The new European shareholder rights directive: removing barriers and creating opportunities for more shareholder activism and democracy

Shareholder activism has increased within the last years. Traditionally, minority shareholders voted by their feet if they disagreed with managements actions. However, this has certainly changed due to the development of Internet based technologies as well as the emergence of hedge funds and other active institutional investors. As a consequence, listed firms’ costs of communicating with investors globally have increased, specifically the budget of investor relation departments. The EU Commission has recently issued a Directive on shareholders rights which will become part of European Law next year recognizing that cross-border voting should be solved as a matter of urgency. This article analyses the nature of shareholder activism in the light of the new Directive arguing that the Directive is only the first step in a legal process that is expected to substantially increase shareholders′ rights in the coming years. The article also presents the notion of shareholder democracy that is crucially dependent on active minority shareholders. It is argued that the notion of shareholder democracy may serve as guidance for how future legislation should be designed.     

Linguistic Acculturation and Context on Self-Esteem: Hispanic Youth Between Cultures

Immigrant adolescents must negotiate two cultures: the host culture and their native culture. This study explored how self-esteem is moderated by the effect of linguistic acculturation and context. An ordinary least-squares regression model, controlling for fixed effects, produced results supporting the hypothesis that linguistic acculturation moderates the effect of context on self-esteem. The self-esteem of Hispanic adolescents who were less linguistically acculturated was found to be more favorable when with family than with friends and the reverse was found for the more linguistically acculturated participants. Adolescents in the middle of the linguistic acculturation process had the widest variance in self-esteem between times they were with their families and times in other contexts; they experienced more positive self-esteem with anyone but family. Findings underscore the need to better understand the complex process of linguistic acculturation and its effects on self-esteem. This research also demonstrates the practical utility of a fixed-effects model for reducing bias in cross-cultural research.     

Research Learning Attributes of Graduate Students in Social Work,Psychology, and Business

Although research teaching literature suggests that social work students may have different research learning attributes than students in other disciplines, minimal data exist to support this view. This study compared the self-reported research anxiety, computer anxiety, and research orientations of 149 full-time graduate social work, psychology, and business students at a research university. Social work students reported more research and computer anxiety and generally believed that research was less important to their profession than students in the comparison groups. Implications for teaching research to social work graduate students are discussed.     

Online Customer Experience: A Review of the Business‐to‐Consumer Online Purchase Context

Customer interactions with an organization's website create opportunities for positive experiences that can lead to long‐term relationship building. The range of potential interactions is now quite diverse, including product information search, purchase transaction and/or service delivery. The domain of customer experience (CE) is well developed in the face‐to‐face context, but little attention has been paid to exploring the concept in the online context. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the online consumer literature in order to inform understanding of the antecedents and consequences of online customer experience (OCE) in the purchase context. The paper offers four important contributions for both academics and practitioners. First, it adds to understanding of OCE in the purchase context and, second, specifically recognizes and discusses the antecedents of OCE by drawing on existing literature relating to online consumer purchase. Third, it proposes the potential consequences of OCE and provides a framework for future testing. Finally, the paper addresses a problem of relevance to both academics and practitioners, and proposes future research and managerial implications.     

From the Editor

No abstract available for this article.     

Association of Self-help Organisations and Groups (ASHOG)

Negotiating or bargaining is a common social process. It occurs continuously without always being formally recognized or articulated. Many of the specific and separate strategies and tactics that characterize negotiation are similarly unidentified. The object of this paper is to specify and describe key strategies and tactics for use in negotiating at the community level. Lessons are drawn from the field of industrial relations.