To what extent are students as middle managers at a training hotel involved in strategic decision making?

Research has shown that middle managers can exert major upward or downward influence on their organisation’s strategy. Inthe practice department of our hotel school, senior students act as managers to train managerial competences. To analyse if thisreflects reality, I have researched whether student managers do have strategic influence. The research indicates that studentscarry out a substantial number of strategic tasks as part of their practical training. However these tasks do not fit with existingtheoretical frameworks regarding middle managers’ strategic influence. This might be explained by the fact that putting studentsin a training situation stimulates non-routinised sensemaking behaviour of student middle managers.Keywords: managerial competences, middle management, sensemaking, strategic influenc

Middle manager’s innovative work behavior and their social network position:A search on slippery ice

Central to this dissertation is the question why some middle managers are more innovative than others. This question has been examined from three related perspectives. A primary role of middle managers consists of analyzing, processing and passing on information. Middle managers maintain intensive contacts with, among others, other middle managers. Therefore it has been investigated how the structure of a social network facilitates or limits innovative behavior. Secondly, it was investigated to what extent individual characteristics influence innovative behavior. Individual characteristics determine how a middle manager deals with opportunities and restraints. The third factor focuses on the complexity of modern organizations. Middle managers often operate in organizations with multiple locations that are at a certain distance from the head office and in complex partnerships such as franchising or joint ventures. Such complex structures influence the autonomy and thus possibly the innovative behavior of middle managers. Three empirical studies have been carried out: Students of a business school, an international company with a complex organizational structure and multiple locations, and the administration of a municipality in Mexico City. In addition, a simulation study was carried out to determine an optimal strategy for dealing with missing data in the network analyses carried out. The results suggest that innovative behavior of middle managers is likely to be influenced by individual differences in personality and goal orientation. Potential influences of network position were not found. Influence of organizational factors related to autonomy could not be identified

The Future of Roe and the Gender Pay Gap: An Empirical Assessment

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law that prohibits nearly all abortions after the fifteenth week of pregnancy and overruled the holding in Roe v. Wade. Among the many arguments raised in Dobbs in an attempt to overturn Roe, the State of Mississippi argued that due to “the march of progress” in women’s role in society, abortion rights are no longer necessary for women to participate equally in economic life. It has also been argued that there is no empirical support to the relationship between abortion rights and women’s economic success in society. This Article will empirically examine both of these arguments, and it provides compelling evidence to reject each of them. To do so, we adopt a novel methodology that utilizes the enforcement of Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws as proxies for abortion restrictions. We study the effects of over forty years of legislation on the participation of American women in the labor market. Our findings suggest that the introduction of TRAP laws has widened the gender pay gap between women of childbearing age and the rest of the population. Our analysis offers two potential explanations regarding the mechanisms based on which TRAP laws widen this gap: they push women out of the labor force and into choosing lower-paying jobs. Ultimately, these findings foreshadow the future landscape of gender inequality in the United States in the post-Roe era

Failed Anti-Activist Legislation: The Curious Case of the Brokaw Act

The Brokaw Act was proposed legislation aimed at “financial abuses being carried out by activist hedge funds who promote short-term gains at the expense of long-term growth . . . .” Sponsoring Senators named it after a small town in Wisconsin that, according to the Act’s sponsors, was decimated by the actions of a hedge fund activist in shutting down the local paper mill with a loss of hundreds of jobs. The Brokaw Act represented the first attempt at federal legislation aimed at restricting hedge fund activism. Since then, new and similar bipartisan proposals have appeared as have threats of state regulation. In this Comment, we show that the occurrences in Brokaw, Wisconsin are far different from the representations the sponsoring Senators made. Hedge fund activists played essentially no role in the closure of the Brokaw mill. To the contrary, the paper company’s incumbent management closed the mill—just the latest in a series of management’s mill closures—amid an industry-wide decline that made the mill uneconomic to keep open. We then consider two claims of hedge fund activism’s opponents that appear to motivate the Brokaw Act. The first claim—that hedge fund activists typically use the ten-day disclosure period of Rule 13d-1 to accumulate positions significantly in excess of 5%—has been the subject of empirical study and is incorrect. The second claim—that hedge fund activists often form a “wolf pack” in the pre-disclosure period to act collectively against a target—is also without support from empirical evidence. Neither claim warrants legislative action. Finally, we consider two additional parts of the Brokaw Act. The first would expand the concept of beneficial ownership to include certain derivatives linked to the value of equity securities, while the second would require increased disclosure of short positions in the stock of public companies. Neither activity plays an important role in hedge fund activism, and both require additional study before the passage of any legislation

The complete mitochondrial genome of the Australian Common Rock Rat, Zyzomys argurus

The Common Rock Rat Zyzomys argurus is an abundant small- to medium-sized Murid rodent that is endemic to Australia. It is a nocturnal mammal with a mostly herbivorous diet. This species is native to the wet/dry tropics of Northern Australia and can be identified from other rock rats on the basis of its small size and its tail length (which is at least equivalent to its head-body length). Here, we describe the complete mitochondrial genome of Z. argurus and compare it to other Rodentia. The Z. argurus circular mitogenome was 16,261 bp and contained 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNA genes, 22 tRNAs and a control region (D-loop) of 859 bp. Phylogenetic analysis of selected, published sequenced mitogenomes reveal it is most closely related to the Lakeland Downs mouse Leggadina lakedownensis in the order Rodentia