Top Management Team Diversity and Acquisition Quality

This research study investigates the impact of top management team diversity (TMT) on the quality of acquisition decisions as reflected in announcement returns to acquirer shareholders. Firms pursue acquisitions with the strategic rationale of increasing shareholder value, improving market share, and achieving economies of scale. Despite these compelling motivations, acquisitions have not always yielded the desired results in terms of increasing shareholder value. This is generally attributed to poor decision making on the part of the TMT. Upper Echelons Theory suggests that TMT decision quality is enhanced when team members come from diverse backgrounds as they bring diversity of opinions and resource knowledge which allow for a more robust sharing of ideas and viable alternatives. Therefore, this study focuses on TMT diversity traits the dimensions of gender diversity, age diversity, job diversity, cultural diversity, tenure diversity, and political affiliation diversity and how these diversity traits impact the decision making process as reflected in the announcement returns of acquirer. I use announcement period returns to acquirer shareholders as my measure of acquisition decision quality due to its extensive use in the finance literature to assess the efficacy corporate policies including investment decisions (Guiso et al., 2008; Bottazzi et al., 2010), cash holdings (Chen et al., 2015) and cost of capital (Gray et al., 2013).I find that age diversity, political diversity, current tenure diversity, and cultural diversity have significant effect on acquisition quality. This means that the shareholders of acquiring firms overall can expect to earn higher abnormal returns when these aforementioned diversity characteristics are present at the TMT level of the firm. Additionally, I find that the impact of these diversity characteristics on acquirer returns are more profound when the deal value of the acquisition is at least 20% of the acquiring firm's size. Furthermore, I also find that TMT diversity characteristics such as gender diversity and total tenure diversity do not have significant effect on acquisition quality as reflected in the announcement returns of the acquirer. Thus, not all diversity characteristics appear to enhance acquisition decision quality. In conclusion, TMT diversity overall promotes better decision making

Traditional theory of Optimal Currency Areas (OCA)

Artykuł wyróżnia zastosowanie sformalizowanej perspektywy metodologicznej. Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie i ocena założeń tradycyjnej teorii optymalnych obszarów walutowych (OOW) metodą idealizacji i konkretyzacji w rozumieniu Leszka Nowaka. Szczególną uwagę poświęcono kryteriom optymalności. W artykule przyjęto podejście historyczne, to jest analizę ewolucji wyjściowej koncepcji OOW. Zastosowano analizę porównawczą i wykorzystano koncepcję idealizacji i konkretyzacji, która pozwoliła zidentyfikować w poszczególnych modelach optymalnych obszarów walutowych cele, czynniki główne i uboczne oraz umożliwiła ocenę charakteru i spójności założeń. W pierwszej części artykułu wyjaśniono przyczynę wyboru koncepcji idealizacji i konkretyzacji, jako narzędzia badawczego, oraz przyjęte w niej założenia metodologiczne. W następnej części zaprezentowano zbiór wyjściowych założeń teoretycznych Optymalnych Obszarów Walutowych. W kolejnych częściach w ślad za literaturą przedmiotu wyróżniono okresy, w których dominowały zbliżone stanowiska badawcze wobec pierwotnych podstaw teoretycznych. W każdej części przeanalizowano z osobna reprezentatywne modele, stosując podejście metodologiczne idealizacji i konkretyzacji.The paper stands out because of the use of a specific methodology. The aim of this paper is to present and assess the evolution of the old theory of the Optimal Currency Areas (OCA) using the methodological concept of idealisation and substantiation developed by L. N owak. A special attention has been given to optimum criteria. A historical comparative analysis method used together with the idealisation and substantiation concept enabled identification of the aims, and the main as well as side factors in all OCA models. The paper is divided in 6 parts: Introduction, Methodological Introduction, three main parts and Conclusion. In the methodological part the author offered the rationale for the use of the idealisation and substantiation concept. The following parts contain a collection of basic theoretical assumptions of the OCA. Parts four and five contain an assessment of two time periods which represented different attitudes towards the basic theoretical assumptions. In all parts, separate OCA models have been verified using the idealisation and substantiation method

Vibration control on linear robots with digital servocompensator

Control application for active damping of structural vibrations and acoustic noise in mechanical systems is one of the engineering fields that can benefit from advances made in digital signal processors. This thesis project is one such application. It is about a vibration control at the loading point of a high speed linear robotic workcell. A lead zirconate titanate piezoelectric ceramic is used as the actuator and an accelerometer provides the sensing. From experimentally measured frequency response of this system, a shaping filter is designed and added on. The reshaped system is fitted with a third order transfer function design model. And based on this model, a discrete-time control scheme designated “servocompensator” is designed and implemented on a Digital Signal Processing board to control structural vibrations on the robotic workcell. Servocompensator is a control scheme based on the principle of Internal Model Design. The results have demonstrated the servocompensator as a powerful scheme for controlling independently the individual modes within the spectrum of a given vibration signal. In a typical result, as much as 40 dB of attenuation is produced on the targeted mode, where 0 dB is equal to 1 g of acceleration in this application. Furthermore, with the multi-tasking capability of the digital hardware, multiple mode control is demonstrated by multiplexing a number of single-mode servocompensators

Modeling, control and simulation of control-affine nonlinear systems with state-dependent transfer functions

There has been no known research that applies nonlinear transfer function to a nonlinear control problem. The belief is that nonlinear systems have no transfer functions. The Laplace transformation required to define transfer functions is not tractable mathematically when the coefficients of the differential equation are functions of state, output and control variables. In other words, it is not defined for systems that do not obey principles of superposition. Only linear systems obey this principle. Therefore, this dissertation work represents the very first research to demonstrate how transfer functions can be used to represent and design feedback control for nonlinear systems. Real systems are inherently nonlinear. A few important examples include an aerospace vehicle whose mass parameter is variable because of fuel consumption, artificial pancreas and HIV drug delivery systems in the bio-medical field, robot arm and magnetic levitation systems in the mechanical engineering field and phase-locked-loop in the electrical engineering field. The subject of nonlinear system control, however, is more of an art than science. There is no unified framework for analysis and design. Success of a design usually depends on a designer’s experience. All the theory and design tools available, e.g., the whole subject of linear algebra, are based on systems described with linear models, which obey the principle of superposition. Control system design by linearization, which is based on approximated linear time invariant (LTI) system design model, is the closest to a general design framework available for nonlinear systems. The most important problem in a control system designed by linearization is the problem of design model parameter variation during its operation. Obviously, this problem is the result of assuming a constant parameter or LTI design model for a real system that is actually nonlinear or has variable parameter model. In other words, a real system does not have constant parameters as approximated by its LTI design model. This problem is important enough to have specific design methods such as robust control and Horowitz quantitative feedback theory developed to address it. As the system is operated further and further out of the approximate linear range this problem gets worst. Furthermore, the controller based on design by linearization is not a tracking controller. It is a regulator that usually cannot track a varying reference input. Investigated in the research presented in this dissertation is a nonlinear transfer function-based control method, i.e., one based on a model represented with varying parameters therefore a natural solution to the model parameter variation problem of design by linearization. The class of applicable nonlinear and time-varying systems are those that are affine in their control input such that they can be described by the central concept of this scheme, a state-dependent transfer function (SDTF). The introduction of this concept of nonlinear transfer function design model and the feedback control scheme based on it are the contributions of the research presented in this dissertation

Role of Leadership Behaviour in Organizational Culture and Job Satisfaction

Leadership plays a significant role in shaping and maintaining the culture of an organization. It is in this leadership process that the effect of culture becomes most perceptible. The study investigated the role of leadership behaviour in organisational culture and job satisfaction. Using the descriptive survey design, 422 senior staff administrative assistants in University of Cape Coast, Ghana, using the table of random numbers. Questionnaire with Cronbach alpha reliability estimates of the three sub-sections were, .86, .74 and .78 for leadership behaviour, organisational culture and job satisfaction respectively was used to gather data for the study. Mediation analysis using bootstrapping approach by Hayes was employed. Specifically, 5000 bootstrap samples was used for bias corrected bootstrap confidence intervals at 95% level of confidence. The study revealed that organisational culture is a significant predictor of job satisfaction, b=8.866, t(419)=7.621, p=.010. It was also found that organisational culture has a significant impact on leadership behaviours, b=1.217, t(419)=2.986, p<.001. Leadership behaviour and organisational culture was found as significant predictors of job satisfaction, F(2, 418)=225.68, p<.001. It was further found that leadership behaviour is a significant mediator in the relationship between organisational culture and job satisfaction, BootCI (.0442-.3002), b=.1659. The study concluded that organisational culture and leadership behaviour mutually and independently affect employee job satisfaction. Leadership behaviour, however, plays a crucial role in the link between organisational culture and job satisfaction. It was recommended that frequent seminars and workshops be organised by management to equip superiors on how to effectively lead their subordinates. Keywords: Organisational culture, leadership behavior, job satisfaction, leadershi

Audio-based event detection for sports video

In this paper, we present an audio-based event detection approach shown to be effective when applied to the Sports broadcast data. The main benefit of this approach is the ability to recognise patterns that indicate high levels of crowd response which can be correlated to key events. By applying Hidden Markov Model-based classifiers, where the predefined content classes are parameterised using Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients, we were able to eliminate the need for defining a heuristic set of rules to determine event detection, thus avoiding a two-class approach shown not to be suitable for this problem. Experimentation indicated that this is an effective method for classifying crowd response in Soccer matches, thus providing a basis for automatic indexing and summarisation

The social mechanics of good music: a description of dance clubs among the Anlo Ewe-speaking people of Ghana

Among the Ewe-speaking people of southeastern Ghana, southern Togoland and southern Dahomey, there are different kinds of music. We have narrative songs, war songs, cradle songs, dirges, play songs, and even chorales (which are foreign to our culture). Along with these one can find different types of cult music belonging to the local rites of worship of the gods, and court music. In African societies, music incorporates dance; therefore music in this paper refers to the drumming, singing, and dancing of the dance club

Takada drumming

Nine miles northwest across a lagoon from the coastal settlement of Keta in southeastern Ghana lies the island town of Anyako, a centre of traditional culture for speakers of the Anlo dialect of Evegbe. Kobla Ladzekpo was born there, and has provided the cultural background material and musical examples for this paper, while Hewitt Pantaleoni has done the notation and analysis. Both authors had the opportunity of checking their material at Anyako in July of 1970. Dance drumming among the Anlo-speaking Eveawo is a vigorous traditional ensemble art actively promoted in Anyako through a system of dance clubs. These are set up by the voluntary joint effort of a group of interested men and women, usually from the same age group. Sometimes a club lasts no longer than its founders are able to remain active in it, and sometimes it survives the founders and accumulates representatives from successive generations

BEHAVIORAL AND CULTURAL ACCOUNTS OF CORRUPTION IN THE INTERFACE BETWEEN PUBLIC OFFICER AND CLIENT

O presente artigo aplica uma perspectiva analítico comportamental para examinar comportamento corrupto. Com esse artigo, pretende-se atender a um chamado feito há algumas décadas aos analistas do comportamento para estender os interesses e estratégias de sua disciplina a domínios tradicionalmente atribuídos às ciências sociais. Este artigo tem três objetivos: primeiro, examinar a corrupção como fenômeno comportamental e cultural; segundo, alertar a comunidade das ciências sociais para a utilidade das ferramentas conceituais analítico-comportamentais para a investigação da corrupção; terceiro, chamar a atenção de analistas do comportamento para algumas pesquisas sobre corrupção, que é uma das questões mais críticas do século XXI.Palavras-chave: Corrupção, Contingências, Metacontingências, Práticas culturais, Cultura.This paper applies a behavior analytic framework to examine corrupt behavior. With this article, we heed to the call made some decades ago to behavior analysts to extend the interests and strategies of their discipline into domains traditionally assigned to the social sciences. This article has three objectives: First, to examine corruption as behavioral and cultural phenomena; Second is to draw the attention of the social sciences community to the potentials of behavior analytic tools to investigate corrupt behavior; Third, to appeal to behavior analysts to direct some research attention to corruption, which is one of the most critical issues of the twenty-first century.Keywords: corruption, Contingencies, Metacontingencies, Cultural practices, Culture

Analysis Of Spoken English In Students’ Writing: A Case Study Of A Ghanaian Senior High School (Shs)

Abstract: Writing in English as a Second Language appears to be a challenge to most students in Ghanaian schools especially those in Senior High School (SHS). This study was carried out to investigate the spoken features in students’ essays. The purpose of the study was to find out the spoken features in students’ written productions. The participants who took part in the study were form one students. The tools used in the study were students’ essays and an interview with teachers. Data collected were analysed and spoken features were sorted out. The study revealed that students were not proficient in essay writing because they blend both written and spoken genres in their write-ups. The study concludes that suitable solutions should be employed by teachers to arouse students’ interest in language use, particularly in essay writing. Keywords: English as a second language, spoken features, essay, written productio