The powerful outburst in Hercules A

The radio source Hercules A resides at the center of a cooling flow cluster of galaxies at redshift z = 0.154. A Chandra X-ray image reveals a shock front in the intracluster medium (ICM) surrounding the radio source, about 160 kpc from the active galactic nucleus (AGN) that hosts it. The shock has a Mach number of 1.65, making it the strongest of the cluster-scale shocks driven by an AGN outburst found so far. The age of the outburst ~5.9e7 y, its energy about 3e61 erg and its mean power ~1.6e46 erg/s. As for the other large AGN outbursts in cooling flow clusters, this outburst overwhelms radiative losses from the ICM of the Hercules A cluster by a factor of ~100. It adds to the case that AGN outbursts are a significant source of preheating for the ICM. Unless the mechanical efficiency of the AGN in Hercules A exceeds 10%, the central black hole must have grown by more than 1.7e8 Msun to power this one outburst.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, accepted by ApJ

The determinants of hotels' marketing managers' green marketing behaviour

Little is known about the factors underlying the pro-environmental behaviour of marketing managers. This paper explores the determinants of green marketing practices in the Red Sea hotel sector in Egypt. The research model assesses green marketing practices against the personal and organisational values of the marketing managers, together with a range of organisational and demographic variables expected to influence hotels' environmental behaviour. From a valid sample of 89 marketing managers responsible for 194 hotels, it was found that organisational contextual variables, and in particular targeting Western tourists, being affiliated to an international hotel chain and the marketers' own demographics, including age, academic subject studied and gender, were the best predictors of more proactive green marketing. Personal environmental values did not explain the pro-environmental behaviour of marketers, and the organisational environmental values that had explained part of their ethical behaviour had resulted from voluntarism rather than utilitarian or conformance-based values. Government policies also appeared to be ineffective determinants. The implications for green marketing practices are also discussed. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

Corporate governance and financial constraints on strategic turnarounds

The paper extends the Robbins and Pearce (1992) two-stage turnaround response model to include governance factors. In addition to the retrenchment and recovery, the paper proposes the addition of a realignment stage, referring specifically to the re-alignment of expectations of principal and agent groups. The realignment stage imposes a threshold that must be crossed before the retrenchment and hence recovery stage can be entered. Crossing this threshold is problematic to the extent that the interests of governance-stakeholder groups diverge in a crisis situation. The severity of the crisis impacts on the bases of strategy contingent asset valuation leading to the fragmentation of stakeholder interests. In some cases the consequence may be that management are prevented from carrying out turnarounds by governance constraints. The paper uses a case study to illustrate these dynamics, and like the Robbins and Pearce study, it focuses on the textile industry. A longitudinal approach is used to show the impact of the removal of governance constraints. The empirical evidence suggests that such financial constraints become less serious to the extent that there is a functioning market for corporate control. Building on governance research and turnaround literature, the paper also outlines the general case necessary and sufficient conditions for successful turnarounds

Economic liberalization and the antecedents of top management teams: evidence from Turkish 'big' business

There has been an increased interest in the last two decades in top management teams (TMTs) of business firms. Much of the research, however, has been US-based and concerned primarily with TMT effects on organizational outcomes. The present study aims to expand this literature by examining the antecedents of top team composition in the context of macro-level economic change in a late-industrializing country. The post-1980 trade and market reforms in Turkey provided the empirical setting. Drawing upon the literatures on TMT and chief executive characteristics together with punctuated equilibrium models of change and institutional theory, the article develops the argument that which firm-level factors affect which attributes of TMT formations varies across the early and late stages of economic liberalization. Results of the empirical investigation of 71 of the largest industrial firms in Turkey broadly supported the hypotheses derived from this premise. In the early stages of economic liberalization the average age and average organizational tenure of TMTs were related to the export orientation of firms, whereas in later stages, firm performance became a major predictor of these team attributes. Educational background characteristics of teams appeared to be under stronger institutional pressures, altering in different ways in the face of macro-level change

Differences that matter: hiring modes and demographic (dis)similarity in executive selection

Scholars, practitioners, and policymakers have long acknowledged the importance of understanding the antecedents of top management team (TMT) composition. Yet, research on how and why firms select executives who are demographically dissimilar to incumbent TMT members remains limited. We take a step toward answering these questions by employing a sample of 575 individual-level executive appointments at 170 large European firms between 2005 and 2009. Drawing on the person-group fit perspective, we argue that firms are more likely to appoint socio-demographically dissimilar executives through internal promotion – while external hires are more likely to socio-demographically resemble incumbent top managers. Our results support the hypothesized relationship. They also show that this relationship is influenced by the level of administrative complexity and environmental uncertainty facing the firm. Overall, our theory and results enhance our understanding of ‘why top management teams are composed the way they are’, by highlighting the impact of internal and external hiring modes in the selection of demographically (dis)similar executives

Investigating the mix of strategic choices and performance of transaction platforms: Evidence from the crowdfunding setting

Research Summary: The platform literature offers keen insights on the pricing and non-pricing strategies that transaction platforms undertake. We supplement this work by studying how platforms mix together their strategic choices and the association with platforms’ performance. To that end, we focus on crowdfunding platforms; a prominent setting of transaction platforms. We present an inductive large-N study of the population of 788 crowdfunding platforms that operated in EU-15 countries up to 2018. Our contribution is threefold: (a) identifying common mixes of strategic choices; (b) tracking deviations from these mixes; and (c) associating these with platforms’ survival and growth. We discuss our findings and how they advance knowledge at the intersection of the platform and strategic management literatures. Managerial Summary: Notable transaction-platforms such as eBay, LinkedIn, and Tencent have an aggregate market-value in the hundreds of billions of dollars. We know that platforms’ success is driven by the strategic choices they undertake. Yet, we know less about how they mix together these choices and the association with platforms’ performance. Our study addresses this gap by focusing on a prominent setting: crowdfunding. Using data on the population of 788 crowdfunding platforms in EU-15 countries, we show that these platforms cluster around three common mixes of strategic choices. Moreover, crowdfunding platforms do not strictly adhere to the strategy mix they are affiliated with. Interestingly, there is a positive association between the degree to which a platform's choices differentiate from its strategy mix and platform's subsequent performance

Do the type and number of blockholders influence R&D investments? : new evidence from Spain

Using data from 3,638 Spanish firms between 1996 and 2000, this article studies the relationship between the presence of large shareholders in the ownership structure of firms and R&D investment. Consistent with our theoretical contention, our results indicate that the impact of large shareholders on the R&D investment is (1) negative when blockholders are banks, (2) positive when blockholders are non-financial corporations and (3) null when blockholders are individuals. In addition, we find a systematic negative relationship between the number of blockholders and R&D investment. Finally, we extend our study by analysing the influence that the combined effect between blockholder type and R&D investment has on the firm’s economic performance. Results of this work provide relevant implications for policy makers and academic research.Publicad

Motivation gaps and implementation traps:the paradoxical and time-varying effects of family ownership on firm absorptive capacity

We present a theoretical framework of family ownership as a driver of the heterogeneity (between‐firm differences) and variability (within‐firm differences over time) of absorptive capacity (AC). Building on our analysis of the multiple dimensions of family owner influence on firm behavior and the mechanisms that can shape the firm willingness and ability to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit external knowledge, we introduce the concepts of motivation gap and implementation gap to explain why, paradoxically, family ownership can cause both upward and downward divergences in AC. Our contingency framework identifies conditions under which the positive and negative effects of family ownership on AC are likely to prevail and adds a temporal perspective suggesting that AC varies depending on the duration of family ownership and ownership succession

What we talk about when we talk about "global mindset": managerial cognition in multinational corporations

Recent developments in the global economy and in multinational corporations have placed significant emphasis on the cognitive orientations of managers, giving rise to a number of concepts such as “global mindset” that are presumed to be associated with the effective management of multinational corporations (MNCs). This paper reviews the literature on global mindset and clarifies some of the conceptual confusion surrounding the construct. We identify common themes across writers, suggesting that the majority of studies fall into one of three research perspectives: cultural, strategic, and multidimensional. We also identify two constructs from the social sciences that underlie the perspectives found in the literature: cosmopolitanism and cognitive complexity and use these two constructs to develop an integrative theoretical framework of global mindset. We then provide a critical assessment of the field of global mindset and suggest directions for future theoretical and empirical research

Appointing Women to Boards: Is There a Cultural Bias?

Companies that are serious about corporate governance and business ethics are turning their attention to gender diversity at the most senior levels of business (Institute of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Briefing 21:1, 2011). Board gender diversity has been the subject of several studies carried out by international organizations such as Catalyst (Increasing gender diversity on boards: Current index of formal approaches, 2012), the World Economic Forum (Hausmann et al., The global gender gap report, 2010), and the European Board Diversity Analysis (Is it getting easier to find women on European boards? 2010). They all lead to reports confirming the overall relatively low proportion of women on boards and the slow pace at which more women are being appointed. Furthermore, the proportion of women on corporate boards varies much across countries. Based on institutional theory, this study hypothesizes and tests whether this variation can be attributed to differences in cultural settings across countries. Our analysis of the representation of women on boards for 32 countries during 2010 reveals that two cultural characteristics are indeed associated with the observed differences. We use the cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede (Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values, 1980) to measure this construct. Results show that countries which have the greatest tolerance for inequalities in the distribution of power and those that tend to value the role of men generally exhibit lower representations of women on boards