divergent reactions to convergent strategies investor beliefs and analyst reactions during technological change an important outcome of technological change is industry convergence as a new technology spurs competition between established firms from different industries we study the reactions of securities analysts as important sources of institutional pressures for firms to the similar product market strategies undertaken by firms from different prior industries responding to industry convergence our empirical setting is the convergence between the wireline telecommunications and cable television industries in the period following the advent of voice over internet protocol technology controlling for firm financial performance and capabilities we find that analysts were consistently more positive toward the cable firms than toward the wireline telecom firms our findings further show that this divergence in reactions arises from differences in existing investor expectations and preferences concerning how firms create value stocks owned by investors with a greater preference for growth receive more positive reactions than those owned by investors with a greater preference for margins however this divergence in reactions shrinks over time as convergence unfolds and as investors shift their shareholdings in response to misalignment between their preferences and firms strategic changes reactions from analysts reflecting inertial expectations of investors may persist for a time despite changes to firms strategies thus creating challenges for some firms in responding to technological change and industry convergence while legitimating and enabling similar responses from their competitors

interbank networks in prewar japan structure and implications forthcoming as interbank networks in prewar japan structure and implications with michiru sawada industrial and corporate change 2011

interorganizational determinants of promotion client leadership and the attainment of women attorneys explanations of gender inequality typically emphasize individual characteristics the structure of internal labor markets or pressures from the institutional environment extending the structuralist and institutional perspectives this article argues that the demographic composition of an organization s exchange partners can influence the demographic composition of the focal organization when the focal organization is dependent upon its partners specifically law firms with women led corporate clients increase the number of partners who are women attorneys data on elite law firms and their publicly traded clients support a bargaining power hypothesis whereby law firms promote women attorneys when their corporate clients have women in three key leadership positions general legal counsel chief executive officer and board director these effects are stronger when the law firm has few clients reinforcing the hypothesis that interorganizational influence is more vital when a focal organization is depe

the rise and fall of social problems a public arenas model this paper develops a model of the process through which social problems rise and fall treating public attention as a scarce resource the model emphasizes competition and selection in the media and other arenas of public discourse linkages among public arenas produce feedback that drives the growth of social problems growth is constrained by the finite carrying capacities of public arenas by competition and by the need for sustained drama the tension between the constraints and forces for growth produces successive waves of problem definitions as problems and those who promote them compete to enter and to remain on the public agenda suggestions for empirical tests of the model are specified

do voters vote ideologically abstract in this paper we address the following question to what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically i e they always vote for the candidate who is ideologically closest to them testable or falsifiable we show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically is irrefutable regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election on the other hand using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically is potentially falsifiable and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested

the two faces of governance responses to legal uncertainty in u s firms 1955 to 1985 recent neoinstitutional analyses have associated the rapid diffusion of due process governance mechanisms in the american workplace with government pressure for equal employment opportunity and affirmative action we carry the argument forward in three ways first we focus on grievance procedures and employment at will clauses to show that the legalization process produces both rights enhancing and rights negating rules second we focus on the private for profit economic sector to test more effectively the efficiency and labor control theories that have fared poorly in previous neoinstitutional studies third we explore the interactions among personnel professionals lawyers and the state in the adoption of legalistic governance mechanisms results sustain the neoinstitutional argument but also offer new support for efficiency and labor control hypotheses

bicameralism and its consequences for the internal organization of legislatures theories of organization of legislatures have mainly focused on the u s congress explaining why committee systems emerge there but not explaining variance in organization across legislatures of different countries to analyze the effects of different constitutional features on the internal organization of legislatures we adopt a vote buying model and consider the incentives to delegate decision rights in a game among legislative chambers we show how presidential veto power and bicameral separation can encourage a legislative chamber to create internal veto players or supermajority rules while a unicameral structure can encourage legislators to delegate power to a leader

corporate voluntary carbon information disclosure evidence from china s listed companies this article seeks to answer two questions i what factors drive firms to decide whether or not to disclose the information related to their greenhouse gas emissions also called carbon information ii what forces lead firms to disclose more carbon information using data hand collected from the annual corporate social responsibility reports of china s listed companies from 2008 to 2012 we find the following i firms that operate in sectors of high emission industries are more likely to make carbon information disclosure cid hereafter ii the more companies within one industry that make cid the more likely it is that a company in that industry will make cid iii companies having a higher sales rank within an industry are more likely to make cid

institutional sources of boundary spanning structures the establishment of investor relations departments in the fortune 500 industrials the authors analyze the coercive and mimetic conditions leading to the establishment of investor relations departments among fortune 500 industrial firms during the 1984 1994 period the results show that antimanagement resolutions brought to a vote by social movement activists significantly contributed to the establishment of investor relations departments intense scrutiny by financial analysts also impelled firms to create such departments whereas social movement activists framed shareholder rights as a problem and compelled organizations to uphold them professional analysts subtly coerced organizations to signal their commitment to investor rights by creating boundary spanning structures that solution was transmitted through board interlocks to other organizations

primaries and the new hampshire effect candidates for u s presidential elections are determined through sequential elections in single states the primaries we develop a model in which candidates can influence their winning probability in electoral districts by spending money on campaigning the equilibrium replicates several stylized facts very well campaigning is very intensive in the first district the outcome of the first election then creates an asymmetry in the candidates incentives to campaign in the next district which endogenously increases the equilibrium probability that the first winner wins in further districts on the normative side our model oers a possible explanation for the sequential organization it leads in expectation to a lower level of advertising expenditures than simultaneous elections moreover if one of the candidates is the more eective campaigner sequential elections also perform better with regard to the selection of the best candidate

momentum and social learning in presidential primaries this paper investigates social learning in sequential voting systems in the econometric model candidates experience momentum effects when their performance in early states exceeds expectations the empirical application uses daily polling data from the 2004 presidential primary we find that kerry benefited from surprising wins in early states and took votes away from dean owing to these momentum effects early voters had up to five times the influence of late voters in the selection of candidates and this helps to explain the distribution of advertising expenditures finally we use the estimated model to conduct two counterfactual experiments

here a chief there a chief the rise of the cfo in the american firm this article examines the rise of the chief financial officer cfo position among american firms during the period 1963 2000 building on event history models of cfo adoptions among a sample of some 400 large corporations this analysis documents two stages in the diffusion of the cfo model that occurred prior to its ultimate embodiment of the shareholder value ideal the cfo function originated as part of the conglomerate ideal to handle the funding of diversifying acquisitions in response to an ambiguous regulatory change in accounting rules in 1979 which threatened to reduce reported earnings further at a time when corporate earnings already were under great strain corporate leaders and finance professionals reconstructed the cfo as a solution the cfo s popularity quickly surged as a result and the role kept expanding in the following years to focus on managing shareholders and stock prices

social imaginary and dilemmas of policy practice the food safety arena in japan through the string of food safety scares that has rocked japanese society since the early 2000s conflicts between the traditional notion of socially acceptable risk and the idea of a science based risk analysis approach have surfaced in the food safety arena elites including government officials and those members of scientific communities who support the science based risk analysis approach have become responsible for communicating seemingly contradictory ideas such as food in japan is safe and there is no such thing as zero risk with food this communication logjam has resulted in confusion and created public distrust of both government and scientific experts against this backdrop this paper aims to examine the struggles and challenges faced by government officials in explaining and practicing policies that pertain to highly controversial food safety issues the primary data used for illuminating the discourses is the official minutes of governmental committees including the agriculture forestry and fisheries committee and the consumer commission

the role of financial analysts in the strategy formation process of business firms increasingly financial analysts are influencing the strategy formation process of corporations but so far little attention has been paid to the complex processes of interaction and the corresponding strategic outcomes this article discusses these influences through different theoretical lenses strategic management finance and accounting theory and economic sociology institutional and systems theory based on case study evidence from three companies we describe how the interactions between financial analysts and business firms take place and formulate several propositions on the relationship between financial analysts and business firms as well as on its influence on the strategic outcome of business firms the results suggest that the influence of financial analysts is indeed significant but depends on a number of contextual factors such as the financial situation of the company or the need for capital practicing managers can learn how to handle a turbulent environment such as the financial analyst community and how they can change their planning processes to absorb as much information as possible

explicating political hazards and safeguards a transaction cost politics approach we apply the logical of comparative institutional analysis to the question of the governance of the relationship between private investors and the government we consider two strategies that investors may follow lobbying for the creation of a specialized political governance structure or the reliance on more general political mechanisms to influence policy in that sector on an ongoing basis we identify political hazards as crucial determinant of the choice of political governance and the transactional attributes that give rise to such hazards finally we highlight shift parameters in a nation s institutional environment that influence the choice between specialized and generalized political governance mechanisms

divided majority and information aggregation theory and experiment this paper studies theoretically and experimentally the properties of plurality and approval voting when a majority gets divided by information imperfections the majority faces two challenges aggregating information to select the best majority candidate and coordinating to defeat the minority candidate under plurality the majority cannot achieve both goals at once under approval voting it can welfare is strictly higher because some voters approve of both majority alternatives in the laboratory we find i strong evidence of strategic voting and ii superiority of approval voting over plurality finally subject behavior suggests the need to study equilibria in asymmetric strategies

drift and adjustment in organizational rule compliance explaining the regulatory pendulum in financial markets this article integrates research on rule development compliance and organizational change to model rule development and compliance in organizations using causal loop modeling from system dynamics to articulate explicitly a few key underlying processes we focus on financial markets as a case area suggesting that recurring regulatory problems in financial markets in the united states over the past 60 years although differing in specifics are structurally similar at the heart of the model is the tension between production goals that focus on short term certain salient benefits and required adherence to production constraining rules that attempt to mitigate long term uncertain nonsalient risks it describes systemically how organizations attend to rules depending on the nature of the benefits of production compared with those of rule compliance the model captures the operative mechanisms responsible for the development of pressures for production and for rule compliance in organizations providing a structural explanation both for problem prone organizations characterized by erosion of standards and increased violations and for organizations following rules more reliably drawing on studies of institutional work we conclude by suggesting research on how agency through strategic and tactical choice potentially modifies structure in rule compliance

managerial cognition and the mimetic adoption of market positions what you see is what you do managers planning to abandon a market position need to find a promising alternative and face a choice of inventing a new market position or entering an existing one the great uncertainty on the consequences of different actions leads them to rely on other organizations for information on how to compete making adoption of existing market positions likely their wish to avoid direct rivalry and maximize growth leads them to seek out information on new market positions with few incumbents as a result recently innovated market positions are mimetically adopted by organizations that can easily observe previous adoptions and see them as relevant to their market situations increasing the market differentiation this theory is tested and supported by analysis of the spread of new radio formats in the united states 1998 john wiley sons ltd

the binary policy model abstract we introduce a model of electoral competition with office motivated candidates who are exogenously committed to particular positions on some issues while they choose positions for the remaining issues a position is majority efficient if a candidate cannot make a majority of the electorate better off given his fixed positions we characterize existence conditions for majority efficient positions the candidates fixed positions in our framework imply that only some voters are swing voters and we analyze how the distribution of swing voters determines whether candidates choose majority efficient positions we also analyze plurality and runoff elections with multiple candidates in our framework

interest rate restrictions and deposit opportunities for small savers in developing countries an analytical view this article argues that by forcing financial intermediaries fi to substitute implicit interest for monetary interest payments deposit rate ceilings may increase the cost of savings mobilisation especially from non wealthy households this mechanism may partially explain the lack of small savers deposit opportunities in developing countries a simple model is used to elucidate this mechanism as well as the effects of financial technology intensity of competition and external funding on an fi s savings mobilisation operations

balanced budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition this paper models balanced budget redistribution between socio economic groups as the outcome of electoral competition between two political parties equilibrium is unique in the present model and a sufficient condition for existence is given requiring that there be enough stochastic heterogeneity with respect to party preferences in the electorate the validity of hotelling s principle of minimum differentiation and of director s law are examined under alternative hypotheses concerning administrative costs of redistributions and voter s possibilities both of abstaining from voting and of becoming campaign activists for one of the parties the policy strategy of expected plurality maximization is contrasted with the strategy of maximizing the probability of gaining a plurality incomes are fixed and known so lump sum taxation is feasible however constraints on tax transfer differentiation between individuals are permitted in the analysis

no news is bad news sensegiving activities media attention and venture capital funding of new technology organizations a significant body of research has examined how new organizations gain legitimacy and how gaining it affects their subsequent access to resources less attention has been given to the problem of how new organizations attract collective attention although related to legitimation the problem of attracting attention is distinct as attention and evaluation are distinct cognitive processes in this study we examine the allocation of collective attention to new organizations in a system of relationships within which new organizations seek to attract attention through their sensegiving activities the information properties of their sensegiving activities affect the level of attention they receive from different types of media and media attention in turn increases their perceived value potential in the eyes of venture capital investors vcs we examine these relationships in a sample of 398 information technology start ups that have obtained different levels of venture capital funding our results show that new organizations that engage in more intense and diverse sensegiving activities attract higher levels of industry media attention and that these effects are enhanced by the human capital of their founders and leaders diverse sensegiving activities are also associated with higher levels of attention from the general media but only the attention of specialized industry media is positively associated with the level of vc funding obtained these findings extend current research on information intermediation and institutional legitimation by demonstrating that media attention early in the life of new organizations affects how they are valued by a well informed expert audience such as vcs they also contribute to entrepreneurship research on the effects of new organizations strategies on their ability to secure resources and to research on vc funding decisions

candidate competition and voter learning in the 2000 2012 us presidential primaries when candidates in primary elections are ideologically differentiated e g conservatives and moderates in the republican party then candidates with similar positions affect each others vote shares more strongly than candidates with different ideological positions we measure this effect in us presidential primaries and show that it is of first order importance we also show that voters beliefs about the candidates harden over the course of the primary as manifested in the variability of candidate vote shares we discuss models of sequential voting that cannot yield that pattern of results and propose an explanation based on a model with horizontally and vertically differentiated candidates and incompletely informed voters consistent with the predictions of this model we also show that in more conservative states low quality conservative candidates do better relative to high quality conservatives and vice versa

policy as myth and ceremony the global spread of stock exchanges 1980 2005 we examine the antecedents and consequences in developing countries of creating a national stock exchange a core technology of financial globalization we study local conditions and global institutional pressures in the rapid spread of exchanges since the 1980s and examine how conditions at the point of adoption affected exchanges subsequent vibrancy little prior research connects the process of diffusion with the operational performance of adopted policies we find that international coercion was associated with more ceremonial adoption but that contrary to expectations common in institutional research contagion processes via peer groups and normative emulation of prestigious actors enhanced vibrancy economic globalization provides a generative context in which to consider the policy implications of organizational theory and research globalization creates both opportunities and challenges for countries on the periphery of the world economy the central question for policy makers is what structures and institutions they should adopt to promote economic and social vibrancy notably waves of alternative theories and associated packages of reforms have swept over the globe in recent decades observing this process of global diffusion and often abandonment of policies and practices meyer boli thomas and raminrez 1997 extended analyses of myth and ceremony at the organization level to the nation state in their world society approach a core idea in this work is that coercion and mimicry of peers or competitors typically based in a substrate of network ties often

organizational susceptibility to institutional complexity critical events driving the adoption and implementation of the ethics and compliance officer position the institutional environment is complex this complexity is characterized by forces that ebb and flow in wavelike patterns as societal expectations evolve with attention coalescing around specific events and then dissipating some of these critical events are broad and affect many firms whereas others are narrow and affect individual firms in either case when they occur these events elevate organizational susceptibility to societal demands but encourage different kinds of behavior in response this study seeks to model this complexity in an area of growing interest for organization scholars business ethics in particular i examine how firms respond to shifting societal pressures for greater ethical behavior by adopting and implementing the ethics and compliance officer position from 1990 to 2008 results demonstrate that although firms decide when to adopt in response to broad fieldwide critical events it is narrower firm specific critical events that determine resource commitments in implementation

learning and coordination in the presidential primary system in elections with three or more candidates coordination among like minded voters is an important problem we analyze the trade off between coordination and learning about candidate quality under different temporal election systems in the context of the u s presidential primary system in our model candidates with different policy positions and qualities compete for the nomination and voters are uncertain about the candidates valence this setup generates two effects vote splitting i e several candidates in the same policy position compete for the same voter pool and voter learning as the results in earlier elections help voters to update their beliefs on candidate quality sequential voting minimizes vote splitting in late districts but voters may coordinate on a low quality candidate using the parameter estimates obtained from all the democratic and republican presidential primaries during 2000 2012 we conduct policy experiments such as replacing the current system with a simultaneous system adopting the reform proposal of the national association of secretaries of state or imposing party rules that lead to candidate withdrawal when pre specified conditions are met

how golden parachutes unfolded diffusion and variation of a controversial practice we contribute to a growing focus on variation in diffusion processes by examining the ways in which contested practices are modified as they spread among adopters expanding on prior diffusion accounts we argue that the extensiveness and similarity of a practice will vary in response to both population and organization level mechanisms to examine these issues we study variation in golden parachute contracts a controversial corporate governance practice that emerged and spread widely during the hostile takeover wave of the 1980s using a concept network approach to analyze the composition of parachute plans we find evidence of mechanisms that both increase and decrease extensiveness and variation of golden parachutes our findings hold implications for accounts of practice diffusion over contested terrain by revealing substantial variation in the course of diffusion

sequential or simultaneous elections a welfare analysis sequential or simultaneous this paper addresses a key question on the design of electoral systems should all voters vote on the same day or should elections be staggered with late voters observing early returns before making their decisions using a model of voting and social learning we illustrate that sequential elections place too much weight on the preferences and information of early states but also provide late voters with valuable information under simultaneous elections voters equally weigh the available information but place too much weight on their priors providing an inappropriate advantage to front runners given these trade offs simultaneous elections are welfare preferred if the front runner initially has a small advantage but sequential elections are welfare preferred if the front runner initially has a large advantage we then quantitatively evaluate this trade off using data based on the 2004 presidential primary the results suggest that simultaneous systems outperform sequential systems although the difference in welfare is relatively small

the social construction of market value institutionalization and learning perspectives on stock market reactions this study advances a social constructionist view of financial market behavior the paper suggests that the market s reaction to particular corporate practices such as stock repurchase plans are not as financial economists contend simply a function of the inherent efficiency of such practices rather stock market reactions are also influenced by the prevailing institutional logic and the degree of institutionalization of the practice the theory first predicts that the emergence of the agency perspective on corporate governance in the mid 1980s represented a powerful new institutional logic that would lead the market to reverse its prior aggregate reaction to stock repurchase plans in the united states the paper then considers the potential for institutional decoupling of repurchase plans and develops competing hypotheses about how the market value of these policies might have changed as more firms formally adopted but did not implement the plans over time in contrast to a financial economic pers

financial market reactions following technological discontinuities a non event study in two industries a large body of literature has explored the challenges of technological change for established firms much of this work has focused on factors internal to firms such as inertial routines or managers cognitive limitations that constrain incumbents development of new capabilities and response to new technologies but institutional pressures arising from financial markets and the securities analysts who mediate such markets likely also play a role in whether and how incumbent firms respond to technological change we know little about how financial markets and securities analysts react as an incumbent firm is faced with a radical technological discontinuity that threatens to substitute for the existing technology understanding such reactions is critical as they further influence whether and how incumbents respond to technological discontinuities in this article i explore securities analysts reactions to incumbent firms faced with technological discontinuities in two industries digital technology in photography and voice over internet protocol voip technology in wireline telecommunications i find that these discontinuities go largely unmentioned in analysts reports and appear to have little influence on analysts recommendations or stock prices even for several years the findings suggest further that analysts and investors continue to reward incumbents for cash flows arising from focusing on the existing business and technology despite the increasing certainty of technological obsolescence copyright 2008 oxford university press

sequential voting with abstention abstract dekel and piccione 2000 sequential voting procedures in symmetric binary elections j polit economy 108 34 55 have proven that information cascades do not necessarily affect the properties of information aggregation in sequential elections under standard conditions any symmetric equilibrium of a simultaneous voting mechanism is also an equilibrium of the correspondent sequential mechanism we show that when voters can abstain these results are sensitive to the introduction of an arbitrarily small cost of voting the set of equilibria in the two mechanisms are generally disjoint and the informative properties of the equilibrium sets can be ranked if an appropriate q rule is chosen when the cost of voting is small the unique symmetric equilibrium of the simultaneous voting mechanism dominates all equilibria of the sequential mechanism

precautionary and speculative aspects of the behaviour of banks in the united kingdom under competition and credit control 1972 1980 when deciding upon the balance of its portfolio an economic agent must take into account many different types of risk the most obvious are those about future asset prices and transaction flows which respectively lend the problem its speculative and precautionary aspects this paper develops a model of uk bank behaviour under the competition and credit control ccc conventions which allows for both types of risk and yet is sufficiently tractable to be fitted empirically following previous uk studies we suppose that banks are risk averse maximising expected utility over a discrete decision period and assume that the distribution of asset returns is independent of that of cash and reserve losses in addition we assume that if the precautionary balances chosen by the bank initially are insufficient to cope with outflows of funds during the decision period without infringing the ccc conventions then the bank will face transactions or penalty costs this assumption distinguishes our model from those used in previous uk studies and gives it its precautionary aspects the basic model is set out in section i of the paper it is noted that reserve assets cash and short term money market items have similar speculative risk characteristics so that the banks problem can be separated into precautionary and speculative sub problems the first involving holdings of cash and reserve assets the second involving the remaining portfolio items the resulting relationships are discussed in section ii these may be estimated using simultaneous non linear equation methods the results are discussed in section iii

efficiency equity and timing of voting mechanisms we compare the behavior of voters under simultaneous and sequential voting rules when voting is costly and information is incomplete in many political institutions ranging from small committees to mass elections voting is sequential which allows some voters to know the choices of earlier voters for a stylized model we generate a variety of predictions about the relative efficiency and participation equity of these two systems which we test using controlled laboratory experiments most of the qualitative predictions are supported by the data but there are significant departures from the predicted equilibrium strategies in both the sequential and the simultaneous voting games we find a tradeoff between information aggregation efficiency and equity in sequential voting a sequential voting rule aggregates information better than simultaneous voting and is more efficient in some information environments but sequential voting is inequitable because early voters bear more participation costs

predation reputation and entry deterrence abstract economists often argue that predatory practices are irrational since there exist cheaper or more certain means to gain or maintain a monopoly our gametheoretic equilibrium analysis suggests that if a firm is threatened by several potential entrants then predation may be rational against early entrants even if it is costly when viewed in isolation because it yields a reputation which deters other entrants asymmetric information plays a crucial role in our analysis since it provides the rationale for entrants to base their expectations of the firm s future behavior on its past actions the analysis also suggests methods to treat general reputational phenomena

diffusion development and democracy 1800 1999 while a trend of growth in democratization over the past two centuries has been generally observed it is the remarkable growth in the democratization of the world over the past 30 years that has truly captured the imagination of social scientists policymakers and the general public alike two major sets of factors have dominated studies attempting to predict democratization one set characterizes endogenous or internal features of countries and may be referred to as socioeconomic development the other set less often tested characterizes exogenous variables that influence democratization via forces at work globally and within the region in which a country resides this set may be referred to as diffusion processes this study provides the first systematic comparison of these two sets of variables when assessed alone development indicators are robust predictors of democracy but their predictive power fades with the inclusion of diffusion variables in particular diffusion predictors of spatial pr

normative contestation in transitions in the making animal welfare concerns and system innovation in pig husbandry previous studies of system innovations mainly focused on historical cases that were driven by commercial motivations of pioneers and entrepreneurs this article investigates a system innovation in the making that is driven by normative concerns such as sustainability or animal welfare initially formulated by outsiders like special interest groups our central research question is how when and why is normative contestation of existing regimes effective in influencing the orientation of transitions in the making the conceptual framework enriches innovation studies and the multi level perspective with insights from social movement theory smt and political science smt is used to analyze the build up of normative pressure through framing resource mobilization and political opportunity structures from political science we use the notion of multiple streams in our analysis a problem regulatory market and technology stream the research design consists of a comparative case study of pig husbandry systems one case analyses the sub sector of pregnant sows where normative pressures after several decades led to the changes advocated by the contestants the second case concerns the sub sector of pig fattening where normative pressure was less successful the difference is partly explained by the normative pressure for pregnant sows being larger than for fattening pigs the other part of the explanation is that in the first case normative pressure aligned better with the three other streams regulatory market and technology to lead to the changes desired by the contestants 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

reputation and decision making under ambiguity a study of u s venture capital firms investments in the emerging clean energy sector this study examines the role of reputation on decision making under ambiguity drawing on social cognition and behavioral theories we propose that a firm s reputation exerts dual pressures on its decision making under ambiguity on the one hand a firm s reputation increases its aspirations for future performance and promotes its engagement in risky strategies to achieve them on the other hand preserving the already established reputation requires a firm to deliver consistent performance over time which promotes greater use of risk reduction strategies our analyses of the u s venture capital firms investments in the clean energy sector from 1990 to 2008 demonstrate that while reputable firms are more likely to invest in the emerging sector they also employ risk reduction strategies more extensively the sector s legitimation further influences these firms investment decisions both directly and through its interaction with firm reputation

bandwagons and momentum in sequential voting in this paper i show that an equilibrium exists to the sequential voting game in which a bandwagon begins with probability 1 these bandwagons are driven by a combination of beliefs and the desire of voters to vote for the winning candidate significantly in this equilibrium the pivot probability for each voter is non zero even in an infinite population consequently the bandwagons do not always start after one or at most two favourable decisions as do economic cascades and varying levels of informative voting are observed consistent with observations from sequential voting in u s presidential primaries further voters are exposed to counterintuitive incentives referred to as buyers remorse that have been attributed to real primary voters i also derive equilibrium behaviour in this environment when voting is simultaneous and compare the quality of information aggregation within each mechanism i relate the conclusions to u s presidential primaries and find they are consistent with a common conclusion about the front loading of the primary process that in tight elections with no front runner simultaneous voting is preferred whereas in lopsided elections sequential voting is preferred the superior performance of sequential voting in lopsided races is precisely because bandwagons occur copyright 2007 wiley blackwell

the simple economics of bank regulation this paper discusses the effects of central bank regulation of the banking system carried out to control the level of bank lending prudential regulation designed to reduce the frequency of bank failure a problem in the economics of uncertainty and information is not considered the main point of this paper is that bank regulation in so far as it is effective and goes beyond the general effects of government intervention in credit markets can be seen as a tax on transactions intermediated through banks the variations in the incidence and beneficiaries of the tax provide a convenient framework for the different regulatory schemes the paper focuses on the effect of regulation on an individual bank the theory presented here is an elementary comparative static one based on the equality of marginal cost and marginal revenue it does not consider the more complicated issues of dynamic control however it is unlikely that any policy that has unsatisfactory comparative static properties will be successful the main ideas of this approach are due to tobin 1963 and johnson 1967 197 1 they have been further developed in work by spencer and mowl 1978 and artis and miller 1978 however the application of the analysis to the effects of different types of regulation is i believe new a general equilibrium model in the same spirit as the partial equilibrium model used here is given by fama 1980 the following section presents a simple model of the banking system section ii discusses the effect of government intervention and regulation and section iii looks at the way in which government regulation induces disintermediation section iv applies the previous results to consider various actual or proposed schemes in practice the final section draws conclusions

effects of social capital and power on surviving transformational change the case of initial public offerings we examined how social capital and the power of venture capitalists and founderceos affect ipo firm survival using data from 218 u s initial public offerings conducted in 1992 we found that average management team tenure and an ipo deal s network embeddedness decreased the likelihood of failure during a firm s first five years as a public entity founder ceo presence at the time of an ipo interacted with ceo ownership to decrease the likelihood of failure and ceo ownership and venture capitalist ownership concentration also decreased that likelihood evolutionary perspectives on organizations are often accompanied by the presumption that organizations face an increased risk of failure early in their lives owing to liabilities of newness aldrich 1999 stinchcombe 1965 as organizational goals and patterns of activity become routinized over time increased reliability in performance and accountability for actions taken enhance a firm s survival chances hannan freeman 1984 this process however also generates strong inertial pressures that not only discourage organizational change but also because of the potential for disruption to existing internal and external routines make change hazardous research findings suggest that even in older better established firms significant transformational events during their life cycles can effectively reset the clock and reintroduce risks associated with the liability of newness as firms struggle to adapt strategies internal operational and administrative processes and or external ties and relationships amburgey kelly barnett 1993 thus transformational change in organizational operations decreases efficiency and increases failure rates at least in the short term as resources and attention are diverted from normal routinized operating functions to processes involving adaptation and reorientation haveman 1992

corporate bank borrowing in the uk 1965 1981 the instability of demand for money equations in both the united states and the united kingdom in the 1970s has reinforced the view that money holdings may usefully be viewed as buffer stocks and that observed movements in broad monetary aggregates may reflect supply side shocks predominantly caused by changes in bank lending to the private sector judd and scadding 1981 goodhart 1982 laidler 1983 this paper presents some new econometric results for uk bank lending to industrial and commercial companies iccs the results are consistent with the view that the quantity of bank borrowing is largely demand determined and as such they provide additional support for the view of a credit driven money stock coghlan 1981 moore 1979 1983 the demand for bank credit by iccs appears highly interest inelastic at least within the single equation framework of this paper finally the policy implications of the study suggest that contrary to some previous work during the period considered 1965 to mid 1981 the bank of england was largely unsuccessful in its attempts to control bank lending by discriminatory regulation gowland 1978 artis and lewis 1981

morals or economics institutional investor preferences for corporate social responsibility this article presents the results of a study that analysed whether social responsibility had any bearing on the decision making of institutional investors being that institutional investors prefer socially aligned organizations this study explored to what extent the corporate actions and or social environmental investments influenced their decisions our results suggest that there are specific variables that affect the perceived value of the organization leading to decisions to not only invest but whether to hold or sell the shares and therefore having a consequential impact on the capital market s valuation

globalization pressures and the state the worldwide spread of central bank independence the authors examine the impact of globalization on state structures in the specific instance of the central bank following the world system world society and neoinstitutional perspectives in sociology they assume that states are in cultural political and economic competition with each other thereby seeking to maintain their position and status frequently by adopting organizational forms or practices that make them isomorphic with their environment the authors predict that countries boost the independence of their central bank from the political power as their exposure to foreign trade investment and multilateral lending increases they also model the cross national dynamic process of diffusion of central bank independence by examining the impact of cohesive and role equivalent trade relationships between countries they find support for their hypotheses with information on 71 countries between 1990 and 2000

change in domestic network centrality uncertainty and the foreign divestment decisions of firms abstract we investigate the role of domestic interfirm networks for the foreign divestment decisions of firms we argue that firms foreign operations risk being divested when a firm becomes more central in its domestic network positive changes in firm centrality at home facilitate access to information about new business opportunities but they may also lead firms to consider reconfiguring their value chain activities and resources across locations the resulting opportunity costs of maintaining foreign operations could subsequently lead to their divestment moreover we argue that the positive association between an increase in firm centrality in the domestic network and foreign divestment is stronger under higher uncertainty as pursuing new business opportunities at home becomes more appealing we distinguish between firm specific uncertainty and domestic market uncertainty we test and get support for our hypotheses using foreign subsidiary data from u s firms in the ict industry

stability and coordination in duverger s law a formal model of preelection polls and strategic voting this paper investigates the dynamics of the wasted vote phenomenon and duverger s law i construct a theoretical model in order to consider how preelection polls serve to inform the electorate about the relative chances of the candidates and how that information acts over time to decrease the support of the trailing candidate the results shed light on how public opinion polls can aggregate information in the electorate and coordinate voters on the viable candidates in the election specifically i show that in a bayesian game model of strategic voting there exist non duvergerian equilibria in which all three candidates receive votes in the limit these equilibria require extreme coordination however and any variation in beliefs leads voters away from them to one of the duvergerian equilibria thus non duvergerian equilibria are unstable while two party equilibria are not in addition i describe how preelection polls provide information to voters about the viability of candidates and can thus be used by voters to coordinate on a duvergerian outcome

dared to care organizational vulnerability institutional logics and mncs social responsiveness in emerging markets a significant gap exists in our understanding of what explains the varying responses of multinational corporations mncs to social issues in emerging markets arguably in a setting where both market institutions and regulations and norms of corporate social responsibility are underdeveloped it is more difficult for corporations to take actions beyond those that serve their immediate economic interests proposing a social movement perspective on mncs responsiveness to social issues in emerging markets we identify the mechanisms by which online activists grab firms attention and force them to become more socially responsive a perception of organizational vulnerability and a home country institutional logic that is consistent with the demands of the online campaign provide political opportunity structures that hasten the corporate response but affect the magnitude of firm response differently we test our framework in the empirical context of corporate philanthropic action following the 2008 earthquake in sichuan province in china which triggered an online campaign that questioned mncs donations to the disaster relief effort our study contributes to the literature on heterogeneous organizational responses to social movements a better understanding of the antecedents for mncs social responsiveness in emerging markets and research on mncs

sequential voting in large elections with multiple candidates abstract i analyze strategic voting incentives in large elections with three candidates when voting takes place sequentially voters have perfect information about their private preferences but do not know the distribution from which other voters preferences are drawn if a candidate finishes last in an early voting round voters deduce that this candidate is likely to be less popular amongst the remaining voters and the remaining voters almost always have an incentive to stop voting for this candidate by contrast sincere voting equilibria can exist under either simultaneous voting or an early voting round of sequential voting without knife edge assumptions

toward a model of issue selling by subsidiary managers in multinational organizations in multinational organizations local market responsiveness is critical to the development of effective strategies this responsiveness is expected to occur in part as the result of upward influence from local subsidiary managers who represent the local culture and shift relevant priorities accordingly issue selling defined as directing top management s attention to particular issues and helping them understand such issues is one important way in which subsidiary managers pursue upward influence the purpose of this paper is to help multinational organizations better facilitate and exploit potentially valuable input from local subsidiary managers to do so we propose an acculturated view of issue selling more specifically we argue that subsidiary managers socialized by different national cultures vary 1 in the extent to which their intention to sell issues is influenced by various contextual cues and 2 in their choice of selling strategies these theoretical differences suggest that local subsidiary managers from different cultures will differ in the way they approach issue selling and in turn in the way they influence the strategy making process the discussion traces the implications of this line of reasoning for future research on the influence of local subsidiary managers and more generally for research on the cultural embeddedness of the strategy process

securities analysts and incumbent response to radical technological change evidence from digital photography and internet telephony a large body of research has explored the factors that impede established firms responses to radical technological changes while it is widely acknowledged that managers face pressures from financial markets to choose strategies that maximize shareholder value little work in the technological change literature has considered the possible influences of public equity markets and the securities analysts who mediate them on incumbent firms challenged with technological change in this paper i begin to address the topic by empirically exploring how securities analysts react to the different strategies undertaken by incumbent firms faced with radical technological change i study the question in two settings the shift to digital technology in photography and the advent of voice over internet protocol voip technology in wireline telecommunications i find evidence that analysts are more attentive and positive toward incumbents strategies that extend and preserve the existing technology than toward strategies that respond directly to the new technology in these settings analysts largely ignore incumbents strategies that directly incorporate the new technology for several years following the discontinuity this study provides insights into the nature and direction of analysts reactions to firms strategies in the context of technological change and is a first step toward better understanding of the potential role of analysts and financial markets in incumbent adaptation

testing a causal model of corporate risk taking and performance the determinants of organizational risk taking and its impact on economic performance are critical issues in strategic management using a model that included risk performance performance expecta

an institution based view of executive compensation a multilevel meta analytic test we offer a multilevel meta analytic study of the firm performance executive compensation relationship comprising prior tests derived from 332 primary studies nested in 29 countries although our work modestly supports the optimal contracting theory based expectation that compensation is positively associated with performance it also reveals considerable cross country variability in this relationship we trace this variance to differences in the level of development of the formal and informal institutions protecting investors against managerial overcompensation and underperformance in terms of intentionally devised and enforced formal institutions we find significant positive moderating effects on the focal relationship of the rule of law and strength of investor protection variables for self enforcing informal institutions we find similar effects for concentrated ownership and compensation related entries in codes of good corporate governance we also find that formal and informal institutions function in a complementary manner in shaping the performance sensitivity of executive compensation the focal relationship becomes stronger when concentrated owners have access to well functioning courts and when informal norms of good governance are supported by shareholder protection laws our study thus suggests that optimal contracting theory must be supplemented with an institution based view to account for the conditioning effects of institutions on national contracting environments