Executive Information Systems: Recent Developments and Research Imperatives

SUMMARY The reluctance of top managers to use computers themselves has become almost legendary, although there are good reasons for their apparent preference for traditional information sources and access routes. Isolated cases have shown how computer-based executive support systems can be used by top managers when great care is taken by the system developers over data presentation and the user interface. Now, the advent of high quality commercial software means that Executive Information Systems (EIS) may become far more widespread. This paper describes the principal features of the new EIS from the executive users' point of view and indicates those characteristics which appear to be most conducive to success. Research directions which will identify the extent and impact of EIS software on top management are identified.     

Regression–Discontinuity Analysis: A Survey of Recent Developments in Economics

Abstract. This paper provides a discussion of recent developments related to the applicability of the regression discontinuity design in economics. It reviews econometric issues, such as identification and estimation methods, as well as a number of sensitivity and validity tests of importance in empirical application.     

Perceptions of Nonprofit Funding Decisions: A Survey of Local Public Administrators and Executive Directors of Community-Based Housing Organizations (CBHOs)

This article compares how local public administrators and executive directors of community-based housing organizations (CBHO) perceive nonprofit funding decisions. The article’s findings suggest that both groups shared perceptions about the scope of affordable housing and factors influencing its funding. Yet, important differences existed. Public administrators were ambivalent about nonprofit capacity and affordable housing outcomes. They also underestimated the importance of networks, partnerships, and minority leadership. Professionals in the nonprofit sector underestimated fair housing concerns and overestimated the importance of promoting homeownership. These insights improve our understanding of the connection between funding patterns, public-nonprofit sector relations, local governance, and administrative structures.

Pay Dispersion and Executive Behaviour: Evidence from Innovation

Compensation packages are widely used to motivate top executives. Pay dispersion among a firm's executives, however, can be associated with the antithetic effects of social comparison and individual motivation, with unclear implications for the company. We focus on innovation activities, which represent an important channel through which pay dispersion can affect firm performance, and test our predictions by exploring innovative output as a function of executives’ pay dispersion in a panel of US firms. We find that executive pay dispersion acts as a double‐edged sword. On the one hand, the higher the dispersion in variable pay, the higher the innovation. On the other hand, the larger the dispersion in fixed pay, the lower the innovation. Results are robust to a number of tests, such as restricting the analysis to executives with direct responsibility for innovation projects and considering individual incentives in the form of cash pay.     

Combining Experts: Decomposition and Aggregation Order

In this article we ask, if quantities in an elicitation have been decomposed, is it better to combine experts before or after recomposing the quantities? We find that combining experts earlier, before recomposition of the quantities, leads to smaller errors with less variance. A simulation shows that these differences may be quite small on average; while an application to actual data shows that the differences can be significant in individual decision problems.     

CEO Age and Top Executive Pay: A UK Empirical Study

This study examines the implications that CEO age has onexecutive pay regarding data collected in a UK setting. Whereprior research has typically focused on total pay (salary plusbonus), this study offers a more complete conceptual model bysplitting pay into salary, annual bonus, and share options. Indoing so, we found that the relationship between CEO salaries andage are significantly related with this association weakeningover time. Another interesting finding not captured by priorresearch was that the relationship between CEO age and bonusappears to be non-linear in nature. Figures 2 which depicts thisnon-linear function suggest at about age 53, the proportion ofbonus as a percentage of salary begins to decrease at anincreasing rate. As a whole, these findings suggest corporate paycommittees should consider family and the financial circumstancesof the executive when designing remuneration schemes.     

A Risk Assessment Framework for the Socioeconomic Impacts of Electricity Transmission Infrastructure Failure Due to Space Weather: An Application to the United Kingdom

Space weather phenomena have been studied in detail in the peer‐reviewed scientific literature. However, there has arguably been scant analysis of the potential socioeconomic impacts of space weather, despite a growing gray literature from different national studies, of varying degrees of methodological rigor. In this analysis, we therefore provide a general framework for assessing the potential socioeconomic impacts of critical infrastructure failure resulting from geomagnetic disturbances, applying it to the British high‐voltage electricity transmission network. Socioeconomic analysis of this threat has hitherto failed to address the general geophysical risk, asset vulnerability, and the network structure of critical infrastructure systems. We overcome this by using a three‐part method that includes (i) estimating the probability of intense magnetospheric substorms, (ii) exploring the vulnerability of electricity transmission assets to geomagnetically induced currents, and (iii) testing the socioeconomic impacts under different levels of space weather forecasting. This has required a multidisciplinary approach, providing a step toward the standardization of space weather risk assessment. We find that for a Carrington‐sized 1‐in‐100‐year event with no space weather forecasting capability, the gross domestic product loss to the United Kingdom could be as high as £15.9 billion, with this figure dropping to £2.9 billion based on current forecasting capability. However, with existing satellites nearing the end of their life, current forecasting capability will decrease in coming years. Therefore, if no further investment takes place, critical infrastructure will become more vulnerable to space weather. Additional investment could provide enhanced forecasting, reducing the economic loss for a Carrington‐sized 1‐in‐100‐year event to £0.9 billion.     

区域创新系统:秩序及其变迁

目前,区域创新系统的研究主要集中于对区域创新系统的解构,对于其形成及演化的分析较少,而演化研究中,借用生物学隐喻类比区域创新系统的研究,则由于语义转化导致的困境,解释力较弱。本文尝试引入秩序变迁的视角,对区域创新系统的演化过程进行分析,理清其脉络关系。     

Inside Management Teams: Developing a Teamwork Survey Instrument

This article reports the development of a measure of teamwork for use with management teams. A five‐stage process was followed. First, a model of teamwork including team processes was generated through empirical research involving the elicitation of 600 team performance constructs from members of management teams and from theoretical considerations. Second, items were written to operationalize the model. Third, data from 220 members of management teams working in private‐ and public‐sector organizations were factor analysed in order to establish the scale structure of the instrument. Fourth, data from a second sample of 16 complete management teams were collected in order to assess within‐team properties of the instrument. Lastly, convergent and criterion‐related validity were assessed. The resulting ‘Teamwork Survey’, is a 7‐scale, 36‐item general‐purpose questionnaire that can be used in further research and in consulting interventions.     

经理人激励的细分: 隐藏行动、努力成本和风险厌恶

本文研究经理人隐藏行动、努力成本和风险厌恶态度对经理人激励的影响.本文的研究基于标准委托人-代理人模型,但放松其关于经理人行动不能影响企业风险的假定,而采用更接近现实的假定--企业风险至少部分内生于经理人的行动.通过研究,本文将经理人激励明确细分类为努力增进激励(βeffort激励)和追求风险激励(βrisk激励)两类.为实现βeffort激励,经理人报酬只需是企业业绩的线性函数即可;但为实现βrisk激励,经理人报酬应是企业业绩的凸函数.     

信息透明度与经理薪酬契约有效性:来自中国证券市场的经验证据

本文以2003-2006年深圳证券交易所A股上市公司为研究对象,实证考察信息透明度对经理薪酬契约有效性的影响,试图从经理薪酬契约角度重新诠释信息透明度的经济后果.研究发现,信息透明度能够显著提高经理薪酬契约的有效性.具体而言,信息透明度越高的公司,经理薪酬业绩敏感性越高,经理薪酬与盈利业绩和亏损业绩之间的非对称性越小.研究还发现,与非国有企业相比,国有上市公司信息透明度对经理薪酬契约有效性的影响更加显著.本研究论证了信息透明度在减少股东与经理之间的信息不对称和降低公司代理成本中的重要作用.     

Higher Order Uncertainty and Information: Static and Dynamic Games

Weinstein and Yildiz (2007) have shown that in static games, only very weak predictions are robust to perturbations of higher order beliefs. These predictions are precisely those provided by interim correlated rationalizability (ICR). This negative result is obtained under the assumption that agents have no information on payoffs. This assumption is unnatural in many settings. It is therefore natural to ask whether Weinstein and Yildiz's results remain true under more general information structures. This paper characterizes the “robust predictions” in static and dynamic games, under arbitrary information structures. This characterization is provided by an extensive form solution concept: interim sequential rationalizability (ISR). In static games, ISR coincides with ICR and does not depend on the assumptions on agents' information. Hence the “no information” assumption entails no loss of generality in these settings. This is not the case in dynamic games, where ISR refines ICR and depends on the details of the information structure. In these settings, the robust predictions depend on the assumptions on agents' information. This reveals a hitherto neglected interaction between information and higher order uncertainty, raising novel questions of robustness.     

Workload Control and Order Release: A Lean Solution for Make‐to‐Order Companies

Protecting throughput from variance is the key to achieving lean. Workload control (WLC) accomplishes this in complex make‐to‐order job shops by controlling lead times, capacity, and work‐in‐process (WIP). However, the concept has been dismissed by many authors who believe its order release mechanism reduces the effectiveness of shop floor dispatching and increases work center idleness, thereby also increasing job tardiness results. We show that these problems have been overcome. A WLC order release method known as “LUMS OR” (Lancaster University Management School order release) combines continuous with periodic release, allowing the release of work to be triggered between periodic releases if a work center is starving. This paper refines the method based on the literature (creating “LUMS COR” [Lancaster University Management School corrected order release]) before comparing its performance against the best‐performing purely periodic and continuous release rules across a range of flow directions, from the pure job shop to the general flow shop. Results demonstrate that LUMS COR and the continuous WLC release methods consistently outperform purely periodic release and Constant WIP. LUMS COR is considered the best solution in practice due to its excellent performance and ease of implementation. Findings have significant implications for research and practice: throughput times and job tardiness results can be improved simultaneously and order release and dispatching rules can complement each other. Thus, WLC represents an effective means of implementing lean principles in a make‐to‐order context.     

Executive compensation in banks: insights from CEO equity incentives and securitization transactions

This paper investigates whether CEO equity incentives promote risk-taking activities in the financial industry. Prior research shows that, during the recent credit crisis, banks whose CEOs had high equity incentives performed significantly worse than banks whose CEOs had low equity incentives. A possible explanation for this result is that the incentive to boost stock price induced CEOs to take risks that turned out to be extremely costly. Focusing on securitization transactions that were among the fundamental causes of the financial crisis and using a sample of US financial institutions, the paper provides evidence that banks whose CEOs had high equity incentives engaged in securitization transactions to a greater extent than did financial institutions guided by CEOs with low equity incentives. Moreover, the paper shows that CEOs with high equity incentives securitized riskier loans than did CEOs with low incentives. This study helps to clarify the role of equity-based compensation in promoting risk-taking behaviors in banks.     

Lean Control for Make‐to‐Order Companies: Integrating Customer Enquiry Management and Order Release

A lead time that is short, predictable, and reliable is an increasingly important criterion in supplier selection. Although many companies may achieve this through lean implementation, high‐variety manufacturers, for example, small and medium‐sized make‐to‐order companies, have found that lean's planning and control techniques do not apply. This article outlines a planning and control concept known as workload control (WLC) that integrates customer enquiry management, including a due‐date setting rule, with order release control. Simulation is then used to assess its impact on shop performance. Results demonstrate that an integrated WLC concept can reduce the percentage of tardy jobs—so short lead times can be realistically quoted—while also reducing and stabilizing workloads. WLC can level demand and production over time when work is not standardized and it is not possible to synchronize flows on the shop floor. Results are shown to be robust to changes in routing characteristics, the mix of orders with due dates specified by the customer and proposed internally, and the strike rate (or order‐winning probability). Hence, an integrated approach to WLC represents an important step toward achieving lean in make‐to‐order companies.