The University of Sydney Business School Research Seminars

The Intransparency of Financial Risks in Bank Financial Statements

Aligning programmatic ideals and technological capabilities: The case of sustainability assurance

Addressing Learning Issues in International Student Cohorts to Enhance Educational Outcomes in the Master of Professional Accounting

Standards, incentives and accounting practice - lessons from the IFRS transition in Sweden

Does Reporting Timeliness Affect Book-Tax Differences?

Funding Asbestos Liabilities: An investigation of corporate and regulatory responses

OHS Disclosure: Corporate Accountability or Instiutionalised Safewash?

Bonus Caps, Corporate Governance and Pay-Performance Sensitivity

Accounting and Pastoral Power: The case of Indigentured Indigenous 'Apprenticeship' Programs in Australia

International Accounting Standard Board (IASB)'s Agenda Formulation Process: A Case of Small and Medium-sized Entities (SMEs) standard

Performance Management: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis

Institutional Homology: Explaining Corporate Art

The role for management controls at different stages of project management. Some insights from a qualitative study.

State and Local Government Owned Enterprises in Italy. Their growth, misuse and the inappropriateness of their reporting.

Are capital expenditures, R&D, advertisements and acquisitions positive NPV?

Information Asymmetry of Fair Value Accounting and Loan Loss Provisions during the Global Financial Crisis

Making Sense of Social Practice: Theoretical Pluralism in Public Sector Accounting Research

Management control systems and strategising: A case study of a Japanese manufacturing company

Financial Statements Insurance

Building Schools for the Future: The Accountability Challenges of Joint Ventures Between the Public and Private Sectors

Writing Masters and Accountants in England - a Study of Occupation, Status and Ambition in the Early Modern Period

Accountable Governance in Corporate Groups; The Interrelationship of Law and Accounting

Consistent Asset Valuation for Purposes of Rate Regulation

Earnings Quality Metrics and what they Measure

Firm Size and National Profiles of IFRS Policy Choice

Complexity - The Other Side of the Expertise Coin: A Three way Interaction Analysis of Task Complexity in Learning

Securitization Accounting

Living with Numbers

Inventory Valuation, Company Value and the Uncertainty Principle

ABC and Enterprise Systems

The GRI's Sustainability Reporting Guidelines: Promoting Accountability to Stakeholders or Institutionalising Corporate Social 'P.R.'?

Analyst Recommendations and Corporate Bankruptcies: An International Study

The impact of voluntary audit on credit ratings: Evidence from UK private firms

The impact of social influence pressure on the ethical reasoning of professional accountants: Australian and New Zealand evidence

Defining the reporting entity in the consolidation of public and private entities: Accountability lost? The case of IPSASs

Rhetoric and the fate of budgeting

The impact of an independent inspector in improving governance and accountability in prisons: Pressure points and conflict in the pursuit of an ideal of performance

Conservatism implications for the properties of accounting information: The case of R&D Accounting

Publishing in a top tier accounting journal: A critical perspective

Designing a semi-confusing management control system package -sensebreaking in the Swedish armed forces

Sustainability accounting without accountants. Results of an explorative investigation of large German companies

The economic sociology of responsibility accounting: A field study in a Chinese state-owned enterprise

Sustainability Reporting in Italian Local Governments

The effect of disclosure transparency on intangibles and analysts' stock pricing forecasts

Accounting For Sustainable Development: (Re)Constructing the Agenda

Text Analysis Methodologies in Corporate Narrative Reporting Research

Improving the Measurement of Book-Tax Conformity

Accounting and Rehabilitation

Pragmatism and Sustainability

The Geography of Professionalism: An Introduction to the Specialization of Professional Accounting Practice in the City

The Relation of Key Performance Indicators and Strategy Development Revisited

What the Models Cannot See: Integrating Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance Information in Investment

Community Warning and Emergency Incident Response: A System of Systems Approach

Action Research Cycles: Storytelling, Organisational Learning and Impacting

Overall this talk addresses the cyclic nature of Action Research (AR). Initially it begins with an overview, in a form of a story, of an approach for Information Systems Development called Multiview which was defined and evolved using AR. One of the main lessons from this work is that Multiple Perspective Thinking emerges from the learning cycles. Next, a collaborative Action Research (AR) study, called the ALTAR (Achieving Learning Through Action Research) Project that was conducted jointly between Staffordshire University and Britvic Soft Drinks Ltd. is discussed. This project included a number of AR cycles involving participants working at different management levels at Britvic. This company was already in the process of adopting Knowledge Management (KM) software but it was recognised it could better exploit KM technologies by undertaking an AR project. The project involved developing academic theory into practical concepts that influenced actions within the organisation and fed back into the academic research. The ALTAR approach and findings are briefly discussed and conclusions are drawn about the study and its implications for AR & KM and the future study of organisational learning. Finally, the findings of the Britvic and Multiview work are summarised. Their practical use to both managers in a variety of organisations and also in informing academic research into relevant disciplines using the AR process are outlined. A possible strategy is discussed for impact on Business Schools' research.

Digital Documentary Practice: Report on the findings from a practitioner survey of markup usage

Contemporary Black Hat, White Hat Research in Information Security: Where are the Gaps

Public Seminar: Why Top Journals Accept Your Paper *RSVP essential before 19 April to: karen.hunter@sydney.edu.au

RSVP essential before 19 April to: karen.hunter@sydney.edu.au.

Tweet inside - Microblogging in a corporate context

The Double Productivity Paradox: IT Productivity and Performance in the Public Sector

Managing information risks and protecting information assets in a Web 2.0 era

What's in, what's out: Coverage as an element of collaboration governance

Business Transformation Driven by Environmental Sustainability: A Critical Topic for Information Systems and for Multi-disciplinary Research

Information Visualisation of Competitive Strategies

In this seminar I will review procedures to extract business strategies from financial accounting data. The purpose of this is to enable visualisation of strategic movements in an industry. These visualisations can then be used to assist executives in strategic decision making.

Seminar abstract

There are principally two approaches to identify competitive strategies from financial data, and I will illustrate both approaches using data from 628 UK listed firms over five years (2005-2009). Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. These are not dissimilar to the methodological difficulties traditionally associated with financial ratio analysis.

The second part of the seminar will deal with the transfer of the data to strategic information visualisation. I will demonstrate a few sample visualisations, and I hope to discuss with the audience which visualisations are most effective and insightful.

Hans van der Heijden

Hans van der Heijden is Head of the Division of Management and a professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Surrey. He holds a Ph.D. in Management from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Netherlands. Before his academic career he worked for a global accounting firm, with international assignments in the financial sector.

Prof. van der Heijden was the research chair for the annual European Conference on Information Systems 2008 in Galway, Ireland, and will be the research-in-progress chair for this conference in 2011 in Helsinki. His research straddles the areas of strategy, accounting, and management information systems. His publications have appeared in MIS Quarterly, European Journal of Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Information and Management, and Journal of Information Technology.

His latest book is Designing Management Information Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Generalisability, accuracy and simplicity: pick two. Approaches for developing theories of attitudes and behaviour towards technology.

This presentation expands on issues initially raised in Dr Tate's ICIS (2009) paper, which can be accessed in the AIS electronic library at http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2009/139/. In the ICIS paper it was suggested that many existing theories of user perceptions and attitudes towards technology suffer from "over investigation" of users' attitudes and "under investigation" of the technologies that cause them. This can be the result of a pursuit of generalisability at the expense of accuracy and salience to practice. In this paper, some heuristics are offered for addressing this issue. It is proposed that salient features of technologies can be identified using affordance theory. The functional affordances of technologies form the basis for users? descriptive beliefs (perceptions). These in turn form the basis for more generalized beliefs that lead to attitudes. The original paper continued with some suggestions as to how this approach can be modelled quantitatively using multi-indicator structural models. The modelling issues are interesting and Dr Tate is keen to take them up off-line with anyone with an interest in SEMs. They are quite technical, however, and likely not of interest to a mixed audience of quantitative and qualitative researchers.

Instead of going deeply into the modelling issues, in the presentation Dr Tate will discuss the other corner of the triangle - that of generalizability. Dr Tate will go back to foundational work on theory building in the social sciences and the book by Dubin (1978), for some insights as to how this balancing act might be accomplished. The seminar then finishes with some recommendations for developing theories of attitudes and behaviour towards technology that strike an appropriate balance.

RSVP: to deborah.bunker@sydney.edu.au by Wednesday 29th September.

TBA

What are we aligning? Categorising alignment in the context of strategic theory

Achieving Alignment in Enterprise Systems Implementations - A Critical Realist Perspective

Because Enterprise Systems (ES) are being implemented in organisations of all types and sizes, understanding how to align the organisational requirements with the ES package capabilities is important and essential knowledge for achieving successful ES implementations. Despite extensive ES implementation experience, organisations still experience considerable problems in the alignment process, problems that contribute to failure to achieve expected business benefits.

This study seeks to explain how alignment between organisational requirements and ES capabilities takes place in ES implementations. The research goal is addressed via a longitudinal case study of the ES implementation being conducted in a public organisation in an expanding region of the country. The research uses a critical realist (CR) lens and employs grounded theory GT to document and explore the organisation-technology relationship.

This study investigates the process of alignment by conceptualising ES projects as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) because they involve large and diverse groups of stakeholders and structures within organisations. The findings suggest that alignment is facilitated when stakeholders reach a shared mental model that supports the overall decision making process during ES implementation. This study therefore expands the theory of mental model convergence by integrating the role of boundary objects and spanners when stakeholders engage in complex knowledge related tasks during ES implementation.

This study operationalises the claims of several researchers that CR offers an appropriate alternative lens for investigating the organisation-technology relationship by facilitating the explicit study of the role of technology. It further suggests that complexity theory and GT are appropriate meta-theory and methodology for conducting empirical CR studies. The findings also offers a more detailed view of the alignment process and consequently situate client organisations in a better position to achieve expected business benefits and reduce the incidence of problematic ES implementations.

Corina Raduescu

Corina's research focuses on investigating the organisation-technology relationship through the lens of critical realism and complexity theory. Corina is currently completing her PhD and her thesis explores the process by which organisations implementing large scale enterprise systems align their business requirements to the capabilities of such systems.
Corina brings together a novel approach to conducting research in business information systems by using complexity theory and critical realism as theoretical and philosophical foundations. This approach, she argues, offers a holistic explanatory account of the interaction between people and technology, and the ability to understand how people acquire and enhance their domain-specific knowledge through interactions with technological artefacts.

Her thesis findings suggest that organisations implementing systems engage in learning and adaptation processes with the main aim of reaching shared knowledge of both their business processes and systems capabilities, knowledge that is represented in both peoples' shared mental models and technological artefacts. She argues that her research is relevant because it offers another view on what organisations' focus should be during systems implementation, given that a high number of organisations still fail to achieve the expected business benefits from their systems investments.

Corina's approach to information systems research is well received by the academic community leading to two Doctoral Consortia invitations in recent years: ICIS 2007, Montreal, Canada and ACIS 2006, Adelaide, Australia. Recent conference presentations such as "Methodology in Critical Realist Research: The Mediating Role of Domain-Specific Theory" in Proceedings of the 15th Americas Conference on Information Systems, 2009 and "Aligning Organizational Requirements with Enterprise Systems Capabilities: The Role of Domain-specific Knowledge," in Proceedings of the 13th Americas Conference on Information Systems, 2007, also reflect the recognition of Corina's research relevance in the field.

The relevance of her PhD study to industry is highlighted by the fact that her study was part of the ARC Linkage Project "Using Measures of Ontological Distance to Evaluate the Alignment between Organisational Needs and Enterprise Systems Capabilities."

Enterprise Information Management Research Programme

Organisations are struggling to manage the growing volumes, forms and sources of digital information and to balance the dual objectives of managing information as an asset and information as evidence. This creates significant challenges at a practice level as organisations attempt to realise value from their information assets whilst also ensuring compliance with increasingly complex and sometimes conflicting legal and regulatory requirements.

In this presentation we discuss the themes, values and intellectual commitments that shape the design of our interdisciplinary research programme. Aimed at assisting organisations to develop an information capability and to improve their information policies, processes and practices, the programme draws on theories of sociotechnical change and reflexive and participatory research designs. The most recent research study investigates the risks and challenges arising from the integration of Enterprise 2.0 projects into the wider enterprise information environment. Using this study as an example, we discuss our findings, their implications for the design of future research cycles and the challenges of managing interactive research and the co-construction of knowledge.

Susan Williams is a DAAD funded Professor at the University of Koblenz-Landau working on research in enterprise information management and collaborative technologies. She has held previous appointments at the University of Sydney, UTS, UNSW and The University of Sheffield. She is currently also a Visiting Professor at the Information School at The University of Sheffield. Her long-term research programme is directed towards assisting organisations to improve the design, management and protection of their information assets. With a specific focus on the complex interplay between technical innovation, organisational change and legal mandates, her work draws from the fields of information management, library and information science and information-related law.

Challenges in Employing a Practice Perspective to Study Interorganisational IS Evolution

I will describe Practice Theory as a new approach to theorising information systems in a thoroughly socio-technical way. At heart practice theory denies certain traditional dualities (subject-object, individual-collective), which if sustained lead IS theorising to various unhelpful determinisms incompatible with many important adoption phenomena, especially evolution of large scale Interorganisational Systems (IOIS) over long timescales. I will describe recent work with Kai Reimers (RWTH Aachen), Stefan Klein (U. Muenster) to articulate a form of practice theory, our attempts to use it empirically, and our attempts to understand IOIS evolution in the pharmaceutical industry and IS adoption generally.

Robert B. Johnston, BSc, DipEd, MSc, PhD is John Sharkey Chair of Information Systems and Organisation and Head of the Management Information Systems Department at University College Dublin. His main research areas are electronic commerce, supply chain management, inter-organisational information systems and theoretical foundations of Information Systems. He has over 120 refereed publications, many in leading international journals including Information Systems Research, Management Science, European Journal of Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Journal of Stategic Information Systems, Electronic Markets, Journal of the Operational Research Society, International Journal of Production Economics, OMEGA Intrenational. Journal of Management Science, and Supply Chain Management. Prior to becoming an academic he spent 13 years as a freelance consulting analyst / project manager, designing and implementing about 25 large computer systems for inventory and production planning in a number of leading manufacturing companies in Australia.

Exploring Continuous Assurance in Practice: Preliminary Insights

The concept of continuous assurance is not new, with a history spanning close to three decades in various guises. Recently there has been renewed attention in the area due to compliance imperatives, trends in governance and risk, anti-fraud measures and technological advances. However significant uncertainty surrounds the practicalities of how continuous assurance may be effectively implemented into an organisation's governance, risk and compliance landscape for auditors and managers. The aim of this paper is to report on the early stages of a case study examining how continuous assurance is being implemented in an Australian wholesale company. Broadly, a practice perspective is adopted, drawing theoretical insights from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and Power's (2007) concept of 'organised uncertainty' is explored to progress thinking in continuous assurance theory and practice. Findings emerging from the initial phases of this study include the heterogeneous and fluid nature of continuous assurance, a duality of mobility involving system dependencies and audit independence, and the unanticipated usages and politics of information.

Catherine Hardy is a Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems at the University of Sydney Business School. Her research program is directed towards assisting organisations improve the governance, assurance and protection of their information assets. Drawing from the fields of information systems, audit and assurance and risk management Catherine's research interests focus mainly on the changing and complex relationships between technical innovation, organisational change, governance and risk. Catherine also has a strong commitment to reflexive and case based methodologies.

From suitability to appropriateness - Rethinking the IT artifact using Heidegger's analysis of equipment

The IT artifact is frequently seen to be the core object of interest in Information Systems research. As such, the IT artifact is commonly conceived of as a bundle of features, i.e. a thing with properties. In this talk, I will question the usefulness of such a view for understanding the adoption and use of IT. I will argue that the artifact view of IT is deeply grounded in a Cartesian worldview, which stresses a duality between subject and object, i.e. between individual and the external world. On this view, adoption and use of IT becomes the familiar Task Technology Fit story, where fit is determined by the relationship between properties of various entities (task, technology, individual characteristics, etc.). I will challenge this view by drawing on Martin Heidegger's analysis of equipment, as introduced in Being and Time (1927/1961). Using a stylized account of a typical IT selection and implementation project I will illustrate how the focus of attention shifts under this post-cartesian worldview. I argue that, by drawing on Heidegger's existential ontology, we are able to better understand and trace back typical IS phenomena to ourbeing-in-the-world as concerned, practice-having beings (Dasein).

This work yields two contributions: The first is to show that the messiness of implementation, captured in such concepts as "lack of adoption", "user resistance", "unfaithful use", or "change management", rather than being the symptoms of the failure of a rational adoption process are in fact the natural outcome as IT is appropriated into existing practices. Treating IT as equipment emphasizes that in genuine use IT is intimately interwoven with other equipment, user practices, and individual identity, and thus highlights theneed to appropriate a new IT artifact (as equipment) into an existing world of user practices. The second is to offer the equipment view of IT use as a distinctly different perspective through which Information Systems can distinguish itself from neighboring disciplines, such as Computer Science and Software Engineering that pursue an artifact view (with a narrow focus on design). I will argue that, by focusing on equipment as the holistic notion of technologies-in-practice, Information Systems might come to better shape its disciplinary core.

Bio

Dr. Kai Riemer is a Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems. Kai joined the University of Sydney in August 2009 from MÜnster University in Germany, where he held a position as Assistant Professor. Kai's expertise and research interests cover the areas of e-Collaboration, collaborative systems, Enterprise 2.0, inter-firm networking, virtual work, and philosophy of technology. In one current research stream he focuses on the application and use of communication media and collaborative systems and their impact and effect on groups and people in virtual work contexts (such as virtual teams or distributed projects). In particular he is interested in Web 2.0 technologies in corporate contexts, such as Enterprise Microblogging platforms. A second stream of research focuses on the conceptualization of the IT artifact drawing on various works from the philosophy of technology and existential philosophy. Kai is a board member of the Journal of Information Technology, Electronic Markets, and the International Journal of e-Collaboration.

Accreditation and ranking of Business Schools: The long and winding path toward excellence or the motorway toward mundanity?

Globally, there is a wave of business school accreditation with many nations establishing their own accreditation regimes. On the international arena, EQUIS and AACSB are at the "cutting edge" of accreditation agencies. We also see that rankings, for example Financial Time's multiple ranking schemes, play a decisive role in achieving accreditation status. It is evident that business schools achieve higher quality in their teaching programs and research through these accreditation and ranking processes. Simultaneously, accreditation status has become a prerequisite for establishing collaboration with other academic institutions. Practitioners and politicians increasingly emphasize accreditation as a necessary measure of excellence. It is also evident that students increasingly check accreditation and ranking status before applying for admittance to a particular business school.

Accreditation and ranking rules and regulations are commonly applied to business schools across national borders. They impact the way in which programs and courses must be described, made available and administered in the global marketplace. These rules and regulations also apply to the composition of faculty, the formal degrees obtained by faculty, and the faculty's research output - not to forget level and patterns of collaboration between academia and public and private organizations.

While it is quite true that achieving accreditation and being ranked among the best may increase education and research quality, it may also be argued that there is an inherent danger in applying similar rules to all. In the long run, will the effect of accreditation and ranking be to stifle academic innovation? Will faculty globally, with regard to competence and skills, become more like one another? Among business schools, will systems for administration, education, and managerial reporting become standardized? In short, will the "rules of the game" become set procedures rather than focus on continuous innovation and the need for being at the forefront of shaping the future?

Biography
Tor J. Larsen holds a MA in Systems Thinking from the University of Lancaster, England in 1975 and earned his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of Minnesota in 1989. He held the position of Senior Vice President at the BI Norwegian Business School 2007-2010 and is at present full professor in Knowledge Management. He has served as associate editor for MIS Quarterly. Dr. Larsen's publications are found in, journals such as Information & Management, Journal of MIS, Information Systems Journal, and Computers in Industry. He is a member of AIS and IFIP WG8.2 and Vice-Chair of WG8.6 since 2007. Dr. Larsen's research interests are in the areas of managers' use of information, knowledge management, innovation, diffusion, representation, and innovation outcome. He can be reached at Tor.J.Larsen@BI.NO

"Don't pressure me!" A case study exposing the multi-faceted nature of voluntariness in IT adoption

The design and management of the roll-out of new IT in an organization comprises several managerial decisions; one of which is whether IT adoption should be mandatory. Voluntariness to adopt has mainly been researched as a variable in explaining individual IT acceptance, however with contradicting results. By drawing on a case study of a financial service company, we aim to improve our understanding of the concept of voluntariness. We elaborate on the changing role of voluntariness in the different stages of the roll-out process of Real-Time Collaboration technologies. Furthermore, we broaden our understanding of voluntariness, beyond focusing on the individual adoption decision, by investigating adoption and diffusion on the team and management level. This allows us to observe an interesting dilemma presented in the case: While voluntariness can be an essential prerequisite for implementation and technology roll-out, it may act as an inhibitor to its full diffusion in later stages.

Bio: Nadine Vehring is a PhD candidate and researches with the Interorganisational Systems (IOS) Group at the Department of Information Systems, University of Muenster. Her research focuses on the analysis of the introduction, adoption and use of communication and collaboration systems in general and Real Time Collaboration systems in particular. Her research is based on an exploratory and multi-level case study research design. With her research she aims to contribute to a better understanding of the interplay of aspects of designing and managing the roll-out of a new communication and collaboration system on the management level and of processes of user appropriation and enrolment of this new technologies into existing user practices at the individual and group level.

New Challenges for Business Intelligence Research: The Evolution of Service Platforms at American Express, Intel and eBay

In Business Intelligence (BI), action research is catalyzing evolutions to what is now being referred to as "service platforms." A service platform integrates multiple applications or services from multiple business functions, business units and/or external complementors to deliver a seamless experience for a customer, employee, manager, business unit, business partner or organization. American Express develops BI applications that quickly become central to both B2C and B2B service platform contexts, but developmental bottlenecks limit faster deployment. Intel views supply chain management foundations as a way to model organizations' enterprise architectures as service platforms for a market of commoditized business processes, but the lack of industry-wide standards stall supply network adoption. eBay evolved an experimental platform for wide-scale service innovation - every eBay user is now involved in at least one experiment - but traditional innovation management tenets haven't kept pace. In all of these service platform incarnations, some traditional "platform market" research findings apply. Action research being conducted in each organization is yielding more clues to additional service platform issues. The service platform of the future will be BI-intensive. Successes and problems at American Express, Intel and eBay serve to emphasize future research needs, and this snapshot of progress at each company will highlight those needs.

Dr. Michael Goul is Professor and Chair of the Department of Information Systems, W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. His work in business intelligence and services-centric computing has included recent industry-sponsored research projects with American Express, Intel and Teradata. Mike's interest in services extends to the public sector, and he was appointed in 2005 as a Distinguished University Fellow of the Clinton School of Public Service. In addition to research collaborations with industry and government, he is actively engaged in business intelligence curriculum design and standards setting. His community involvement includes his current post as Vice President of Programs for the Arizona Chapter of the Society for Information Management. Mike has published in journals including Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Service Research, Electronic Commerce, Information and Management, Information Systems Frontiers and many others. He has also served as a journal editor, special issue co-editor, Association for Information Systems (AIS) Council Vice-President, and AIS Conference Chair and Program Chair. He is a Past-Chair of the AIS Special Interest Group in Decision Support, Knowledge and Data Management Systems, and he is currently an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Services Computing. He is co-author of the 2010 Journal of Service Research outstanding research paper titled, "Moving Forward and Making a Difference: Research Priorities for the Science of Service.

Process Modeling in Complex Social Environments

Abstract The seminar will argue for an open process modeling approach in today's complex environments, where there is the need to continually adapt to change. The paper proposes that one way to manage complexity is to define concepts to naturally express the different relationships in complex environments and the impact of change to one relationship on others. The seminar will describe an open modeling initiative that provides a system to create such concepts and the metamodels based on concepts. It will outline a set of concepts and metamodels for modeling wicked systems and illustrates with application to policy creation in wicked systems. The concepts focus on integration of social and structured processes and defining role responsibilities in managing change.

Bio Prof. Igor Hawryszkiewycz is Head of the School of Systems, Management and Leadership at UTS, where he is responsible for teaching and research in the School. He completed a BE and ME degrees in Electrical Engineering at the University of Adelaide, and a PhD degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research reported in over 200 publications and 5 text books emphasizes design issues and over time has covered design databases and information systems, and recently on the design of collaborative systems with emphasis on integration of collaboration into business processes and on providing services for complex adaptive systems now needed in today's dynamic environment. The seminar uses methods in the author's recent book published by Palgrave Macmillan in Basignstoke UK on "Knowledge Management: Organizing Knowledge Based Enterprises".

Sociomateriality - More than Jargon Monoxide? Questions from the Jester to the Sovereign

Recently the notion of 'Sociomateriality' has gained in popularity among information systems (IS) scholars in their search for providing new ways of investigating and understanding IS in organizations and society at large. While some scholars put forward arguments and research accounts that have the potential of leading to new insights, others provide reports which expose a cursory treatment and partial appreciation of the idea. Certain IS scholars have even been accused to introduce yet more academic jargon monoxide by using the term to explain an important phenomenon. Overall the current use of the concept in IS while showing some potential for progressing the theorizing of the 'wicked relation' of man and the soft-machine (the IS/IT artefact) points to the necessity of a deeper exploration of the term. This talk - inspired by the Alternative Genres Track at ECIS 2012, and based on existing literature dealing with sociomateriality in IS - attempts to "take a fresh look, to evoke new insights, and to gain a deeper understanding"1 of the notion of sociomateriality in the IS field. To ensure a constructive discussion, a particular genre where the audience is invited to attend a prolonged dialogue - characterized by honesty, frank observations, and wit - between the court jester and the sovereign, the queen and the king, is used. In doing so, the hope is to contribute with a refreshing debate that builds on open-minded questions in the pursuit of key answers to strengthen our discipline.

Karlheinz Kautz, Dr philos is professor in Systems Development at the Department of Operations Management at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark and the former Director of Studies of Europe's oldest course program on IT and Business Administration. Previously he has been employed as a senior researcher at the Norwegian Computing Center and at universities in Germany, Norway, England and Denmark.

He is a founding member and a former chairman of the IFIP TC8 WG 8.6 on Diffusion, Transfer, and Implementation of Information Technology and a member of AIS. He is the former coordinating editor of the Scandinavian Journal of IS. Currently he serves as senior editor or associate editor for the Communications of the AIS, the Journal of Information Technology, Information, Technology & People, and the Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application. His research interests are in systems development, the diffusion and adoption of information technology innovations and the organizational and societal impact of IT.

1. http://www.ecis2012.eu/tracks/alternative-genres-track.html [assessed October 13, 2011]

What does my financial advisor do? Designing for transparency in service encounters

In sales-oriented service encounters like financial advisory, the client may perceive information and interest asymmetries as a lack of transparency regarding the advisor's activities. In this presentation, I will discuss two design iterations of an interactive tabletop application that we built to increase process, information and cost transparency and thereby enable the client to better understand and contribute to the advisory activities. This project was developed in close collaboration with a major Swiss bank and tested with their advisors. The project is furthermore a good case of modern design research, combining methodological rigor with practical usefulness under the umbrella of user centered design.

Gerhard Schwabe is a full professor of information systems at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. He is leading a research group of 10 PhD students. His research interests bridge the areas of information management and collaboration technologies. Recent research programs have focussed on collaborative advisory, tourism communities, global software development teams and mobile learning. Currently he is starting a program on innovation and social networtk. Most of his research is design oriented and in collaboration with industry.

Two Studies on the Effective use of Information Systems

Information systems are designed and used to achieve certain objectives. However, achieving these objectives often requires that the systems are used effectively. This notion of 'effective use' is, therefore, an important phenomenon to understand. Surprisingly, it is a very under-researched phenomenon. In this presentation, I will describe two initial studies I have undertaken of this topic. The first is a conceptual study that presents a theory of effective use, offering a view on its nature (what it is) and its drivers (what can be done to improve it). The second is a grounded-theory study of the effective use of an electronic health record system used by health workers in a community care setting. This study sheds light on some of the complexities involved in defining, assessing, and improving effective use in real-life settings.

"... Because we don't manufacture cars - we treat people!": Improving Knowledge-Intensive Health care Processes Beyond Efficiency

Health care has been one of the most important domains for Business Process Management (BPM) research and practice for many years. Through an exploratory case study conducted in a real organization named "SpecialClinic", this research aims to investigate what lies beyond process efficiency and traditional approaches to BP improvement for an industry leader with a very high-level of process automation. This presentation focuses on a complex example of customer-facing knowledge intensive BP and investigates the case organisation's approach to its ongoing improvement. The main findings of this research challenge the main objectives of BP improvement (i.e. reduced costs and improved efficiency) as they show that some organizations are making their "to-be" processes slower and more expensive, yet significantly improved in terms of quality of customer service.

In addition to the main research contribution related to new approaches to improvement of knowledge intensive BPs, this work offers some important lessons for the practitioners interested in expanding the current boundaries of BPM beyond efficiency and traditional BP improvement methods.

Based on Marjanovic O (2011) "Improving Knowledge-Intensive Health Care Processes Beyond Efficiency", 32nd International Conference on Information Systems ICIS 2011, Shanghai, China, 7th December 2011

Designing collaborative infrastructures to support distributed work

A growing proportion of contemporary organizational work takes place in the context of distributed collaborative environments which involve the interaction of multiple organizations with distinct areas of expertise, technologies, and work practices. In this research-in-progress, we develop a three-part model of the facets of collaborative infrastructure that support such distributed collaborative environments. We argue that collaborative infrastructures inherently reflect the interplay of practices, artifacts, and discourse. Specifically, our model asserts that the development of shared practices and artifacts by organizations engaged in collaboration is mediated by the emergence of common discourses between the parties. The preliminary theorizing developed in this paper is based on multiple case study analyses of collaborative projects in the areas of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) and software development and implementation. Our initial research suggests key areas of consideration by collaboration leaders in the development of collaborative infrastructures for distributed work.

An Agile Approach to Context Aware Cloud Adaptation

Organizations have shown a significant interest in the adoption of cloud technology-enabled operating environment. While many organizations are interested in adopting cloud technology-enabled operating environment suitable to their local circumstances, there is little guidance available on how to do so. We propose the iterative development and evaluation of a context-aware cloud adaptation (CACA) framework construct, based on agile philosophy and Actor-Network-Theory, by applying a design science research approach. This framework, whilst still under development, can be useful in assisting organizations to develop self awareness of their cloud adoption readiness, while at the same time being able to iteratively self assess, adopt and improve an appropriate cloud technology-enabled operating environment for their business by obtaining, modeling, processing and managing contextual information for their economic and competitive advantage. This seminar presents our ongoing research in this emerging area of cloud technology-enabled business transformation and highlights how businesses can best deal with the challenge of context-aware cloud assessment, adoption and improvement.

Transformational Journey of a Retail Organisation Towards Bi-Influenced Strategy Creation

The research examines how the upward and downward strategic influence of the head of the BI unit in the case organization evolved over time and the BI perspective became legitimate in the organization. The analysis covers a decade long period of time. We engaged in an Action Research (AR) inquiry where the change process was explored through the first-hand experiences of one of the co-authors. The model of the strategic agency of middle managers was applied in the analysis. Our study demonstrates that a reciprocal relation between top management and head of the BI unit is necessary for enabling the interaction between BI and strategy making. This interaction capability could help organizations find those innovative solutions that make a difference in the market place and provide the competitive edge over the competitors.

Historical Narrative: Understanding and Learning from IS Strategising Failure

This seminar will look at the historical narrative of an ICT outsourcing initiative by the Australian Federal government from 1996-2001. Three different narrative perspectives, which are embedded within the Perspectival ITS Management Model (PISTM - Bunker 2004), are utilised to highlight the "competing voices" (Curthoys & McGrath 2009) that ultimately contribute to the strategising failure. These narrative accounts were constructed through the examination of secondary data sources which documented the outsourcing initiative. Through this approach we learn that "whole of government" and individual departmental contextual assumptions were made regarding technological skill sets, system outcomes, conceptual expression, building techniques and organisational culture, which were different to those embedded in the artifacts created and used to produce the outsourcing strategy. It is explained how these differences in assumptions caused Federal Government ICT outsourcing to fail in 2001. It is then suggested how this narrative approach allows us to better understand and learn from what occurred in this case.

Place-making: A Phenomenological Theory of Technology Appropriation

The topic of this talk is the introduction of new technologies into organisational practices. While IS textbooks conceive of IS introduction largely as a decision process, a body of literature has emerged characterizing the phenomenon as a time-extended appropriationprocess, whereby users adapt and integrate a technology into their everyday practices. However, research in this field, typically aimed at explaining the variation in (unintended) outcomes, has struggled to grasp how exactly both the technology and the practice change during appropriation. We argue that appropriation research has been limited by certain commitments at the ontology level to a widely held dualist worldview. Against this background we develop a phenomenological theory of appropriation based on Martin Heidegger's analysis of equipment. On this view, technology goes from being an object with properties when inspected upon first encounter, to a specific means for the enterprise of the practice, captured in the notion of equipment. Equivalently, we can say that technology moves from the foreground as a thing to be evaluated to the practice background where it lends intelligibility to other entities and events. We show that this transformation occurs through a practice of actively performed place-making in which the technology is accommodated in the practice among existing equipment, practical logics and social identities. We illustrate our theory with a rich case study of social media appropriation, making methodological use of the novel feature that self-referential user conversations are captured within the technology, providing access to direct evidence of the appropriation phenomenon. The paper contributes a more nuanced sociomaterial account of the simultaneous transformation of technology and practices occurring in technology introduction.

The Housing Market and the U.S. Business Cycle

We develop a forecasting model of U.S. GDP growth, 1956-2009. Perhaps counter-intuitive to some, we conclude that changes in the real value of tangible assets, comprised mostly of real estate, do not have an important role in forecasting future growth, once one controls for the conventional macroeconomic variables.

Real-Time Inflation Forecasting in a Changing World

This paper revisits inflation forecasting using reduced form Phillips curve forecasts, i.e., inflation forecasts using activity and expectations variables. We propose a Phillips curve-type model that results from averaging across different regression specifications selected from a set of potential predictors. The set of predictors includes lagged values of inflation, a host of real activity data, term structure data, nominal data and surveys. In each of the individual specifications we allow for stochastic breaks in regression parameters, where the breaks are described as occasional shocks of random magnitude. As such, our framework simultaneously addresses structural change and model certainty that unavoidably affects Phillips curve forecasts. We use this framework to describe PCE deflator and GDP deflator inflation rates for the United States across the post-WWII period. Over the full 1960-2008 sample the framework indicates several structural breaks across different combinations of activity measures. These breaks often coincide with, amongst others, policy regime changes and oil price shocks. In contrast to many previous studies, we find less evidence for autonomous variance breaks and inflation gap persistence. Through a real-time out-of-sample forecasting exercise we show that our model specification generally provides superior one-quarter and one-year ahead forecasts for quarterly inflation relative to a whole range of forecasting models that are typically used in the literature.

This is a joint work with Jan J.J. Groen and Francesco Ravazzolo

The HESSIAN Method: Highly Efficient Simulation Smoothing, In A Nutshell

State space models, which govern the interaction of observed data and unobserved states, are very useful in capturing dynamic relationships, especially where there are changing, but latent, economic conditions: the states may be state variables in macroeconomic models, volatility in asset markets or time-varying model parameters. In this paper, I describe the HESSIAN method for non-linear non-Gaussian state space models. It involves an approximation of the conditional density of states given data that can be evaluated and simulated exactly. The approximation can be used as a proposal density, for Bayesian inference using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods; or as an importance density, useful for approximating the likelihood function through simulations. Because the approximation is so close, fast MCMC and importance sampling are feasible and highly numerically efficient for problems where alternatives are inefficient or intractable. I compare the performance of the HESSIAN method with methods currently used in the literature.

Efficient Estimation via Generalised Splitting

Adaptive importance sampling techniques such as the cross-entropy method have proved to be very useful in rare-event probability estimation. However, for high-dimensional problems the importance sampling estimator can become unreliable, due to the degeneration of the likelihood ratio. We propose a new rare-event estimation method based on the classical splitting idea of Kahn and Harris. The new method does not use importance sampling, is non-parametric, and remains stable in higher dimensions. We demonstrate its effectiveness by estimating the number of solutions in the satisfiability (SAT) problem.

WALS model averaging

Parameter estimation under model uncertainty is a difficult and fundamental issue in econometrics. One way to approach this problem --- and hence to avoid the harmful pretest effect --- is via model averaging. In model averaging all potential models play a role, but in varying degree of importance. We shall introduce a new method, calles weighted average least squares (WALS), and compare the performance with the dominant method (Bayesian model averaging - BMA). Our proposed method has two major advantages over BMA: its computational burden is trivial and it is based on a transparent definition of prior ignorance.

Resource Allocation in a Tactical Arms Race with Temporary Advantages

We consider an arms race between two opponents (e.g., government forces vs. insurgents) where each advantage that is achieved by one of the opponents is limited in time and expires when the other opponent develops a new weapon or counter-measure (in contrast with the "winner-takes-all" situation that characterizes much of the literature on investments in competitive business environments). We first consider a variety of models that apply to a one-sided situation, where the defender has to determine how much to invest in developing counter-measures to a weapon employed by the attacker. The decision problems are expressed as (convex) nonlinear optimization problems. We present an example that provides some operational insights regarding optimal resource allocation. We also consider a two-sided situation and develop a Nash equilibrium solution that sets investment values so that both parties have no incentive to change.

Estimation of Autoregressive Conditional Duration (ACD) Models using Estimating Functions and QMLE Methods

We consider the class of Autoregressive Conditional Duration (ACD) models to analyze the time gaps (durations) between consecutive transactions. Since the popular maximum likelihood (MLE) procedure is diffcult to implement in practice, we use an alternative estimation method based on estimating functions (EF). Using a large scale simulation study, we show that this EF method is easier to apply than the MLE in practice and produces similar results. We also discuss the class of log ACD models and use QMLE methods for parameter estimation following Allen et al (2008). If time permits, we consider some examples from real data sets to illustrate these estimation methods.

When Does Soft Talk Matter?: Evidence from Officer Quotations in Earnings Press Releases

We employ a sample of quotations from earnings press releases to ascertain factors influencing the information content of qualitative disclosures by management. We find that, after controlling for quantitative aspects of the earnings release disclosure, the degree of optimism conveys significant incremental information content when quantitative earnings guidance is not provided in the release. The information content of the degree of optimism is reduced when quantitative guidance is provided, which is consistent with quantitative guidance crowding out information transmission via qualitative disclosure. In addition, we provide some evidence that the information content of qualitative disclosure is enhanced if management perceives greater litigation risk and is reduced when investors have less favourable perceptions of management.

Optimal Sample Size Allocation for Multi-Stress Tests using Extreme Value Regression

In this talk, I will discuss the optimal sample size allocation in a multi-group life-testing experiment for complete sample and Type-II censored sample. The extreme value regression model is commonly used for statistical analysis of data arising from such a multi-stress experiment, for example, the books by Nelson (1982) and Meeker and Escobar (1998). By considering this situation, we will derive the maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs), expected Fisher information and the asymptotic variance-covariance matrix of the MLEs. Three optimality criteria will be introduced and the optimal allocation of units for two- and k-stress level situations will then be determined. Then I will demonstrate the efficiency of this optimal allocation rule by using the real experimental situation considered earlier by Nelson and Meeker (1978). Finally, I will present some Monte Carlo simulations to show that the optimality results hold for small sample sizes as well.

Forecast combination in discrete choice models: predicting FOMC monetary policy decisions

This paper extends the discrete choice model by Hu and Phillips (2004) that allows for nonstationary dependent and explanatory variables. It provides a new methodology to combine in- and out-of-sample forecasts based on a mixture of discrete models. This is achieved primarily by combining probabilities associated with each model. The methodology is not limited to point forecast and can be used to predict the whole density of the multiple choice model. Scoring functions, such as log-score and quadratic score, are used to evaluate the forecasting performance of the diverse models. We apply this methodology to forecast the outcomes of Federal Reserve board meetings decisions in changing the federal funds target rate. The original and extended Hu and Phillips (2004) data set and model are employed as a starting point to conduct the empirical studies. This paper also investigate the utilisation of real-time data, which contains the actual information available at the time when Federal Reserve board makes decisions rather than revised and updated data series. Furthermore, models are constructed with a mixture of data frequencies.

This paper is work-in-progress and only preliminary results and preliminary ideas will be presented. This is a joint work of Laurent Pauwels and Andrey Vasnev.

Instrumental Variable Estimation of Dynamic Linear Panel Data Models with Defactored Regressors under Cross-sectional Dependence

This paper develops an instrumental variable (IV) estimator for consistent estimation of dynamic panel data models with error cross-sectional dependence when both N and T, the cross-section and time series dimensions respectively, are large. Our approach asymptotically projects out the common factors from regressors using principal components analysis and then uses the defactored regressors as instruments to estimate the model in a standard way. Therefore, the proposed estimator is computationally very attractive. Furthermore, our procedure requires estimating solely the common factors included in the regressors, leaving those that in.uence only the dependent variable into the errors. Hence aside from computational simplicity the resulting approach allows parsimonious estimation of the model. The
.nite-sample performance of the IV estimator and the associated t-test is investigated using simulated data. The results show that the bias of the estimator is very small and the size of the t-test is correct even when (T;N) is as small as (10; 50). The performance of an overidentifying restrictions test is also explored.

This is a joint work with Dr Vasilis Sarafidis.

IV Estimation of Factor Residuals

This paper considers panel data regression models with residuals generated by a multi-factor error structure and regressors that are not necessarily strongly exogenous. In such cases, the standard dynamic panel estimators fail to provide consistent estimates of the parameters. We propose a new estimation procedure, based on instrumental variables, which retains the traditional attractive features of method of moments estimators. The novelty of our approach is that we introduce new parameters to represent the unobserved covariances between the instruments and the factor component of the residual; these parameters are typically estimable when N is large. Some important estimation and identification issues are studied in detail. Our estimator permits unit roots and is robust to cases where the variance of the factor loadings is large. In the fixed-effects case, we show that modified versions of our estimator are asymptotically equivalent to the popular Arellano-Bond, Ahn-Schmidt and system GMM estimators. Therefore, our approach provides a unifying treatment of existing panel estimators. The finite-sample performance of our estimator is investigated using simulated data. The results show that proposed method produces reliable estimates of the parameters over various parametrizations.

Translation-invariant and positive homogeneous risk measures and optimal portfolio management

The problem of risk portfolio optimization with translation-invariant and
positive-homogeneous risk measures, important representatives of which are value-at-risk (VaR) and tail conditional expectation (TCE), leads for the case of elliptical multivariate underlying distributions to the problem of minimizing a combination of a linear functional and the square root of a quadratic functional. In this paper we provide a simple and feasible condition under which the optimal solution exists, and the explicit closed- form solution of this minimization problem is provided prior to this condition. The results are illustrated using data of 10 stocks from NASDAQ/Computers. The closeness between the VaR and TCE optimal portfolios is investigated.

Can the Life Insurance Market Provide Evidence for a Bequest Motive?

Using U.K. microeconomic data, we analyze the empirical determinants of participation in the life insurance market. We find that term insurance demand is positively correlated with measures of bequest motives like being married, having children and/or subjective measures of strong bequest motives. We then show that a life-cycle model of life insurance demand, saving and portfolio choice can rationalize quantitatively the data in the presence of a bequest motive. These findings provide evidence supporting the presence of a bequest motive.

Extensions of the Lee-Carter model for mortality projections

The literature on mortality projections was dominated in the 1990's by the Lee-Carter model which assumes that the central death rate for a specific age follows a log-bilinear form, allowing for variations in the level of mortality over time. This model, with its inherent homoscedastic structure, was later extended by a Poisson model governed by a similar log-bilinear force of mortality. The paper will discuss potential extensions to the Lee-Carter model along the following lines:

Presentation of the L-C model as a state-space model.
Bayesian Implementation of the L-C model with a broad family of imbedded ARIMA models.
Bayesian model choice considerations.
Adaptation of the L-C model for simultaneous projection of several populations.

Joint Dynamic Pricing of Multiple Perishable Products Under Consumer Choice

In response to competitive pressures, firms are increasingly adopting revenue management opportunities afforded by advances in information and communication technologies. Motivated by applications in industry, we consider a dynamic pricing problem facing a firm that sells given initial inventories of multiple substitutable and perishable products over a finite selling horizon. In these applications, since individual product demands are linked through consumer choices, the seller must formulate a joint dynamic pricing strategy while explicitly incorporating consumer behaviour. For a general model of consumer choice, we model this multi-product dynamic pricing problem as a stochastic dynamic program and characterize its optimal prices. In addition, since consumer behaviour depends on the nature of product differentiation, we specialise the general choice model to capture vertical and horizontal differentiation. When products are vertically differentiated, our results show monotonic properties of the optimal prices and reveal that the optimal prices can be determined by considering aggregate inventories of products rather than their individual inventory levels. Accordingly, we develop a polynomial-time exact algorithm for determining the optimal prices. When products are horizontally differentiated, we find that analogous structural properties do not hold and the behaviour of optimal prices is substantially different. To solve this problem, we develop a variant of the backward induction algorithm that uses cubic spline interpolation to construct the value functions at each stage. We demonstrate that this interpolation-based algorithm has low memory requirements and is very effective in generating near-optimal solutions that result in an average error of less than 0.15%.

Probabilistic Forecasts of Volatility and its Risk Premia.

The object of this paper is to produce distributional forecasts of physical volatility and its associated risk premia using a non-Gaussian state space approach. Option and spot market information on the unobserved variance process is captured via non-parametric, `model-free' measures of option-implied and spot price-based variance, with the two measures used to define a bivariate observation equation in the state space model. The premium for diffusive variance risk is linear in the latent variance (in the usual fashion) whilst the premium for jump variance risk is specified as a conditionally deterministic dynamic process, driven by a past function of the measurements. Linking the risk premia to the risk aversion parameter in a particular form of representative agent model, we also produce probabilistic forecasts of the relative risk aversion of a representative investor. The inferential approach adopted is Bayesian, implemented via a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm that caters for the non-linearities in the model and for the multi-move sampling of the latent variances. The simulation output is used to estimate predictive distributions for all latent and observed variables of interest. The method is applied to empirical spot and option price data for the S&P500 index over the 2000 to 2007 period, with conclusions drawn about investors' required compensation for variance risk during the recent financial turmoil. Bayesian methods are used to demonstrate the accuracy of the probabilistic forecasts of the observable variance measures, compared with those yielded by more standard time series models.

Seasonality, quality and short strategies of prices. The case of the Alicante-London Market

This paper focuses on airline prices in the Alicante-London market. It introduces a model of prices and analyses price evolution over short periods to observe the incidence of seasonality, the types of firms involved, timetabling, types of airport, competitiveness, and variables such as the price of jet fuel and the rate of exchange used by airlines to establish prices.

The paper analyses these variables in three seasons to compare the strategies of the companies. The results show the relative incidence of all variables analysed, and stress the relevance of seasonality and competitiveness in the price strategies followed by the different types of company

Disproportional ownership structure and pay-performance relationship: evidence from China?s listed firms

This paper examines the impact that ownership structure has on the pay-performance relationship in China’s listed firms. We find that the cash flow rights of the ultimate controlling shareholder have a positive effect on this relationship while a divergence between the control rights and cash flow rights has a significantly negative effect. By dividing our sample into state owned enterprises (SOE), state assets management bureaus (SAMB), and privately controlled firms, we find that cash flow rights in SOE controlled firms have a significant impact on accounting based pay performance and cash flow rights in privately controlled firms also affect the market performance based relationship, however, CEO pay in SAMB controlled firms bear no relationship with either accounting or market based performance. We therefore argue that CEO pay is inefficient in firms where the state is the controlling shareholder because it is insensitive to market based performance but consistent with the efforts of controlling shareholders to maximize their profits.

Hyper-spherical and Elliptical Stochastic Cycles

A univariate first order stochastic cycle can be represented as an element of a bivariate first order vector autoregressive process, or VAR(1), where the transition matrix is associated with a Givens rotation. From the geometrical viewpoint, the kernel of the cyclical dynamics is described by a clockwise rotation along a circle in the plane. The reduced form of the cycle is either ARMA(2,1), with complex roots, or AR(1), when the rotation angle equals 2kΠ or (2k + 1) Π, k = 0, 1, ...
This paper generalizes this representation in two directions. According to the first, the cyclical dynamics originate from the motion of a point along an ellipse. The reduced form is also ARMA(2,1), but the model can account for certain types of asymmetries. The second deals with the multivariate case: the cyclical dynamics result from the projection along one of the coordinate axis of a point moving in Rn along an hyper-sphere. This is described by a VAR(1) process whose transition matrix is obtained by a sequence of n-dimensional Givens rotations. The reduced form of an element of the system is shown to be ARMA(n, n - 1). The properties of the resulting models are analyzed in the frequency domain, and we show that this generalization can account for a multimodal spectral density.
The illustrations show that the proposed generalizations can be fitted successfully to some well-known case studies of the econometric and time series literature. For instance, the elliptical model provides a parsimonious but effective representation of the mink-muskrat interaction. The hyper-spherical model provides an interesting re-interpretation of the cycle in US Gross Domestic Product quarterly growth and the cycle in the Fortaleza rainfall series.

MODELS AND DECISIONS: A ROBUST APPROACH TO FINDING BOTH

Separating the identification problem from the problem of finding solutions to a decision problem described by an uncertain model has the generic drawback that the error norm used for fitting the model is not related to the expected loss from ex-post model mismatch. Furthermore, sample data from the model can be often complemented by insights about admissible model behavior. In this talk, I will present a general approach that merges the identification and robust optimization problems, subject to structural constraints. Approximation errors and optimal decisions are determined simultaneously, together with an ex-ante distribution of the corresponding payoffs. I will also discuss the related problem of data acquisition and provide perspectives on how the approach can be generalized to games. The robust approximation method is illustrated for the problem of optimal debt settlement in the credit-card industry.

Joint work with Naveed Chehrazi.

A Stochastic Production Frontier Model

In this paper we explore the idea that the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) may have a contribution in reducing productive inefficiencies. ICT is treated as a special type of technology and knowledge capital, the impact of which on production should be evaluated through the channel of technical efficiency. To implement this, we adopt the stochastic production frontier methodology for panel data. We follow the one-step procedure, as suggested in the recent literature, in which the technology parameters are estimated simultaneously with the parameters of the inefficiency equations, avoiding serious econometric problems involved with the two-step procedure initially employed (Schmidt and Sickles, 1984; Battese and Coelli, 1995; Coelli et al., 1999; Wang and Schmidt, 2002).
The model is implemented using a panel of 42 developed and developing countries in the period 1993-2001. The analysis is also performed focusing only on the OECD countries for which a longer data set was available (1990-2005). Strong evidence is provided for a significant impact of ICT in reducing country inefficiencies. Further evidence indicates a significantly positive ICT impact on labor productivity, while it seems that a substitute relationship between ICT and non ICT capital exists.
Based on the model’s estimates, the most efficient countries in the OECD group are the USA, Belgium and the Netherlands, while India and Argentina achieved the highest efficiency levels among the developing countries. Overall, developed countries operate closer into the world frontier. Several south European countries are less efficient and have not yet converged to the efficiency levels of the most developed OECD countries.

Estimation of copula models with discrete margins

Estimation of copula models with discrete margins is known to be difficult beyond the bivariate case. We show how this can be achieved by augmenting the likelihood with uniform latent variables, and computing inference using the resulting augmented posterior. To evaluate this we propose two efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling schemes. One generates the latent variables as a block using a Metropolis-Hasting step with a proposal that is close to its target distribution. Our method applies to all parametric copulas where the conditional copula functions can be evaluated, not just elliptical copulas as in previous Bayesian work. Moreover, the copula parameters can be estimated joint with any marginal parameters. We establish the effectiveness of the estimation method by modeling consumer behavior in online retail using Archimedean and Gaussian copulas and by estimating 16 dimensional D-vine copulas for a longitudinal model of usage of a bicycle path in the city of Melbourne, Australia. Finally, we extend our results and method to the case where some margins are discrete and others continuous.

The paper is a joint work with Professor Michael S. Smith.

An O(T^3 log T) Algorithm for Economic Lot Sizing with Constant Capacities and Concave Inventory Costs

This paper studies the classical single-item economic lot-sizing problem with constant capacities, linear production costs and concave inventory costs, where backlogging is allowed. We propose an O( T^3 log T) optimal algorithm for the problem, which improves upon the O( T^4) running time of the famous algorithm developed by Florian and Klein (1971). Instead of using the standard dynamic programming approach by predetermining the minimal costs for all possible subplans, we develop a different dynamic programming algorithm to obtain a more efficient implementation.

Best Guess and Learning Models

It is to be argued that Bayesian methods are a combination of making best guesses and learning. For this idea to be formulated it is necessary to fully understand what a Bayesian believes she is learning about and what she is making guesses about. This talk will present a framework in which best guesses are revised via a learning process based on observations. Illustrations involving model selection will be presented.

Identification pathologies and their effects on GMM

We apply a range of GMM based inference procedures to the first-order dynamic panel data model. We use moment conditions from either the first differenced or levels model or both. In addition to standard Wald and LM procedures we consider some recently developed weak instrument robust GMM statistics. By Monte Carlo simulation we address size and power in finite samples of hypothesis tests on the autoregressive coefficient. Both our theoretical and simulation results indicate that conventional tests are subject to considerable size distortions in a significant part of the parameter space. In addition, there is a decline in power close to the unit root. Weak instrument robust statistics, however, have good size properties while maintaining sufficient power in the system model in some cases.

Distributed Optimisation by Learning in Games with Pure Nash Equilibria

An emerging framework for optimisation in large distributed problems is that of multi-agent systems, in which control of a system is partitioned among several autonomous decision makers. Within this context, potential games are used as a design template for constructing agents' utility functions, resulting in games with pure strategy Nash equilibria that can be solved for using iterative learning algorithms. This presentation investigates the convergence properties of one such iterative learning procedure, called fictitious play, in repeated normal form games. Specifically, using methods from the theory of differential inclusions and stochastic approximations, we analyse the rest points of fictitious play. We also discuss how to extend fictitious play's use to solve games with unknown rewards or perturbations to action observations, and also to multi-agent sequential decision-making problems (such as Decentralised-POMDPs).

Online Mechanism Design for Electric Vehicle Charging

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are expected to place a considerable strain on local electricity distribution networks, requiring charging to be coordinated in order to accommodate capacity constraints. In this talk I will present a novel online auction protocol for this problem, wherein vehicle owners use computer agents to bid for power and also state time windows in which a vehicle is available for charging. This is a multi-dimensional mechanism design domain, with owners having non-increasing marginal valuations for each subsequent unit of electricity. In our design, we couple a greedy allocation algorithm with the occasional “burning” of allocated power, leaving it unallocated, in order to adjust an allocation and achieve monotonicity and thus truthfulness. We consider two variations: burning at each time step or on-departure. Both mechanisms are evaluated in depth, using data from a real-world trial of electric vehicles in the UK to simulate system dynamics and valuations. The mechanisms provide higher allocative efficiency than a fixed price system, are almost competitive with a standard scheduling heuristic which assumes non-strategic agents, and can sustain a substantially larger number of vehicles at the same per-owner fuel cost saving than a simple random scheme.

Why April 2007 Triggered October 2008

Current margin calculation practice uses two approaches to margining investment portfolios, strategy-based and risk-based. Our observations of the margin rules changes against the margin debt behaviour in the U.S. in the period from 2003 through 2008 support the thesis that the use of the risk-based approach to margining customer accounts with positions in stocks and stock options since April 2007 influenced and triggered the U.S. stock market crash in October 2008. This paper also presents mathematical models showing that the strategy-based approach is, at this point, the most appropriate one for margining security portfolios in customer margin accounts, while the risk-based approach can work efficiently for margining only index portfolios in customer margin accounts and inventory portfolios of brokers. We also show that the application of the risk-based approach to security portfolios in customer margin accounts is very risky and can result in the pyramid of debt in the bullish market and the pyramid of loss in the bearish market. We also provide recommendations on ways to set appropriate margin requirements.

Measuring welfare: Latent variable models for happiness and capabilities in the presence of unobservable heterogeneity

The paper contributes to the operationalisation of the capabilities approach to welfare economics by developing and analysing data on the freedoms of adults in Argentina. Specifically, it reports on the development and delivery of a survey instrument for measuring capabilities, calculates for each respondent a Nehring–Puppe type index of capabilities and examines the distribution of index scores. The main analytic part of the paper then goes on to develop a generalized linear latent and mixed model (GLLAMM) for assessing the impact of capabilities on life satisfaction, in which allowance is made for (i) unobserved heterogeneity and (ii) possible endogeneity, by introducing latent individual effects and by instrumenting capability variables using income and other socio-economic variables. Our empirical results show that empathy, self-worth, goalautonomy, discrimination, safety and stress are statistically significant determinants of life satisfaction, in a decreasing order of importance. The paper concludes by suggesting that, if replicated, the findings have profound implications for the conceptualisation and evaluation of economic progress.
This is a joint work with Paul Anand and Ngoc Bich Tran.

Incentive Aligned Data Collection

Incentive alignment aims to motivate participants to reveal truthfully their preferences, and it has been used in a variety of contexts such as conjoint analysis (Ding, Grewal and Liechty 2005; Ding 2007). Incentive alignment also makes it more feasible for researchers/managers to design new data collection methods, and one of such new methods is discussed in this presentation. Extant preference measurement research, including conjoint analysis, is done in the isolation of one¹s own mind. That is, it remains completely silent on the explicit influence of others in the formation of consumer preferences. This paper proposes a holistic framework of preference, PIE, as well as a measurement method to remedy this problem. The new paradigm posits that consumers evaluate product attributes using (potentially) three perspectives which are determined by some combinations of the product¹s physical profile (P), the focal customer¹s idiosyncratic attributes (I), and an external target group¹s value system (E), the last factor allowing for influences from others. To provide an empirically feasible method to collect information consistent with this framework, we propose and test an incentive-aligned approach, a group-sourced mechanism, which mimics a real life consultation of a customer with her ³friends² in purchase decision making. The results provide support for the PIE framework, including superior predictive power.

Managing an Available-to-Promise Assembly System with Dynamic Short-Term Pseudo Order Forecast

We study an order promising problem in a multi-class, Available-to-Promise (ATP) assembly system in the presence of pseudo orders. A pseudo order refers to a tentative customer order whose attributes, such as the likelihood of an actual order, order quantity and con¯rmation timing, can change dynamically over time. Each product is assembled from two major components, with one component requiring one unit of production capacity and one unit of component inventory. An accepted order must be ¯lled before a positive delivery lead time. The underlying order acceptance decisions involve tradeo®s between committing resources (production capacity and component inventory) to low-reward ¯rm orders and reserving resources for high-reward orders. We develop a Markov chain model that captures the key characteristics of pseudo orders, including demand lumpiness, non-stationarity and volatility. We then formulate a stochastic dynamic program for the ATP assembly (ATP-A) system that embeds the Markov chain model as a short-term forecast for pseudo orders. We show that the optimal order acceptance policy is characterized by class prioritization, resource imbalance-based rationing and capacity-inventory-demand matching. In particular, the rationing level for each class is determined by a critical value that depends on the resource imbalance level, de¯ned as the net di®erence between the production capacity and component inventory levels. Extensive numerical tests underscore the importance of the key properties of the optimal policy and provide operational and managerial insights on the value of the short-term demand forecast and the robustness of the optimal policy.

Assortment choices of competing retailers with uninformed consumers

For many products, some (uninformed) consumers may need to experience the touch and feel in order to determine their valuation. In addition, consumers differ in their costs of searching for the ideal product. Under such circumstances, we show that heterogeneous product assortment breadth among two competing retailers can emerge as an equilibrium. Specifically, we consider a market with two products and two retailers, and show the conditions under which there exists an equilibrium in which one retailer carries a full line and the other sells one product only, even though the demand structure for the two products is symmetric and the cost structures of the two retailers are the same. Under this equilibrium, the full line retailer expands the market demand by attracting the uninformed consumers with large search costs and the single product retailer pass on the savings on carrying costs to the informed consumers by setting a lower price. Therefore, the two retailers soften the competition between them and achieve higher profits.

This is a joint work with Steve Gilbert.

Managing Opportunistic Supplier Product Adulteration: Deferred Payments, Inspection, and Combined Mechanisms

Recent cases of product adulteration by foreign suppliers have compelled many manufacturers to re-think approaches to deterring suppliers from cutting corners, especially when manufacturers cannot fully monitor and control the suppliers' actions. Recognizing that process certification programs, such as ISO9000, do not guarantee unadulterated products and that product liability and product warranty with foreign suppliers are rarely enforceable, manufacturers turn to mechanisms that make payments to the suppliers contingent on no defects discovery. In this paper we study: (a) the deferred payment mechanism --- the buyer pays the supplier after the deferred payment period only if no adulteration has been discovered by the customers; (b) the inspection mechanism --- the buyer pays the supplier is immediately, contingent on product passing the inspection; and (c) the combined mechanism --- a combination of the deferred payment and inspection mechanisms. We find the optimal contracts for each mechanism, and describe the Nash equilibria of inspection sub-games for the inspection and the combined mechanisms. The inspection mechanism cannot completely deter the suppliers from product adulteration, while the deferred payment mechanism can. Surprisingly, the combined mechanism is redundant: either the inspection or the deferred payment mechanisms perform just as well. Finally, the four factors that determine the dominance of deferred payment mechanism over the inspection mechanism are: (a) the inspection cost relative to inspection accuracy, (b) the buyer's liability for adulterated products, (c) the difference in financing rates for the buyer and the supplier relative to the defects discovery rate by customers, and (d) the difference in production costs for adulterated and unadulterated product.

* Joint work with Volodymyr Babich, Georgetown University

Finite Buffer Fluid Networks with Overflows

Consider an abstraction of a material processing network with N nodes. Each node is equipped with a finite buffer of capacity K_i and with a processor capable of working at rate mu_i. Material is modeled as a continuous (ideal fluid) flow and arrives to the nodes exogenously according to rates alpha_i. When material arrives to node i and finds less than K_i in the buffer then it either enters the buffer or is immediately processed if the buffer is empty. Material which is processed at node i can either leave the system or move to other nodes. This follows the proportions p_{i,j} (the proportion of material leaving i which goes to j) with have sum_j p_{i,j} <= 1; in case the inequality is strict, the remaining material leaves the system. When material arrives to find a full buffer it is diverted (overflows) according to propositions q_{i,j} similarly to the p_{i,j}.

The case of random discrete memoryless (Poisson/Exponential) flows and K_i = infinity is the well-known Jackson network and can be represented as a Markov chain having a product form solution in the stable case. As opposed to that, finite K_i typically implies intractability of the Markov Chain. In this case it is first fruitful to analyze the behaviour of the system with deterministic continuous flows. In this respect we formulate traffic equations and show that they can be represented as a linear complementarity problem. We further find a polynomial time algorithm for the solution of the equations (note that the general LCP is in general an NP-complete problem). Finally, the solution of the traffic equations can be used to approximate the sojourn time distribution of customers through the network which can be represented as a discrete phase-type distribution.
Joint work with Erjen Lefeber from Eindhoven University of Technology.

The Variance Profile

The variance profile is defined as the power mean of the spectral density function of a stationary stochastic process. It is a continuous and non-decreasing function of the power parameter, p, which returns the minimum of the spectrum (p ??? ??????), the interpolation error variance (harmonic mean, p = ???1), the prediction error variance (geometric mean, p = 0), the unconditional variance (arithmetic mean, p = 1) and the maximum of the spectrum (p ??????). The variance profile provides a useful characterisation of a stochastic process; we focus in particular on the class of fractionally integrated processes. Moreover, it enables a direct and immediate derivation of the Szeg??-Kolmogorov formula and the interpolation error variance formula. The paper proposes a non-parametric estimator of the variance profile based on the power mean of the smoothed sample spectrum, and proves its consistency and its asymptotic normality. From the empirical standpoint, we propose and illustrate the use of the variance profile for estimating the long memory parameter

Macro Fundamentals as a Source of Stock Market

In order to shed new light on the influence of volume and economic fundamentals on the volatility of the Chinese stock market we follow the methodology introduced by Engle, Ghysels and Sohn (2009) (EGS) and Engle and Rangel (2008). We show that the Chinese A-share market presented speculative characteristics before WTO entry in late 2001. However, after that date macroeconomic fundamentals play an increasing role, especially for CPI inflation, and the influence of volume on the A-share index vanishes. The B-share market shows speculative characteristics since it was opened to domestic investors in 2001.

This is a joint work with Eric Girardin, AMSE-GREQAM-University Aix-Marseille

The effect of misspecification in models for extracting trends and cycles

This article deals with the specification of trends and cycles in an unobserved components model. We establish a general framework to assess the robustness in misspecified linear time series models based on the MSEs criterion. We show how different criterion can be used for different purposes: forecasting, filtering and smoothing. We generalized the algorithms in Harvey and Delle Monache (2009, HDM hereafter) allowing for all possible misspecifications in linear SSF models. We concentrate on model to extract trends and cycles. We assess the robustness of various sources of possible misspecification. We investigate the discrepancy between the estimated parameters (sample estimation) and the `pseudo-true values'; this yields interesting insights regarding the unknown data generating process (DGP). For example, if the true DGP is a correlated components model, as advocated in the recent literature, then we have that: (i) the calibrate HP filter leads to a big inefficiency for filtering as well as for smoothing; (ii) an uncorrelated components model can still yield a filter with high efficiency. So the extracted cycles on real time are close to each other; (iii) the sample estimates do not match the `pseudo-true values'. Therefore, the differences between the cycles extracted by the alternative specifications is not due to the correlation misspecification and the correlated components model does not match the true DGP.

Pair Copula Constructions for Multivariate Discrete Data

Rich multivariate discrete datasets are increasingly found in diverse fields including econometrics, finance, biometrics and psychometrics. Many common models used for multivariate discrete data are equivalent to popular copula models, for example the multivariate probit can be expressed in terms of a Gaussian copula. Our contribution is to introduce a new class of models for multivariate discrete data based on Pair Copula Constructions (PCCs) which has two major advantages. First, PCCs capture more flexible dependence structures compared to more restrictive existing approaches, including the Gaussian copula. Second, the computational burden of evaluating the likelihood for an m-dimensional discrete PCC only grows quadratically with m. This compares favourably to existing models for which computing the likelihood either requires the evaluation of evaluation of 2^m terms or slow numerical integration methods. We demonstrate the high quality of maximum likelihood estimates both under a simulated setting and for two real data applications, including a longitudinal discrete dataset. We show that the use of asymmetric pair copulas in a PCC can improve both the in-sample fit of our models and the out-of-sample prediction of joint outcomes that lie in the tails of the multivariate data.

Cross-sectional Dependence in Panel Data Analysis

This paper provides an overview of the existing literature on panel data models with error cross-sectional dependence. We distinguish between spatial dependence and factor structure dependence and we analyse the implications of weak and strong cross-sectional dependence on the properties of the estimators. We consider estimation under strong and weak exogeneity of the regressors for both T fixed and T large cases. Available tests for error cross-sectional dependence and methods for determining the number of factors are discussed in detail. The finite-sample properties of some estimators and statistics are investigated using Monte Carlo experiments.

The paper can be downloaded from the following web link:
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20815/1/MPRA_paper_20815.pdf

Bayesian VaR and ES forecasting via the two-sided Weibull distribution

A study on the impacts of asymmetry in the conditional distribution and volatility on forecasting Value-at-Risk and expected shortfall is carried via parametric method. A new distribution derived from Weibull distribution is proposed to generate adequate Value-at-Risk and expected shortfall. A two-regime double-threshold GARCH is used to model the asymmetric behavior in volatility process of a heteroskedastic financial return series. As the financial data are usually observed in high frequency, a smoother change between regimes is considered more reasonable than a sharp transition. Thus a generalized two-regime smooth-transition GARCH model is adopted for comparison. To allow flexibility in the model, the threshold parameter, at which the change between regimes occurs, is estimated. It???s well known that the financial data are usually observed other than normally distributed. Therefore, a Student t and an asymmetric Laplace distribution are also used as the potential distribution for the financial data. The latter is recently popular as it captures the dynamics in skewness with a time-varying shape parameter. Hansen???s generalized skewed t distribution is also frequently used to take into account the dynamics in skewness. For comparison, this distribution is also used in our models. The model parameters are estimated by Baysian Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling
scheme, employing the Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithm with a mixture of Gaussian proposal distributions. We illustrate the model by applying it to return series from four international stock market indices, as well as two exchange rates, and generating one-step ahead forecasts of VaR and ES. The models are compared via standard and non-standard tests.

Keywords: Two-sided Weibull, Value-at-Risk, Expected shortfall, Back-testing, precrisis and post crisis, asymmetric higher moments, asymmetric volatility.

Australian Labour Market Dynamics Across the Ages

Transition probabilities between four labour market states (full-time employment, part-time employment, unemployment and inactive) for three age groups (the young, the middle and the old) are calculated using monthly gross flow data for Australia from October 1997 to September 2010. We determine the responses of the different groups to phases of the business cycle by estimating a small set of unobserved common dynamic factors that drive the transitions of the age groups. We also look at the impulse responses of gross flows to a positive business cycle shock.

Local Maximum Likelihood Techniques with Categorical Data

In this paper we provide asymptotic theory of local maximum likelihood techniques for estimating a regression model where some regressors are discrete. Our methodology and theory are particularly useful for models that give us a likelihood of the unknown functions that we can use to identify and estimate the underlying model. This is the case when the conditional density of the variable of interest, given the explanatory variables, is known up to a set of unknown functions. Examples of such models include probit and logit models, truncated regression models, stochastic frontier models, etc. In developing the theory we use the Racine and Li (2004) kernels for discrete regressors. The asymptotic properties of the resulting estimator are derived and the method is illustrated in various simulated scenarios. The results indicate a great flexibility of the approach and good performances in various complex scenarios, even with moderate sample sizes.

Are we still using the best predicted model? Prediction Capability Procedure flavored by Principal Function Data Analysis

We present a method for analyzing the model prediction capabilities in the changing reality. The proposed prediction capability procedure combines the ideas of nonparametric density estimation and principal function data analysis in order to clarify the question whether the new observed data comes from the same expected data generation process or not. If there is not enough evidence that the data generation process has been changed after the model has been selected there is no reason to believe that the model has lost its predictive capabilities in the new reality.

Economic Integration and Structural Change

We show the dynamics of sectoral production - structural change - come with systematic changes in the geographic dispersion of activity. In developing countries, sectoral diversification is accompanied by geographic agglomeration, and regions become heterogeneous. In advanced economies, sectoral specialization is accompanied by geographic dispersion, and regions become homogeneous. We argue that developing countries diversify because their constituent regions integrate with each other, and can specialize regionally as a result. Advanced economies specialize because they integrate internationally and their constituent regions all produce according to the global pattern of comparative advantage. We .nd systematic support for these claims in international data on sectoral production at the regional level, including in the US, China and India, but no such evidence once the samples focus on non-traded sectors or relatively closed regions. Economic areas formed by specialized, regionally homogeneous countries tend to diversify and agglomerate, as if their constituent countries were integrating.

Balancing appointments and walk-ins in healthcare

Outpatient clinics and diagnostic testing facilities traditionally provide patients with individual appointments to balance workload. Disadvantages however, include patients needing to revisit the hospital, an involved planning process and potentially long access times. In this talk I discuss a study in which we explore the viability of walk-in based policies. We introduce a stochastic method that finds the mixed strategy that balances the benefits and drawbacks of pure appointment and walk-in policies.

Accuracy of Copula-Based Multivariate Density Forecasts in Selected Regions of Support

This paper develops a testing framework for comparing the predictive accuracy of copula-based multivariate density forecasts, focusing on a specific part of the joint distribution. The test is framed in the context of the Kullback-Leibler Information Criterion, and using (out-of-sample) conditional likelihood and censored likelihood in order to restrict the evaluation to the region of interest. Monte Carlo simulations show that the resulting test statistics have satisfactory size and power properties in small samples. In an empirical application to daily exchange rate returns we find evidence that the dependence structure varies with the sign and magnitude of returns, such that different parametric copula models achieve superior forecasting performance in different regions of the copula support. Our analysis highlights the importance of allowing for lower and upper tail dependence for accurate forecasting of common extreme appreciation and depreciation of different currencies.

Practical Use of Sensitivity in Econometrics with an Illustration for Forecast Combinations

Jan R. Magnus and Andrey L. Vasnev

We consider practical use of the sensitivity measure studied by Magnus and Vasnev (2007). For this purpose we distinguish between absolute and relative sensitivity
and highlight the context dependent nature of the sensitivity analysis. Relative sensitivity is then applied in the context of forecast combination and sensitivity based
weights are introduced. All concepts are illustrated with the help of the European
yield curve example. In this context it is natural to look at sensitivity to autocorrelation
and normality assumptions. Different forecasting models are combined with equal, fit based and sensitivity based weights and compared against the multivariate and random walk benchmarks. We show that the fit based weights and the sensitivity based weights are complimentary.

Graphical modelling representation of multivariate time series

Graphical modelling is very effective for identification and estimation of sparse structural multivariate time series model. After an introduction to graphical modelling and some of its useful properties there will be a discussion of the issues pertaining the identification of sparse structural vector autoregressions and how graphical modelling can assist. Extensions will be presented to I(1) time series and structural vector autoregression moving average models.

Prediction with Macroeconomic Models

There are several relevant layers of uncertainty that characterise econometric models routinely used for policy making. First and foremost, there is intrinsic uncertainty about the future conditional on a model and parameters. Then there is extrinsic uncertainty about model parameters conditional on a model. Then there is uncertainty about models conditional on a set of models. In addition there is unconditional uncertainty, when all models considered are false.

In this paper we incorporate all four levels of uncertainty and we assess the improvements in the quality of prediction that we get by doing so. We provide a practical example based on the joint combination of a DSGE model, a Bayesian VAR and a dynamic factor model for a set of US macroeconomic time series.

In our paper we find that:

Taking into consideration parameter uncertainty is most relevant in periods of unusual data
A pool with equal weights provides predictions of superior quality with respect to prediction obtained with individual models
We introduce a measure of value of each of the models being combined that can be decomposed across sub-periods and this measure provides important indication regarding the usefulness of the individual models.

Ranking games and gambling: When to quit when you're ahead

It is common for rewards to be given on the basis of a rank ordering, so that relative performance amongst a cohort is the criterion. In this paper we formulate an equilibrium model in which an agent makes successive decisions on whether or not to gamble and is rewarded on the basis of a rank ordering of the final position amongst competing players. One application of this model is to the behavior of mutual fund managers who are paid depending on funds under management, which in turn are greatly influenced by annual or quarterly rank orderings. We model a situation in which fund managers can elect either to pick stocks or to use a market tracking strategy. In equilibrium the distribution of the final position will have a negative skew. We explore how this distribution depends on the number of players, the probability of success when gambling, the structure of the rewards, and on information regarding the performance of other players.

A Hidden Markov Process Approach to Information-Based Trading

This paper proposes a novel approach to information-based trading, incorporating the dynamics and serial correlation of trading activities. Unlike the existing approaches of sequential trading modeling, it updates the prior belief of information states using newly observed order flows and identifies trading motives in a data-driven manner. It allows the set of information states to vary across time and companies. Extensive simulation demonstrates that the proposed approach can generate dynamic daily measures of information-based trading in high accuracy. Based on a sample of 30 NYSE stocks, we provide evidence of the significant explanatory power of information-based trading on return volatility.

Venture Capital Distrinutions, Stock Price Reactions, and Information Incorporation

Detecting Fraudulent Performance Reporting by Hedge Fund Managers

Optimal Priority Structure, Capital Structure, and Investment *

Issues with Smoothed Financial Data, A TAR Approach to Hedge Fund and to Real Estate Return Unsmoothing

Equilibrium Prices in the Presence of Delegated Portfolio Management

Are ETFs Replacing Index Mutual Funds?

Industries and Stock Return Reversals

Do Private Equity Managers Strategically Inflate Performance? Evidence from Sequential Fund Raisings

Do Credit Rating Agencies Underestimate Liquidity Risk?

Worldwide short selling: Regulations and activity

Procyclical Stocks Earn Higher Returns

Decomposing Short-Term Return Reversal

Trust and Delegation

Due to imperfect transparency and costly auditing, trust is an essential component offinancial intermediation. In this paper we study a sample of 444 due diligence (DD)reports from a major hedge fund DD firm, many of which indicate a lack of transparencyabout past legal and regulatory problems, failure to use a major auditing firm and the useof internal pricing. Previous studies have examined the empirical correlates of the limitedinformation revealed in the mandated hedge fund disclosures of 2006. This study usesevidence of inadequate or failed internal processes to derive a simple and direct measureof operational risk that is consistent with the Basel definition. Exposure to this riskincreases the likelihood of subsequent poor performance. Since these DD reports areperformed after positive performance it is important to control for potential bias due tothis and other conditioning factors. Although our sample is not sufficiently large todetermine whether this is a priced source of risk, it does not appear that exposure tooperational risk influences in any way the tendency of hedge fund investors to invest onthe basis of past high returns. Our study emphasizes the importance of informationverification in the context of financial intermediation.

Mutual Fund Flow Timing and External Growth

The literature documents a convex relationship between performance and subsequent fund flows and argues that this convexity helps managers to attract more flows by raising fund level risk. Due to an adding-up constraint which aggregates flow-performance relationship at the industry level, however, empirically estimated convexity must be correlated with aggregate flows. This correlation provides incentives for managers to pursue a time-varying "flow timing" strategy, that is, to increase risk only when they forecast a big, positive aggregate flow, in order to benefit from the flow-performance convexity in periods when its value is the highest. Empirically, superior flow timing ability helps funds to attract additional external flows. In contrast, increasing fund risk without timing ability does not appeal to new flows.

What do short sellers know?

Using a five-year panel of proprietary NYSE short sale order data, the authors investigate the sources of short sellers' informational advantage.

Multiscale Explanations of the Size and Value Premia

Funding Constraints, Market Liquidity, and Financial Crises: Lessons from an Historical Experiment

We use the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a randomized historical experimentto examine the effect of funding liquidity on financial markets from 1815-1925.

Real Estate Prices during the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression

Using unique data on real estate transactions, we construct a hedonic price index for Manhattan
from 1920 to 1939.

What Death Can Tell: Are Executives Paid for Their Contributions to Firm Value?

An efficient managerial labor market should compensate executives according to theircontribution to shareholder value. We provide novel empirical evidence about the relationshipbetween executive pay and managerial contribution to value by exploiting the exogenousvariation resulting from stock price reactions to sudden deaths.

Alpha and Performance Measurement: The Effect of Investor Heterogeneity

When the Tail Wags the Dog: Industry Leaders, Limited Attention and Spurious Cross-Industry Information Diffusion

Manager Remuneration - Linking Corporate Performance to Share Price

Political Risk and Discount Rates: Evidence from the Croatian Pension System

This time is the same: Using the events of 1998 to explain bank returns during the financial crisis

Is Information Risk Priced? Evidence from the Price Discovery of Large Trades & Information Risk and Momentum Anomalies

Market Bubbles and Crashes as an Expression of Tension between Social and Individual Rationality: Experiments

Topic TBA

The cross-section of hurdle rates for capital budgeting: An empirical analysis of survey data

Whereas Poterba and Summers (1995) find that firms use hurdle rates that are unrelated to their CAPM betas, Graham and Harvey (2001) find that 74% of their survey firms use the CAPM for capital budgeting. We provide an explanation for these two apparently contradictory conclusions. We find that firms behave as though they add a hurdle premium to their CAPM based cost of capital. Following McDonald and Siegel (1986), we argue that the hurdle premium depends on the value of the option to defer investments. While CAPM explains only 10% of the cross-sectional variation in hurdle rates across firms, variables that proxy for the benefits from the option to wait for potentially better investment opportunities explain 35%. Estimates of our hurdle premium model parameters imply an equity premium of 3.8% per year, a figure that is essentially the same as that reported in the survey by Graham and Harvey (2005). Consistent with our model, growth firms use a higher hurdle rate when compared to value firms, even though they have a lower cost of capital.

Asset prices with heterogeneity in preferences and beliefs

Modeling vast panels of volatilities with long-memory dynamic factor models

The Economic Impact of Social Ties: Evidence from German Reunification

The impact of the mandatory adoption of IFRS on Stock liquidity

Preemptive Bidding, Target Resistance and Takeover Premia; An Empirical Investigation

Reconsidering Price Limit Effectiveness

Topic TBA

Divisional Managers and Internal Capital markets

Using hand-collected data on divisional managers at the S&P 500 firms, we provide one of the first studies of their role in the internal capital budgeting. Divisional managers with connections to the CEO receive more capital. Managers' informal connections, such as social ties to the CEO, outweigh measures of managers' informal influence, such as board membership and seniority, and affect both the appointment of managers and subsequent capital allocations in their visions. The impact of connections on investment efficiency depends on the tradeoff between agency and information asymmetry. When governance is weak, connections reduce investment efficiency and erode firm value by fostering favoritism. When information asymmetry is high, managerial ties increase investment efficiency and firm value by facilitating information transfer. Overall, we provide novel evidence on the role of formal and informal managerial influence inside conglomerates.

Strategic Investments, technological Uncertainty and Expected Return Externalities

Equity Yields

We study a new data set of prices of traded dividends with maturities up to 10 years across three world regions: the US, Europe and Japan. We use these asset prices to derive equity yields, analogous to bond yields, and decompose these yields into expected dividend growth rates and a risk premium component. We find that both dividend growth rates and the risk premium component exhibit substantial variation over time. Further, equity yields may help predict other measures of economic growth such as consumption growth. We relate the dynamics of growth expectations to recent events such as the financial crisis and the earthquake in Japan.

Volatility, The Macroeconomy and Asset Prices

In this paper we show that volatility news is essential for a coherent economic interpretation and measurement of the underlying risks in the economy, and that ignoring validity can lead to substantial biases in the stochastic discount factor (SDF). We quantify and show that ignoring volatility can have first-order implications for the implied consumption innovations, the SDF, and asset returns. Furthermore, using a VAR based approach we document that accounting for volatility leads to a positive correlation between the return to human capital and the market, while this correlation is negative when volatility is ignored. Our volatility based asset pricing model captures well the levels and differences in the risk premia across value and size portfolios. We further show that accounting for volatility risks is important for correct economic interpretation of the assets? exposure to the underlying sources of risks.

Do non-executive employees have information? Evidence from employee stock purchase plans.

The Baltic Dry Index as a Predictor of Global Stock Returns, Commodity Returns and Global Economic Activity.

The goal of this paper is to show that the growth rate of the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) has predictive ability for a range of stock markets, which is demonstrated through in-sample tests and out-of-sample statistics.

The documented stock return predictability is also of economic significance, as seen by examining the certainty equivalent returns and Sharpe ratios of portfolio strategies that exploit the BDI growth rate. In addition, the BDI growth rate predicts the returns of commodity indexes, and we find some evidence for joint predictability of stock and commodity returns in a system of predictive regressions. Finally, the BDI growth rate predicts the growth in global economic activity, establishing further BDI's role in revealing a link between the real and financial sectors.

Bond Market Access and Corporate Investment

Prior research has shown that differential access to debt markets significantly affects capital structure. In this paper, we examine the effect of access to debt markets on investment decisions. Using debt ratings to indicate bond market access, we find that firms with access are more likely to undertake acquisitions than those without and that firms with bond market access pay higher premiums for their targets. Furthermore, these firms receive less favourable market reaction to their acquisition announcements relative to those of non-related acquirers. The results are robust to addressing the endogeneity of seeking bond market access. Thus, we document significant effects of access to bond markets on a firm's ability to undertake investment and the quality of those investments. The overall bidder announcement reactions are non-negative on average, supporting the conclusion that lack of debt market access creates underinvestment, rather than simply constraining overinvestment.

Policy Uncertainty and Cross-Border Flows of Capital

We find that policy uncertainty is an important determinant of fluctuations in cross border flows of capital.

Specifically, we find that fluctuations in policy uncertainty around national elections generate cycles in cross-border flows around the world. FDI flows from US companies to foreign affiliates drop significantly when there is a national election in either the US or the destination country. The election patterns in foreign direct investment are more pronounced in countries with lower measures of government stability and a lower degree of checks and balances in the political system. We also find that elections with more uncertain outcomes lead to larger swings in the DFI flows. The electoral cycles in cross-border capital flows are limited to investments that are relatively irreversible.That is, we find that capital flows are sensitive to policy uncertainty in both high and low-income counties, suggesting that political uncertainty is not only an emerging market phenomenon. These results suggest that policy uncertainty acts as a tax on cross-border investment.

Topic TBA

A Pyrrhic Victory? Bank Bailouts and Sovereign Credit Risk

We show that financial sector bailouts and sovereign credit risk are intimately linked. A bailout benefits the economy by ameliorating the under-investment problem of the financial sector. However, increasing taxation of the non-financial sector to fund the bailout may be inefficient since it weakens its incentive to invest, decreasing growth. Instead, the sovereign may choose to fund the bailout by diluting existing government bondholders, resulting in a deterioration of the sovereign's creditworthiness. This deterioration feeds back to the financial sector, reducing the value of its guarantees and existing bond holdings as well as increasing its sensitivity to future sovereign shocks. We provide empirical evidence for this two-way feedback between financial and sovereign credit risk using data on the credit default swaps (CDS) of the Eurozone countries and their banks for 2007-11. We show that the announcement of financial sector bailouts was associated with an immediate, unprecedented widening of sovereign CDS spreads and narrowing of bank CDS spreads; however, post-bailouts there emerged a significant co-movement between bank CDS and sovereign CDS, even after controlling for banks' equity performance, the latter being consistent with an effect of the quality of sovereign guarantees on bank credit risk.

Topic TBA

The Mutual Fund Industry Worldwide: Explicit and Closet Indexing, Fees, and Performance.

Mutual fund investors face a basic choice between actively-managed funds and index funds with lower expenses. However, the prevalence of indexing is rare in most countries. Rather, actively managed funds in many countries engage in "closet indexing," choosing portfolios that closely match their declared benchmark. The degree of explicit indexing in a country is negatively related to fees, while "closet indexing" is positively associated with fees and negatively with performance. The most actively managed funds charge higher fees but outperform their benchmarks after expenses. The degree of indexing and the ability of active managers to outperform are both associated with competition and fees.

Topic TBA

R&D and the Incentives from Merger and Acquisition Activity

We provide a model and empirical tests showing how an active acquisition market affects firm incentives to innovate and conduct R&D. Our model shows that large firms optimally may decide to purchase smaller innovative firms and conduct less R&D than small firms. The model shows that firm R&D increases with competition, demand and the probability that firms are taken over. Empirically, we document that the R&D responsiveness of firms increases with demand shocks and industry merger and acquisition activity. Both of these effects are stronger for smaller firms than for larger firms. The results also show that firm R&D increases with product-market competition and with the probability a firm is an acquisition target.

Moral Hazard, Investment, and Firm Dynamics

We present a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms. Owners of the firms delegate investment decisions to managers, whose consumption and investment decisions are private information. We solve the optimal contracts and characterize the implied general equilibrium. Our calibrated model has implications on the cross-sectional distribution and time-series dynamics of firms' investment, manager compensation and dividend payout policies. Risk sharing requires that managers' equity shares decrease with firm sizes. This in turn implies that it is harder to prevent private benefit in larger firms, where managers have lower equity stake under the optimal contract. Consequently, small firms invest more, pay less dividends, and grow faster than large firms. Despite the heterogeneity in firms decision rules and the failure of Gibrat's law, we show that the size distribution of firms in our model resembles a power law distribution with a slope coefficient about 1.06, as in the data.

The Pricing Policy of Banks on the German Secondary Market for Leverage Certificates: Interday and Intraday Effects

This paper is the first thorough analysis of finite leverage certificates on the German market. Our study, based on a unique data set at investor- and certificate-specific level, contains more than half a million trades in DAX leverage certificates by more than 7,000 retail costumers of a large German direct bank for the years 2007 and 2008. We analyse the order flow induced by the investors and compare traded prices - rather than quotes - with corresponding theoretical fair product values. We examine deviations between the prices and the values in two directions: interday, i.e. the development of the deviations over a certificate's lifetime and intraday, i.e. deviations depending on the time of day the trade is made. Our major results can be summarized as follows: (i) Leverage certificates are overpriced. (ii) The "Life Cycle Hypothesis" by Stoimenov and Wilkens (JBF, 2005), initially developed for long-term investment certificates, also holds for short-term leverage certificates. This interday effect is more pronounced the less likely a premature knock-out of the certificate is. (iii) At the end of the underlying's trading hours issuers increase the prices. (iv) The issuers' pricing policy is consistent with the customer-driven order flow and the overnight gap risk issuers face.

How important is the industry experience of independent directors?

We analyze a newly available data set with the full employment history of independent directors at S&P 1500 companies and show that the proportion of independent directors with industry experience (IDIEs) is positively and significantly correlated with firm performance, but the proportion of independent directors without industry experience (IDNIEs) is not. We find that higher proportions of IDIEs are associated with fewer earnings restatements and more cash holdings. Firms with IDIEs have higher CEO pay-performance sensitivity, higher CEO turnover-performance sensitivity, and more patents with more citations. We also find that CEO power is negatively correlated with the presence of IDIEs.

Labor as a monitor of the CEO: A Power Game of Outsourcing

Consistent with a stakeholder model, we propose a power play hypothesis that the CEO power is balanced by labor that can monitor the CEO behavior. We develop a theory of a cooperative power game between the CEO and labor in corporate outsourcing, and test the model's predictions concerning the decision to outsource, division of profit, and post-outsourcing firm performance using a sample of 162 outsourcing deals by U.S. firms during 1992-2005. In accord with the model, a firm is more likely to outsource the greater is CEO power, the greater is the firm's production cost, and the more homogeneous is the industry; the greater is CEO power, the greater is the CEO's share of profits. And the outsourcing decision does not affect the CEO's share of profits, and CEO power is positively related to post-outsourcing performance. Interestingly poor prior firm performance moderates power dynamics between the CEO and labor. The implication is that in addition to the traditional governance mechanisms such as board, institutional investors or banks, labor can also be an effective managerial monitor when the firm undergoes a major restructuring.

Buyers versus Sellers: Who Initiates Trades and When?

We study the relation between order imbalance and past returns and firm characteristics and test a number of hypothesis including the disposition effect, momentum and contrarian trading, taxloss selling and flight-to-quality hypothesis. These hypotheses make predictions about investors' buy or sell decisions, but previous studies that test these hypotheses use turnover data that combine both buyer and seller-initiated trades. We find that investors behave as contrarians over short horizons and as momentum traders over longer horizons. We find strong support for seasonal tax induced trading but little evidence of flight-to-quality.

Credit Lines as Monitored Liquidity Insurance, Theory and Evidence

Characterizing Global Financial and Economic Integration through Analyst Forecast

This paper presents new evidence on international financial market integration using stock analyst earnings forecasts from 37 countries around the world. By examining cash flow (CF) and discount rate (DR) news co-movements, we find that the influence of these two driving forces of global market integration have diverged over time as DR news have become more important than CF news over the past decade. However, this divergence is less severe in emerging markets compared with developed markets where expected return news has played a less prominent role. We interpret this as being that financial integration has developed relatively slowly in emerging markets due to the hampering effects of their poor information environments.

Investor Sentiment and Seasoned Equity Offerings

We document that investor sentiment is positively related with pre-SEO overpricing and plays an important role in managers' equity issuance decisions. Further, we provide evidence that investor sentiment impacts the SEO discounting and underpricing. High sentiment periods are followed by low long run returns suggesting that sentiment does not proxy for unobservable fundamentals. Overall, our findings are consistent with market timing and behavioural explanations for equity offerings.

Liquidity Constraints and Consumer Bankruptcy: Evidence from Tax Rebates

This paper estimates the extent to which legal fees prevent liquidity-constrained households from declaring bankruptcy. To do so, it studies how the 2001 and 2008 tax rebates affected consumer bankruptcy filings. We exploit the randomized timing of the rebate checks and estimate that the rebates caused a significant, short-run increase in consumer bankruptcies in both years, with larger effects in 2008 when the rebates were more generous and more widely distributed. Using hand-collected data from individual bankruptcy petitions, we document that the rebates caused an increase in the average liabilities and the liabilities-to-income ratios of filers.

Co-Insurance in Mutual Fund Families

We apply a bootstrap approach to show that mutual fund families coordinate actions across member funds in order to support those that are forced to sell due to heavy outflows. We show how such strategy can affect the pricing implications of asset fire sales and how it distorts the incentives of fund managers. First, we show that coordination is more likely to be observed within families that have a sufficiently large number of funds. Consistent with internal coordination, we document weak or no price pressure coming from the widespread selling by financially distressed mutual funds that are affiliated with large families, while the effect is very strong for their small-family peers. Moreover, we show that affiliation with large families significantly reduces the sensitivity of outflows to poor past performance, in particular for funds holding more illiquid portfolios. However, by improving the convexity of their implicit payoff structures, we show that risk-sharing strategies at the family level can encourage individual fund managers to take extra risks.

The Aggregate Information in Unexpected Media Coverage of Firms' Earnings Reports

Economists have recently begun to explore the roles of the financial media in the stock market.

We extend this line of inquiry by assessing the aggregate information contained in the Wall Street Journal's decisions to cover firms' earnings reports. Since the information in earnings announcements varies across firms and time, we first measure unexpected coverage of each firm's announcement and then aggregate unexpected coverage across firms each month. The resulting measure quantifies the monthly flow of market-wide information regarding stock valuation -- arising from the Wall Street Journal's perception of the informativeness of the earnings reports. In months when the level of coverage is surprisingly high, returns on the CRSP value-weighted index are high and continue to be high for roughly six months. The six-month predictability in returns seems due to the persistence in the flow of market-wide news rather than aggregate media coverage capturing investor sentiment.

We conclude that high aggregate unexpected coverage identifies periods of high valuation uncertainty and that high returns are compensation for bearing this time-varying risk. In addition, we find that exposure to this risk varies across stocks and is priced in the cross section of returns. Finally, serial correlation in the index return is highly dependent on our measure of aggregate news flow, switching from positive to negative serial correlation as aggregate unexpected coverage changes from high to low.

The Valuation of Hedge Funds' Equity Positions

We provide evidence on the valuation of equity positions by hedge fund advisors. Reported valuations deviate from standard valuations based on closing prices from CRSP for roughly seven percent of the positions. These deviations are economically significant for about 25 percent of the hedge fund advisors. Advisors with more pronounced valuation deviations show a stronger discontinuity in their reported returns around zero, manage a higher fraction of potentially fraudulent funds, show smoother reported returns, self-report to commercial databases, and are domiciled in offshore locations. Additional tests suggest that the documented equity valuation deviations respond to past performance.

Customers as Advisor: The Role of Social Media in Financial Markets

This paper investigates the extent to which peer-based advice transmitted through social media affects the stock market. We conduct textual analysis of articles published on Seeking Alpha, a popular social-media platform among investors. We find that the views expressed in these articles associate strongly with contemporaneous and subsequent stock returns, and help predict earnings surprises. The social media effect is stronger for articles that receive more attention and for companies likely to be neglected by traditional advice sources. The association remains strong for companies with no mentioning in the Dow Jones News Service in the week surrounding the publication of the Seeking Alpha article. Together, these findings point to the importance of social media as both a source of peer-based advice and a channel through which views become reflected in stock prices.

The Value of a Third Opinion: Split Ratings, Information Opacity and Fitch Ratings

Evaluating corporate acquisitions: Exploratory studies of financial analysts' use of accounting information

Abstract: Recent changes in the accounting for business combinations and goodwill have, arguably, resulted in more complex and comprehensive financial reports. In light of the changes, there may be consequences in regard to how analysts evaluate corporate acquisitions and, in turn, how the stock-market will react to such transactions. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) aims for its standards to be useful to capital market participants and the Board further states that users should have a reasonable degree of financial knowledge and are responsible for studying the information with reasonable diligence (IASB, 2010). The paper reports results from two exploratory studies. The first one is based on semi-structured interviews with five Swedish sell-side analysts concerning how they incorporate information about acquisitions into the analysis and the valuation of specific companies that they follow, and their subsequent communication with customers. The second study, based on a questionnaire sent to members of the Swedish Society of Financial Analysts, aims to capture the following topics: the analysts' knowledge of relevant International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the area of acquisitions (IFRS 3 and IAS 36), their use of such accounting information for the evaluation of acquisitions, their use of valuation-related measures, their communication of with customers, and a psychological variable concerning the analysts' need for cognition (NC). The interview study suggests that acquisitions are handled in a context where analysts spend most of their time and effort on giving prompt feedback to customers in response to news and events, including corporate acquisitions. The analyst seldom finds the time for more comprehensive analyses of the companies followed, and the communication with customers is framed around 'on the margin' effects. The impact of acquisitions on the analysts' use of accounting information should be seen in this context. When the acquisition is announced, the amount of accounting information is generally very limited, but the analysts must still give their views very quickly on expected share price effects and the impact on company fundamentals. More accounting information is then gradually added in the subsequent company presentations, quarterly and annual reports, and the prospectus, but the additional details do not generally represent significant events worth reporting to the customer. Results from the questionnaire study suggest, among other things, that the analysts had a low level knowledge of IFRSs directly related to acquisitions (IFRS 3 and IAS 36), but they still considered accounting information based on these standards to be of great importance for their evaluations of acquisitions (e.g., the acquisition analysis and impairment information). The paper discusses implications related to analysts' use of accounting information where they have limited knowledge of how the information has been prepared and also the implications of promoting analysts' skills in communicating 'on the margin' effects of news and corporate events rather than more in-depth analyses.

BIO: Dr. Niclas Hellman is Acting Professor in Accounting at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), Sweden. His research interests pertain to financial accounting and auditing and he has published papers in the areas of international accounting, the impact of accounting information on the behavior of financial analysts and investors, auditor-client interaction, and corporate governance. Niclas is the head of the SSE master specialization in Accounting and Financial Management and teaches international programs for students, financial specialists and executives in his areas of expertise. Niclas is also Vice Chairman of the Swedish Accounting Standards Board.

Wages, Overseas Investment and Ownership: Implications for Internal Labor Markets in Japan.

Abstract: Japanese firms expanded their outward foreign direct investment (FDI) rapidly in the emerging economies in Asia in the post-1990 period. The Japanese public feared that companies would increasingly rely on cheaper foreign workers and that large numbers of home country workers would find their responsibilities, and hence their earnings, dwindling over time. However, using several recent data sets on workers in firms with and without FDI investments, we show that workers received earnings premiums if they were with firms that engaged in outward FDI involving ownership of at least 50% in some foreign firm. Higher ranked workers benefited more, but even some non-managerial workers did benefit as well. These wage benefits crucially depend on the level of ownership in FDI projects. Increased foreign employment, on the other hand, did not benefit workers' wages except those in the highest ranks.

BIO: Masao Nakamura received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in administration engineering from Keio University in Tokyo and his Ph.D. degree in operations research and industrial engineering from The Johns Hopkins University. He has also worked for Toshiba as a systems engineer. His research interests include economic behavior of firms and households, corporate governance, international business and Japanese economy, and management of technology and environment. Since 1994 he has been a Professor and the Konwakai Japan Research Chair in the Sauder School of Business and the Institute of Asian Research of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He has published books and also articles in academic journals. His recent publications include: Adoption and Policy Implications of Japan's New Corporate Governance Practices after the Reform, Asia Pacific Journal of Management 28, 2011, 187-213; and Changing Corporate Governance Practices in China and Japan: Adaptations of Anglo-American Practices (Ed.), Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. For further details please see his home page.

Transferring tacit know-how through licensing or joint venture: Is opportunism really redundant?

Abstract

Transaction cost theory (TCE) scholars argue that MNEs exist due to failure of markets, a main stimulus of which is opportunism. On the contrary, proponents of the knowledge based view (KBV) claim that the opportunism assumption is redundant; the existence of the MNE can be explained without recourse to opportunism. This debate still persists (e.g., Fransson, Hakanson, & Liesch, 2011), but a key feature is that despite competing causal mechanisms, predictions of TCE and KBV are identical. We see this lack of predictive uniqueness as the prime bottleneck in resolving the question of whether opportunism matters, and contribute to the debate in two ways: (1) conceptually, we exploit the contingency logics inherent in KBV and TCE to build distinctive predictions from both theories and (2) empirically, we test the competing logics of both theories, bringing empirical evidence to the debate which has this far been largely on conceptual turf alone. Our results suggest that, subject to certain caveats, opportunism matters

Bio

Dr. Alex Eapen earned his doctoral degree from Tilburg University, The Netherlands in June 2007, and is currently a lecturer in International Business at the University of Sydney Business School. His research seeks to better understand the impact of multinational enterprises (MNE) on host country firms and economies. The question his research seeks to answer is: what are the conditions that make international expansion of MNEs beneficial to host country firms? This issue has far reaching implications, not only theoretically, but also for practice. To find the right answers, his research has focused on better understanding (1) the spillover process and (2) the entry and evolution of foreign firms in a host country. His research has been published in journals such as Journal of International Business Studies and Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences.

Relative Value Appropriation by Partners in Cross-Border Technology Transfer Alliances: How the Alliance Value Pie is Split Between the Allies

Abstract: This paper tests different determinants of partner shares of alliance returns, for a sample of cross-border technology transfer alliances. Findings suggest the importance of bargaining power as an influence on partner shares of alliance returns and suggest that firms with better absorptive capacity (relative to their partners) gain more from alliances. There is a positive correlation between risk and return in alliances; in other words, firms that want a greater share of total returns from an alliance may be able to reach that objective by also agreeing to accept more risk or volatility. On a related point, shifting risk to a partner by insisting on minimum sales or minimum royalty requirements is typically accompanied by a smaller share of total alliance returns for the partner offloading risk. Finally, the findings suggest that return and risk are evaluated in a holistic manner by those negotiating and designing alliances. Implications for theory and practice are explored and further research about issues raised in this paper is recommended.

Speaker: Dr. Farok Contractor is Professor in the Management and Global Business department at Rutgers Business School. He has also taught at the Wharton School, Copenhagen Business School, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Nanyang Technological University, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, XLRI (India), Lubin School of Business, Theseus, EDHEC and conducted executive seminars in the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia.

He is a graduate of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D. (Managerial Science and Applied Economics) and MBA, and the University of Michigan, where he received an M.S. in Industrial Engineering. Farok Contractor's research has focused on corporate alliances, outsourcing and offshoring, valuation of intangible assets, the technology transfer process, licensing, and foreign direct investment. He is particularly focused on the negotiated, inter-firm aspects of International Business such as alliances between firms from different nations, including joint ventures, and licensing, as well as negotiations between investors and governments. His work treats the strategic implications of companies sharing their expertise and markets with other firms, and has involved gathering data from a large number of companies.

Dr. Contractor has written well over a hundred scholarly papers on these topics, and books: (1) International Technology Licensing: Compensation, Costs and Negotiations (Lexington Books), (2) Licensing in International Strategy; A Guide for Planning and Negotiations (Quorum Books), (3) A co-authored textbook, Introduction to International Business (Kendall Hunt), (4) Cooperative Strategies in International Business (co-edited) (Lexington Books), (5) Government Policies and Foreign Direct Investment (UNCTAD), (6) Economic Transformation In Emerging Countries: The Role of Investment, Trade and Finance (edited) (Elsevier), (7) The Valuation of Intangible Assets In Global Operations (edited) (Quorum Books), (8) Cooperative Strategies and Alliances (co-edited) (Oxford: Elsevier), (9) Global Outsourcing and Offshoring: An Integrated Approach to Theory and Corporate Strategy (co-edited) (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Prof. Contractor has among the highest citation counts amongst scholars in the field of International Management (Academy of International Business (AIB), or Academy of Management (AOM)) with Google Scholar citation totals exceeding 4200 citations in other scholarly papers. Prof. Contractor has also been rated by several surveys as among the top-ranked contributors of scholarly papers to the field.

Over the past 15 years, Dr. Contractor has chaired or been on the supervisory committees of 14 doctoral dissertations on International Strategic Management topics, and served on the faculty of several Doctoral and Junior Faculty Consortiums organized by the Academy of Management, Academy of International Business, and CIBERs. Dr. Contractor has served on the Executive Board of the Academy of Management's International Management Division, was Chair of the division and Program Chair at the at the Academy of Management. Earlier, he was elected to a two year term on the Executive Board of the Academy of International Business, and is an active member in other professional bodies in the field of International Management.

He was elected a permanent Fellow of the Academy of International Business, an honor reserved for approximately 60 out of an academy membership exceeding 3,500 persons worldwide. Prof. Contractor has also held other term fellowships such as the Fulbright Fellowship and Unilever Fellowship. Recently he has been Nanyang Visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University.

Conferences organized by Dr. Contractor have had a catalytic influence on company practices. The Rutgers/Wharton/IMD conferences on Cooperative Strategies in International Business served to spark interest in corporate alliances which subsequently proliferated to the point where alliances today comprise a central facet of corporate strategy. The conference books continue to be used in graduate and executive programs worldwide. Recently, he initiated a conference at Bocconi University on Global Outsourcing and Offshoring strategies resulting in a definitive compilation of papers on the subject.

He has served Rutgers University in many capacities such as Department Chair for the International Business Department for six years, as Research Director of the CIBER (Center for International Business Education and Research), Coordinator of the Ph.D. program in International Business, the Dean's Leadership Council, and several other key school and university initiatives.

Before his academic career, Prof. Contractor was an executive with the international arm of the Tata Group of Companies, an India-based multinational group. Besides Rutgers, Prof. Contractor also taught at the Wharton School, full time, for four years, conducted courses at universities in Europe and Asia and lectured and given executive seminars throughout the world.

A Global Value Chain Approach to Emerging Market Catch-up

Abstract: Value chain analysis is an innovative tool that views economy in terms of activities instead of its constituent industries and firms (Mudambi, 2008). The value chain approach analyses, at the sector level, each link in the 'chain of activity' - from the ideation of the product or service to its post-use disposal.1 A value chain for any product or service consists of a number of inter-linked activities extending from upstream R&D, to raw materials and component supply, production, through delivery to international buyers, and often beyond that to disposal and recycling. Modern value chain analysis enables us to pinpoint the relative contributions to value creation associated with each activity, from basic raw materials to final demand. This approach helps us to understand that as far as a geographic location is concerned, success in terms of creating prosperity is based on the local activities performed rather than the identity of local firms or industries. GVCs are part and parcel of international trade and have existed as long as there have been trade relations between countries. However, two fundamental trends have arisen over the last few decades that have changed the characteristics of GVCs in fundamental ways. First, the advance of technology, especially information technology has enabled firms to re-configure themselves in very basic ways so that they can now outsource activities deep in the heart of the firm with surgical precision and focus on activities where they have superior competencies. It is now routine for firms to outsource functions involving sensitive information like payroll, pensions and accounts receivable (Metters, 2008). The robustness of modern information technologies allows firms a great deal of latitude in terms of the geographic location to which these outsourced activities re-located (Mithas and Whitaker, 2007). Some of these activities are knowledgeintensive and create a great deal of value for the location where they are eventually undertaken. Second, the number of locations where such activities can be undertaken has risen dramatically over the last two decades with the increasing sophistication of infrastructure and other resources in a wide range of emerging markets from China and India to Mexico and Turkey. GVCs today are truly global within industries ranging from apparel (Gereffi, 1999; Smakman, 2003) and shoes (Pyndt and Pedersen, 2006), to electronics

The importance of fragmented production and intermediates trade has been widely documented in academic research (e.g., Baldwin, 2006). When trade is disaggregated and geographically dispersed across national borders, a global value chain (GVC) exists. GVCs incorporate all the activities related to producing a good or service and delivering the product or service to the end user. This type of trade is especially important in China and other emerging economies due to the great importance of GVCs in their economywide catch-up processes. In some emerging markets such as China, the percentage of high technology exports in total exports (or high technology output in GDP) has been increasing at unprecedented rates. Na??ve interpretation of this data would suggest that technological catch up and convergence are well advanced. However, these traditional output-based measures are undertaken as the industry level, thus facing two important shortcomings:

The measures fail to take into account that different stages of the same GVC (e.g. specialized versus standardized activities) can have distinct value added levels.
The measures often capture gross output and not value added. As a result, they not only capture the activities that have taken place in a country, but also the value of upstream activities that are used as inputs. Example of the Apple iPhone (Linden et al., 2009). In this paper we apply GVC analysis to Chinese data to examine the extent of economywide catch-up. Using this approach we find that catch-up is significantly less advanced than simple output-based measures indicate.

Speaker: Ram Mudambi is professor and Perelman Senior Research Fellow in General and Strategic Management at the Fox School of Business and Management at Temple University.[1][2] He has published over fifty refereed journal articles and six books on the multinational strategies of entrepreneurial firms; the location and research and development strategies of multinational firms, and the politics of international business. Mudambi serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of International Business Studies, the Asia Pacific Journal of Management and the Journal of International Management.

Prior to joining Temple University, Mudambi taught at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He taught in Europe for seven years at the University of Reading and the University of Buckingham. He retains a Readership at the University of Reading Business School [3] and is a Fellow of the Academy of the University of Messina in Italy. He completed his Masters degree at the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom and his Ph.D. at Cornell University.

Being in Good Standing: The Value of a Corporate, Workplace & Social Reputation to Potential Employees

Abstract: It has been readily accepted that prospective employees, including MBA students seeking jobs after graduation, put great stock in a potential employer's reputation - particularly that relating to its social responsibility and workplace practices. However, other than potentially biased results from self-report surveys we have little information as to whether or not job seekers would actually trade-off salary and other utilitarian aspects of a job contract to work at firms with supposed greater reputational standing. In the present study we use a structured experimental approach to determine the extent to which the facets of reputation - corporate, social and workplace - drive job contract choice. We discover that while some aspects of corporate and workplace reputation matter marginally, MBA job seekers appear to put little value on social reputation and those in other professions even less so. Even in the specific cases where we can discern individuals who do value social reputation, this is unrelated to their stated preferences revealed using standard survey methods. The implication is that firms seeking to entice potential employees should focus on utilitarian aspects of the employment contract that may impact their reputation rather than attempting to manipulate that reputation directly.

Speaker: Timothy Devinney is a Professor of Strategy at the University of Technology, Sydney and Professor (Conjoint) in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales. Prior to that he was a Professor and Professorial Research Fellow at the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), Director of the Centre for Corporate Change and the AGSM Executive MBA. Before joining the AGSM he held positions on the faculties of The University of Chicago, Vanderbilt University and UCLA and has been a visiting faculty member at numerous universities in Europe (Copenhagen Business School, Humboldt University-Berlin, Wirschaftsuniversitat Wien, and the Universities of Hamburg, Trier, Konstanz, Ulm & Frankfurt) and Asia (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology & City University, Hong Kong) and taught at many others (e.g., CEIBS, Helsinki University of Technology & Helsinki School of Economics). He has published seven books -- e.g., Managing the Global Corporation (with J. de la Torre and Y. Doz, 2000) and The Myth of the Ethical Consumer (with P. Auger and G. Eckhardt) -- and more than eighty articles in leading journals including Management Science, the J. of Business, The Academy of Management Review, J. of International Business Studies, Organization Science, California Management Review, Management International Review, J. of Marketing, J. of Management, Long Range Planning, J. of Business Ethics and the Strategic Management Journal. He has presented papers and addresses at more than 200 universities and conferences in the last ten years. In 2008 he was the first recipient in management of an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award and was Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of International Business.

Timothy is heavily involved in the international networks of scholar. He served as Chair of the International Management Division of the Academy of Management. He is the co-editor of The Academy of Management Perspectives, co-editor of the Advances in International Management series (Emerald Publishers), and the Director of the International Business & Management Network of SSRN. He operated, jointly with the University of Illinois, the annual Workshop in Theory and Measurement in International Business and ran the 2001 Academy of International Business Conference in Sydney. He was a member of the Executive of ANZAM (Australia New Zealand Academy of Management) and was named a Fellow in 2008. He is a former Chair of the Intl Mgt Division of the Academy of Management. He is on the editorial board of more than 12 of the leading international journals. He is an International Fellow under the auspices of the AIM Initiative in the UK, which gave him a Professorship at London Business School. He is one of the largest recipients of Australia Research Council funding in the last five years having won over $11,000,000 in supported research from the ARC and other organizations.

Timothy has taught in numerous executive programs in Australia, USA, Germany, Austria, France, Finland, Korea, India, China, Turkey and the Netherlands, as well as having worked and consulted with corporations world wide, including Apple Computer, Anadolu (Turkey), Telekom Austria, LG (Seoul), Boral, AT Kearney, GEC-Alsthom, AMP, TMP, GM/Holden, CSR, Mobil, Koppers Industries, SAP, Rolls Royce (UK), SAS Institute, Hanimex/Rabbit Photo, Sabanci Holdings (Turkey), Thomson Publishing, Transfield, and Westfield Holdings-as well as many small Internet startups-e.g., Agribuys (US), Haburi (Denmark), Maconomy (Denmark), and ChateauOnline (France)-and governments and non-profits-e.g., the State Council of the PRC (China), the government of PNG, Amnesty International, The Property Council of Australia, Invest Australia, Australian Manufacturing Council and the City of Sydney, to name only a selection. He was a panel member of the Australian Federal Government's Research Quality Framework, responsible for the allocation of $600M in annual funding.

Healthy Choices that Make Us Fat: Decision Biases and Remedies

Despite the vast public policy efforts to promote the consumption of healthy foods and the growing concern of many Americans with managing their weight, the proportion of overweight individuals continues to increase. This research argues that an important factor contributing to this obesity trend is the misguided belief about the relationship between a meal's healthiness and its impact on weight gain. People erroneously believe that eating healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables in addition to unhealthy ones decreases the likelihood of gaining weight. To illustrate, people believe that adding a side salad to a meal not only makes this meal healthier but also lowers its calorie content and the likelihood that it will promote weight gain. These biases are attributed to the qualitative nature of people's information processing, stemming from their tendency to categorize food items according to a good/bad dichotomy into virtues and vices.

The Unconscious Consumer

For many years researchers (both economists and psychologists) have largely assumed that consumers are conscious decision making machines. In this talk we'll present a wide variety of evidence that directly challenges this assumption and suggests that in many consumption situations we are guided by both stimuli and processes that occur outside our conscious awareness. At times such effects can be highly adaptive and functional, while in other settings they can be harmful and even destructive.

Mental Simulation and Product Evaluation: The Affective and Cognitive Dimensions of Process Versus Outcome Simulation

Purchasing products that consumers have not used before (e.g. baby stroller for first time parents or a new product like an iPad) can be a challenge for consumers. In this article, the authors examine how mentally simulating two specific aspects of a product - the product usage process vs. the product benefits - might impact product evaluation, and how the effectiveness of each aspect might depend on whether consumers rely on their thinking or feelings. Based on the premise that when consumers don't have well formed preferences for a product they tend to focus on the usage process, the authors predict that when consumers rely on their thinking, prompting them to think about the product benefit (i.e. outcome simulation) leads to higher evaluation than prompting them to think about the usage process (i.e. process simulation) because the former highlights the naturally ignored product aspect whereas the latter is redundant. However, when consumers rely on their feelings, focusing on the usage process is more effective than focusing on the product benefit, because the detailed usage steps related with process simulation evoke a higher level of affective immersion in using the product. A first experiment based on the Tablet PC confirmed this prediction. Further, the authors demonstrated a reversal of the effect when consumers' focus is naturally shifted from the usage process toward the product benefit. This reversal occurred for hedonic product such as the Apple iPad where people's primary focus is the affective enjoyment (vs. how to use it), or for the same functional product when consumers are asked to evaluate it for a purchase decision in two months (distant future) rather than for in two days (near future), because distant future naturally directs people's focus to the product benefit.

These findings have important implications for marketing managers of products that are new to their consumers. They suggest that under a cognitive focus, simulating about the naturally ignored aspects should lead to higher evaluations; whereas under an affective focus, simulating about the naturally more salient product aspects should result in enhanced evaluation due to the saliency and vividness of those product aspects being more easily transformed into positive affective responses. The findings further suggest that while incorporating this strategy in the marketing practice, marketers should adjust their strategies based on whether the product serves predominantly a functional purpose or is positioned more on affective dimensions, and whether consumers evaluate the product for more immediate purchase or for the more distant future.

Successful Cross-Paradigm Research

Marketing has embraced a number of research paradigms including a variety of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Many research topics can be productively researched using more than one approach, but such cross-paradigm research has its own sets of issues and rewards. To discuss how it can be done successfully, we have put together a panel of local and international experts who have collaborated on a number of cross-paradigm projects. The panel will share their insights on and answer questions about how to make such cross-paradigm research most successful.

Travelling Light: Liquidity of Possessions and Practices among Global Nomads

This research re-examines the role of possessions in geographical mobility through the study of global nomads, a highly mobile group of consumers whose identities and lifestyles are not anchored to a particular national geography. In contrast to prior work that argues for a salient role of possessions because of their linking value as identity markers to particular places or relationships, we do not find such roles. Instead, global nomad's consumption projects are highlighted by the logic of instrumentality, where consumption objects and practices are strategic elements in serial reterritorialization. Moreover, as global nomads exhibit a detachment from possessions and put a premium on flexibility and fluidity, we introduce and develop the concept of liquid possessions. Liquid possessions are objects valued temporarily for their use-value and immateriality. We argue that it is the liquidity of possessions and the mastery of consumption practices that enable nomads to maintain a lifestyle detached from national geographies and reinforces their mobility. Our unique context of study provides for theoretical contributions to consumer behaviour theories of materiality and acculturation.

Competing for Consumer Identity: Limits to Self-Expression and the Perils of Lifestyle Branding

Lifestyle positioning has become an increasingly common approach among managers, especially in commodity categories in which functional differences are hard to maintain. In addition to the traditional lifestyle brands, such as Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Martha Stewart, a number of performance-oriented brands including Gillette, Dove, Montblanc, Oakley, and Quicksilver have transitioned their focus to consumer lifestyles. Many managers view this lifestyle positioning as a way to break free of the cutthroat competition within a category by connecting with consumers on a more personal level.

We argue, however, that the open vistas of lifestyle branding are an illusion: functional brands may be trading in-category competition for even fiercer cross-category competition, competing not only with their direct rivals but also with brands from unrelated categories. Moreover, competition for consumer identity is not limited to lifestyle brands; it includes virtually any activity with a self-expressive component, such as ordering one's favourite coffee, listening to one's favourite band, and social networking. This argument is based on the idea that because consumers' need for self-expression is finite and, like most needs, can be satiated when consumers are exposed to multiple self-expressive brands, the scope of the competitive landscape for lifestyle brands extends far beyond specific categories and brands. This implies that by repositioning itself as a lifestyle brand, Gillette is entering into direct competition with other lifestyle brands including Ralph Lauren, Starbucks, and Facebook for a share of a consumer's identity.

Our theory is supported by data from five empirical studies, which show that consumers' need for self-expression is finite and can be satiated by a variety of means - including brands from unrelated categories; non-brand means of self-expression including books, TV shows, and sports teams; as well as self-expressive behavioural acts such as product customization. The data from these experiments provide converging evidence that by switching from functional to lifestyle positioning, brands might be setting themselves up for a much broader, and often fiercer, competition for a share of consumer identity.

Guilt Versus Shame: Coping Strategies and Message Framing Effects on Persuasion

Four experiments examine the effectiveness of health messages as function of ambient emotion and message frames. While past research has focused on examining the role of positive versus negative emotions on the effectiveness of gain or loss message frames, we propose that the two negative emotions of guilt and shame can differentially affect persuasion from gain versus loss message frames due to distinct efficacy appraisals. We show that individuals experiencing guilt are more persuaded by health messages employing gain frames whereas individuals experiencing shame are more persuaded by loss frames in a responsible drinking ad context. These persuasion effects occur because gain frames facilitate the use of problem-focused coping strategies favored by guilt-laden consumers whereas loss frames facilitate the use of emotion-focused coping strategies favored by shame-laden consumers. We demonstrate that coping facilitates the processing of the health messages, thereby enhancing persuasion. We further show that making problem focused (emotion-focused) coping strategies more available to shame-laden (guilt-laden) consumers allows them to mimic the persuasive effects of guilt-laden (shame-laden) consumers, providing strong evidence of the theoretical process at work. These effects manifested on perceptions of risks associated with drinking, intentions to binge-drink, and time spent viewing alcohol advertising.

Incentive Aligned Data Collection

Incentive alignment aims to motivate participants to reveal truthfully their preferences, and it has been used in a variety of contexts such as conjoint analysis (Ding, Grewal and Liechty 2005; Ding 2007). Incentive alignment also makes it more feasible for researchers/managers to design new data collection methods, and one of such new methods is discussed in this presentation. Extant preference measurement research, including conjoint analysis, is done in the isolation of one's own mind. That is, it remains completely silent on the explicit influence of others in the formation of consumer preferences. This paper proposes a holistic framework of preference, PIE, as well as a measurement method to remedy this problem. The new paradigm posits that consumers evaluate product attributes using (potentially) three perspectives which are determined by some combinations of the product's physical profile (P), the focal customer's idiosyncratic attributes (I), and an external target group's value system (E), the last factor allowing for influences from others. To provide an empirically feasible method to collect information consistent with this framework, we propose and test an incentive-aligned approach, a group-sourced mechanism, which mimics a real life consultation of a customer with her "friends" in purchase decision making. The results provide support for the PIE framework, including superior predictive power.

Brand Integrity in Moments of Consumption: Lessons from American Girl

In this article, we explore the practices and processes by which a brand is negotiated when it enters a household, crossing from public into private space. Focusing on their material and ideological content, we describe how branded objects can retain their commodity status even as they are singularized by becoming implicated in the day to day lives of household members. From a long-term ethnographic study of the American Girl brand as it is enacted at several moments of consumption in domestic space, we develop the conception of brand integrity to help explain how this dual status is achieved and maintained. In so doing, we contribute to literatures on in-home consumption, the nature of brands and brand relationships, and materiality.

A Cultural Analysis of Tailgating on a Midwestern American Collegiate Campus

Tailgating is an institutionalised form of public revelry accompanying many sporting events in the U.S. It is a populist prosumption phenomenon that contrasts in interesting ways with the sporting spectacle with which it is paired. In our ethnographic investigation of tailgating in the context of collegiate football, we explore the lived experience of the numerous stakeholders involved this revelry. We provide a thick description of the event, and propose a grounded theory of tailgating. In particular, we unpack themes of conviviality, community, chorography, carnavalesque and canalization that inform the phenomenon.

Asymmetric Pricing, Relationship Norms and the Dual Entitlement Principle

Firms are often seen as more likely to pass through cost increases than cost decreases to consumers. One rationale for why firms are able to sustain this practice of asymmetric pricing is based on consumer fairness perceptions governed by the principle of dual entitlement. Examining the practice of asymmetric pricing through the theoretical lens of relationship norms, the present research proposes that the degree to which the dual entitlement principle is endorsed as the community standard of fairness is influenced by the type of buyer-seller relationship and corresponding relationship norms. Specifically, to the extent that asymmetric pricing protects firms' profit at consumers' expenses, the pricing practice may be perceived as less fair in a communal (vs. exchange) relationship as it violates the communal norm of concern for consumers. In three studies we provide support for this effect by manipulating the type of buyer-seller relationship through priming (study 1), industry (study 2) and culture (study 3). We conclude by discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of our results.

Collecting Data with Mturk: The Nuts and Bolts and Issues

Online data collection is becoming increasingly popular, but cost effective sources of respondents are often hard to find. A new resource, Mechanical Turk or Mturk, developed by Amazon offers a potential solution. At Mturk, researchers as "requesters" post work to be done, and qualified "workers" do the work at their location/pace for a very small fee (at a rate of about $1.40/hour or $.25-$.35 for 10-15 minutes). Therefore, for behavioural researchers Mturk can be an excellent source of respondents. To get interested researchers up to speed, especially with the limited documentation and human assistance on the Mturk website, this talk will offer a tutorial and answer questions on how to use Mturk for data collection from a user's perspective. I will address issues of data validity and participant demographics, and offer a step by step demonstration of how to use Mturk to run a simple experiment, including how to sign up and navigate the system, post a request, download data, reward workers, and problems you might encounter. Mturk is a potentially valuable tool not only for those interested in experimental or survey research but also for open-ended responses, pilot testing and any other tasks that can be conveyed electronically (e.g. data cleaning, transcribing, translation).

The Nature and Role of Complex Systems Theory and Methods in Marketing Research and Education

Computational social science is a fledging interdisciplinary field at the intersection of the social sciences, computational science, and complexity science It is an umbrella term for diverse new ways of analysis and understanding of social phenomena with the aid of computer-intensive methods. Amongst these tools are social network analysis, automated text analysis and information extraction systems, social geographic information systems and agent-based modelling. The purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview of complex systems research and theory and the associated research methodology of agent-based modelling (ABM). We explain and illustrate its relevance and importance to the development of marketing theory and research, with a particular emphasis on building ABM on distribution systems and business networks.

ABM is a form of mathematical modelling of complex systems. An ABM can be written down as a set of mathematical equations. But, because they are trying to develop more realistic and fine-grained models of complex systems the equations of motion of the system are necessarily highly nonlinear, involving numerous interaction and order effects and non-proportional impacts of factors. In other words they cannot be decomposed into a set of simpler component systems, whose equations can be solved by traditional means. The behaviour of the system as a whole is more than the sum of the behaviour of the component systems.

Frustrated Fashionistas: Why and How Do Some Consumers Ask for More from Mainstream Marketers?

While prior research has studied consumers who oppose mainstream marketing practices, we lack insight into why and how consumers may mobilize to seek greater inclusion in mainstream markets. Drawing on institutional theory, we offer insights into the reasons why consumers start seeking more options from mainstream marketers, and into the strategies they deploy to influence institutionalized practices. We find that the emergence of a collective consumer identity, the legitimation of desired changes by logics leveraged from adjacent institutional fields, and the identification of institutional entrepreneurs who provide inspiration encourage consumers to engage in efforts to get marketers to better serve them. We also identify three strategies consumers use in those efforts: appealing to institutional logics, lending legitimacy to market actors who make efforts to serve them, and allying with powerful institutional actors.

Dual-tasking, temporal embeddedness or having fun: When does time fly?

Time is a major variable of interest to consumer behaviour theory. However, the debate regarding how to conceptualize and theorize time in consumer research still remains unsolved and a "lack of theoretical development" in the discipline has been acknowledged (Bettany & Gatrell, 2009). Using two experimental studies, this dissertation moves into an exploration of the "neural-clock model" according to which individuals are expected to generate a decision about the passage of time based on the amount of interval-filling information available in memory. Taken together, findings from these two studies show that subjective time deviates from real time, and time perception is significantly affected by active information processing, time delay and stimulus' level of enjoyment.

Most important, findings provide evidence for theoretical discussions and new research avenues. Time perception for events past is significantly distorted when subjects are cued to reconstruct and estimate the experience as a whole, as opposed to retrieving and estimating its different subparts. Both studies illustrate that in time perception "the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts", and this effect is enhanced when duration estimates are produced after a time delay and when subjects perform active stimulus information processing. This is an interesting finding because it provides support to apply literature in event structure and memory psychophysics regarding reconstruction of physical objects and events into time perception research. Thus, findings show that time perception seems to depend on how individuals reconstruct the experience, and not only on the amount of information stored in memory, as the neural-clock model proposes.

We know that misestimating time has profound ramifications on consumer behaviour, and marketing researchers have dedicated considerable effort to understanding the effects that time perceptions play in consumers' decision-making. However, very little is known regarding how marketers may distort the subjective experience of time to their own benefit. This dissertation attempts to fill that gap.

The Contextual Effect of Service Separation on Service Failure

Previous research on service failure has focused on 'unseparated' service encounters in which both the production and consumption of the service occur simultaneously, usually in the presence and with the participation of the customer. However, recent research recognizes that some services are separable (i.e. the production and consumption of the service can be separated across time and/or space, and the production may take place in the absence of the customer). Accordingly, the present research examines customers' differential responses to service failures under separated versus unseparated service contexts. Results from two empirical studies indicate that service separation increases customer dissatisfaction for service failure. This is because customers' perceived deprivation of control in the separated service context exacerbates customer dissatisfaction in the event of failure. Furthermore, we find that customer participation level and length of customer-organization relationship have moderating effects on the relationship between failure in the separated service context and customer dissatisfaction.

You'll Never Walk Alone: Value Co-creation in a Usage Centre

SDL emphasizes the importance of value-in-use for the co-creation of value. But little is still known about the processes of value co-creation and how value-in-use is created within. This is especially true when, as it is typical for business-to-business settings, the value is not only co-created with an individual customer but with number of several users in a company. In analogy to the concept of the "buying centre" this group of people can be seen as a "usage centre" consisting of all members of buyer firm that are involved in the usage of a product or service delivered by a supplier.

The paper develops and explores a conceptual model for co-creation process quality. The model identifies nine supplier, customer and joint processes which are subject to quality assessment by the members of usage centre in appraising the solution.

Furthermore, the customer's construction of value from solutions is explored in an industrial maintenance context. Drawing on goal theory, solution quality is related to value for both the customer organization and the individual customer respondent. Through data gained in interviews using the repertory grid technique the constructs by which customers assess both individual and organizational value in this context are elicited. Through this also the various value dimension of the different members of the usage centre as well as the varying process of value co-creation are revealed.

Evolutionary Models of Behavioural Choice

The overall environment in which agents make choices has evolved rapidly. There is now a vast proliferation of alternatives. In many cases, the products are complex and difficult to evaluate. Further, greater connectivity means that agents have become much more aware of the decisions, ideas and behaviour of others.

In such circumstances, we observe two key features of the outcomes of agent behaviour. First, right-skewed non-Gaussian distributions of outcomes at a point in time. Second, turnover of the ranking of alternatives over time.

I consider models of agent behavioural choice which are compatible with this empirical evidence.

Global Business Market Research: From Information Vending to Knowledge Café

Analyzing Online Customer Review Engagement

Power Distance Belief, Power and Charity Giving

Four studies examined the link between power distance belief (PDB) - the tendency to accept inequalities in society - and charity giving. Results suggested that the effect of PDB depended on the respondents' perceived power. Among high PDB consumers, power was positively associated with charity giving, whereas among low PDB consumers, power did not influence charity giving. These results are traced to the differential empathy felt by high power people towards low power people in the two types of systems. Theoretical and managerial contributions are discussed.

Technologies of ironic revelation: enacting consumers in neuromarkets

Neuroscience is increasingly considered a possible basis for new business and management practices. A prominent example of this trend is neuromarketing - a relatively new form of market and consumer research that applies neuroscience to marketing by employing brain imaging or measurement technology to anticipate consumers' response to, for instance, products, packaging or advertising. In this paper, we draw attention to the ways in which certain neuromarketing technologies simultaneously reveal and enact a particular version of the consumer. The revelation is ironic in the sense that it entails the construction of a contrast between what appears to be the case - consumers' accounts of why they prefer certain products over others - and what can be shown to be the case as a result of the application of the technology - the hidden or concealed truth. This contrast structure characterises much of the academic and popular literature on neuromarketing, and helps explain the distribution of accountability relations associated with assessments of its effectiveness.

Ethnographic Stories and the Strategic Development of the Firm

Ethnography is a popular research method in a growing number of organizations. Companies such as Intel or Harley Davidson have found ethnography to be essential in creating customer-centric capabilities in organizations. Ethnography has helped companies develop an in-depth understanding of consumer segments leading to empathetic product designs and new market opportunities.

However, despite recent efforts to formalize what we know about the use of ethnographic methods as a form of consumer research (Cefkin 2009; Malefyt 2009; Sunderland and Denny 2007), major gaps persist in our understanding of the way ethnography is used within companies.

In this presentation, we will present the findings of a two-year study designed to examine how ethnography contributes to the development of market knowledge and the strategic development of the firm. We draw from extensive fieldwork in the world of commercial ethnography, including interviews with ethnographers, innovation consultants, advertising executives, market researchers and business executives who are involved in ethnographic projects. Our analysis focus on the properties of ethnography as a type of narrative knowledge.

We already know that storytelling is a powerful tool: stories delight, inspire us and they help us understand by imprinting a picture of the world in our minds. Most successful brands are built on evocative storylines and characters. Yet we rarely talk about market research as a form of storytelling, nor do we examine the specific properties of narrative knowledge as a way to build strategies. Our work looks at the power of ethnographic stories in an organizational context.

How Users Shape Markets

Users are recognised as key actors in processes of innovation, including technology design, commercialisation and appropriation. This paper shifts the focus from user influence over technology, to how user activity contributes to shape markets. Three principal user roles are synthesized from user-technology research, those of 'user', 'developer' and 'mediator'. Based on the literature on market shaping, we identify five sub-processes in which users could potentially be involved: 'generating market representations', 'establishing market rules and regulations', 'configuring exchange agents', 'framing the mode of exchange', and 'qualifying the objects of exchange'. We then explore user participation in shaping existing markets through four complementary case studies: an effort to standardize customer service in the market for diagnostics instruments, the use of frequent flyer programmes in the market for air travel, the development and spread of car sharing schemes, and the growth of file sharing of digital media via The Pirate Bay. Taken together, the cases provide examples of users assuming all three user roles and becoming involved in all five sub-processes of market shaping, although the level of involvement varies. The paper contributes to our understanding of innovation processes and the presumed link between users and markets by showing that user involvement goes beyond shaping exchange objects, and that users may be involved not only in the establishment of markets, but also in their ongoing organising. The paper also adds to our understanding of market shaping processes by empirically demonstrating various roles via which users participate in efforts to reshape markets.

Degrees of Separation and Locus of Control in Services Networks

The role of the distribution channel in high-technology products and services contexts is investigated using an exploratory investigation of the practices of high technology vendors and their partners. New forms of product service network can be seen to be developing; these can be represented as value-led ecosystems in which value is appropriated in different forms by different actors at different times. These ecosystems exhibit a number of tensions from coopetition and separation of service roles to a potential change in locus of channel coordination from the OEM to the customer. Trust and expert power are found to be the coordinating functions within these ecosystems.

Engineering Cooperation: Mean bad birds vs Kind Friendly Chickens

Buying Social Justice through Public Procurement? Labour standards for contracted cleaners in New South Wales public schools

Since the privatisation of government cleaning services in the early 1990s, Australian contracted cleaners are increasingly poorly managed, undervalued and earn minimal wages as employers compete for contracts in a 'race-to-the-bottom'. The inclusion of social justice provisions, such as required labour standards, in government procurement contracts is a possible solution to the problem that the procurement or outsourcing itself introduced. In July 2009 the Australian Government issued a statement acknowledging that it has a 'role as a model purchaser to encourage good practices from its suppliers', with particular mention of low-paid workers such as cleaners. This presentation discusses how these measures could make use of public procurement to improve or uphold labour standards.

Capable Capabilities: The Appropriation of E-HR for the Management of Talent

The argument that an organisation needs to manage its human capital assets has a long history. However changes in demographic patterns, the 'war for talent', talent shortages and several other factors have today combined in a manner which further encourages organisation's to identify, recruit, maintain and develop individuals who are deemed 'talent' through talent management policies and processes. The importance of talent management has further prompted senior executives to not only state that "our people are our greatest asset" but to undertake tangible strategic actions that embody these claims. The ability to effectively conduct talent management can benefit from the introduction of technology and the number of organisations that are adopting information technology to support and enhance policies, processes and activities are increasing. This presentation forms part of a thesis defence that addresses the way in which Sharna will seek to explore in-depth the relationship between talent management and E-HR (Electronic Human Resources).

Redefining the Provider Role: Career Prioritisation and the Emergence of the Female Primary Earner Family

Warren's (2007) conceptual review of "breadwinning" outlines four conceptualisations of the term: "breadwinner" as main financial provider, "breadwinner" as main labour market participant, male "breadwinner" as ideology, and male "breadwinner" as masculine identity. These four conceptualisations highlight the two key strands within breadwinner literature - the distinction between the enactment of the breadwinner role and the normative element of breadwinning as a "special male responsibility" (Potuchek 1992). The term "breadwinner" becomes problematic given the increasing labour force participation of women such that the majority (63%) of Australian households are now categorised as dual-income (ABS 2009) and include a variety of breadwinning arrangements. When both partners engage in paid work and contribute to the family's finances the concept of breadwinning requires re-examination, particularly in how to disentangle the practice of breadwinning from breadwinner ideology.

One way in which the concept can be re-examined is to study those households who have completely de-coupled "breadwinning" from a normative male ideal and can be considered female primary earner families. There is no Australian census data which directly measures households where the female is the primary (or sole) earner but from comparable overseas data they are estimated to be between 1.8% and 3% of the population and constitute an increasingly observed trend, labelled in the Washington Post as the "rise of wives" (January 2010). In studying these women, and their partners, this research aims to conduct a conceptual re-examination of "breadwinning" and its continued relevance for the Australian workplace and family. The particular research question is what organisational and workplace factors facilitate or constrain the emergence of breadwinner-reversal couples as a new breadwinning arrangement for the 21st century?

Learning to Navigate Enterprise Bargaining: The NTEU and 'Round One'

Discussant: Associate Professor John O'Brien, University of New South Wales
This research paper is part of a larger project towards a PhD thesis which asks the question: how did the NTEU build the knowledge capital required to respond to the introduction of Enterprise Bargaining to higher education and to negotiate subsequent rounds? This paper takes a slice of the larger project to focus on the formation of the NTEU and 'round one' of enterprise bargaining. The goal is to chart key innovations, their origins and to map the flow of information and identify key individuals and groups engaged in this process. Using the NTEU's archived minutes and memos from this period (1993-95) this paper enlists the insights of activity theorists in the field of knowledge management as a framework to analyse the process by which knowledge has been created and shared in the NTEU. This study is a novel approach to the study of trade union organisation. It contributes to the current union renewal literature by combining traditional approaches to the study of trade unions with the observations of research in the field of knowledge management and social network theory to generate a visual representation of the development of knowledge communities.

Future trends in the regulatory reform of work-life balance in the UK

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This paper will provide an overview of the development in state interventions aimed at supporting work-life balance rights for employees in the UK. It will overview the origins of the 'New Labour' policy framework - which is rooted in the pre-existing policy framework, influenced by the ambiguous relationship with the European Union and presented in a way intended to emphasise a 'business case'. A brief review of the author's previous findings, in relation to the 'business case' rationale, will be made before providing an overview of the current position is in relation to employee rights and where the main political parties are on the issue on the eve of a general election.

Employer evaluations of immigrant IT and accounting professionals: A case of skill underutilisation

Discussant: Dr Ian Roper, Middlesex University

Existing literature suggests that the skills of accredited, permanent immigrants in Australia remain underutilised in the labour market. This is attributed to four key reasons: the lack of recognition of overseas based qualifications, employer reluctance to hire immigrants who do not yet have host country work experience, the lower levels of immigrant English language skills, and the exclusionary social attitudes and fears about immigrants that result in discrimination and prejudices within the hiring process. Most of this research has been survey based and conducted from either an immigrant capability or policy focus. Although employers play a central role in the social incorporation of immigrant labour, little is known of employer's evaluations of immigrant skills. In light of this gap in the scholarship, this paper aims to make a contribution through a regionally specific case study of employers, to examine how occupationally specific candidate criteria influences the employer's evaluation at the pre-entry phase. The paper finds some, but not complete, resonance with existing literature and but also finds that employers are more inclined to favourably evaluate immigrant computing professionals than accounting professionals.

The Challenge from Below and the Transformation of Industrial Relations in Vietnam

Discussant: Associate Professor Nick Wailes, The University of Sydney

Vietnam has been in transition from a socialist command economy to a market economy for the last 20 years. Despite these political economic changes, the industrial relations system remained largely intact until a recent explosion of informal worker activism. Rank-and-file workers who have been poorly represented by the official unions have been able to organise effective collective actions to bargain with the employers for higher wages and better working conditions. This challenge from below has forced provincial governments to adjust their IR approach and at the same time to push for institutional reform at the national level. Informal worker activism and provincial appeal for reform have become the most important stimulus for the transformation of the national IR system. The paper, therefore, proposes an integrated approach which builds on the strategic choice framework while drawing threads from economic theories on institutional change and regionalism to studying the process of IR transformation in Vietnam.

Will we ever learn from history? The impact of economic orthodoxy on the Great Depression in Australia; and how economic orthodoxy led to the Global Financial Crisis of 2007

The central question underpinning this research is will WE EVER LEARN FROM HISTORY?? The research examines the Great Depression of the 1930s in Australia, and, using insights gain to assess the impact of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) to protect investors from the pitfalls of unregulated shadow banking.? Autobiographical and biographical research has been undertaken in the archives of the Bank of England, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the National Archives.? The reports of Royal Commissions, Boards of Enquiry and Cabinet documents have been examined as well as texts by historians and economists, including, J.M.Keynes, J.K.Galbraith, C.B.Schevdin, D.Copland, L.Giblin,? S.Boehm, E.Shann, R.Sayers, S.Macintyre, A.Millmow, R.McKibbin, G.Patmore, N.Ferguson, R.Mckibbin,? R.Garnaut, and J.Stiglitz.? Preliminary findings show that covert pressure from the Bank of England, in particular the influence of Sir Otto Niemeyer, were backed by leading Australian business men, and by Sir Robert Gibson, the Chairman of the Board of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.? The Global Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008 led to the fear of another world depression, and to instability in Europe and America (Anglosphere), as well as Australia.? E Commerce and internet communication mean that world financial trends are influenced twenty four hours a day, seven days a week which has? led to a reappraisal of modern capitalism by writers such as Paul Krugman,? Peter Temin, and David Blanchflower. There? are now many critics of the Internaional Monetary Fund, the World Bank and leading Wall Street financial institutions. It is not the purpose of the research suggest how financial markets and institutions should be regulated, but to present evidence showing that regulation is necessary.? The social cost of economic failure is too great as the least privileged members of society never benefit from an economy dominated by 'clever money'

'My Brilliant Career': Boundaryless Organisations and Unstable Careers.

The Great Credit Crash? Financial Journalism and the Return of the Past, 2007-2009

Amin Samman is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham. He holds a BSc in Economics from University College London and an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics. He is currently co-editor for the Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies.

His dissertation, '(Re-) imagining the crises of global capital', uses the financial crisis of 2007-2009 to explore the relationship between narrative and history in the global political economy. His general research interests include: Constructivist and Cultural Political Economy approaches; Ideology and Discourse Analysis; Philosophies of History; and Historiography.

RSVP to anna.white@sydney.edu.au or call 9036 7198 by Wednesday 18th August

The Micro-Politics of Climate Change: Role Identity and Institutional Entrepreneurship Amongst Green Corporate Change Agents.

Connectivity and Team Performance: Preliminary Findings from a Global Study of Distributed Teams

Differences, Dissimilarity, & Diversity: Applying a Multilevel Lens to Organizational Research

Dr. Aparna Joshi is an Associate Professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the U.S.A. Her work focuses on multilevel issues in workplace diversity, gender issues in science an engineering, collaboration in global and distributed teams, generational issues in the workplace, and international and cross-cultural management. Her work in the area of gender dynamics in engineering work groups was recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant (in the U.S.). Her research appears in top-tier journals such as Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Organization Science. Aparna's work has received the Academy of Management's Saroj Parasuraman Award in 2010, the Dorothy Harlow Distinguished Paper Award in 2006 and 2008, the Ulrich-Lake Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Human Resource Management Journal, and the Academy of Management's Best Dissertation Award (Gender and Diversity in Organizations division) and has also been featured in the Cincinnati Enquirer, USA Today, and the Times of India. She currently serves as the Co-Editor for the annual review series Research in Personnel and Human Resource Management and is on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

RSVP to anna.white@sydney.edu.au or call 9036 7198 by Thursday 30th September

Braverman, Mills, and me: Socially constructing an intellectual and experiential journey across three decades, via privatisation and internationalisation in 'a corporate life' informing reflections and interpretations in a business-facing Academy

Leadership - fantasy or reality?

Institutional changes in management consulting industry: commodification, work intensification and innovation

The Emotional Business of Greening: Enacting Emotion in Business Responses to Climate Change

Transnational Labor Alliances: Why Some Succeed

An Ethic of Empathy: Financial service provision in remote indigenous communities

Institutional dynamics and organizational change

Global production networks, labour and small firms

Australia's Population Strategy: An Opportunity Missed

Practices in organizations

Financial markets, labour markets and the great financial crisis

Annual Leave: A Holiday from Work or a Working Holiday?

Changed governance of public sector organisations - challenged conditions for intra-professional relations

Weathering the storm? Multinational companies and human resource management through the global financial crisis

'The Thought of Work': a presentation by Professor John Budd, University of Minnesota on his recent book

Professor John Budd, University of Minnesota, will visit the WWRG in February 2012 and present a seminar on his very recent book: 'The Thought of Work' an erudite and engaging interdisciplinary synthesis of ten meanings of work that shows the centrality of work in our lives, identity politics, and society.

John W. Budd is the Industrial Relations Land Grant Chair and Director of the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of 'Employment with a Human Face: Balancing Efficiency, Equity, and Voice', and 'Labor Relations: Striking a Balance', and coauthor of 'Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives: Bringing Workplace Law and Public Policy into Focus'.

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Gender and ethnicity in the legal profession in England and Wales: Career trajectories and inequality through the lens of structure and agency theory

Navigating Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships: Critical Emotional Incidents and Practices of Engagement

Leadership as practise: Implications for leadership development

A critical review of qualitative research methods in top management journals

Seeking strategic coherence - legitimacy and identity in strategy work

Writing a "geo-history" of the Pilbara's iron ore industry

Australia at work: an update

Challenges to Teaching Evidence-Based Management: Why Students Might Not Believe Some of Our Research Findings

Authors

Dan V. Caprar, Australian School of Business Sara L. Rynes, University of Iowa Boram Do, Boston College Jean Bartunek, Boston College

Abstract

Teaching from an evidence-based perspective requires, first and foremost, that we focus on teaching principles where the science is clear (Rousseau & McCarthy, 2007). Unfortunately, however, research shows that people often do not believe even well-documented research findings, both in management and in many other scientific areas.

Although there are many specific reasons that people might not believe particular research results, there is at least one general principle that might explain resistance to a number of scientific findings: that certain findings may threaten people's emotional well-being and evoke a need for self-protection. This possibility is investigated in a study examining students' reactions to an essay arguing that employers should hire for intelligence because it is the best predictor of job performance. Consistent with predictions from self-enhancement and self-protection theories, students in general preferred essays arguing that employers should hire for emotional intelligence and fit over the essay promoting hiring for intelligence. In addition, students with lower grade point averages (GPA, a partial but highly salient indicator of intelligence) showed lower agreement with the essay than did those with higher GPAs. Finally, the relationship between GPA and agreement with the essay was mediated by test-taking anxiety, as well as affected by the order in which the intelligence essay was presented. Implications for future research and for teaching potentially threatening research findings are discussed.

Bio

Dan V. Caprar is a Lecturer at the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales. He received his MBA and a PhD from the University of Iowa in the United States, and Australia is the fourth country he has lived and worked in, after Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Dan's research focus is on the interaction between business and its socio-cultural context, with particular interest in the impact of foreign business on local cultures. Dan's most recent work was published in the Journal of International Business Studies, in a special issue showcasing the use of qualitative methods in international business. He recently joined the Editorial Board for the Journal of International Business Studies, and will soon start as the Regional Associate Editor for the International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management. He is also a member of the Research Committee for the Academy of Management's International Management Division.

Dan teaches Cross-Cultural Management in the Master of Commerce program at UNSW, and also a Leadership course in the AGSM MBA program in Hong Kong.

A particular area of interest for Dan is what makes people believe (or not believe) research findings, with the objective of bridging the gap between academics and practitioners. The seminar presentation is based on a work-in-progress paper related to this interest.

The Influence of Governance on Negotiation Strategies in Buyer-Supplier Disputes

'It all makes sense': the role of the organisation in becoming a professional elite

Human, Social or Cultural Capital: What Works Best in the Graduate Labour Market?

Risk, Representation and an 'old pay' approach: Fairness and Job Evaluation Systems in Australia

Achieving mutual gains: The role of interest based bargaining processes

Strategizing as organizational identity work - evidence from a university's change process

Imagining Imaginaries

China's Migrant Workers: Underclass or Proletariat?

Not happy Jan: Investigating performance pay complaints in EU countries

The career narratives of "castaways": The presentation of career in Desert Island Discs

The dynamics of failed legitimation in MNCs

Self-management of the green enthusiast in a European utility company