Business Commons^™

The Function Of Narrative In Leadership: Theoretical Foundations And Empirical Evidence, Michael S. Carriger

WCBT Faculty Publications

This research is focused on the differential impacts of narrative and facts and figures on the understanding of corporate strategy or competitive advantage. In this way a theoretical (philosophical) foundation can be laid for narrative and the understanding of corporate strategy. Additionally, much needed theoretically sound, empirical validation can be offered for the use of narrative and storytelling by leaders within organizations as a means of creating, disseminating,and executing strategy. Employing a model derived from the tension between modern and post-modern thinking about the nature of ideas and concepts a conceptual framework is offered to try to explain the possible …

Corporate Financial Policies And Informed Trading, Abu S. Amin

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes the information content of corporate financial policies, in particular dividend changes and share repurchases, by examining their announcements effects on the behavior of informed traders. If unexpected dividend changes or share repurchases have information content, then there should be announcements effects on the extent of informed trading. I test this hypothesis by estimating the extent of informed trading before and after the dividends, tender offers and Dutch auctions announcements. I estimate the informed trading when the dividends announcements are informative [i.e. announcements contain surprises] and compares it when dividends announcements are not informative [i.e. announcements contain no …

International Clustering And Foreign Subsidiary Performance, Jing'an Tang

WCBT Faculty Publications

The article discusses the development and testing of a network-based model of international clustering and foreign subsidiary performance in an attempt to determine how multinational companies (MNC) enter a foreign country to build their own foreign cluster. It focuses on the foreign peer network (FPN) to incorporate both the social and economic interactions within a cluster. An FPN is described as a set of social and economic relations among a group of foreign subsidiaries that are from the same home country and run same or similar businesses within a common geographic area in the host country. The initial condition of …

Why Work When You Can Shirk?: Worker Productivity In An Experimental Setting, Russell P. Engel

WCBT Faculty Publications

Employee shirking has the potential to be extremely costly to firms. To counter the productivity loss caused by shirking, firms may institute various incentive schemes. Previous experimental research has shown that while monitoring does decrease shirking, some subjects work without explicit financial incentives. This paper presents the experimental results of an economic experiment designed to investigate the effect of various incentive schemes on subject behavior. Subjects are allowed to engage two tasks; one task mimics work for an employer, the other task allows for gains due to shirking. We find that subjects who are given incentives to shirk do in …

Information-Based Trading And The Bid-Ask Spread, Kee H. Chung, Jing Jiang

WCBT Faculty Publications

We analyze the equilibrium spread when the transaction size of informed traders is elastic in the value of private information (α). We show that the pooling equilibrium is likely to be inefficient when trade size is sensitive to α and the inefficient equilibrium can occur before the market breaks down. The pooling equilibrium spread does not monotonically increase with α, although it increases with the elasticity of informed trades to α. The upper bound of the elasticity of informed trades for the market to remain open for the active specialist is higher than the corresponding value for the passive specialist …

Fair Value Accounting: Affect On The Auditing Profession, Danny A. Pannese, Alan Delfavero

WCBT Faculty Publications

During this period of global markets, multinational corporations are demanding financial accounting standards with enhanced uniformity. In an effort to achieve this objective, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) have been working together on the Convergence Project, aiming to develop accounting standards that closely correlate with international financial reporting standards. In September 2006 and February 2007, the FASB issued two key fair value accounting (FVA) standards which focused on providing guidelines for fair value measurement (through a classification hierarchy), expanding disclosure requirements, and also allowing business entities to increase FVA's application. However, the …

Workers' Migration And Remittances In Bangladesh, Khawaja Mamun, Hiranya K. Nath

WCBT Faculty Publications

Bangladesh has sent more than 6.7 million workers to over 140 countries during a period of more than three decades since the mid-1970s. Most of these workers temporarily migrated to work in Middle East and Southeast Asia. This mass movement of temporary migrant workers has, to some extent, eased unemployment pressures on the over-burdened labor market in this highly populated country. More importantly, the remittance transfers received from these migrant workers have reached a phenomenal level of over 10 billion US dollars in 2009, approximately 12 percent of GDP in Bangladesh. This paper analyzes the trends and various other aspects …

Interpreting Financial Results, Bridget Lyons, Rupendra Paliwal, Danny A. Pannese

WCBT Faculty Publications

The article discusses three accounting changes issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FSAB). The Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 158 "Employers' Accounting for Defined Benefit Pension and Other Retirement Plans" and the SFAS No. 160 "Noncontrolling Interests in Consolidated Financial Statements" are mentioned. Financial Interpretation 48 "Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes, an Interpretation of FSAB Statement No. 109" is mentioned.

The takeaway? Financial analysts, investors, and creditors need to carefully interpret ratios and measures, including debt to equity, liabilities to equity, and return on equity. Financial ratios used in loan covenants should be clearly designed and …

Nation Branding And Nation Brand Equity: The Case Of Slovakia, Pardon Me, Slovenia (Summary Brief), Arne Baruca

WCBT Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to explore and discuss whether Slovenia, a Central European country, has the possibility of developing a nation brand. As a new country Slovenia faces recognition problems and is thus being confused with other countries; specifically with its “twin-country” Slovakia. This is a case-based paper. The author uses a previously developed nation brand equity model (Dinnie 2008) to illustrate and explore the nation brand equity of Slovenia. The exploratory study shows that Slovenia has the elements of the nation brand equity model, and therefore has all the needed potential to develop the nation brand. This …

Backdated Stock Options Ownership Impact On The Corporation, Management, & Shareholders, Karen Cascini, Alan Delfavero

WCBT Faculty Publications

In the post-Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOx) world, there has been an unprecedented crackdown on fraudulent activity occurring within corporate America. During recent years, many companies have granted stock options to their executives and employees as part of compensation packages. While the issuance of stock options as a component of compensation is considered to be a legal practice, corruption has taken this corporate resource to unlawful heights. Recently, numerous corporations have been in the news for potentially backdating stock options. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to distinguish between legal and illegal aspects of backdating stock options, and to examine the …

Developments In Accounting Education, Stephen Scarpati

WCBT Faculty Publications

Whether in public practice, industry, government, or academia, all CPAs face the challenge of staying current with the competencies, skills, requirements, and demands associated with the profession. College accounting professors received important guidance in their mission to educate and advise accounting students at the recent Accounting Educators Conference sponsored by the NYSSCPA’s Higher Education Committee.

Globalization Of Entrepreneurship: Policy Considerations For Sme Development In Indonesia, Balbir B. Bhasin, Sivakumar Venkataramany

WCBT Faculty Publications

SMEs are of overwhelming importance to the young and growing economies of most Southeast Asian nations, including Indonesia. The country is a vast polyglot archipelago, struggling with poverty and unemployment, poor and inadequate infrastructure, rampant corruption, insufficient capital, and unequal distribution of resources. It has recently experienced fundamental changes in political governance, regional empowerment, and economic structures as a result of the Asian Financial Crisis, coupled with widespread social unrest which resulted in the ouster of the authoritarian regime of President Suharto. This paper evaluates the existing private sector development policy in Indonesia, which has been found to be both …

Teaching The Budgeting Process Using A Spreadsheet Template, Benoit Boyer

WCBT Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how to use a template to teach the budgeting process and how to use the same template to do a sensitivity analysis once the budget process is completed. The template can be used as-is by non-accounting majors. They just have to fill in all of their assumptions by replacing the red numbers. The template can be locked so that students cannot modify the formulas by mistake. Simply protect the worksheet (Review tab > Protect Sheet) and students will be able to only change the assumptions. Accounting majors are shown how to build their …

Business Planning For New Ventures, Mike Roer, Benoit Boyer, Ken Kollmeyer, Matthew Smith

WCBT Faculty Publications

Table of contents:

Assessing Entrepreneurial Aptitude -- Identifying Sources of Capital -- Selecting a Legal Structure -- Preparing the Business Plan -- Presenting the Plan to Capital Providers -- Glossary.

Proliferation Of Tail Risks And Policy Responses In The Eu Financial Markets, Lucjan Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

This study draws attention to the proliferation of tail risks in financial markets prior to and during the course of the recent global financial crisis. It examines the level of tail risks in selected equity, interbank lending and foreign exchange markets in selected EU Member States in relation to the United States. The extent of tail risks is assessed by applying general error distribution (GED) parameterization in GARCH volatility tests of the examined variables. The empirical tests prove that tail risks were pronounced across all of the examined European financial markets throughout the crisis. They were also significant prior to …

Narrative Vs. Powerpoint: For Leaders, It May Not Be A Matter Of Fact, Michael S. Carriger

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper aims to argue that narratives, skillfully deployed by senior leaders in an organization, can be a very effective tool for creating, disseminating and executing corporate strategy. The paper presents a model for narrative use by leaders and a practical guide to implementing the model. Preliminary and anecdotal data are presented to substantiation a case for leaders' use of narrative as an alternative means for conveying corporate strategy. Implications for the practical use of narratives by leaders are explored by this paper.

Giving Voice To Values: How To Speak Your Mind When You Know What's Right (Book Review), Andra Gumbus

WCBT Faculty Publications

Book review by Andra Gumbus.

Gentile, Mary. Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What's Right. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2010.

ISBN 9780300161182

Telling The Brand Story: Including News Articles In Online Promotional Strategies, Anca C. Micu

WCBT Faculty Publications

Given the growing popularity of the Internet as a promotional medium, it is crucial for brand managers to examine the effects of combining the different brand communication sources online. According to social comprehension theory and knowledge from neuroscience, people exposed to a message spontaneously construct a mental simulation. People who are exposed to images or visuals are unlikely to assign verbal labels to their observations, whereas people who read a story may spontaneously form mental pictures of the narrative content. Mental processing of stories requires more extensive elaboration than processing of visuals. In a first study, survey results indicate online …

Intra-Industry Effects Of Takeovers: A Study Of The Operating Performance Of Rival Firms, Rupendra Paliwal

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper investigates whether the managers of industry rivals act to mitigate their agency exposure and improve operating performance when one of the firms in the industry is subject to a takeover attempt. The results indicate that rival firms in general decrease free cashflows, improve operating performance, reduce capital expenditures, and increase leverage in response to a control threat within the industry. In particular, rival firms with potentially higher agency costs i.e., fewer investment opportunities and high cash or high free cashflows exhibit a higher reduction in cash levels and free cashflows subsequent to a control threat in their industry. …

Earnings Of Nurses In Non-Nursing Occupations: Evidence Of Significant Nursing Dissatisfaction?, Stephen D. Rubb

WCBT Faculty Publications

In examining the nursing shortage, many scholars note the high correlation between job dissatisfaction and "intentions" to leave. This study compares the earnings of individuals with nurse training in non-nursing occupations to those in nursing occupations. Nurses exiting the occupation while remaining employed appear to occur if alternative occupations pay a premium. This premium is higher for males and increases with education. Earnings of nurses in non-nursing occupations do not provide evidence of significant nursing dissatisfaction.

Social Networking And The Perception Of Privacy Within The Millennial Generation, Andra Gumbus, Frances S. Grodzinsky, Stephen J. Lilley

WCBT Faculty Publications

Has technology caused a generational divide between current college age users (Millennial Generation) who have no problems posting intimate details of their personal life on the Web and more traditional older users who seem to value privacy? This paper presents the results of a survey of 251 university students and follow-up focus groups on the topic of the perceptions of social networking and privacy. We will use Facebook as an example of social networking, and review attitudes about privacy and control over personal information among traditional and non-traditional college age users and light and heavy users of social networking sites.

Should Individual Investors Use Technical Trading Rules To Attempt To Beat The Market?, Thomas S. Coe, Kittipong Laosethakul

WCBT Faculty Publications

Problem statement: Despite widespread academic acceptance of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, some stock traders still use technical trading rules in an attempt to beat the market. Approach: This study looked at four trading rules, namely, the arithmetic moving average, the relative strength index, a stochastic oscillator and its moving average. These trading rules compare the relationship of current prices to past price patterns to generate a signal when to buy and sell stocks. The trading rules were tested over the years 2000-2009, a period of time that exhibited bull and bear markets, to determine if traders could actively …