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Purpose: This study empirically examines perceptions of environmental report believability based on a firm's relative performance and level of assurance obtained on environmental activities under the recently clarified and recodified attestation standards in the United States. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses a 2 × 3 between-subjects experiment to identify differences in 153 non-expert environmental report users' perceptions of report believability based on positive or negative firm performance and (level of) assurance provided by an accounting firm. Findings: Results show a main effect in that negative performance reports are perceived to be more believable than positive performance reports, as driven by negative performance reports being significantly more believable when no assurance is present. The firm performance effect is eliminated once limited or reasonable assurance is provided. Further, positive performance reports with limited, but not reasonable, assurance are perceived to be more believable than reports without assurance. No differences are identified within the negative performance condition. Practical implications: Limited assurance might be used as an impression management tool to enhance the believability of positive performance environmental reports. Users, practitioners, and standard-setters should also be aware that users might believe environmental reports are assured, even when no such assurance has been provided. Originality/value: This paper examines the impact of assured environmental reporting on users that review firms' environmental reports outside of a shareholder/investor role. The study also demonstrates conditions in which firm performance and assurance impact perceptions of report believability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the productivity challenges as well as the production-related technological investments in the U.S. manufacturing sector in order to create a rich framework for productivity-enhancing policy making. It offers an industry-based analysis of the evolution of manufacturing productivity performance and subsequently presents original, survey-generated data on automation investment. Productivity performance drivers are statistically identified and a discussion of the still poorly understood relationship between automation and productivity is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from a nationally representative sample of working adults to quantify how a culture trust improves business performance. Analysis of the national sample showed that organizational trust and alignment with the company's purpose are associated with higher employee incomes, longer job tenure, greater job satisfaction, less chronic stress, improved satisfaction with life, and higher productivity. Employees working the highest quartile of organizational trust had average incomes 10.3% higher those working in the middle quartile of trust (p = 0.000) indicating that trust increases productivity. In order to demonstrate the causal effect of trust on business performance, we created an intervention to increase organizational trust in a division facing high job turnover at a large online retailer. The intervention increased organizational trust by 6% and this improved job retention by 1%. These studies show that management practices that increase organizational trust have salubrious effects on business performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delegating managerial tasks is essential for firm growth. Most firms in developing countries, however, do not hire outside managers but instead rely on family members. In this paper, we ask if this lack of managerial delegation can explain why firms in poor countries are small and whether it has important aggregate consequences. We construct a model of firm growth where entrepreneurs have a fixed time endowment to run their daily operations. As firms grow large, the need to hire outside managers increases. Firms' willingness to expand therefore depends on the ease with which delegation can take place. We calibrate the model to plant-level data from the United States and India. We identify the key parameters of our theory by targeting the experimental evidence on the effect of managerial practices on firm performance from Bloom et al. (2013). We find that inefficiencies in the delegation environment account for 11 percent of the income per capita difference between the United States and India. They also contribute to the small size of Indian producers, but would cause substantially more harm for US firms. The reason is that US firms are larger on average and managerial delegation is especially valuable for large firms, thus making delegation efficiency and other factors affecting firm growth complements. (JEL D22, G32, L25, L26, O14) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) are designed based on a win-win approach to environmental protection that reconciles environmental protection and economic performance. Despite the claims about VEPs, there has been an ongoing debate over their efficacy with regard to whether environmental goals are balanced by economic interests on both theoretical and empirical grounds. To resolve this controversy, this paper empirically investigates a public VEP by the US Environmental Protection Agency: Green Lights (GL). For this, the paper constructs a treatment effects regression model to account for the effects of non-random assignment for GL participants and non-participants. The proposed model can simultaneously estimate probit models that predict corporate participation in the GL program and linear models that test the extent to which this participation contributes to economic performance. The results indicate significant positive effects of corporate participation in the GL program on economic performance, providing support for the win-win perspective. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of total quality management (TQM) practices implemented in Palestinian hospitals and their relationship to organizational performance using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. Design/methodology/approach -- A survey of 51 hospitals operating in the West Bank of Palestine was conducted in order to test the validity and reliability of TQM constructs and their relationship to organizational performance. Findings -- The results showed that TQM constructs used in this study are positively related to hospital performance and for the most part the relationship was significant; they were capable of explaining a significant portion of variance in performance. Three elements were found to be strongly significant predictors of performance-people management, process management, and information and analysis. Research limitations/implications -- Although hospitals operating in the Gaza Strip were excluded from the study, this research promotes critical management practices that help channeling organization resources into areas aimed at improving quality and performance. Practical implications -- The study showed that there are certain areas where administrators or managers need to focus on should they aspire for better performance. The constructs used in this study can be used to assess the implementation of quality practices and highlight areas for movement. Originality/value -- This paper provided practitioners, administrators, and academics with a fresh perspective on quality management practices and their impact on organizational performance. It also served as a foundation for future initiatives and programs aimed at improving quality in hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The mechanism by which leadership influences organizational performance has largely been unexplained. This study intends to fill this gap. This study identified the six specific leadership practices: promoting inter-unit collaboration, managing diversity, providing performance feedback, ensuring goal directedness, developing employees, and resource provision. This study also identified a number of generic functions of leadership, that is, promoting cooperation, clarifying employees’ roles, and improving skills in organization. Then the mediating effects of the three generic functions were tested in order to link the specific leadership practices to organizational performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approach Structural equation modeling was used for analyzing the data from the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to investigate the mediating model.Findings The effects of the six specific leadership practices on organizational performance were mediated by the three generic leadership functions.Originality/value The result of this study delineated the linking paths between leadership practices and organizational performance which has largely remained as a black box. Moreover, since the specific leadership practices are categorized by the generic functions that are instrumental for organizational performance, it provides theoretical and empirical grounds for managerial prescriptions for improving organizational performance. [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]

Purpose — The internet has become a ubiquitous technology for business and it possesses the potential to make the concept of value chain into a more attainable reality. The purpose of this paper is to conjecture that the way the internet is utilized and the extent to which the internet impacts business performance vary from country to country. The paper aims to compare two countries regarding the pattern of internet utilization, the impact of the internet on organizational performance, and the readiness for the internet from the value chain perspective. Design/methodology/approach — A survey study was conducted with CIOs and IS directors in the USA and South Korea. A research instrument was developed by adopting and revising two existing instruments on IT value chain and on business internet practices. Findings — The findings suggest that the two countries are more similar in the way they utilize the internet than anticipated despite discernable differences observed in some areas of internet utilization. The study also provides an empirical evidence for the connection between the organization's readiness for the internet and the impact of the internet on organizational performance. Research limitations/implications — Varying sampling and data collection processes between the two countries may have introduced unintended bias to the study. Practical implications — The findings of the study provide empirical evidence that the internet has become a truly global business tool that makes the concept of value chain an achievable reality. Originality/value — This comparative study makes a unique contribution for both academicians and practitioners to gain a better understanding how the internet is adopted and utilized in different countries and to chart a course to capitalize on the technology from a value chain perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of a specific set of management practices and policies and policies (organizational behavior modification, the management principles, and the management process) on human resource outcomes and on individual employee performance. A comprehensive management practices and policies performance model is theorized and empirically assessed. Design/methodology/approach – Data collected from a sample of full-time employees working in the Southern USA are analyzed using a partial least squares/structural equation modeling methodology. Findings – Considering the direct and indirect links among the constructs the authors conclude the following: organizational behavior modification, the management principles, and the management process combine to improve organizational commitment and job satisfaction; organizational commitment and job satisfaction combine to improve employee engagement and workplace optimism; and employee engagement and workplace optimism combine to enhance individual performance. Research limitations/implications – The model tested reflects the synergy created though the implementation of the management practices and policies and policies and the impact of that synergy on human resource outcomes and individual employee performance. This is the first assessment of this comprehensive model. Replication and verification of the model are suggested. Practical implications – Practitioners are provided with a framework for assessing the synergistic impact of the management practices and policies on human resource outcomes and individual employee performance. The theorized model and results provide practicing managers with a blueprint for the systematic implementation of the management practices and policies. Originality/value – A comprehensive management practices and policies performance model is proposed and empirically assessed. The results support the proposition that implementation of the management practices and policies leads to improved human resource outcomes and individual employee performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can organizations spanning institutionalized categories mitigate against the possibility of reduced attention by audiences? While there has been a good deal of research on the illegitimacy discount of category spanning, scant attention has been paid to how organizations might strategically address this potential problem. In this paper, we explore how the strategic naming of products might enhance audience attention despite the liabilities associated with category spanning. Drawing on a sample of films released in the United States market between 1982 and 2007, we analyze different naming strategies and show that names that simply signal familiarity are not potent enough to offset the illegitimacy discount, while names imbued with known reputations serve as a symbolic device that enhances audience attention to genre-spanning films. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent perspectives on community investments suggest that they are opportunities for firms to create value for shareholders and other stakeholders. However, many corporate managers are still influenced by a widely held belief that such investments erode profits and are therefore unjustifiable from an agency perspective. In this paper, we refine and test theory regarding countervailing forces that influence community-based firm performance. We hypothesize that high levels of available slack will be associated with higher community-based performance, but that this relationship will be moderated by three important governance variables: board independence, investment fund ownership, and CEO ownership. We find support for our hypotheses in longitudinal study of a large sample of U.S. corporations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates factors that influence entrepreneurs' decisions to prepare business plans. Data is obtained from a survey administered to clients of the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center and designed to address various aspects of financing options. Logistic regression analysis is used to develop descriptive models that identify factors and interactions between factors that are associated with the entrepreneur's decision to prepare a business plan, including greater amount of required start-up costs, financial self-efficacy, size of the business, adequacy of capital resources acquired from business financing, and others. These findings have implications for research related to the preparation of business plans and organizational performance. Mixed results in prior studies may be attributed to failure to control for context and person factors that may influence both performance and the decision to prepare a business plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the theory, methodology and application of a new predictive model for time series within the financial sector, specifically data from 20 companies listed on the U.S. stock exchange market. The main impact of this article is (1) the proposal of a recommender system for financial investment to increase the cumulative gain; (2) an artificial predictor that beats the market in most cases; and (3) the fact that, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort to predict time series by learning redundant dictionaries to sparsely reconstruct these signals. The methodology is conducted by finding the optimal set of predicting model atoms through two directions for dictionaries generation: the first one by extracting atoms from past daily return price values in order to build untrained dictionaries; and the second one, by atom extraction followed by training of dictionaries though K-SVD. Prediction of financial time series is a periodic process where each cycle consists of two stages: (1) training of the model to learn the dictionary that maximizes the probability of occurrence of an observation sequence of return values, (2) prediction of the return value for the next coming trading day. The motivation for such research is the fact that a tool, which might generate confidence of the potential benefits obtained from using formal financial services, would encourage more participation in a formal system such as the stock market. Theory, issues, challenges and results related to the application of sparse representation to the prediction of financial time series, as well as the performance of the method, are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As strategic assets for organizations, information systems (IS) have been adopted to enhance organizational knowledge performance. Based on the absorptive capacity perspective, we investigated intertwined relationships among IS adoption, organizational capabilities, IS-enabled absorptive capacity, and organizational knowledge performance. We empirically examined our model with survey data from 417 IS employees of 21 different state governments in the United States. We find that: (1) IS adoption does not directly generate IS-enabled absorptive capacity; (2) organizational capabilities positively affect IS-enabled absorptive capacity; (3) synergies arising from complementarity between IS adoption and organizational capabilities have a positive impact on IS-enabled absorptive capacity; and (4) IS-enabled absorptive capacity significantly drives manager and employee knowledge performance. This research enriches the understanding of the relationships among IS adoption, organizational capabilities, and organizational knowledge performance in U.S. public sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a widely held view that in the period since the early 1990s the European Union (EU) has overtaken the United States (US) as the leader with the most advanced or demanding environmental regulations. However, it is striking that there are very few robust comparative evaluations of the outcomes of environmental regulations or of levels of industrial environmental performance in the EU and US. This paper seeks to address this by comparing the standards and levels of performance achieved based on a case study of the regulation of a classic air pollutant (benzene) from a widespread industrial sector that has been heavily regulated in both settings for many years (oil refineries). Contrary to expectations, we find that on average normalised levels of emissions from EU refineries are three times higher than those from US refineries, and whilst outcomes in the US show marked convergence towards the best standards, there continue to be wide variations in the outcomes achieved in different EU Member States, despite the rhetoric of harmonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates the effects of technology licensing on the licensee firm's performance with the help of a unique data set of observed licensing transactions in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry. We examine how intensity of licensing participation as a licensee affects the firm's performance. This study also analyzes how relationship between the licensor and the licensee in a deal along with characteristics of participants and their industry influences the performance of the licensee firm. The findings suggest that frequent participation in technology licensing increase licensee firm's sales growth. Also, transaction cost considerations and technology spillovers are important explanatory factors that influence licensee firms' performance in licensing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between online presence and U.S. small firm performance during the 2007-2009 recessionary period. The paper specifically explores the impact of having a web presence on the return on assets of 570 U. S. small businesses. The analysis revealed that having a web presence positively and significantly improved the return on assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand how IT capabilities for knowledge management and process integration can build a firm's agile process capabilities for sensing, strategic decision and responding. The study also investigates how the three agile capabilities affect firm performance in different competitive environments. Design/methodology/approach: This study conducted a large-scale field survey with firms in the United States. Survey invitations were sent to business executives of the target firms. A total of 254 complete samples were collected for our hypotheses test. Findings: The results confirm the overall significant roles of IT capabilities in the three agile capabilities. The results further reveal that the IT capability for knowledge management has a higher influence on sensing capability, while the IT capability for process integration has a higher influence on responding capability. Moreover, strategic decision and responding capabilities are more important in the high market competition. However, in the low market competition, sensing capability becomes more important while responding capability demonstrates a negative impact on firm performance. Originality/value: This study helps both academics and practitioners better understand a firm's IT-agility-performance mechanism. Particularly, our findings guide how to achieve agile capabilities and what to focus on under the different levels of market competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on chief executive officer (CEO) succession research and the impression management literature, we examine earnings management by interim CEOs, its impact on interim CEOs' promotion prospects, and the moderating effect of governance mechanisms on the relationship between the two. Based on a sample of 145 interim CEO succession events in U.S. public firms from2004 to 2008, we find that (a) an interim CEO is more likely than a non interim CEO to engage in earnings management to improve firm earnings performance ("income-increasing earnings management"), (b) the greater the income-increasing earnings management, the more likely it is that the interim CEO will be promoted to the permanent position, and (c) the relationship between earnings management and the likelihood of interim CEO promotion is weakened when effective internal and external governance mechanisms are in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a bid to optimize jobsite safety, wearable sensing devices (WSDs) are slowly emerging as a class of viable tools with strong potential to improve safety measurement and monitoring. While some industries have successfully utilized WSDs, such as smart personal protective equipment (PPE), to track data related to health, fitness, or even location, the construction industry has been relatively slow in implementing WSDs. Although some progress is expected, construction management research is yet to provide clear evidence of the impact of WSDs on vital project and organizational performance metrics such as safety and productivity. To fill this gap, the present study established the first WSD success model using multiple complementary frameworks and theories. The success model comprises individual adoption factors that influence individual WSD use and highlights implementation success indicators needed to evaluate adoption success. It was tested using survey questionnaires retrieved from 415 users of WSDs in the United States. Test results indicate the success model was a good fit. Moreover, findings suggest a strong positive relationship between the use of WSDs and individual performance, and project performance. This hybrid model provided critical insights on the impact of WSDs on workers' performance, project metrics, as well as essential information for supporting the increased adoption of WSDs. It is believed that this framework will also guide construction practitioners in the effective integration of WSDs into their work processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a large, longitudinal panel of US start-ups collected between 2004 and 2011, this article shows the extent to which intellectual property (IP) types, for example trademarks, patents, copyrights and outward licensing, enhance multidimensional performance. An ordered probit analysis corrected for sample selection bias, estimates performance to derive the following conclusions. First, trademarks and out-licensing IP types increase a firm's chances of being a high performer, confirming the importance of certain forms of IP protection for start-ups. Second, patenting significantly reduces the chances of being a high performer, suggesting patenting has limited performance benefits for start-ups. Third, few performance synergies exist in the joint use of IP types, suggesting that strong complementarities among IP types are limited. While out-licensing patents and out-licensing copyrights increase performance, out-licensing patents and out-licensing trademarks diminish it. Furthermore, registering more trademarks and out-licensing more trademarks also diminishes performance, suggesting start-up firms should keep trademarks in-house. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study builds on structural elaboration theory by developing a model to explain the adoption of board structures that appear to conform to the prevailing institutional logic, but which in fact contradict it. We test our theory with the case of CEO-only board structures, a formal increase in board independence that prior research has shown to lead to greater CEO entrenchment rather than increased shareholder value. Using an event history analysis of the Fortune 250 over a 27-year period, we examine three mechanisms that drive its adoption: executive interests, executive power, and elaboration opportunities. We show that the CEO-only structure is more likely to occur in firms in which a higher proportion of insiders predate the CEO, and in which the CEO has greater formal power and agenda control. We also find that powerful CEOs are more likely to realize the structural change following institutional opportunities, such as the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), and organizational contingencies, such as positive changes in firm performance. By exploring the mechanisms leading to the proliferation of the CEO-only structure, our study contributes to sociopolitical perspectives on corporate governance, as well as to theories of institutional logics and structural elaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of the United States (US) sugar program on sugar-using firm profitability from 2000 to 2017 is examined using firm financial data and the relative US-to-world sugar price ratio. Return on assets and market-to-book ratio proxy for firm financial performance. The regression results provide statistical evidence that as the US sugar price increases relative to the world sugar price, sugar-using firm financial performance improves. This is likely a result of sugar-using firms passing higher sugar costs on to consumers. An ex post analysis indicates that the statistical tests have adequate power. Findings provide guidelines for future analyses investigating the relationship between the US sugar program and sugar-using firm financial performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]