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Proactive environmental strategy (PES) is regarded as an effective tool to mitigate and root out the negative effects of an enterprise's development on the environment. Although institutional pressures have been viewed as major factors that can promote enterprises' PES, the results are still inconsistent. This mixed empirical result leads to a need to unpack the relationship between institutional pressures and PES, like the certain key mediating role of top managerial environment attitude. In addition, with the important role of new media in an enterprise's strategy, new media pressure plays a significant role in the PES field to induce enterprises to make a strategy change. Therefore, combining institutional theory and upper echelon theory, this paper explores the mediating roles of top managerial environment attitude between institutional pressures and PES, and the moderating roles of new media pressure, from a new media perspective. Our research model was tested by survey data from 345 top Chinese managers, and several results are established. First, the top managerial environment attitude significantly mediates the relationship between three institutional pressures and PES. Second, among the three institutional pressures, customer pressure is the most powerful one to influence the top managerial environment attitude toward PES. Third, new media pressure promotes and suppresses the positive effect between customer pressure, competitor pressure, and top managerial environment attitude. To promote the adoption of PES, it is important for top managers and governments to pay close attention to customer, regulatory, and competitor pressures, particularly when these pressures are amplified by new media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how CEOs' insurance behaviours outside the workplace, as measured by the premium rates of their self‐purchasing critical illness insurance, are related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. We show that such behaviours (i.e. the CEO‐insurance effect) capture the variation in CEOs' risk aversion and are positively associated with CSR performance. We also find that our results align with the risk mitigation hypothesis rather than the agency conflict hypothesis. Additional analysis reveals that the main effect is more pronounced among firms in uncertain environments. Further evidence shows that accounting conservatism and internal control are potential channels through which the CEO‐insurance effect boosts CSR performance. Collectively, our evidence contributes to research on managerial risk attitude, heterogeneity in CSR policies and 'off‐the‐job' determinants of CEOs' styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managerial attitudes are often seen as critical to sustainable employee participation practices, yet very little is known about how managers act within employee voice fora. We examine managements' decision to actively consult with employees, and by doing so contribute to industrial relations debates concerning the role of managerial prerogative and trust to better understand the attitudes of managers towards elected employee representatives. Using evidence from a 2‐year longitudinal study of non‐union employee representation, we report on how managements' perception of risk about sharing information with employee representatives influences their decision as to how to consult with employees. The findings show that managers can be unwilling to share information with employee representatives, which constrains the depth and scope of consultation. The role of management decision‐makers, typically the I&C fora Chairperson, is highlighted as champion for, or obstacle to, consultation. Lastly, the data illustrate that I&C is viewed by management as a lower strategic organizational priority, and how extending worker voice is constrained by the importance management place on maintaining their presumed prerogative of control. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although emotions have been investigated within strategic management literature from an internal perspective, managers' ability and willingness to understand consumers' emotions, with emphasis on the retail sector, is still a scarcely explored theme in management research. The aim of this paper is to explore the match between the supply of new analytical tools and retail managers' attitudes towards new tools to capture customers' emotions. To this end, Study 1 uses machine learning algorithms to develop a new system to analytically detect emotional responses from customers' static images (considering the exemplar emotions of happiness and sadness), whilst Study 2 consults management decision‐makers to explore the practical utility of such emotion recognition systems, finding a likely demand for a number of applications, albeit tempered by concern for ethical issues. While contributing to the retail management literature with regard to customers' emotions and big data analytics, the findings also provide a new framework to support retail managers in using new analytics to survive and thrive in difficult times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability managers represent a key stakeholder in implementing and diffusing sustainability initiatives. However, there is a significant gap in the literature examining the impact of greenwashing on sustainability managers. This research examines the effects of greenwashing on sustainability managers' job satisfaction, commitment, turnover intentions, and job performance from a social identity/person–organization (P‐O) fit perspective. Our sample consists of practicing sustainability managers (n = 125) in high‐ (77%) or mid‐level (23%) positions. Results indicate that perceived greenwashing negatively affects the attitudinal outcomes and job performance of sustainability managers. The results also indicate that for sustainability managers whose social responsibility identity is higher than that of their firm, greenwashing has a significant association with lower satisfaction and job performance and higher intentions to leave. However, for managers whose social responsibility identity is lower than that of their firm, employer greenwashing had no effect on the sustainability managers' attitudes, even though they recognized their own poor job performance. The cumulative effect may be a situation in which managers in the best position to enhance a firm's CSR leave the firm, and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although flexibility has been considered critical in responding to uncertainty in a business environment, few studies have explored firms' flexibility in sustainable development. To understand the nature of firms that can respond better to uncertainty in their sustainable development practices, this study defines sustainable development flexibility and investigates the mechanism underlying its formation. The study proposes a conceptual framework on the interactions of managers' environmental attitude and cognitive style, as well as firms' information integration on sustainable development flexibility. A questionnaire survey was developed to test the corresponding hypotheses, and 241 valid responses were received from middle‐ and top‐level managers in Chinese firms. The results show that (a) the higher the manager's environmental attitude, the higher the firm's information integration and greater sustainable supply chain flexibility, and (b) the more intuitive the manager's cognitive style, the greater the impact of environmental attitude on sustainable development flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores if the value priorities and their impact on future managers' attitudes towards environmental responsibilities vary with gender. While relevant prior studies mostly focus on gender‐based variations of individuals' personal values in developed economies, we concentrate on both personal values and pro‐environmental attitudes in an emerging economy. This study is built on MBA students (a proxy for future managers) in India since India is characterized as a male‐dominated society and a producer of larger number of MBA graduates. Overall, our results show that personal values and attitude towards environmental responsibilities do not vary significantly with gender. Only two values (among the 21 values) and one value type (out of 10 values) get significantly higher ranking from females compared with males. Further, although 'universalism' and 'benevolence' are found to have a statistically significant impact on respondents' attitude towards environmental responsibility, the latter is invariant to the respondents' gender. Our findings may indicate India's transformation from a male‐dominated society towards a more gender‐balanced society. These findings can be used to operationalize a pro‐environmental recruitment policy and to formulate strategies to improve female participation in MBA cohorts of business schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze how the work ethic of managers impacts a firm's employment contracts, riskiness, growth potential, and organizational structure. Flat contracts are optimal for diligent managers because they reduce risk-sharing costs, but they attract egoistic agents who shirk and unskilled agents who add no value. Stable, bureaucratic firms with low growth potential are more likely to gain value from managerial diligence. Firms that hire from a virtuous pool of agents are more conservative in their investments and have a horizontal corporate structure. Our theory also yields several testable implications that distinguish it from standard agency models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to establish a competitive advantage, firms must acquire or create resources at a price below their value in use. Absent pure luck, this requires managers to exercise foresight about a resource's future value and/or complementarities with pre-existing capabilities. This foresight grants managers the opportunity to exploit information asymmetries for personal gain as well as building organizational capabilities. Nevertheless, there is limited research on the extent of foresight or how managers use it. In our study of insider trading, we found that managers purchase stock well before breakthrough patents are filed. We argue for further research on the extent of managerial foresight and how it affects rent generation and appropriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence that top managers have contrarian views on firm value. Managers' perceptions of fundamental value diverge systematically from market valuations, and perceived mispricing seems an important determinant of managers' decision making. Insider trading patterns shows that low valuation firms are regarded as undervalued by their own managers relative to high valuation firms. This finding is robust to controlling for noninformation motivated trading. Further evidence links managers' private portfolio decisions to changes in corporate capital structures, suggesting that managers try to actively time the market both in their private trades and in firm-level decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship of strategic leadership behaviors with executive innovation influence and the moderating effects of top management team (TMT)'s tenure heterogeneity and social culture on that relationship. Using survey data from six countries comprising three social cultures, strategic leadership behaviors were found to have a strong positive relationship with executive influence on both product-market and administrative innovations. In addition, TMT tenure heterogeneity moderated the relationship of strategic leadership behaviors with executive innovation influence for both types of innovation, while social culture moderated that relationship only in the case of administrative innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigated how the ownership structure is related to the firm's overall compensation strategy. The findings extend previous research that focused primarily on CEO compensation strategy. We show that there are significant differences in the compensation practices that apply to all employees as a function of the ownership structure. The results show that for owner-controlled firms and owner-managed firms there is significant pay/performance sensitivity for all employees. In management-controlled firms, changes in pay are related to changes in size of the firm. These findings lead us to conclude that ownership structure not only affects upper management's pay, but also the pay of all employees through substantial differences in the firm's compensation practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study helps to explain why some new ventures make strategic decisions more quickly than others. Drawing on life course theory and human capital theory, I develop a model of how entrepreneurs' individual characteristics affect new venture decision speed. I test the model using survey data from 98 Internet startups and their founder/managers. Results show that firms made faster decisions when they were managed by older entrepreneurs and by those with prior entrepreneurial experience. In addition, exploratory analyses indicating that fast decision-making firms were more likely to close may indicate that prevailing theory in this area is contextually limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common folklore that giving options to agents will make them more willing to take risks is false. In fact, no incentive schedule will make all expected utility maximizers more or less risk averse. This paper finds simple, intuitive, necessary and sufficient conditions under which incentive schedules make agents more or less risk averse. The paper uses these to examine the incentive effects of some common structures such as puts and calls, and it briefly explores the duality between a fee schedule that makes an agent more or less risk averse, and gambles that increase or decrease risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine voting by a board designed to mitigate conflicts of interest between privately informed insiders and owners. Our model demonstrates that, as argued by researchers and the business press, boards with a majority of trustworthy but uninformed "watchdogs" can implement institutionally preferred policies. Our laboratory experiments strongly support this conclusion. Our model also highlights the necessity of penalties on insiders when there is dissension among board members. However, penalties for dissent appeared to have little impact on the experimental outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managers operate in a complex, uncertain environment and tend to form simplified models in order to cope with this environment and make competitive strategic decisions (i.e., cost leadership, differentiation, or focus). In this study, we use an experimental design to examine the strategic choice decision-making process in firms located in the United States and Japan. We develop several main-effect propositions regarding managerial selection of competitive strategies, depending on the competitive forces (buyer power, threat of substitutes, threat of new firm entry, and high intensity of rivalry) they are facing. We propose a main effect due to country of origin: Japanese managers prefer a cost-leadership strategy more than American managers do. We also propose several interaction effects regarding cross-national differences in strategy selection between Japanese and U.S. managers. To test our propositions, we collected experimental data from 316 U.S. executives and 459 Japanese executives. We assessed relative impacts of the competitive forces on strategic decision-making using a multilevel regression analysis. The research findings indicated that high buyer power and high substitution threat were associated with a preference for cost-leadership strategies, and Japanese managers were significantly more likely to prefer a cost-leadership strategy than U.S. managers. We also found that, under conditions of high buyer power, U.S. managers were less likely than Japanese managers to enter a market with a differentiation or focus strategy. We found little support for other interaction hypotheses, suggesting points of similarity between U.S. and Japanese managers. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of 251 IPOs in the United Kingdom, this paper examines interlinks between executive and non executive characteristics, share ownership, and short-term performance measured in terms of share offer 'underpricing.' It argues that executives' power and previous experience directly affect ex ante choice of nonexecutive directors and their ownership interests in the firm. These endogenously developed governance factors may be used by IPO teams strategically to reduce the extent of underpricing. However, there is a selective response of investors to different board characteristics and share ownership structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze a sample of 72 IPO firms that went public between 1992 and 1996 for which we have detailed proprietary information about the amount and cost of directors' and officers' (D&O) liability insurance. If managers of IPO firms are exploiting superior inside information, we hypothesize that the amount of insurance coverage chosen will be related to the post-offering performance of the issuing firm's shares. Consistent with the hypothesis, we find a significant negative relation between the three-year post-IPO stock price performance and the insurance coverage purchased in conjunction with the IPO. One plausible interpretation is that, like insider securities transactions, D&O insurance decisions reveal opportunistic behavior by managers. This provides some motivation to argue that disclosure of the details of D&O insurance decisions, as is required in some other countries, is valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by notions from the literature on organizational learning, this paper investigates how product line experimentation and organizational performance change across the careers of top managers. Its subjects are the studio heads who ran all the major Hollywood film studios from 1936 to 1965. The study found first, that product line experimentation declines over the course of executive tenures; second, that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between top executive tenure and an organization's financial performance; and third, that product line experimentation is more likely to benefit financial performance late in top executives' tenures. These findings are consistent with a three-stage `executive life cycle'. During the early years of their tenures, top managers experiment intensively with their product lines to learn about their business; later on their accumulated knowledge allows them to reduce experimentation and increase performance; finally, in their last years, executives reduce experimentation still further, and performance declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue deals with the question of how it is that, over time, some firms manage to become successful using their capabilities, while other firms do not. The articles examine the ways in which firm capabilities emerge, develop, and change over time, and the resulting effects on firm performance. Conceptual models and analyses based on empirical research deal with market entry and the evolution of firm capabilities, adaptation and change in capabilities, and heterogeneity of firm capabilities over time. Within these broad themes, specific topics include the role of' pre-entry experience and initial conditions, aspirations and learning, dynamic capabilities, technological change, products and markets, mergers and acquisitions, and managerial cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the study of the nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Saudi Arabia. The study performs demographic and organizational survey of attitudes of managers and non-traditional students (employees) toward CSR. It mentions that CSR is grouped into six categories including economic, legal, and ethical responsibilities, which are rated using a five-point Likert scale. Result shows that CSR in the country is labeled on environmentalism, legality, and voluntarism.

We examine whether mutual fund performance is related to characteristics of fund managers that may indicate ability, knowledge, or effort. In particular, we study the relationship between performance and the manager's age, the average composite SAT score at the manager's undergraduate institution, and whether the manager has an MBA. Although the raw data suggest striking return differences between managers with different characteristics, most of these can be explained by behavioral differences between managers and by selection biases. After adjusting for these, some performance differences remain. In particular, managers who attended higher-SAT undergraduate institutions have systematically higher risk-adjusted excess returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although one might expect differences between manufacturing and service firms in pioneering advantages, the extent of these differences has not yet been investigated. This is the first cross-national study that compares such differences in nine countries/regions: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore. We develop several hypotheses concerning the perceptions of managers of manufacturing firms and service firms regarding the benefits and post-entry risks of pioneering, and the cost and differentiation advantages accruing to the pioneering firm. We test the hypotheses with data from 2,419 firms representing all nine countries and both industrial sectors. We find that: (1) managers from all countries perceive pioneering to be associated with higher market share and/or profitability; (2) manufacturing firm managers perceive pioneering risks to be significantly more important than do service firm managers; (3) cost and differentiation advantages of pioneering are, for the most part, more significant to manufacturing than to service firm managers; (4) Western manufacturing firm managers perceive the cost advantages to be more important than Asian Pacific manufacturing firm managers. We conclude by presenting the managerial implications of our findings. [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]

During the recession, the decline in home value and home ownership reduced the demand for ornamental plants, lawn and garden products, and related services, which resulted in significantly negative effect on the green industry revenues. Postrecession consolidation in the United States green industry has forced smaller firms to re‐evaluate their marketing strategies. New‐media marketing has gained attention as a relatively low‐cost and high‐exposure marketing strategy. This paper utilizes binary logit and interval censored regression to examine the use and the impact of social‐media marketing in the green industry. The analysis was based on primary data from a survey of US nurseries and garden centers. The findings reveal that the daily use of social‐media marketing is largely driven by the network effect and the managers' attitudes. They also indicate that the small‐sized firms receive higher returns from social media use in terms of increased sales compared with larger firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational studies have widely debated the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. Some papers have dealt with managerial satisfaction and businesses' performance adopting agency theory to interpret the results. However, no studies have yet considered the relationship between the satisfaction levels of an environmental manager and corporate environmental performance. This paper thus analyses the role played by the environmental manager's satisfaction in enhancing corporate environmental performance and reputation. The paper uses data from a survey of 412 Eco Management and Audit Scheme registered organizations. The results show a positive relationship between managerial satisfaction and environmental performance, whereas no such positive relationship was found when considering eco‐innovation performance. In addition, the environmental manager's satisfaction has a positive and indirect influence on the corporate environmental reputation. These results contribute to the literature on agency theory and aim to extend the debate between job satisfaction and job performance to the sustainable business field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most theories of corporate governance argue that chief executive officers (CEOs) take less risk as they near the end of their career, and therefore are less likely to make major investments. This prediction is based on decisions related to firm‐specific benefits; however, it may not be generalizable to decisions that involve broad societal goals. In terms of societal investments, CEOs with a longer time perspective may be more likely, rather than less likely, to invest. In this paper, we argue that a CEO's future time perspective is fostered by shorter career horizons, longer tenures, higher organizational ownership and less short‐term compensation. We test these hypotheses on 150 observations from the US investor‐owned electric power generation sector over a three‐year unbalanced sample (64.3% of the population). We applied random‐effects generalized least squares (GLS) estimations to test our hypotheses, and found support for three out of four hypothesized relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide evidence on the agency cost explanation for corporate diversification. We find that the level of diversification is negatively related to managerial equity ownership and to the equity ownership of outside blockholders. In addition, we report that decreases in diversification are associated with external corporate control threats, financial distress, and management turnover. These findings suggest that agency problems are responsible for firms maintaining value-reducing diversification strategies and that the recent trend toward increased corporate focus is attributable to market disciplinary forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we provide evidence concerning the extent to which managers are to blame when their firms become bankrupt. We study a sample of firms that file for Chapter 11 and determine the actions taken by the firms' managers during the three-year period before the filing. We compare the sample with a control sample of firms that performed better. We suggest that the comparison provides evidence on the way managers act as their firms sink into financial trouble and whether financial distress is the result of incompetence or excessively self-serving managerial decisions or due to factors outside of management's control. We find that managers of the Chapter 11 firms and the control firms make very similar decisions and that, on average, neither set of managers is perceived to be taking value-reducing actions. These results do not change when we control for managerial turnover or managerial ownership. We also find that when managers are replaced in firms that eventually file for Chapter 11 protection, the market does not respond positively, regardless of whether the new managers are from inside or outside the firm. Our findings suggest that when managers are blamed for financial distress, they are serving as scapegoats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies suggest that underwriting syndicates provide marketing services and certify the fairness of offer prices. We argue that syndicate lead banks also monitor manager effort, increasing the value of capital-raising companies. A given level of monitoring is associated with a given level of intrinsic value, so there is a "schedule" of certifiable offer prices, depending on the level of monitoring. Monitoring, marketing, and certification are, therefore, all legitimate syndicate functions. New evidence supporting the conclusion that syndicates provide corporate monitoring is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the divestiture decisions of managers who care about their reputations. Managers' divestiture and investment decisions are publicly observable, but managers privately observe signals with respect to the future payoff distribution of investments they have initiated. We establish that in equilibrium there is too little divestiture. These inefficiencies create the opportunity for wealth-enhancing divestiture-motivated takeovers. A key result is that only managers of targets with "middle of the road" asset specificity should consider the takeover threat credible. These findings suggest that uniqueness of assets is an important determinant of both agency costs and takeover activity. Our analysis leads to several empirical predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a sample of 326 US acquisitions between 1975 and 1987, three types of acquisitions have systematically lower and predominantly negative announcement period returns to bidding firms. The returns to bidding shareholders are lower when their firm diversifies, when it buys a rapidly growing target, and when its managers performed poorly before the acquisition. These results suggest that managerial objectives may drive acquisitions that reduce bidding firms' values. [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]

Within a simple bidding game under asymmetric information, we are able to explain many observed takeover/merger phenomena. These include sequential bidding, mistaken overbidding, managerial resistance, including the use of a white knight, and the reluctance of the market to reduce the price of the target following a rejected takeover offer. Importantly, these phenomena occur under the assumption of rational value-maximizing behavior and are not the result of managerial self-interest as has been suggested by Easterbrook and Fisehel [4] and Gilson [7]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we show that even a strongly efficient stock market is, by itself, insufficient to discipline managers who may hold incorrect beliefs about investors' behavior and their decision rules. Instead of disciplining the managers, the stock market may generate prices that reinforce these incorrect beliefs. When this happens, the disciplining of managers must be accomplished through other mechanisms, such as through markets for managerial labor, mergers and takeovers, the financial press, and education. These alternative mechanisms may produce slower disciplinary reactions than the stock market. Several important classes of accounting phenomena seem consistent with a failure of the stock market to discipline managers promptly. We present in detail how the apparent failure of managers to make cashflow-maximizing LIFO-FIFO choices in a timely fashion is consistent with this theory. Our approach is also applicable to other financial reporting conundrums in which adverse managerial and stock market reactions were predicted in response to Financial Accounting Standard No. 2 (accounting for research and development outlays), Standard No. 8 (foreign exchange translation), and Standard No. 19 (accounting for oil and gas exploration costs), each of which changed firms' accounting incomes but not their cash flows. Classical Arrow-Debreu models, as well as the rational expectations models, assume that firms are run by managers who seek to maximize the "market value" of the firm. Since the main purpose of such models is to examine the Pareto efficiency of wealth allocations by the stock market under the presumed behavior of management, this assumption has been useful in bypassing the extremely difficult problems of managerial compensation contracts and motivation. Formal examination of these contracts in the agency theory literature (e.g., Mirrlees [1976] and Holmstrom [1979]) has concluded that in the presence of moral hazard, appropriate incentives are provided to... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes methods for estimating the value of the total annual compensation of top corporate executives. These methods refine those originated by Burgess [1963], Lewellen [1968], and Masson [1969]. Measures of executive compensation are relevant in addressing three current issues. First is the extent to which the compensation effects of different accounting alternatives influence executives' preferences over proposed changes in accounting regulations and their actual selection of financial reporting techniques. Second is whether compensation effects of new financial reporting standards induce managers to change their production and investment decisions. Third is the impact of a change in the terms of executives' compensation contracts on their decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have only begun to provide explanations of how top executives' experiences and perceptions influence organizational decisions. Drawing from a broad theoretical base, this study tests the contention that top executives' personal experiences (age, educational background, and work experience), their perceptions of their firms' attitudes toward technology and risk, and their perceptions regarding their firms' past success with collaborative technological development influence their cognitive assessments of potential technological alliances. Results from the study suggest that top executives with a technical education place more weight on the opportunities provided by the alliance than those with other types of education. Moreover, executives from firms that are perceived to emphasize technology and to have had success with technological alliances in the past tend to focus more on the opportunities provided by the alliance and less on the riskiness of the venture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines variation in top executives' environmental perceptions within firms and within industries. More specifically, we investigate how industry and organizational membership affect top executives' perceptions of five environmental attributes. Results indicate that significant homogeneity of perceptions exists within firms and also within industries. Approximately 40 percent of the variance in individual top-level executives' perceptions of aspects of their respective organization's environment is explained by their organizational and industry membership. Implications of the findings for strategic management and organization theory and for future research are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws on the concepts of relative standing to explain the post-merger performance of recently acquired European firms. We used a 2 x 3 sampling design where we surveyed top managers of British and French firms that were acquired by British, French, and U.S. firms as to their perceptions of cultural compatibility with the buying firms, their sense of loss of autonomy since the merger, and post-merger performance. While we found that the theory adequately explains the post-merger performance of both British and French firms, suggesting that this primarily "made-in-the-United States" organization theory extends beyond the cultural domain of the United States, we also found an aspect of the theory that reflects a possible cultural bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central argument is that firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision-makers. What decision-makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on. What issues and answers they focus on depends on the specific situation and on how the firm’s rules, resources, and relationships distribute various issues, answers, and decision-makers into specific communications and procedures. The paper develops these theoretical principles into a model of firm behavior and presents its implications for explaining firm behavior and adaptation. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationship between perceptions of strategic uncertainty and environmental scanning behaviors. It has been postulated that the strength of this relationship will depend on the combined effect of the environmental constraints and the prevailing approach to strategic decision making. A sample of 141 medium-size Bulgarian companies, all of them operating in a highly constrained external environment and a business culture, characterized by a low degree of calculative strategic decision making, was used to test four hypotheses related to scanning behavior. The empirical findings of this study were then compared with the results of prior research on environmental scanning in the United States in order to draw conclusions for both the theory of scanning behavior and strategic management practice in various environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The organizational problem firms face is the utilization of knowledge which is not, and cannot be, known by a single agent. Even more importantly, no single agent can fully specify in advance what kind of practical knowledge is going to be relevant, when and where. Firms, therefore, are distributed knowledge systems in a strong sense: they are decentered systems, lacking an overseeing 'mind'. The knowledge they need to draw upon is inherently indeterminate and continually emerging; it is not self-contained. individuals' stock of knowledge consists of (a) role-related normative expectations; (b) dispositions, which have been formed in the course of past socializations; and (c) local knowledge of particular circumstances of time and place. A firm has greater-or-lesser control over normative expectations, but very limited control over the other two. At any point in time, a firm's knowledge is the indeterminate outcome of individuals attempting to manage the inevitable tensions between normative expectations, dispositions, and local contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we hypothesized that relationships among top managers' goals consensus, means consensus, demographic homogeneity and firm performance would be positive and stronger in a stable industry environment than in a dynamic one. Utilizing a more rigorous methodology, the significant findings of earlier studies could not be replicated. Although the questions remain interesting and important ones, we believe pursuing this line of inquiry further will yield results inconsistent at best and fruitless at worst. Therefore, we urge future researchers to cautiously tread the perilous methodologic minefield that led to our nonfindings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies using Federal Trade Commission Line of Business data have reported that industry membership explains between 17 percent and 20 percent of financial performance variance among firms. This study attempts to replicate these findings using an alternative sample and a methodology based on executives' perceptions. The results support those reported in previous studies, with industry factors explaining about 20 percent of overall performance variance. Moreover, the analysis produces empirically derived industry factors, and examines their relative power in explaining industry performance variance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines three of the primary structures of thought and some of the situational circumstances that enable and constrain the actions of corporate leaders in the airlines industry. It argues that lawyers and corporate leaders who understand the law and the structures of power in America have a unique capacity to protect and enhance share-owner wealth. Three examples are used to propose a model of force relations in complex, high-stakes situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms facing imminent bankruptcy would seemingly be under some pressure to demonstrate effective governance structures as a means for maintaining the support of important external constituents and initiating a turnaround. Little is known, however, about CEO and director turnover and its impact on the composition and structure of the board in failing firms. This study assesses both the incidence and form of governance changes in the 5-year period prior to corporate bankruptcy. Despite extensive board member and CEO replacements, changes by firms at imminent risk of failure do not conform with the prescriptions favored by reform advocates and institutional investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper identifies similarities and differences in the emphases and patterns that U.S. and Japanese managers attribute to a set of 22 generic competitive methods. It highlights the different ways that Japanese and American managers combine these methods to form general business strategies. Using factor analyses and smallest space analyses, the study shows differences in business strategy patterns between managers in Japan and the U.S. Such differences reflect the organizing principles underlying the strategy approaches in U.S. and Japanese firms. The organizing principle underlying U.S. responses is the desire to find way to differentiate a firm from its competitors. In contrast, the organizing principle underlying Japanese responses is a desire to establish a comprehensive, stable and defensible position. The paper discusses the implications of these results for strategic management and suggests directions for future U.S. and Japanese comparative strategy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managers' perceptions of their involvement in strategic planning were hypothesized to be positively related with their feelings of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and job involvement. Further, it was also hypothesized that the relationship between strategic involvement and these work-related attitudes would be enhanced to the extent that the managers' felt that a salient strategic vision was guiding the company. We tested these two hypotheses using a sample of upper level managers in a large corporation undergoing a major strategic transformation. With the exception of finding no evidence that vision salience moderated the positive relationship between strategic involvement and job involvement, both hypotheses were supported. With regard to managers' psychological attachment to the organization, the results suggest that there are advantages afforded by involving them in the strategy making process, and that these advantages are magnified to the extent that the involvement occurs within the context of a salient strategic vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cross-level study tested the relationship between organizational turbulence as reported by 49 strategic business unit managers from 17 Fortune 500 companies and the attitudes of 679 midlevel managers in these companies. The results indicated that turbulence clustered into four dimensions that were differentially related to managers' attitudes. Incremental negative turbulence was negatively associated with satisfaction with job security. Financial restructuring was positively associated with career loyalty. Growth was positively associated with career loyalty and with job involvement. Organizational breakup was positively associated with career loyalty. The long-term implications for companies of the career-loyal/company-loyal, job-involved but job-insecure management cadre produced by the corporate turbulence of the 1980s are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]