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The choice of a primary financial goal is considered an important part of any organization's planning process. A lingering question is whether stockholder welfare can really be affected by a company's decision to change this goal.

Electric Utility Diversification and Efficient Capital Markets Over 60% of investor owned electric utilities have experimented with diversification into lines of business other than the traditional generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. They diversify for a variety of reasons, but a primary goal is to improve their overall financial performance. Existing studies have found that diversified utilities outperform non‐diversified utilities. Measures of performance have included EPS growth, price‐earnings multiples, market‐book ratios and internal rates of return. However, many of these studies do not compare performance on a risk‐adjusted basis nor indicate whether differences are statistically significant. In contrast, this study compares performance using the efficient market hypothesis. Regression results indicate that there is no significant difference in risk between portfolios comprised of diversified utilities and non‐diversified utilities. Furthermore, no significant difference in return was observed. The performance of the two portfolios does not appear to differ in risk or return. These results tend to support the efficient market hypothesis concerning stockholders' inability to gain an advantage from publicly available information. Differences in company performance that are anticipated and already reflected in stock price do not result in differences in returns to stockholders.

Capital budgeting has been a major topic of the finance literature since Joel Dean's book was published in 1951. Since then, several books and dozens of articles have been published about every aspect of this finance function. So many surveys of capital budgeting techniques used by companies have been administered by researchers that even the surveys have been evaluated.

Starting in the 1980s, financial liberalization and technological developments have enabled individual investors to participate in financial markets and carry out easy transactions. With these developments, academics began to wonder how the individual investors decide to invest and what factors affect these decisions.

According to traditional finance theory, it is suggested that markets are efficient and investors show rational behaviors in their financial purchasing decisions. However, in many studies conducted in recent years, it was determined that investors included emotional elements as well as rational elements in their decision-making process and therefore exhibited irrational behaviors by believing rumors instead of real information. It is thought that many factors such as personal characteristics, psychological factors, demographic and socio-economic factors play a role in the behavior of investors in purchasing a financial product.

In this study, the importance of herd behavior, which is one of the psychological factors that play a very important role in financial markets, on financial product purchasing process is examined in the light of the behavioral finance theory. It is thought that information included in the study will be useful for researchers who want to study herd behavior and for those who are interested in the subject.

Purpose – This chapter attempts to provide a literary analysis of the various ways in which the importance of basketball in North American Native culture has been represented in literature produced by three Native American authors: James Welch, Stephen Graham Jones, and Sherman Alexie.

Design/methodology/approach – The foundation of this study is derived from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s account of his experiences as a coach of Apache players in Arizona in A Season on The Reservation, and the example of Shoni Schimmel, from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, who is featured in the documentary, Off the Rez. These documentary accounts are supplemented by a critical apparatus drawn from the ideas of the Anishinaabe critic, Gerald Vizenor.

Findings – The character of the Native basketball star functions as a complex signifier that resists Western conceptions of individual achievement and success in favor of Native conceptions of community and cultural survivance.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations of literary analysis stem from the engagement with a body of Native literature that is by no means comprehensive. In addition, the views expressed by each writer are necessarily punctuated by narrative ambiguity and indeterminacy.

Originality/value – The chapter provides a unique introduction to the motif of basketball in contemporary Native American fiction and the storytelling practices from which meaning emerges. The analysis of the works addressed highlights a Native-centered interpretive approach that reveals the complex meaning of basketball in Native American society. The use of this culturally responsive critical paradigm allows readers to approach Native literary achievement on its own terms, rather than from the perspective of the dominant culture.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Strategic decisions leaders make involving organizational changes such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A), divestitures, and downsizing, which can influence and/or interact with other organizational factors. For example, within the context of M&A, changes impact financial performance, firm behaviors, and organizational culture. In addition, strategic decisions for these types of change can also interrelate with other more intrapersonal factors, including both leaders’ and employees’ health and well-being. Employee stress, also referred to as “merger syndrome,” outlines individual negative impacts of the changes including, but not limited to, cynicism and distrust, change wariness, and burnout, all accumulating to psychological effects including increases in detachment to work, stress, and sick leave. In this chapter, the authors outline the different impacts M&A phases have on stress and well-being and how they interrelate with the strategic decisions leaders make. The authors also outline future research opportunities and practical implications for how leaders and employees could better manage future major changes such as M&A activities.

A “state-driven” approach suggests that colonists use census categories to rule. However, a “society-driven” approach suggests that this state-driven perspective confers too much power upon states. A third approach views census-taking and official categorization as a product of state–society interaction that depends upon: (a) the population's lay categories, (b) information intellectuals' ability to take up and transform these lay categories, and (c) the balance of power between social and state actors. We evaluate the above positions by analyzing official records, key texts, travelogues, and statistical memoirs from three key periods in India: Indus Valley civilization through classical Gupta rule (ca. 3300 BCE–700 CE), the “medieval” period (ca. 700–1700 CE), and East India Company (EIC) rule (1757–1857 CE), using historical narrative. We show that information gathering early in the first period was society driven; however, over time, a strong interactive pattern emerged. Scribes (information intellectuals) increased their social status and power (thus, shifting the balance of power) by drawing on caste categories (lay categories) and incorporating them into official information gathering. This intensification of interactive information gathering allowed the Mughals, the EIC, and finally British direct rule officials to collect large quantities of information. Our evidence thus suggests that the intensification of state–society interactions over time laid the groundwork for the success of the direct rule British censuses. It also suggests that any transformative effect of these censuses lay in this interactive pattern, not in the strength of the British colonial state.

This chapter introduces the topic of mental health and wellbeing in schools and the overarching theoretical framework for the book. The evolving role of schools from nurturing environments to frontline support for pupils’ mental health and wellbeing is scrutinised in the context of demand, capacity and constraints in a post-pandemic world. Alongside this is a critical consideration of schools’ and education staff’s role, responsibilities and boundaries. The disparate mental health needs of pupils within the school population are discussed, as well as key risk and protective factors to help facilitate timely identification and appropriate support pathways for vulnerable pupils. Key topics and case studies which comprise the remainder of the book are introduced to navigate the reader, and this concludes the chapter.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are increasingly seeking to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and inclusiveness within the societies they operate in, often by highlighting the amount of tax they pay. The author proposes to summarize channels through which tax impacts the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and analyze them in relation to a single goal, SDG 10 (reduced inequalities) in a single region (the Central and Eastern Europe, CEE). The impact of tax is often ambivalent, but above all it is hard to quantify as there are many stakeholders involved and corporations still tend to disguise their internal information. The author analyzes MNEs’ operations in the CEE region to better understand how reporting standards influence the achievement of SDG 10, focusing on country-by-country reporting (CbCR) and non-financial reporting of European banks and other corporations who publish CbCR on a voluntary basis. The authors perform a quantitative analysis of CbCR data and a qualitative investigation of 201 non-financial reports by 30 MNEs. From the theoretical viewpoint, this research may help to construct a framework to evaluate the tax impact of a given company. Given that, this chapter also outlines why and how it can be beneficial for MNEs to publish voluntary reports it can also serve to motivate increased voluntary participation of MNEs in the transition to sustainability.