COVID-19 and business renewal: Lessons and insights from the global airline industry

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the fortunes of multiple companies around the globe. Accordingly, questions are increasingly being asked about how organizations can revitalize during and after a crisis. Yet, we have limited understanding of how organizations renew themselves during crises over time. We explore this question through the lens and examination of two South-Asian airlines: Pakistan International Airlines and Sri Lankan Airlines. The cases offer important insights into the reasons behind underperformance of state-controlled enterprises and renewal activities. We shed light on strategic renewal (SR) in the wake of increasing liberalization and deregulations in the global airline industry. To this end, we propose a four-stage approach towards renewing such underperforming organizations to respond effectively to black swan events and external shocks.     

Diverse approaches to managing diversity

Against a backdrop of philosophical and political debate, this article reviews the emerging pitfalls of new corporate diversity programs. Three pioneering corporate programs are examined closely, and a discussion of the purpose, the process, and the impact of these programs is offered. Original survey data reported here suggest that exposure to diversity issues affects workplace attitudes. Lessons are drawn that address the role of top leadership, participant mix, instructor quality, and corporate culture.     

The Only Fund in Town? Geographic Segmentation in the US Mutual Fund Industry

We find that mutual funds located in regions with more competing funds charge lower management fees, but higher fees related to sales and distribution (12b‐1 fees), sales loads, and other nonmanagement fee expenses. There is some evidence that funds in more competitive regions have higher total expense ratios than similar funds in less competitive regions. Our results indicate that while increased competition drives down fund profits, it creates a negative externality by way of increased sales expenses. Overall, our results suggest the mutual fund industry is characterized by monopolistic competition determined at the local level.     

INFORMATION AGGREGATION,GROWTH, AND FRANCHISE EXTENSION WITH APPLICATIONS TO FEMALE ENFRANCHISEMENT AND INEQUALITY

We develop a model of voluntary gradual franchise extension and growth based on the idea that voting is an information aggregation mechanism. A larger number of voters means that more correct decisions are made, hence increasing output, but also implies that any incremental output must be shared among more individuals. These conflicting incentives lead to a dynamic model of franchise extensions that is consistent with several real world episodes, including female enfranchisement. The model also predicts that in certain circumstances growth and enfranchisement will be accompanied by Kuznets curve type behaviour in inequality. Contrary to the preceding literature these conclusions do not rest on incentives for strategic delegation.     

A Test of the Conditional CAPM with Simultaneous Estimation of the First and Second Conditional Moments

Recent studies of the conditional Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) are extended by modeling the first and second conditional moments separately, but estimating them jointly, allowing the isolation of time-varying influences in the different moments. Results support evidence that both conditional moments and conditional risk parameters are time varying, and help shed light on previous rejections of the conditional CAPM. The GMM test of the over-identifying restrictions fails to reject the null that the CAPM holds through time when a non-linear specification is used, and only weakly rejects the null with a linear specification.     

Managerial perceptions of service-infused IORs in China & India: A discursive view of value co-creation

This paper explores the managerial challenges facing firms seeking to build relationships with other network actors while doing business in foreign markets. By taking a critical perspective on an area of increasing importance in both manufacturing and service sectors, that of value co-creation, the paper explores how managers in different cultural contexts make sense of the notion of ‘value’ in inter-organizational B2B relationships between New Zealand service and service-infused supplier firms and buyers in China and India. From an analysis of the interview-based accounts on both sides of the buyer–seller dyad marked differences emerge regarding value-creation within managers' discourse around partnerships, collaboration and cooperation. Our findings suggest that the Indian manager's discursive use of ‘partnership’ draws on service-dominant logic in viewing this type of interaction as a means for co-creating value; they and their New Zealand suppliers are jointly involved in co-creating value within a service system, creating value-in-use. In contrast, the predominant perspective seen in the discourse of Chinese managers is the use of cooperation as a means of making transactions more cost-effective, or to fill gaps in their supply chains, resulting in the creation of transaction-based, co-production of value, which suggests a value-in-exchange orientation. In both cases, there is repeated reference to more peripheral actors whose efforts result in what we interpret as network value creation, based on their interactions with actors within the buyer–seller dyad.