Board directors with foreign experience and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

This study examines the impact of board directors with foreign experience (BDFEs) on stock price crash risk. We find that BDFEs help reduce crash risk. This association is robust to a series of robustness checks, including a firm fixed effects model, controlling for possibly omitted variables, and instrumental variable estimations. Moreover, we find that the negative association between BDFEs and crash risk is more pronounced for firms with more agency problems, weaker corporate governance, and less overall transparency. Our findings suggest that the characteristics of board directors matter in determining stock price crash risk.     

The impact of wearable devices on employee wellness programs: A study of hotel industry workers

Hospitality workplaces are particularly challenging contexts in which to implement wellness initiatives. The present study implemented a technology-based wellness intervention to improve various aspects of employee wellness in contemporary hotel workplaces. The participants were given a wearable device (Fitbit, used here as an innovative tool) in order to monitor their activity levels and sleep patterns over a 14-day period. Additionally, the participants provided researchers with food diaries in separate electronic form. Information regarding job satisfaction, job engagement, organizational citizenship behaviors, and intention to leave was obtained before and after the observation period. The results demonstrate an increase in physical activity, an increase in healthy food consumption, and a reduction in overall caloric intake. Furthermore, positive changes in employee engagement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment were noted. Care should be exercised when implementing such interventions in order to ensure data privacy and positive employee relations.     

Testing Rival Theories of Budgetary Decision–making in the US States

This article tests three common budgetary decision–making theories in the US states. Pooled time series cross–section analysis is used from 1960 to 1996 to test the garbage can theory and incrementalism, and from 1989 to 1996 to test various theories of rational budgeting. The results demonstrate that there was some support for all three theories in terms of their impact on reducing state budget outputs. Rational budgeting reduces expenditures in aggregate, incrementalism has relatively low explanatory power below the aggregates, and garbage can budgeting is more prevalent in functional areas than for government as a whole. These findings imply that the future research agenda on budgetary decision–making theories should focus more on a system–wide approach, which takes into account many of the characteristics of all three rival models of decision–making, rather than exclusively focusing on each one singly.     

Free cash flow, debt-monitoring and managers' LIFO/FIFO policy choice

This paper explores the explanatory power of Jensen's free cash flow hypothesis in managers' choice of LIFO versus FIFO. The association between FCF, and choice of inventory methods is based on the assumption that there is a potential conflict of interest between managers and shareholders when LIFO is the tax minimization method and that non-value-maximizing managers of firms with the FCF problem have incentives to choose FIFO, an income increasing method, in order to increase their compensation. However, since debt can act as a monitoring device and mitigate the agency problems of FCF, managers of firms with high FCF and high debt are less likely to choose FIFO than managers of firms with high FCF and low debt. The evidence is consistent with this expectation.     

关于健全独立董事制度的若干思考

入世给我国中小企业的发展带来了机遇与挑战。培育核心竞争力是其抓住机遇 ,应对挑战 ,走向成功的关键所在。文章在分析了我国中小企业面临困境的基础上 ,提出了培育我国中小企业核心竞争力 ,促进我国中小企业发展的方法和措施。     

技术性贸易壁垒与合格评定程序

随着WTO和贸易自由化的发展，各国的关税水平大幅度降低，以及配额、许可证等非关税措施的逐步取消，大大促进了国际贸易的发展，技术贸易措施在国际贸易中的地位日益重要。合格评定程序是指任何直接或间接用以确定产品是否满足技术法规或标准要求的程序。合格评定程序是企业扩大对外出口、突破技术贸易壁垒的有效措施。     

Teams,Teamwork and Absence*

We argue that firms with interdependent worker productivity, team production, have a higher cost of absence and, as a consequence, spend additional resources on monitoring absence. As a result, firms with team production should have lower absence rates. We estimate the determinants of absence for blue‐collar workers using a sample of German manufacturing establishments. Workplace teams are used as a proxy for team production. The estimates reveal that firms with teams have lower absence rates, as do smaller establishments. The size effect, however, is unique to establishments with teams, which fits prior theoretical work that has not been previously tested.     

以就业为导向做好专业建设的实践与探索

专业建设是高职学校改革和发展的重要组成部分,又是课程建设的基础、纲领。本文通过以就业导向做好专业建设的实践,对如何做好高职的专业建设的问题,进行了探索。     

标准化在油藏监测工作中的作用

以油藏监测工作中的油藏压力监测为例，介绍了标准化工作在压力资料录取及解释分析中的作用。并用实例说明了标准化作业在油田开发方案的制定及油藏压力监测中的应用。