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The relationship between ethics and economics has never been easy. Opponents in a tug of war, friends in a warm embrace, ships passing in the night--the relationship has been highly variable. In recent years, the friendship model has been gaining credence, particularly among U.S. corporate executives. Increasingly, companies are launching ethics programs, values initiatives, and community involvement activities premised on management's belief that "Ethics pays." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working from the perspective of the resource-based view of strategy, this paper addresses whether academics, consultants, and other sources of general managerial prescriptions can affect firms' long-run rent streams. The answer is affirmative. To demonstrate this, I discuss the use of motivational techniques as a well-understood and common managerial choice that may affect a firm's chance of generating rents. This paper interprets extant empirical research on goal setting and discusses the conceptualization of temporal rent patterns. I build upon an empirical finding in goal-setting research to compare the temporal patterns of rents for managerial choices embedded in path-dependent vs. path-independent processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its current form, the Deming management method contains a prescriptive set of 14 points that serve as guidelines for appropriate organizational behavior and practice regarding quality management. Despite the apparent effect of these 14 points on both the industrial world and the practice of management theory around the world, there is little evidence of the role of the Deming management method in the formalization and advancement of management theory. Although its impact on management practice is clear, neither its theoretical contribution nor its theoretical base has yet to be articulated. Yes, there is a theory of quality management underlying the Deming management method, but at present, this theory is presented in the prescriptive form of these 14 points. We propose and articulate a theory of quality management to describe and explain the effects of adopting the Deming management method. This theory is based on the conceptual synthesis of Deming's writings, literature on the Deming management method, observations of practice, and, more specifically, the results of a Delphi study involving a panel of experts on the Deming management method. We trace the development of this method, position it within the context of theory, describe our theory formulation process, propose and explain an underlying theory of quality management, and offer implications for practice and further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a test of whether capital structure decisions are at least in part motivated by managerial self-interest. It is shown that the debt ratio is negatively related to management's shareholding, reflecting the greater nondiversifiable risk of debt to management than to public investors for maintaining a low debt ratio. Unless there is a non managerial principal stockholder, no substantial increase of debt can be realized, which may suggest that the existence of large non managerial stockholders might make the interests of managers and public investors coincide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If firm performance affects managers' wealth or reputation, preferences of managers dominate firms' financing decisions. When information about real asset investment is symmetric, managers finance exclusively with equity. If managers know more about asset quality than do investors and if managers are sufficiently risk averse, they signal high-quality projects with debt. Increases in collateral value decrease risky debt use. Increases in interest rates that do not change productive opportunities increase debt use. The explanation for these and further results is based on underpricing of equity and overpricing of debt at the margin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An untested proposition in the normative strategic management literature is that strategists should make decisions based on accurate assessments of their external environments. Empirical organization theory literature holds the assumption that high levels of perceived uncertainty are detrimental to performance. Both literatures assume goal consensus to be important to effectiveness. This study investigated the relationship between top management perceptions of uncertainty, corporate goal structures, and industry volatility in explaining economic performance in 20 firms. Findings suggested that attempts to avoid true environmental uncertainty and to seek high levels of goal congruence may be dysfunctional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Role diversity-operationalized by the number of relevant role senders-job level, subunit size, and company size are examined in this paper as determinants of perceived managerial satisfaction. Perceived need satisfaction, need fulfillment deficiency, need importance, and possibility of need fulfillment serve as the dependent variables. Role diversity and job level are found to be more significantly related to need satisfaction and possibility of need fulfillment than subunit or company size. Results are interpreted in the context of role theory and previous research by Porter. Administrative implications are suggested in the areas of reward system design and managerial motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report that the probability that executives exercise options early decreases with the volatility of the underlying stock return. We interpret this to mean that executives' subjective option value increases with volatility and that option grants increase executives' risk appetite. Further decomposition reveals that the results are most pronounced for idiosyncratic volatility, consistent with our conjecture that executives believe they can better predict or influence the resolution of idiosyncratic uncertainty than systematic uncertainty and, thus, favor the former. Data are available at . This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether financial targets are based on both forward-looking and financial information, rather than on financial information only. We collect sales and performance appraisal data of store managers in a retail chain. The firm issues directives focused on the provision of excellent customer service and assesses store managers' compliance with these directives subjectively. We demonstrate that, controlling for current sales, compliance with directives scores predicts future sales performance. We find that, next to objective sales information, this forward-looking information is impounded in the next year's sales target. Finally, we find some evidence that suggests that incorporating forward-looking information improves the accuracy of sales targets. This paper was accepted by Mary Barth, accounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We examine voluntary disclosure and capital investment by an informed manager in an initial public offering (IPO) in the presence of informed and uninformed investors. We find that in equilibrium, disclosure is more forthcoming-and investment efficiency is lower-when a greater fraction of the investment community is already informed. Moreover, managers disclose more information when the likelihood of an information event is higher, more equity is issued, or the cost of information acquisition is lower. Investment efficiency and the expected level of underpricing are non-monotonic in the likelihood that the manager is privately informed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the link of decision-making style and individualism with Arab executives' attitudes toward risk. Problems and objectives; Scales used; Implications.

The importance of innovation within organizations has been demonstrated on numerous occasions, which has subsequently led to the identification of effective leadership as a potential catalyst. Accordingly, empirical findings have repeatedly demonstrated a positive relationship between transformational leadership and work unit effectiveness measures. This study explores the relationship between transformational leadership and employee innovative work behaviour, additionally examining the moderating effect of gender of the manager and gender of the employee. Data were gathered within four Australian hospitals, generating a dataset of 335 respondents. The findings revealed a positive and significant relationship between transformational leadership and innovative work behaviour. Furthermore, gender of the manager moderated the latter relationship, indicating that employees report more innovative behaviour when the transformational leadership is displayed by male in comparison with female managers, confirming our gender bias hypothesis. No significant effect was found for the three-way interaction of transformational leadership, gender of the manager, and gender of the employee. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the relative lack of mentoring by senior leaders of corporations and other large organizations. Corporations face the need to replace most if not all of their senior leaders as the baby boom generation of managers reaches retirement age. Despite this acknowledged problem, many senior leaders do not engage in mentoring of potential successors or younger employees in general. Interviews were conducted with senior leaders in a variety of fields. The most common excuses given for not mentoring are contradicted by other research findings. Suggestions are given on how companies and organizations can create programs to overcome the resistance to mentoring.

In this comparative survey of seventy-three Russians and ninety-two US managers, we explore differences and similarities in ethical decision-making among respondents from these two countries within a business context. Using Reidenbach and Robin's (1988) multi-criteria ethics instrument, we examined whether business people in Russia and the US differed in their judgement of the ethical content of business decisions. Russia and the US provide an interesting comparison because of the extreme differences in their cultural characteristics as well as in their economies and related business development. Our results indicate that, while Americans, in general, tended to assess certain actions as less ethical when applying utilitarian or justice criteria, the ethical judgements of the two groups differed by situation and by criteria employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competitive analysis is the cornerstone of effective strategy formulation and implementation. This analysis helps executives understand and predict strategic moves by competitors. It also allows executives to develop, select, and test appropriate strategies. However, competitive analysis is complicated and time-consuming, and it requires significant organizational resources, creativity, imagination, and insight. This complexity often breeds flawed analysis. Undetected, such analysis leads to ineffective, if not disastrous, strategies. This article highlights six potential blind spots or flaws in competitive analysis and offers guidelines for executives to safeguard against them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprise management often encourages their marketing personnel to offer gifts to purchasers of clients but won't allow the purchasers of the company to accept gifts. This double standards create an atmosphere of dishonesty in the company. When considering that purchasers fulfilling the procurement function for a company are the major spenders of company funds, and that purchasers are frequently tempted to accept gifts and prevailing double standards within the company, it is no wonder that they sometimes succumb to unethical behaviour. The purchasing environment thus creates an atmosphere conducive to unethical behaviour. However, the cause of unethical behaviour is not necessarily the individual's lack of moral standards. Research has shown that the actions of managers, the ethical climate in the enterprise and the absence of a company policy on the matter are all contributing factors towards unethical behaviour. Unethical behaviour of purchasers and other personnel involved in procurement can therefore be prevented or limited by implementing certain measures. This article focuses on ethics, procurement or purchasing ethics, and unethical behaviour among purchasers in general, as well as more specifically on the situation in South Africa, and makes recommendations for establishing codes of conduct, other procedures and policies for improving the situation of the purchaser in the enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the risk preferences for below target returns of 224 managers from the U.S., Canada, and Europe. When only non-ruinous losses were involved, 71% of the managers were risk seeking for below target returns. The distribution of risk preferences tended to be stable over a wide range of experimental conditions: diversity of background of the managers, the size of outcomes below target, and the context of the decision process (personal versus managerial). When ruinous losses were introduced for 75 of the managers, 64% switched to risk averse behavior. Empirical findings concerning the relationship between risk preferences for below target returns and several demographic characteristics of managers are also reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents business management-related news items, as of January 1983. Possibility that population statistics explain Japan's low labor turnover and high productivity in contrast to those in the United States; Relation between top management's opinion and the company's long-term survival; Trends in research and development spending.