Search

In the summer of 1987, more than 370 workers at Nicolet Paper Company in De Pere, Wisconsin, walked out on strike after refusing to agree to a wide range of concessions demanded by International Paper Company (IP), Nicolet's parent company. Within a few weeks, however, IP had permanently replaced the strikers, a tactic that became increasingly common in the 1980s. The author uses oral history interviews to provide a valuable, unique insight into the effects of the permanent replacement tactic, which bitterly divided the small community and left workers with psychological scars that were all too apparent more than a decade later. As the Nicolet workers were part of a broader showdown between IP and the United Paper workers' International Union, the article also helps to illuminate the history of a major labor dispute of the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the issue of 're-making' corporate law through the prism of the United Nations' recent efforts at reducing legal obstacles experienced by micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises in starting and scaling a business. In order to be fully successful, this paper suggests that the UN should go back to business fundamentals and should attempt to build from the ground up based on the real world needs of entrepreneurs, rather than work off already existing corporate legal systems. In this way, it is possible to engage in a more imaginative form of regulatory design in which a clear, open and preferential legal framework for stimulating innovation and business creation can be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on competitive effects of common ownership has grown at a fast rate in the past two years. Anticompetitive effects have been confirmed with alternative reduced-form and structural estimation methods, in different industries, geographies, and jurisdictions. Multiple independent studies have disproven early critiques of the literature. Other papers document the heterogeneity of common ownership effects on competition across markets and industries. Important advances were made on the study of the economic mechanisms and governance channels that implement anti-competitive incentives. New theory refines the interpretation of existing empirical work. Access to high-quality ownership and product-market data remains a bottleneck for meaningful research in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between external knowledge sourcing and a diverse set of innovation outcomes in rural and urban establishments in the U.S. Existing studies in the broader knowledge management literature principally examine firms in a single industry, overwhelmingly rely on patent data to proxy for innovation, and cannot account for the innovations of businesses in rural American markets. By addressing these limitations using data from the 2014 Rural Establishment Innovation Survey of the USDA's Economic Research Service, this research provides novel insights into how externally acquired knowledge by American establishments may support innovation. Results of the analysis suggest that external knowledge sourcing may specifically promote product, process, and green innovation in U.S. firms. While collective results when external sources of information are divided by industry orientation fail to show that sources outside of a firm's industry play a dominant role in the innovation processes of American establishments in general, findings provide evidence for an outsized impact of these relationships within rural establishments specifically and suggest that external knowledge sourcing from extra‐industry organizations is most critical for promoting successful innovation in rural firms. Results additionally indicate that knowledge sourcing from non‐local organizations may be more important for supporting innovation in rural compared to urban markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first reviews a range of risk management frameworks before selecting two models for further consideration, namely the latest international standard for risk management and the standard for enterprise risk management, originating in the USA. The paper then considers three recent major incidents and notes some common characteristics and proposes three tools to identify and mitigate risks arising from interdependency, for use within the two frameworks previously discussed. Finally, the paper considers the complications of appraising inter-connected investments with multiple objectives and outlines a variety of appraisal methods, including multi-criteria analysis and real options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolving situation of mature manufacturing small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) in Japan and the United States and considers some of the key challenges they now face in an era of globalization and rapid technological change. The rationale and justification for policy intervention to support mature SMEs is considered. A review is offered of illustrative policy initiatives in three areas: framework policies, industrial services, and regional industrial cluster policies. The convergence of manufacturing and regional policies is noted. The relative strengths and weaknesses of Japanese and US strategies are assessed. The paper concludes with a comparison of Japanese and US approaches to retaining manufacturing SMEs, interpreted through the various and at times interactive ways through which each country's innovation system develops and evolves technology and business support policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores changing relationships between apparel firms and rural labor markets in Wisconsin over the last decade. Mainstream explanations of recent changes in the apparel industry suggest that rural communities will lose tedious or physically demanding, low-skilled apparel manufacturing jobs but will gain more information-intensive and desirable "apparel service" employment. Through case studies of apparel firms located in two Wisconsin communities, the paper argues that current changes in the industry not only affect communities unevenly but, even in regions where apparel service firms have provided significant numbers of new jobs, these jobs are less well paid, more casually structured, and less secure than manufacturing employment has been. The paper argues that current concepts of the economic embeddedness of firms in communities need to be refined to permit consideration of the kinds of leverage and voice that community organizations have in confronting new forms of corporate capital. The two case studies demonstrate that corporate embeddedness and its labor market outcomes are linked to changes in the global market in which firms compete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of ISO 14001 certification on recycling performance. The research is based on a survey conducted on a sample of certified industrial companies that operate in United States. The paper reveals that companies’ recycling performance is significantly positively affected by certification. The paper also reveals that earlier certified companies experience better recycling performance than more recently certified companies. Finally, the paper shows that smaller firms experience greater improvement in recycling performance than larger firms due to ISO 14001 certification. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Currently, a large gap exists between the number of open software engineering positions and the number of qualified software engineers to fill those positions. The Industry/University (I/U) subgroup of the Working Group on Software Engineering Education and Training (WGSEET) is investigating active collaborations between companies and universities in which non-software professionals and practitioners without formal software education are reeducated to become software engineers. This paper describes the current status of work performed by the I/U subgroup in the investigation of reeducation collaborations. It is our goal to identify the common characteristics of successful collaborations in order to provide guidance to universities and companies when constructing a collaborative program, as well as to promote future collaborations. In this paper, we report on the current activity of the I/U subgroup, describe the features of successful collaborations identified so far in our research, and provide some conclusions as to the usefulness of such collaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper looks at the role of firm size, location, and in-house research and development (R&D) in the innovation performance of U.S. firms in the commercial geographic information systems (GIS) industry. Data from a survey of 300 GIS firms are presented. The results suggest that innovation-intensity varies directly with in-house R&D spending (scaled as a proportion of company sales), but inversely with company size (total employment). Significant regional variations in the innovation performance of GIS firms are identified. It is argued that the geography of innovation is influenced by the spatial distribution of young and/or small firms, in that R&D-productivity is found to vary inversely with company size. An important finding is that creative inputs to support innovation are almost evenly divided between internal and external sources. A surprising result is that the academic community is not viewed as a particularly important source of new ideas for innovative firms. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the survey data for future empirical work on the GIS sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media depictions of corporate social action are increasing (Economy, 2013; Fallon, 2014). Given concerns for the sustainability of our civilization and environment (Hartmann, 2004), increased corporate social action helps ensure a more secure future (Bansal, 2002). This paper attempts to substantiate these anecdotal accounts by using the Kinder, Lyndenburg, Domini (KLD) rating's database to examine the social performance of companies comprising the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A five year analysis found progress in eight of the variables examined including Innovative Giving; Employee Involvement; Health and Safety Concerns; and, Regulatory Problems. Results also indicate opportunities abound for increased corporate social action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the century since his death a great deal of speculation surrounds just how much Taylor has meant to business and industry functional and leadership practices in the United States and the world. It is generally acknowledged that Taylor not only greatly influenced how work was done in the 20th century but also had a direct impact on contemporary management practices and management education. This paper is an attempt to chronicle the life and work of a most extraordinary man who changed the way production, work processes and leadership practices are formulated and put into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate about the separation of ownership and control has focused primarily on internal control of corporations. This study examines the relationship between ownership and control at the interorganizational level. It investigates the relationship between the structure of interorganizational title, as indicated by proprietary communities of interest, and the structure of interorganizational control, as shown by clusters of firms that recruited their boards from the same sets of directors. Secondarily the paper investigates the structure of centrality in the interlocking directorates, for which managerial theory predicts a close relationship between size and centrality. Examining American railroads in 1905, the results show that (1) while ownership and control may or may not have been separate at the level of the individual firm, at the interorganizational level the structure of title conforms very closely to the structure of control; and (2) the structure of centrality exhibits no singular hierarchy, but distinct clusters. Moreover, major companies were not highly central in the entire network, but were instead dominant within particular clusters, suggesting that centralization does not always engender power. The paper concludes that the debate over ownership and con trol should focus on both organizational and interorganizational levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically tests the extent to which economic restructuring and gentrification affect viability and vulnerability businesses, with specific focus on arts and cultural industries in West Chelsea from 2000 through 2012. Based on the theoretical framework, gentrification stage model and adopting discrete-time survival analysis, we separately compare the risks of opening and closing between businesses established before/early stage of revitalisation (early-arrivers) and those established in the later stage (late-arrivers) within West Chelsea, versus their counterparts in the remainder of the study area in New York. We find that West Chelsea has been an advantageous location overall for late-arrivers in surviving in their market, while the early-arrived gallery and individual artists’ enterprises have faced a higher risk of their operations closing. On the other hand, a higher proportion of new gallery and arts and cultural industries remain attracted to West Chelsea after 2000, suggesting that firms in those industries may be benefiting from the agglomeration effects and localisation economies associated with colocation. The higher opening probability of lodging venues (e.g. hotels) and other amenities signals an overall transformation of the neighbourhood and influx of new uses (and visitors) observed during this time frame. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper extends the current literature on county-level income distribution in the United States by explicitly exploring the effect of business-attraction efforts by state governments. Using county-level job attraction and retention data from 2000 to 2005 in Virginia to explain the income distribution from 2006 to 2010, while controlling for demographic and socioeconomic conditions of local communities, this study shows that bringing in manufacturing jobs can reduce income inequality at the local level while attracting jobs in professional and business services tends to increase local income inequality. The results indicate that state and local governments' efforts to attract and retain manufacturing jobs help improve local income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid evolution of computer systems in business organizations worldwide, use of computer systems must be controlled. Because of the characteristics of information, they may give rise to the security problems of information. Most business organizations rely on business information for decision making and even status reporting to stockholders, misuse of accounting information, fraudulent business activities or misrepresentation of company financial status may arise if there is no control over the data subject, data user and data custodian. Corporate governance is required in this regard. SOX implementation is one of the corporate governance tools and has been compulsorily adopted by all American-related companies as well as being widely adopted by non-American companies globally. This paper reviews past literature on SOX implementation in order to establish whether it can help to eradicate the above problems or only bring burdens to stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper finds that, on average, across all firms, employing undocumented workers reduces a firm's hazard of exit by 19 percent. The advantage to firms from employing undocumented workers increases as more firms in the industry do so, decreases with the skill level of the firm's workers, increases with the breadth of a firm's market, and increases with the labor intensity of the firm's production process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century big corporations have evolved into one of the main business organizations of the world. Moreover, large corporations started to dominate many industries in the United States (US). Today, in the globalization era, they have become much more powerful as in the past. The US corporations are major players in the business world and influence our lives. The aim of our paper is to analyze the evolution of the first ten largest US corporations by their revenues and profits in the 2011-2012 period. The research type is a literature review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During periods of economic turmoil and uncertainty, employment opportunities are often greatly diminished. The Great Recession beginning in 2007 caused such a labor market disruption, hitting new college graduates especially hard. Under such conditions, business ownership may appeal to some as a conceivable substitution to "finding a job." The present paper sought to investigate the predisposition of students in a college of business to operate their own business or to work for an established organization. Further, measures for fear of success and fear of appearing incompetent were examined to see whether either, or both, influence either preference. Both underclass students and graduating seniors were surveyed. Results showed that while many students at both levels expressed a preference for operating their own business, considerably fewer believed it to be a likely outcome. Also, males expressed a higher preference than did females for operating their own business. The relationship of the fear of success and the fear of appearing incompetent with the decision to operate one's own business was inconclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that revenues from a sample of publicly traded US asset management companies carry substantial market risks. Not only does this challenge the academic risk management literature about the predominance of operative risks in asset management, it is also at odds with current practice in asset management firms. Asset managers do not hedge market risks even though these risks are systematically built into the revenue generation process. This is surprising as shareholders would not optimally choose asset management companies as their source of market beta. They rather prefer to participate in alpha generation and fund gathering expertise of investment managers as financial intermediaries. At the very minimum, asset managers need to monitor their ‘fees at risk’ to understand what impact product design, benchmark choice and fee contract design have on revenue volatility. This calls for a much wider interpretation of the risk management function that too narrowly focuses on client risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stunning decline of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler over the past decade has rendered the once 'Big Three' US automakers a vulnerable 'Detroit Three'. In their attempts to return to profitability, the Detroit Three have undertaken a series of 'turnarounds' aimed at renewing their competitive edge. Through this corporate restructuring agenda, 250,000 assembly jobs in North America have been lost, upwards of 50 auto plants have been closed, wages and benefits for new hires have been cut substantially and once strong, independent auto unions have been thoroughly overwhelmed. Permanent restructuring, then, represents a crisis strategy on the part of the corporate elite to continually intensify the demands placed on labour in the hopes of creating new conditions for capital accumulation. Working within labour geography, this paper documents the 'regional race to the bottom' in the North American auto industry while reminding labour geographers that capitalist restructuring is a powerful constraint on labour agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Despite the constant and frequent merger activity across various industries in the U.S. and throughout the world, limited evidence of the success of corporate mergers has been documented. The vast body of academic research demonstrates that most mergers add no value or reduce shareholder value for the acquiring firm. Given the failure of so many mergers, the question of why mergers continue to occur in large numbers remains. Overconfidence and optimism have come to the forefront as the most common behavioral explanations for the continued prevalence of ill-advised mergers. This paper investigates a different type of behavioral bias that also may influence merger and acquisition decisions—confirmation bias. Using a unique experimental data set, we provide evidence in support of the existence of confirmation bias in merger decision making behavior, particularly with respect to the behavior of actual corporate executives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates productivity growth, technical progress, and efficiency change for a group of the 56 largest CPA firms in the US from the period 1996–1999 through the period 2003–2006, where the former preceded, and the latter followed, enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX). Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to calculate Malmquist indices of three measures of interest: productivity growth, technical progress, and efficiency change. Results indicate that CPA firms, on average, experienced a productivity growth of approx. 17% from the pre- to post-SOX period. Consistent with the finding of Banker et al. [Banker RD, Chang H, Natarajan R. Productivity change, technical progress and relative efficiency change in the public accounting industry. Management Science 2005;51:291–304], this productivity gain can be attributed primarily to technical progress rather than a change in relative efficiency. In addition, results indicate that the “Big 4” firms underperformed their non-Big 4 counterparts in both productivity growth and technical progress. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In today’s globalized political economy, diplomacy between nation-states (state–state diplomacy) now exists alongside state–firm diplomacy, the negotiations between multinational corporations (MNCs) and the countries in which they do business. While the state must be committed to the interests of its MNCs in the interest of domestic state–firm diplomacy (maintaining a supportive business environment), it still has recourse to address failures in corporate diplomacy and to maintain the appearance of dominance on the world stage. This paper examined these strategies through a critical analysis of prepared testimony at the February 2006 congressional hearing regarding the controversial actions of four U.S. IT MNCs (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco) operating in China. I conclude that when the government is constrained from using its hard power on its MNCs, soft power becomes its most effective tool. Image, suggestion, and appearance—soft power—can be considered more important than legislation itself—hard power—and perhaps even the currency of current state–firm relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the quest to explain changing urban political economic conditions over the past thirty years urban researchers have naturalized capital mobility, to the point where challenging the mobility of capital appears either impossible, undesirable, or both. In this paper I aim to denaturalize capital mobility and to repoliticize the relationship between capital and place through a critical legal geographic investigation of corporate mobility rights in the United States. The overall goal is to help urban researchers to think critically about the politics of capital mobility and to ensure that the legal principles enabling capital mobility remain open to challenge from alternative political perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the research productivity of academic institutions in the leading international marketing journals, leading generalist marketing journals, and leading international business journals between the years 1999 and 2003 from a regional and country-specific perspective. The research found that across the three groups of journals, the majority of works were authored by academics at institutions located in North America, although North Americans contribute significantly less in the international marketing and international business journals than leading generalist marketing journals. The findings suggest that there is a broadening of non-U.S. influence within the international marketing and international business journals, which should lead to a broadening of international marketing theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, we perform an initial, exploratory analysis to determine whether firms use “cultural filters” as indirect and direct proxies for human capital when screening potential applicants for employment opportunities. Using data collected from three counties in Washington State, we find that these filters do, indeed, influence hiring decisions. As a result, it may be advantageous for policy makers to consider restructuring welfare policies to account for the effects of these cultural filters. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper tests whether financial leverage fluctuates in a way which is consistent with the existence of a target leverage or, on the contrary, it freely fluctuates with the observed changes on stock returns. Using a sample of non-financial publicly-traded firms of 5 Latin-American countries and the US in the period 2000-2007, we find that firms allow their leverages fluctuate almost one to one with stock returns variations. This evidence does not mean at all that firms are not involve in corporate debt issuing activity but they do not care too much about hit a particular target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the determinants of stock option introduction as a part of CEO compensation in listed US firms during the 1994–2004 period. The results are consistent with agency costs and recruiting considerations, suggesting that firms do not adjust CEO compensation in order to address the ‘investment horizon’ problem. The findings also suggest that CEO stock option adoption is not necessarily influenced by the same factors that have been found in the literature to affect the level of CEO stock option compensation and the adoption of broad-based stock option incentives. Overall, the findings provide evidence for several theoretical predictions, thus adding to our understanding of managerial incentives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores differences in the use of design in service innovation in Nordic and American new technology-based firms and is based on a systematic qualitative comparison of case data collected on eight service innovation projects in each of the locations. Differences were expected due to these two locations'' disparity in terms of agglomeration of technology-based firms and access to design resources. The results of the comparison indicate that there are more similarities than there are differences in how design is used in service innovation in these two locations. Possible explanations are explored and implications suggested. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]