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Abstract: We examine the forecasting power of a daily newspaper‐based index of uncertainty associated with infectious diseases (EMVID) for real estate investment trusts (REITs) realized market variance of the United States (US) via the heterogeneous autoregressive realized volatility (HAR‐RV) model. Our results show that the EMVID index improves the forecast accuracy of realized variance of REITs at short‐, medium‐, and long‐run horizons in a statistically significant manner, with the result being robust to the inclusion of additional controls (leverage, realized jumps, skewness, and kurtosis) capturing extreme market movements, and also carries over to 10 sub‐sectors of the US REITs market. Our results have important portfolio implications for investors during the current period of unprecedented levels of uncertainty resulting from the outbreak of COVID‐19.
Journal: International Review of Finance
Published: July 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Oguzhan Cepni
Abstract: De senere år er der sket en vækst i lovbestemt ikkefinansiel rapportering i og uden for EU med henblik på at øge virksomhedernes samfundsansvar, ikke mindst uden for hjemlandet. Der mangler dog viden om, hvorvidt og under hvilke former ikke-finansiel rapportering har denne virkning og dermed kan anvendes som reguleringsstrategi. Ikke-finansiel rapportering sker med vægt på information til omverdenen eller på transformation af virksomheden. Gennem en kontekstbaseret indholdsanalyse af rapporter fra danske virksomheder 2008-2018 bidrager artiklen til forståelsen af virkningen af lovpligtig ikke-finansiel rapportering gennem en analyse af udviklingen i rapporternes indhold om politikker, implementering og resultater vedrørende menneskerettigheder og sociale forhold, især arbejdsforhold. Dansk ret har siden 2008 gennemgået en udvikling fra frivillig rapportering til lovkrav, som både har repræsenteret transformations-og informationsmålene.
Artiklen konkluderer, at ikke-finansiel rapportering kan fremme virksomheders selvregulering ift. negativ indvirkning, men at kravets udformning er afgørende for, hvorvidt rapporteringspligten ansporer til selvregulering bl. a. i forhold til forsyningskæden, eller til eksternt rettet information. Undersøgelsens design og resultater kan fungere som inspiration for andre indholdsanalyser over tid af ikke-finansielle redegørelser fra virksomheder i forskellige lande. Desuden kan resultaterne indgå i aktuelle overvejelser om revision af direktivet om ikke-finansiel rapportering og vedrørende EU-retlige krav om risikobaseret due diligence.
Journal: Juristen
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Karin Buhmann
Abstract: Researchers frequently use variants of the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) mechanism to elicit willingness to pay (WTP). These variants involve numerous incentive-irrelevant design choices, some of which carry advantages for implementation but may deteriorate participant comprehension or trust in the mechanism, which are well-known problems with the BDM. We highlight three such features and test them in the field in rural Uganda, a relevant population for many recent applications. Comprehension is very high, and 86 percent of participants bid optimally for an induced-value voucher, with little variation across treatments. This gives confidence for similar applications, and suggests the comprehension-expediency trade-off is mild.
Journal: Journal of Development Economics
Published: September 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Stefano Tripodi
Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of uncertainty shocks on REITs returns over a monthly period from 1972:01 to 2015:12, and sub-samples from 1972:01 to 2009:06, and 2009:07 to 2015:12, to accommodate for the possible effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and unconventional monetary policy decisions. We use the recently-proposed variations in the price of gold, around events associated with unexpected changes in uncertainty as an instrument to identify uncertainty shocks in a proxy Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) model. Moreover, to control for news-related effects associated with these events, uncertainty and news shocks are jointly identified based on a set-identified proxy SVAR, as recently suggested in the VAR literature. Our results show that the uncertainty shock generates a larger negative impact on REITs returns over the post-GFC period to the extent that it also outweighs the impact of the otherwise dominant news (productivity) shocks. In addition, the impulse response dynamics related to the recursively identified uncertainty shock, as is standard in the literature, resembles the effects of a news shock, and somewhat contrary to intuition suggests that the impact of the uncertainty shock on REITs returns were higher during the pre-GFC era.
Journal: Research in International Business and Finance
Published: December 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Oguzhan Cepni
Abstract: Complementing Nielsen and colleagues’ (2020) analysis of methodological trends in the Journal of International Business Studies over the past 50 years, we examine similar data on methods published in a wider range of leading international business (IB) journals. Our analysis shows a clear decline of studies based on primary data relative to secondary data, and a persistently low level of individual-level studies among the growing body of research using secondary data across all IB journals considered. We discuss the main mechanisms driving these trends and identify the problems of IB’s increasing exposure to the risks inherent in secondary data. We also discuss the implications related to neglecting individual-level data for theory advancement in IB, such as a disregard for novel secondary data opportunities at the individual level and the risk of reduced theoretical pluralism. In doing so, we substantially extend the debate initiated by Nielsen and colleagues (2020).
Journal: Journal of International Business Studies
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Phillip C. Nell
Abstract:
Research Question/Issue: We study the relationship between family blockholding of voting rights and the relative size of international acquisitions, and the moderating effect of two types of financial blockholders (pressure-resistant and pressure-sensitive blockholders).
Research Findings/Insights: Employing an international sample of 8,687 nonfinancial cross-border acquisitions conducted by 4,630 acquirer firms from 40 home markets to 66 host countries between 2004 and 2013, we find a U-shaped relationship between family blockholding of voting rights and the relative size of international acquisitions. Further, we find evidence that this relationship is moderated by the presence and type of financial blockholders. While pressure-resistant financial blockholders shift this relationship downwards (due to intensified conflicts), pressure-sensitive financial blockholders shift it upwards.
Theoretical/Academic Implications: We contribute to the literature on family firm governance and internationalization on several fronts. First, we revisit the predominant logic of linear effects of the family blockholding. We suggest the family blockholding's effects are related to nonlinear risk preferences of family owners, expressed through SEW slack. Second, we suggest that the “dominant shareholder interest” assumption of family firms, usually based on the controlling family's SEW should be interpreted contingent upon the interests of other financial shareholders. Finally, using family-financial blockholder conflicts as the scenario, we suggest that principal-principal conflicts depend on the composition of the conflicting blockholders, specifically, upon the nature of their relations with the firm.
Practitioner/Policy Implications: This study offers insights to policymakers and those interested in incentivizing family ownership that family owners’ risk behaviors should be understood and discussed in the context of different financial blockholders as a reference group.
Journal: Corporate Governance: An International Review
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Bersant Hobdari, Anne Sluhan
Abstract: Pneumonia is a leading global cause of morbidity and mortality, particularly amongst adults aged >70 years and children. Annual deaths due to pneumonia in these groups was estimated at more than one million and 672 000 worldwide for both groups, respectively, in 2019 [1]. The importance of pneumonia is highlighted by impact of the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on vulnerable populations. Yet, despite the high impact of pneumonia worldwide, diagnosing pneumonia, especially in children in low- and middle-income countries, remains a big challenge. Frequent clinical signs of pneumonia (cough and difficult or rapid breathing) are non-specific and can overlap with other prevalent diseases in these settings, such as malaria. Equally important, data provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that 40% of children with pneumonia symptoms in the 40 countries reporting 90% of child pneumonia deaths never receive medical care for their pneumonia [2]. Furthermore, overdiagnosis of bacterial pneumonia and unnecessary administration of antibiotics poses an extra challenge, particularly in countries with limited resources for diagnostic procedures.
Journal: The European Respiratory Journal
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Kjeld S. Hansen
Abstract: Studies on delegation to international organizations have extensively examined the determinants of supranational delegation. Yet, systematic empirical accounts on the effects of different types and degrees of delegation on policy developments remain limited. This paper addresses this gap by using a novel dataset that combines delegation data from the Treaty of Rome with data on legislation and case law developed by the European authorities (1958–2000). The analysis produces three findings. First, a higher level of delegation of legislative and executive functions has a positive effect on the volume of secondary legislation, but no effect on the volume of case law. Second, a higher level of judicial delegation has a positive effect on the volume of case law, while limiting legislative activity. Third, the precision of the Treaty provisions constrains the volume of secondary legislation. The findings show how the type and intensity of supranational delegation shape supranational policy development.
Journal: Journal of Common Market Studies
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Manuele Citi, Mads Dagnis Jensen
Abstract: Building on critical approaches that understand algorithms in terms of communication, culture and organization, this paper offers the supplementary conceptualization of algorithms as organizational figuration, defined as material and meaningful sociotechnical arrangements that develop in spatiotemporal processes and are shaped by multiple enactments of affordance–agency relations. We develop this conceptualization through a case study of a Danish fintech start-up that uses machine learning to create opportunities for sustainable pensions investments. By way of ethnographic and literary methodology, we provide an in-depth analysis of the dynamic trajectory in and through which the organization gives shape to and takes shape from its key algorithmic tool, mapping the shifting sociotechnical arrangements of the start-up, from its initial search for a viable business model through the development of the algorithm to the public launch of its product. On this basis, we argue that conceptualizing algorithms as organizational figuration enables us to detail not only what algorithms do but also what they are.
Journal: Big Data & Society
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Sara Dahlman
Abstract:
Purpose: Focusing on female entrepreneurs operating in a resource-scarce environment, this study aims to draw from the resource-based view to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial competences and firm growth.
Design/methodology/approach: This study used a cross-sectional research design. Data was collected from 232 women entrepreneurs operating in Kampala’s two biggest markets. The data were analyzed to test the mediation effect of absorptive capacity on the relationship between entrepreneurial competences and firm growth; a Sobel test and bootstrap estimation were analytical approaches that were used.
Findings: This paper argues that for female entrepreneurs, the venture growth process is not simply dependent on inimitable resources such as competences, as these are first not readily available to female entrepreneurs and second, only provide a temporary competitive advantage. Rather, venture growth also involves the ability to continuously identify and exploit knowledge resources through an absorptive capacity that may be limited by the sociocultural context within which the female entrepreneur operates in sub-Saharan Africa.
Originality/value: The novelty of this research resides in support for the mediating role of the ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it and apply it to commercial ends. This study shows that female entrepreneurs use externally generated knowledge as a mechanism to grow their firms and this is impacted by the sociocultural context within which they operate. The study further improves the understanding of the resource-based view by suggesting that a black box exists in the relationship between resources and performance. It is shown that the possession of one resource facilitates the acquisition of other resources and proposes that the role of resources continuously unfolds as a firm develops.
Journal: International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Rebecca Namatovu
Abstract: Previous literature fails to offer firms consistent guidelines on how successful managers may enhance or reduce the potential to learn from frontline service encounters. In addressing this research gap, this study contributes to the frontline employee (FLE) literature by 1) investigating the contingency role of managers’ perceived career success in FLEs’ personal learning process, 2) distinguishing between FLEs’ service-related and context-related personal learning, and 3) accounting for both exploratory and exploitative learning. This study uses two datasets: an exploratory dataset on 253 FLEs and a multilevel and multisource dataset on 444 FLEs and 55 service managers. Findings reveal that managers who are unsuccessful in their careers still stimulate frontline learning processes, but their subordinates generally use only their service-related personal learning to generate ideas for service improvement. Successful managers are better able to guide their FLEs in how to turn context-related learning into service improvement.
Journal: Journal of Business Research
Published: September 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Ad de Jong, Selma Kadic-Maglajlic
Abstract:
Purpose: The discipline's most common uses for literature reviews—identifying gaps, developing research agendas, and categorizing the literature—too often fail to challenge, change or advance theoretical perspectives. The authors offer guidance to theorization through literature reviews. The key to theory advancement is consistency between the state of theory and the chosen review type.
Design/methodology/approach: A conceptual approach is taken. The authors identify shortcomings in literature reviews of logistics and supply chain management (L&SCM) research and develop a framework to aid theorization from literature.
Findings: Literature review types are categorized as inductive theory building, contextualized explanations, theory testing and interpretive sensemaking. The authors argue that the effectiveness of a review type depends on the prior state of theory, which ranges from nascent, to intermediate, to mature. The authors propose the interpretive sensemaking review as a novel review type rooted in the interpretive paradigm.
Practical implications: This study should be of immediate interest and value to logistics and supply chain management scholars—as well as scholars in other fields—because it offers a pathway to theory development through literature reviews. Appropriate applications of the proposed review types will result in more comprehensive theories.
Originality/value: This article lays down arguments for the need to change the way L&SCM scholars use literature reviews. It extends earlier work from the authors (Durach et al., 2017; A New Paradigm for Systematic Literature Reviews in Supply Chain Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management) by outlining four review types, and offering further insights to theorization, as is typically the goal in the synthesis step of literature reviews.
Journal: International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Andreas Wieland
Abstract:
Purpose: This research explores how investment and central bankers cope with strategic uncertainty when they anticipate prices. The uncertainty originates from others' decisions and their consequences, and cannot be meaningfully reduced to risk. The authors postulate that, in order to cope with this type of uncertainty, bankers use simple rules, also called heuristics. This study aims to identify such heuristics and the psychological processes that underlie them.
Design/methodology/approach: The authors interviewed 22 managers of teams tasked to anticipate prices, in two leading investment and central banks. The primary data came from in-depth, semi-structured interviews lasting 30–60 min, supplemented by our observations during the on-site visits, emails and phone calls when preparing the interviews, and reports published by the banks. Data were coded and heuristics were induced over multiple rounds by multiple researchers.
Findings: Bankers (1) construct simple game representations of markets, (2) make inferences to gauge opponents, (3) become alert when they see too much agreement and (4) communicate coherent narratives. Heuristics (1)–(3) are employed when the pace of decision-making is fast, whereas (4) is used for longer time scales. In sum, bankers exhibit reciprocal bounded rationality, wherein interaction partners are mutually aware of and adapted to the fundamental uncertainty of the task and their limited resources.
Originality/value: Heuristics for anticipating prices have not been studied empirically outside the lab. The findings may help integrate conceptualizations of heuristics in the simple-rules and fast-and-frugal-heuristics research programs and improve market efficiency.
Journal: Management Decision
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Timo Ehrig
Abstract: This article discusses anonymizing elite interviewees. Based on our experiences with interviewing professional elites and ultra-elites in different research projects, we describe how the types of conflicts involving analysis and publication change when interviewees are not promised anonymity. We discuss how contextualizing the elite positions of anonymized interviewees becomes increasingly difficult in interviews with persons who hold prestigious positions of authority and are interviewed in their official capacity. Masking interviewees can create conflicts with regard to the researcher’s presentation of results, the transparency of the research and the ability of interviewees to talk back. We show how working with non-anonymized interviewees – and even using excerpts from interviews on public radio – can be an option in qualitative research. However, non-anonymized interviews with elites should be considered only in some instances and may seriously hamper the validity of the material in other cases.
Journal: International Journal of Social Research Methodology
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Christoph Houman Ellersgaard, Anton Grau Larsen
Abstract: Anticipation is part of organizational attempts to manage their future affairs and shape their surroundings. Still, the ways in which organizations engage in anticipation have not been sufficiently conceptualized in the field of organization and management studies. This article conceptualizes organizational ways of shaping and orchestrating futures by engaging insights from Foucauldian scholarship that highlight the intersection between what we can see, know and govern. We highlight the importance of processes of knowledge production in governance efforts, and articulate how anticipatory governance is crafted through intricate combinations of resources such as narratives, numbers and digital traces. The main contribution is a conceptual typology outlining four different templates for anticipatory governance in organizational settings that we term ‘indicative snapshots’, ‘prognostic correlations’, ‘projected transformations’ and ‘phantasmagoric fictions’. We posit anticipatory governance as a knowledge-based, performative phenomenon that addresses potential and desirable futures in and between organizations. Such anticipatory activities gauge and guide organizational processes and modes of thinking and acting along different temporal orientations, and have governance effects that makes anticipation performative by its very nature. This understanding of anticipatory governance, we suggest, offers both conceptual contributions and empirical avenues for research in organization and management studies.
Journal: Organization Theory
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Mikkel Flyverbom
Abstract: Our understanding of the link between women managers and firm-level innovation remains incomplete. Building on recent research on gender and leadership styles, we argue that there is a positive association between women managers and firm innovation. We highlight the selection process of women managers as an important underlying mechanism and discuss institutional and environmental contingencies as factors that influence this association. Specifically, we theorize and garner empirical support for the idea that in countries with legislation that promotes legally-mandated gender quotas, underqualified women may be selected for management positions, whereas in countries with voluntary gender quotas (or quotas are entirely absent), women are predominantly selected on the basis of their qualifications. The association between women and innovation is strengthened (weakened) in the latter (former) case. We also argue that this positive relationship is stronger under conditions of environmental complexity, which typically characterize innovation activities. These predictions are supported on the basis of data from the Management, Organization and Innovation (MOI) survey which covers manufacturing firms in twelve countries.
Journal: The Leadership Quarterly
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Nicolai J. Foss
Abstract: COVID-19 is the first global scale crisis since the inception of Bitcoin. We compare the contagion phenomenon of Bitcoin and other financial markets or assets pre and during the COVID-19 shock in both contemporaneous and non-contemporaneous manner. This paper uses the directed acyclic graph (DAG), spillover index, and network topology to provide strong evidence on the directional contagion outcomes of Bitcoin and other assets. The empirical results show that the contagion effect between Bitcoin and developed markets is strengthened during the COVID-19 crisis. Particularly, European market has a dominant role. Excluding Bitcoin’s own shocks, United State and European markets are the main contagion sources to Bitcoin. European market also works as a intermediary to deliver infectious from United State and market fear. The findings show that gold always has contagion effect with Bitcoin, while gold, US dollar and bond market are the contagion receivers of Bitcoin under the shock of COVID-19. The empirical results further proved the safe haven, hedge and diversifier potential of Bitcoin in economic stable time, but also shows that the sustainability of these properties is undermined during the market turmoil.
Journal: Research in International Business and Finance
Published: December 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Xiaochun Guo
Abstract: I introduce a method for simulating aggregate dynamics of heterogeneous-agent models where log permanent income follows a random walk. The idea is to simulate the model using a counterfactual permanent-income-neutral measure which incorporates the effect that permanent income shocks have on macroeconomic aggregates. With the permanent-income-neutral measure, one does not need to keep track of the permanent-income distribution. The permanent-income-neutral measure is both useful for the analytical characterization of aggregate consumption-savings behavior and for simulating numerical models. Furthermore, it is trivial to implement with a few lines of code.
Journal: Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Karl Harmenberg
Abstract: This paper explores possible links between overproduction and future gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Using a measure of economywide overproduction that captures firms’ real earnings management (REM) incentives, we find that REM-driven overproduction has a negative moderating effect on the positive association between growth in aggregate accounting performance and one-quarter-ahead GDP growth documented in the literature. We also find that macro forecasters do not fully incorporate this effect into their forecasts. Our findings contribute primarily to the literature that links aggregate accounting information to GDP growth.
Journal: Seoul Journal of Business
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Bjørn N. Jørgensen
Abstract: Often, the space for agency and leadership for middle managers is understood to depend on their capacity to escape standardized controlling systems. In this paper, we challenge this view, and instead explore the possibility for middle managers to engage with and make systems enabling rather than constraining, thereby supporting locally relevant change initiatives. We specifically explore how managers engage with employee surveys, as organization wide standardized systems, and work to make these enabling. Based on interviews with 48 managers and observations of 10 meetings in 5 different organizations, we identify three main strategies: reinterpretation, prioritization, and embedding. Drawing on complexity leadership theory, we argue that through these strategies, the managers succeed in creating a temporary adaptive space, thereby facilitating development and innovation. Our findings contribute to the literature on middle managers by developing a detailed understanding of the possibility for enabling leadership in this position.
Journal: Journal of Change Management
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Magnus Larsson
Abstract: 要: 海内外的中国学者所从事的管理研究呈现出多样性，虽然以实证主义 为范式的假设检验型研究牢牢占据主导地位。由于管理学的主要理论来自西方，中 国管理学者在研究中就会自觉或不自觉地思考中学和西学的体用关系，呈现出四种 基本的取向，即西体中用、中体西用、中西为用和中西共融。在每种研究取向中我们 又可进一步分辨出两种不同( 或大体相反) 的研究模式。于是我们就可以用这四种 取向和八种模式来概括和理解中国管理研究的多样性。本文旨在表明，中国管理实 践的复杂性和丰富性为管理研究提供了足够广阔的空间来容纳多种形式的管理研 究，这四种取向和八种模式都有其存在的合理性，中国管理学者完全可以也应该根据 个人的兴趣、偏好和比较优势在其管理研究中选择任何一种或多种研究取向和研究 模式，中国的高校、科研基金机构以及学术期刊也应该对这种个人的自由选择提供制 度支持。唯有这样，实证主义的“霸权”或“垄断”地位才有可能被打破，中国管理研 究的多元范式百花齐放百家争鸣的学术繁荣状态才有可能出现。
Journal: Chinese Culture and Management
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Xin Li
Abstract:
Purpose:
Drivers and barriers for employee ownership vary between countries because of differences in Politics, Institutions and the Economy (PIE). By analyzing this variation, the purpose of this study is to answer why employee ownership has developed fast in the United States and not in Denmark.
Design/methodology/approach:
The drivers and barriers for employee ownership are identified from the scientific literature, and the main societal dynamics are identified through the PIE model covering the dynamics between politics, institutional change and the economy. Politics focuses on different social groups influencing the development of institutions driving or hindering employee ownership in the economy.
Findings:
United States has followed a self-enforcing circle with broad political support of “shared capitalism,” including the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) type of employee ownership. In Denmark, the labor movement rejected worker cooperatives as a main strategy and focused on building up the welfare state. Center-right parties favored employee stocks, but the institutional framework never overcame the barriers for employee ownership.
Originality/value:
This is the first study to perform an analysis of politics, institutional change and economic development to explain drivers and barriers for employee ownership and to make a comparison between the development of employee ownership in the United States and Denmark.
Journal: Journal of Participation and Employee Ownership
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Niels Mygind
Abstract: We develop a theoretical perspective on how the increasing data availability in the digital age affects firms’ strategic decisions. Specifically, we explore whether, and under which conditions, external experts’ collective assessment of product-technology domains impacts firms’ allocation of capital to their strategic business units engaged in these domains. Drawing on decision comprehensiveness theory, we propose that such expert sentiment has informational value for capital allocation decisions, and that this value is contingent on the available information’s determinacy and quantity. We find evidence for our propositions by studying 669 capital allocation decisions made by 85 pharmaceutical firms from 2005 to 2016, and by using supervised machine learning classifiers to analyze expert sentiment in 250,000 articles. Our study contributes to the behavioral theory of the firm by showing that, contrary to what scholars traditionally assume, decision makers broaden, rather than narrow, their information processing in comprehensive information environments
Journal: Journal of Management Studies
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Johannes Luger
Abstract: The distinction between macro- and microinventions is at the core of recent debates on the Industrial Revolution. Yet, the empirical testing of this notion has remained elusive. We address this issue by introducing a new quality indicator for all patents granted in England in the period 1700–1850. The indicator provides the opportunity for a large-scale empirical appraisal of macro- and microinventions. Our findings indicate that macroinventions did not exhibit any specific time-clustering, while microinventions were characterized by clustering behavior. In addition, we also find that macroinventions displayed a labor-saving bias and were mostly introduced by professional engineers. These results suggest that Allen’s and Mokyr’s views of macroinventions, rather than conflicting, should be regarded as complementary.
Journal: Explorations in Economic History
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Valentina Tartari
Abstract: This article explores how one middling English family – the Wilkinsons, shopkeepers in industrialising Lancashire – experienced and negotiated threats to their respectability and social status during the early nineteenth-century. It contributes to the history of downward social mobility, responding to a recent call in this journal for more work on this topic. I use a rich epistolary archive to explore the Wilkinsons experiences.
Journal: Cultural and Social History
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Andrew Popp
Abstract: Climate change and impact mitigation is central to the shipping industry. Targets and standards that aim to reduce emissions and mitigate impact will apply either to all ships or to certain ship types or ship activities. The impact of this regulatory agenda on maritime activities is heavily dependent on international conventions and decisions taken at the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Some scholars have pointed to the undue influence of firms on the IMO via ‘corporate capture’. Mainstream scholarship assumes that decisive influence comes from powerful states. This article deploys a polycentric approach to argue that governance outcomes are often a function of the particularities of the negotiating process as opposed to the characteristics and resources of the negotiating parties.
Journal: Marine Policy
Published: September 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Michael Prehn
Abstract: Energy production is a source of disputes across the world. Governments and firms argue that investing in wind energy contributes to the sustainable development of energy systems. However, wind farms perpetuate ongoing injustices and instigate new injustices. Vulnerable groups such as excluded and marginalised indigenous people can trace the injustices in low-carbon investments to a historical continuity of oppression and repression by internal and external elite groups. Based on a qualitative longitudinal study in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico, we expand our understanding of the energy justice framework in two ways. First, we show that cognitive justice is a vital dimension for understanding different ways of life, traditions and customs. Second, we propose the new concept of ‘transactional colonialism’, which emphasises the role of economic transactions between firms and economically motivated members of indigenous communities with the support of elite actors. This article provides new insights into the conflicting dynamics of wind energy investments in the Global South.
Journal: Energy Research and Social Science
Published: August 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Jacobo Ramirez
Abstract: What information would people like to have? What information would they prefer to avoid? How does the provision of information bear on welfare? And what does this mean for food policy? Representative surveys in eleven nations find that substantial percentages of people do not want to receive information even when it bears on health, sustainability, and consumer welfare. Nonetheless, substantial percentages of people also do want to receive that information, and people’s willingness to pay for information, contingent on their wanting it, is mostly higher than people’s willingness to pay not to receive information, contingent on their not wanting it. We develop a model and estimate the welfare effects of information provision. We find substantial benefits and costs, with the former outweighing the latter. The results suggest that in principle, policymakers should take both instrumental and hedonic effects into account when deciding whether to impose disclosure requirements for food, whether the domain involves health, safety, or moral considerations. If policymakers fail to consider either instrumental or hedonic effects, and if they fail to consider the magnitude of those effects, they will not capture the welfare consequences of disclosure requirements. Our evidence has concrete implications for how to think about, and capture, the welfare consequences of such requirements with respect to food.
Journal: Food Policy
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Lucia A. Reisch, Micha Kaiser
Abstract: This paper focuses on policies that are enlightened by behavioural insights (BIs), taking decision-makers’ biases and use of heuristics into account and utilising a people-centric perspective and full acknowledgement of context dependency. Considering both the environmental and pandemic crises, it sketches the goal of resilient food systems and describes the contours of behavioural food policy. Conceptually built on BIs derived from behavioural economics, consumer research and decision science, such an approach systematically uses behavioural policies where appropriate and most cost-effective. BI informed tools (nudges) can be employed as stand-alone instruments (such as defaults) or used to improve the effectiveness of traditional policy tools.
Journal: European Review of Agricultural Economics
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Lucia A. Reisch
Abstract: This paper presents the experience curves of low-carbon domestic heating technologies in the United Kingdom between 2010 and 2019. The deployment of these technologies has been acknowledged as one of the main actions toward decarbonising the heating sector. In the UK, several deployment oriented policies have been implemented, such as the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). In this study, we focus on the following domestic heating technologies: air-source heat pumps, ground-source heat pumps, solar thermal collectors, and biomass boilers. Condensing combination gas boilers are also included to act as the baseline/incumbent technology. Using UK installation cost data for 2010 to 2019, we found that low-carbon heating technologies had experience rates of; air-source heat pumps −2.3 ± 5%, ground-source heat pumps −0.8 ± 4%, biomass boilers 0.1 ± 2%, and solar thermal 13 ± 5%, all significantly lower than the reported rates of similar technologies in the literature. Furthermore, we found that gas boilers have potentially reached the floor price at approximately £30/kW. The resulting experience rates can be used in energy economics models and to inform policymakers in developing further deployment programs.
Journal: Energy Policy
Published: September 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Tooraj Jamasb
Journal: Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Abayomi Baiyere
Abstract: Increasing consumer engagement is a cornerstone of companies’ social media efforts. However, how social media brand engagement behavior affects brand performance remains largely unexplored. We capture engagement along two dimensions – volume and variety – and measure brand performance using consumers’ brand attachment, attitudes, and purchase intentions. Based on the power law of practice and combining survey measures with social media data, our analyses reveal a diminishing marginal utility of engagement volume, as the positive impact of engagement behavior on brand outcomes declines at higher engagement levels. However, the variation across performed activities attenuates these diminishing returns on engagement volume. We find consistent evidence for these effects across two studies with 1347 consumers who interacted with different brands. The results question companies’ often unidimensional focus on increasing engagement volume. Instead, our findings suggest that to maximize brand performance on social media platforms, companies should also encourage engagement variety.
Journal: Journal of Business Research
Published: October 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Tobias Schäfers
Abstract: Regulatory experimentation is a novel approach to enable innovation in the energy sector, while maintaining the protection of consumers. We define regulatory experimentation as a temporary removal of regulatory barriers. This can be in the form of a derogation from a rule, but it can also mean assigning responsibility to players to conduct activities that they are normally not allowed to engage in. The outcomes of regulatory experiments inform future regulation. In this paper, we discuss experiences with regulatory experimentation in the energy sector of three pioneering countries: the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Italy. We compare the implementations along six design dimensions: eligible project promoters, scope of the derogations, length of the derogations, administration of the experiments, the access to public funding, and transparency. We also discuss how the early approaches have evolved in these countries. Finally, we look ahead and discuss how regulatory experimentation can evolve in the future European context to contribute to the green transition.
Journal: Energy Policy
Published: September 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Tooraj Jamasb, Manuel Llorca
Abstract: The European Green Deal calls for a revision of the Regulation on guidelines for trans-European energy infrastructure (TEN-E Regulation). The focus of the TEN-E Regulation was on accelerating the development of strategically important projects linking energy networks across the EU, labelled as Projects of Common Interest (PCIs). We provide seven recommendations on how to revise the Regulation to align it with the new full decarbonisation objective. We split the analysis in three parts: the eligibility, selection and cost allocation of PCIs. Regarding eligibility, first, oil networks should be excluded, while the case of gas networks is debatable. Second, power-to-X technologies, electric charging infrastructure and (smart) gas distribution grids could be added to the scope. Regarding selection, first, the Ten-Year Network Development Plan (TYDNP) should be integrated over all energy vectors using an open-source model. Second and third, the scenarios used in the TYNDPs should be subject to the European Commission's approval, while the approval decision for cost-benefit analysis methodologies should be reallocated from the Commission to ACER. Finally, regarding cost allocation, first, cross-border cost allocation decisions should leave all involved jurisdictions with similar benefit-to-cost ratios to increase commitment. Second, affordability should be the only award criterion for European funding.
Journal: Energy Policy
Published: September 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Tooraj Jamasb, Manuel Llorca
Abstract: Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) is a method to extract homogeneous clusters characterized by a common response profile. Previous works employing LPA to human value segmentation tend to select a small number of moderately homogeneous clusters based on model selection criteria such as Akaike information criterion, Bayesian information criterion and Entropy. The question is whether a small number of clusters is all that can be gleaned from the data. While some studies have carefully compared different statistical model selection criteria, there is currently no established criteria to assess if an increased number of clusters generates meaningful theoretical insights. This article examines the content and meaningfulness of the clusters extracted using two algorithms: Variational Bayesian LPA and Maximum Likelihood LPA. For both methods, our results point towards eight as the optimal number of clusters for characterizing distinctive Schwartz value typologies that generate meaningful insights and predict several external variables.
Journal: Methodology - European Journal of Research Methods for the Behavioral and Social Sciences
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Jan Michael Bauer, Fumiko Kano Glückstad
Abstract:
Purpose:
This paper investigates how different and sometimes conflicting approaches to performance evaluations are hybridized in the day-to-day activities of a disciplined hybrid organization–i.e. a public child protection agency at the intersection between the market and the public sector.
Design/methodology/approach:
The paper is based on a one-year ethnography of how employees achieve to qualify their work as “good work” in situations with several and sometimes conflicting ideals of what “good work” is. Fieldwork material was collected by following casework activities across organizational boundaries. By combining accounting literature on hybridization with literature on practices of valuation, the paper develops a novel theoretical framework which allows for analyses of the various practices of valuation, when and where they clash and how they persist over time in everyday work.
Findings:
Throughout the study, four distinct registers of valuation were identified: feeling, theorizing, formalizing and costing. To denote the meticulous efforts of pursuing good work in all four registers of valuation, the authors propose the notion of sequencing. Sequencing is an ongoing process of moving conflicting registers away from each other and bringing them back together again. Correspondingly, at the operational level of a hybrid organization, temporary compartmentalization is a means of avoiding clashes, and in doing so, making it possible for different and sometimes conflicting ways of achieving good results to continuously hybridize and persist together.
Research limitations/implications:
The single-case approach allows for analytical depth, but limits the findings to theoretical, rather than empirical, generalizability. The framework the authors propose, however, is well-suited for mobilization and potential elaboration in further empirical contexts.
Originality/value:
The paper provides a novel theoretical framework as well as rich empirical material from the highly political field of child protection work, which has seldomly been studied within accounting research.
Journal: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Ida Schrøder
Abstract: This study examines how managers and entrepreneurs in stigmatized industries use historical narratives to combat stigma. We examine two industries, the private military contractors (PMC) industry in the United States and the cannabis industry in Canada. In recent decades, the representatives of these industries have worked to reduce the level of stigmatization faced by the industries. We show that historical narratives were used rhetorically by the representatives of both industries. In both cases, these historical narratives were targeted at just one subset of the population. Our research contributes to debates about stigmatization in ideologically diverse societies, an important issue that have been overlooked by the existing literature on stigmatized industries, which tends to assume the existence of homogeneous audiences when researching the efforts of industry representatives to destigmatize their industries.
Journal: Journal of Management Inquiry
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Anders Ravn Sørensen
Abstract: Host-country policies shape the incentives and opportunities of MNC subsidiaries to innovate. However, prior research largely ignores the agency of foreign MNC subsidiaries receiving government R&D subsidies from their host countries. Subsidiaries may increase R&D investments and innovation outputs as intended by governments or merely accept the additional funds while continuing R&D programs that they would have undertaken anyway. In this exploratory study, we investigate whether R&D subsidies trigger additional input, output, and behavioral innovation effects in foreign MNC subsidiaries. Based on longitudinal data from Germany, we find that foreign MNC subsidiaries increase their R&D investments more than comparable domestic firms in response to an R&D subsidy. Moreover, MNC subsidiaries experience comparatively stronger effects in innovation performance from subsidy-induced R&D. However, subsidies also shift attention away from the subsidiaries’ original R&D activities. We interpret our findings by integrating theory from subsidy additionality literature into models of MNC subsidiary innovation. Our findings have implications for both MNC subsidiaries and policymakers who seek to attract foreign R&D investment in a host country.
Journal: Journal of International Business Policy
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Wolfgang Sofka, Christoph Grimpe
Abstract: Identity management has been ripe for disruption over the past few years due to recurring incidents of data breaches that have led to personal information leaks and identity theft. The rise of blockchain technology has paved the way for the development of self-sovereign identity (SSI)—a new class of user-controlled resilient identity management systems that are enabled by distributed ledger technology. This paper examines how self-sovereign identity management can be used in a public transportation sector that spans different operators in multiple countries. Specifically, the paper explores how a blockchain-based decentralized identity management system can draw on the SSI framework to provide high-level security and transparency for all involved parties in public transportation ecosystems. Accordingly, building on analyses of the existing public transportation ticketing solutions, we elicited requirements of a comparable system based on the SSI principles. Next, we developed a low-fidelity prototype to showcase how passengers can utilize standardized travel credentials that are valid across different transportation networks in Europe. The proposed system eliminates the need for multiple travel cards (i.e., one for each transportation provider) and empowers individuals to have better control over the use of their identities while they utilize interoperable ticketing systems across Europe. Overall, building on the public transportation case, we offer a proof-of-concept that shows how individuals can better manage their identity credentials via the SSI framework.
Journal: Blockchain: Research and Applications
Published: May 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Raghava Rao Mukkamala, Michel Avital
Abstract: The enduring lack of diversity in the corporate elite continues to attract attention from scholars and practitioners. However, the issue of representation or ‘body count’ – in particular for women – tends to dominate the discussion and overshadows social-relational dimensions. Adopting a network perspective, this article investigates how gender and nationality interact with human and social capital (i.e. director capital), explaining why particular directors hold more influential positions in the corporate elite. Findings from Swiss data show that some specific aspects of human and social capital matter more than others for being an influential director and that, ceteris paribus, Swiss citizens benefit most from both sources of capital. The discussion engages with the implications of our findings on current approaches intended to increase the numbers of appointments of ‘diverse’ directors, and how these are expected to change the corporate elite and the related job market in the longer term.
Journal: Work, Employment and Society
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Florence Villeséche, Evis Sinani
Abstract: While conventional historical narratives of entrepreneurship education focus on its rise in business schools since the 1970s, this paper traces its roots to the early nineteenth century and chronicles its evolution within the field of higher education more broadly. Using a comparative-history design, we show how changing social imaginaries of entrepreneurship education in Germany and the United States were based on divergent and evolving justifications of entrepreneurial autonomy and its relationship to the common good. Our narrative explores how these social imaginaries shaped the moral and political legitimacy of entrepreneurship and the aims, practices, and organizational forms of entrepreneurship education. We draw out the implications of this deeper history for entrepreneurship education today, including: (a) its current social imaginary, (b) the character of entrepreneurial knowledge, and (c) its relationship to the modern university.
Journal: Academy of Management Learning and Education
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Dan Wadhwani, Christoph Viebig
