Corporate Governance in Asian Countries: Has Confucianism Anything to Offer?

Although Confucianism is a resilient cultural tradition in Asian societies, its role in their corporate governance systems is ambiguous. Confucian values have been pushed to the periphery because of a preoccupation in these countries to emulate corporate governance systems from the West. This article argues that Confucianism has much to offer in enhancing director conduct and corporate governance standards. As the attention of the global business community turns eastwards, it is opportune to revive interest in Confucianism and to explore ways in which it can be integrated formally into companies' governance systems.     

Why Has Occupational Sex Segregation in Turkey Increased since 1975?

Abstract. We have used occupational data on Turkey available for the period 1975–2000, to analyse the impact of countervailing legislative effects, economic activity, and cultural attitudes on the sex segregation of occupations. We find that the Turkish labour market is now more segregated than 25 years ago. The recession at the end of the 1970s led to a rise in sex segregation at that time, which has reversed only slowly. Anti‐discrimination legislation introduced in the early 1980s and amended in the 1990s may have contributed to the improvement seen over the 1980s particularly in professional occupations.     

From Bureaucracy to Debureaucratization?

More than previous mild recessions, the current global crisis calls into question the merits of a model that held sway for almost three decades. Celebrated in the nineties in a “National Bestseller”, which even President Clinton considered to be a “blueprint” “for all officials to read”, the book—Reinventing Government—preached the reform of government in private sector ways. In stark contrast to Bureaucracy, which they considered “Bankrupt”. Authors Osborne and Gaebler (1993) promoted Debureaucratization, which they summed up as decentralization, deregulation, downsizing and outsourcing. It is time to revisit the assumptions of the Osborne-Gaebler model that has demonstrably failed. More than the model, however, the ways of its promotion in the market of ideas invites a word of caution. It prompted simplistic distortions, which typically followed from superficial analyses of Weber’s seminal opus (Timsit 2008:864–875). This paper reconsiders these two contrasting models, though not in “black” and “white”. Rather, the two are explored in dialectical terms, as outcomes of shifting ideologies, often taken to extremes.     

The Gender Earnings Gap for US Physicians: Has Equality been Achieved?

Recent work examining a constructed hourly wage measure indicates gender earnings equality among US physicians. Yet, physicians are not typically paid by the hour and the constructed measure fails to capture the true influence of hours worked and presents a fallacy of composition. When the earnings specification replaces the constructed wage measure with annual earnings or is modified to properly include hours worked, earnings equality vanishes and large gender differentials reappear.     

Public or Private? Public Corporations,Companies and the Decline of the Middle Ground

In the era of New Public Management in the Anglo-Saxon countries, governments have become infatuated with things private and disparaging of things public. This dramatic attitudinal shift has been reflected in the importation of private sector business method into so much of what government does, and in the championing of privatization in its various forms as a way of reducing the size and importance of public sectors. The change represents a retreat from the more traditional acceptance that a valuable social purpose was served by middle ground structures and activities located in the outer parts of these public sectors, i.e., between the highly politicised cores of government systems and the highly commercialised institutions of private enterprise. In particular, this article argues that the form of the public (or government, statutory or crown) corporation epitomised such social value, and that the state-owned company which is now so often replacing it represents an abandoning of social value.     

Opportunities? Barriers? It's up to you.

This career advice column is usually directed toward those in transition--physician executives who are actively pursuing job opportunities or preparing to do so. But most of your career is actually spent in a position and on the job. So it seems appropriate to focus on the great majority of physician executives who are not currently in the job market. Take a look at opportunities to learn and grow in your present position.     

Returns to Tenure or Seniority?

This study documents two empirical facts using matched employer–employee data for Denmark and Portugal. First, workers who are hired last, are the first to leave the firm. Second, workers' wages rise with seniority, where seniority is defined as a worker's tenure relative to the tenure of his colleagues. Controlling for tenure, the probability of a worker leaving the firm decreases with seniority. The increase in expected seniority with tenure explains a large part of the negative duration dependence of the separation hazard. Conditional on ten years of tenure, the wage differential between the 10th and the 90th percentiles of the seniority distribution is 1.1–1.4 percentage points in Denmark and 2.3–3.4 in Portugal.     

Coopetition Strategy – When is it Successful? Empirical Evidence on Innovation and Market Performance

Coopetition (collaboration between competing firms) has been viewed as a potentially beneficial but also a risky relationship for a firm. Earlier literature provides inconclusive evidence in terms of the effects of a firm's coopetition strategy on innovation and market performance, suggesting both positive and negative implications. Some of this variation could be attributed to the fact that coopetition is successful only in certain types of business environment. In order to take the research further, this study examines the effect of a coopetition strategy on the firm's innovation and market performance, focusing on the moderating effects of market uncertainty, network externalities and competitive intensity. The results from a cross‐industry survey of 209 Finnish firms provide novel evidence on the conditions under which coopetition is successful and when it is not.     

Does market share lead to profitability?

For a number of years the findings of the well-known PIMS study have played a predominant role in strategic thinking which holds that the market share of a business enterprise is ‘the key to profitability’. One criticism raised against this proposition consist in showing, through empirical evidence, that the maxim ‘the bigger, the better’ does not always hold, without, however, going into any analysis of the relationships involved and without presenting a total model. As a result, even today it is still not clear when, how, and why market share is in some way related to return on investment. It is intended, in this article, to formulate a general model, which will describe and explain these relationships. This model may be helpful in formulating strategies.     

Natural Capitalism: Path to Sustainability?

In this article, the Lovins’² explain what is meant by Natural Capitalism, four principles that enable business to behave responsibly towards both nature and people while increasing profits, inspiring their workforce and gaining competitive advantage. It combines radically increased resource productivity; closed-loop, zero-waste, nontoxic production; a business model that rewards both; and reinvestment in natural capital. The article describes how, even today, when nature and people are typically valued at zero, protecting and restoring nature, culture and community can be far more profitable than liquidating them.     

What do you have to do to become a medical director?

Medical management is a large and growing profession. The need for physicians in management roles grows unabated in hospitals, managed care organizations, group practices, and myriad other environments. But entry is not merely a matter of wishful thinking. Painstakingly assembled credentials and skills are the order of the day. The advice in this column is distilled from Medical Directors: What, Why, How, a new College monograph.     

Does insider shareholding matter to corporate payout reactions to tax reforms?

Theory indicates that since Germany’s 2001 Tax Reform Act non-qualified shareholders have strongly preferred share repurchases over dividends, even though qualified or corporate shareholders are typically expected to be indifferent between the two. By contrast, prior to the reform most shareholders preferred dividends. As payout policies may be driven by taxes but also by factors arising from asymmetric information of agents and principals, this raises the question whether payout decisions are driven by ownership structure, i.e., members of the management board or other influential shareholders such as blockholders. Kaserer et al. (Z Betriebswirtschaft 82, 2012) investigate the impact of insider shareholding on payout policy. Their study sheds light on the mechanisms behind corporate payout policies and provides important new insights into the influence that insiders’ actions have on payout policies. The authors leave issues like the impact of voting power and of dominant shareholder groups more or less untreated, hence preparing the floor for a whole series of interesting future empirical studies.     

“Where to” micromultinationals? A tribute to Professor Pavlos Dimitratos

This reflection serves as a tribute to Professor Pavlos Dimitratos by providing a state-of-the-art understanding of micromultinationals (mMNEs), an important term initially coined by Pavlos and his colleagues (2003) in their European Management Journal article “Micromultinationals: New Types of Firms for the Global Competitive Landscape” to capture the rising phenomenon of international small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with advanced modes of entry. Whilst underexplored, such firms have critical research, managerial, and policymaking implications for their increasing population and significant value-added activities in home and host economies relative to exporting firms. Based on a short analysis of existing mMNE studies, we appeal for more scholarly attention to their evolution, behavioural characteristics, and consequences, particularly in the area of SME internationalisation. We suggest several promising future directions to investigate this intriguing type of entrepreneurial firms and, using a Scottish context, show how they are appealing to policymakers.     

Has SFAS 142 improved the usefulness of goodwill impairment loss and goodwill balances for investors?

Due to the concerns about the annual SFAS 142 impairment test, the FASB has recently added a project to its technical agenda to evaluate potential alternatives for measurement of goodwill. Motivated by the FASB’s consideration of a change in goodwill accounting, I examine the impact of SFAS 142 on the usefulness of goodwill write-offs and goodwill balances. I find that goodwill write-offs and goodwill balances are more strongly associated with stock returns and stock prices respectively after SFAS 142 than before SFAS 142. Furthermore, in the post-SFAS 142 period, I find that the association between stock prices and goodwill is lower for firms that avoid the recognition of the existing goodwill impairments, and that goodwill write-offs are more negatively associated with stock returns for firms where managers have more discretion over the impairment testing process. Overall, the findings suggest that despite the concerns of critics over the reliability of fair value estimates of goodwill, (1) SFAS 142 has improved the usefulness of goodwill numbers from investor perspective, and (2) investors see through the differences in reliability of reported goodwill numbers. These results have implications for standard-setting as the FASB considers new alternatives for goodwill accounting.     

Can you take your soul to work?

David White in The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Soul in Corporate America explores ways for professionals to take their souls to work, instead of checking them at the door. "We simply spend too much time and have too much psychic and emotional energy invested in the workplace for us to declare it a spiritual desert bereft of life-giving water." Several ideas are presented to help physician executives preserve their souls in an increasingly corporatized U.S. health care system: (1) Figure out what you are meant to do as your life's calling; (2) know what you think and want; (3) share some of what you think at work, while being careful to not lose your job unless you choose to; (4) be a trustworthy listener and find one; (5) get yourself outside; (6) pay attention to your physical space; and (7) develop some new hobbies or refresh old ones. "One of the disciplines of building a rich soul life seems to be the simple act, on a daily basis, of remembering what is most important to us."