Relational Ownership and CEO Continuity: A Property Rights Perspective

Inspired by agency theory, research on Chief Executive Officer (CEO) succession often focuses on turnovers as a mechanism to discipline CEOs in the event of poor firm performance. Recent research extends this view by showing that CEO turnovers can also lead to substantial disruption in a firm's management. Less is known, however, about the antecedents of disruption and continuity in the context of CEO turnovers. Drawing on modern property rights theory, we investigate how CEO continuity varies across different types of firms. Using a sample of Swiss publicly traded firms, we find that relational ownership enhances the likelihood of CEOs staying in office or moving to the position of board chair. Firms with little relational ownership, in contrast, display a high degree of CEO continuity only when capital intensity is high. Provided that a CEO turnover occurs, relational ownership and capital intensity reduce the likelihood of interim CEO successions. These findings highlight the importance of a nuanced view of CEO continuity, taking into account owner types as well as contextual factors.     

Job strain in different types of employment affects the immune response

The immune system, in cooperation with neuroendocrine functions, defends from cancer and infections mainly by the activity of blood natural killer (NK) cells. Blood NK activity may be influenced by the type of employment since work is the central part of life; moreover, job stress is a situation affecting both neuroendocrine and immune systems. This study examines anxiety (by STAI 1 and 2), job strain (by the Karasek's JCQ) and blood NK activity (by an in vitro radio-isotopic method) of 134 male workers. These men, over 38 years old with stable employment, were working in factories, in construction yards, in offices, as hospital attendants or as self-employed craftsmen. Workers in factories and in construction yards, with high job strain, showed lower NK activity, while office employees, with low job demand, and craftsmen with low anxiety and elevated decision latitude, showed higher NK activity; the level of NK activity of the hospital attendants was between the other groups. In conclusion, this study confirms that the type of employment, related to job stress, affects blood NK activity. Moreover, blood NK activity may be used in the bio-monitoring of workers at high risk.     

Managing structural and dynamic complexity in supply chains: insights from four case studies

Complexity is regarded a major impediment to Supply Chain (SC) performance. However, very few studies aid SC managers adopt adequate practices in response to structural and dynamic complexity. This study offers a comprehensive review of the practices that four manufacturing companies employ in their SC function to manage the structural and dynamic complexity of their product portfolio, internal SC, and supplier and customer bases. Moreover, leveraging the results of the inductive in-depth case studies, a classification of complexity management practices consisting of four clusters is advanced: variety reducing, confinement and decoupling, coordination and collaboration and decision support and knowledge generation. Each cluster’s distinctive logic and limitations are discussed and propositions on their managerial scope are introduced, therefore providing managers with relevant insights to design effective complexity management approaches in their organisations.     

From the multi-sited to the in-between: ethnography as a way of delving into migrants’ transnational relationships

Multi-sited ethnography has been extensively applied to migrants’ transnational family life and to the underlying care practices. Its methodological underpinnings and dilemmas, though, are relatively under-reflected. How can the relational and affective spaces between migrants and left-behind kin be ethnographically appreciated? Against this question, I revisit my fieldwork on a migration flow between Ecuador and Italy. This is an instance of the development of transnational social relationships, based on the circulation of material, cognitive and emotional resources, whereby people living ‘here’ and ‘there’ negotiate mutual affections, concerns and expectations. The challenge for ethnographers, under similar circumstances, lies less in staying in more sites than in sensing and understanding the relationships between them and the social practices on which this connectedness relies. The attendant methodological implications are discussed, ultimately pointing to the significance of relationality and in-betweenness for ethnographies of migration, transnationalism and mobilities.     

Latent variable modeling of disability in people aged 65 or more

This paper aims at classifying, on the basis of their disability profile, the population of elderly and quantifying the number of those with a very low level of functioning in a central region of Italy. This is accomplished using a set of variables on the difficulty of accomplishing everyday tasks (Activities of Daily Living, ADL) and functions. This issue is very important for National and Local Health organizations in order to evaluate the need for care, planning services, elaborating policies and allocating resources. Latent class models are applied on data coming from the Italian National Survey on Health Conditions and Appeal to Medicare to extract the latent trait of disability and classify the elder population according to their disability profile. Model selection brings to a classification into four latent classes. Looking at posterior probabilities, classes may be interpreted as follows: elderly without disability, with difficulties in movements, with difficulties in movements and daily tasks, with very low functioning level. Estimates of the amount of population aged 65 or more falling in each class is also provided. Cross-validation shows evidence of the robustness of such classification. Item response theory models are also applied to the items considered to study how functions are lost with increasing levels of disability. In particular, the abilities of climbing stairs and stooping down are those lost first, while those of eating and getting washed are those lost last.     

The perils with the misuse of predictive power

In early drug development, especially when studying new mechanisms of action or in new disease areas, little is known about the targeted or anticipated treatment effect or variability estimates. Adaptive designs that allow for early stopping but also use interim data to adapt the sample size have been proposed as a practical way of dealing with these uncertainties. Predictive power and conditional power are two commonly mentioned techniques that allow predictions of what will happen at the end of the trial based on the interim data. Decisions about stopping or continuing the trial can then be based on these predictions. However, unless the user of these statistics has a deep understanding of their characteristics important pitfalls may be encountered, especially with the use of predictive power. The aim of this paper is to highlight these potential pitfalls. It is critical that statisticians understand the fundamental differences between predictive power and conditional power as they can have dramatic effects on decision making at the interim stage, especially if used to re-evaluate the sample size. The use of predictive power can lead to much larger sample sizes than either conditional power or standard sample size calculations. One crucial difference is that predictive power takes account of all uncertainty, parts of which are ignored by standard sample size calculations and conditional power. By comparing the characteristics of each of these statistics we highlight important characteristics of predictive power that experimenters need to be aware of when using this approach.     

The Dynamics of International Competitiveness: First Results from an Analysis at the Industry Level

The paper uses the key role of technology as starting point in determining trade flows and international competitiveness at industry and country level as a growing number of theoretical contributions and empirical verifications have recognized over the past decade. The paper uses a set of new data on trade, production, technology and costs at industry level for a certain number of countries to relate trade performance to a set of different economic and technological factors across countries and industrial sectors since the early 1970s. A single model of trade specialization is applied to the data in order to establish the impact of innovation, costs and country specific factors to overall performance, both in the short run and the long run, via a panel data analysis. Model specification follows the cointegration approach, where a long-run cointegrating vector is estimated along with the dynamic adjustment towards long-run equilibrium. The paper presents some preliminary results, related to a certain number of different industrial sectors for the major industrialized countries.     

The Europe 2020 Index

This paper presents a new index to quantify, measure and monitor the progress towards the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. This index is based on a set of relevant, accepted, credible, easy to monitor and robust indicators presented by the European Commission at the time the strategy was launched. The internal analysis of the index shows that the Smart and the Inclusive growth dimensions of the strategy are strictly correlated and that the trade-offs between each of these two dimensions and the Sustainable one exist but are decreasing, suggesting that a change towards more sustainable models of development is occurring in Europe. The external analysis of the index shows that it can be a valid measure to assess the overall competitiveness of countries and that the most critical factors for this strategy to be successful are good governance and social capital.     

Aid,Budgets and Accountability: A Survey Article

This article surveys the recent literature relating to the rationale for scaling up aid and improving its effectiveness. Modalities such as General Budget Support (GBS) are being introduced to increase country ownership and strengthen budget systems and domestic accountability. However, recent assessments of GBS programmes and Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms highlight a number of shortcomings which call into question the role of donors in supporting institutional change. Political‐economy factors are often overlooked. Moreover, in a number of countries, donors are deeply involved in core policy processes, undermining their capacity to play a more constructive role. As a consequence, the strengthening of domestic accountability remains an elusive objective.