Aiwu Zhao and Alexander J. Brehm
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether cumulative voting can help ease the conflicts between board of directors and minority shareholders.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether cumulative voting can help ease the conflicts between board of directors and minority shareholders.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use voting result of shareholder proposals as an indicator of the level of conflicts between board and minority shareholders. OLS regression and non‐parametric Kruskal‐Wallis tests have been applied in the analysis.
Findings
It was found that cumulative voting can help ease the conflicts between board of directors and minority shareholders. Also, the tension between board and minority shareholders is affected by both corporate governance factors and a company's stock performance.
Research limitations/implications
In general, the research result indicates that cumulative voting is still an effective mechanism that can lower investors' costs on monitoring boards of directors.
Practical implications
Considering the huge amount of resources used in shareholder campaigns, the research result indicates that cumulative voting can be an efficient choice to alleviate the confrontation between dissenting shareholders and board of directors.
Social implications
With the change of minority shareholder structure, it is necessary to examine whether the corporate world needs to reconsider the adoption of cumulative voting.
Originality/value
The authors use a novel proxy, voting results of investor proposals, to measure the conflicts between board of directors and minority shareholders. This is also one of the few papers focusing on the monitoring cost side of the agency cost problem in corporate governance literature.
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Roy Toffoli, Michel Librowicz, Ahlem Hajjem and Issam Telahigue
This study investigates how direct cultural interaction between a supplier country’s personnel and host country purchasing decision makers (HCNs) occurring during the exporting of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates how direct cultural interaction between a supplier country’s personnel and host country purchasing decision makers (HCNs) occurring during the exporting of professional, high-contact services can help shape the latter’s perception of the image of the supplier country and their willingness to buy its services or products. The article develops a theoretical framework that identifies those key drivers and their relationship.
Methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper based on a comprehensive review of the literature complemented by a pilot study with offshore executive MBA programs.
Findings
A conceptual model is developed with a series of testable propositions.
Practical implications
The framework should help companies and organizations involved in the exporting of such services devise programs to bolster the image of their country as a provider of these and other services and products.
Social implications
Trade in services is becoming a lifeline for many developed countries that have seen their manufacturing industries relocate to low labor-cost countries. Thus, it is imperative for these countries to bolster their COO to gain competitive advantage. Developing countries can also use such a framework as a means of improving the overall image of their own country and its products.
Originality/value
This research complements those rare studies done on the acculturation of HCNs by examining, for the first time, this process in the context of the exporting of professional services and on how it can lead to changes in the perception of the HCNs vis-à-vis the image of the supplier country.
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Emre Amasyalı and Axel van den Berg
The use of the concept of “agency,” in the sense of action that is to some extent free of “structural” constraints, has enjoyed enormous and growing popularity in the sociological…
Abstract
The use of the concept of “agency,” in the sense of action that is to some extent free of “structural” constraints, has enjoyed enormous and growing popularity in the sociological literature over the past several decades. In a previous paper, we examined the range of theoretical rationales offered by sociologists for the inclusion of the notion of “agency” in sociological explanations. Having found these rationales seriously wanting, in this paper we attempt to determine empirically what role “agency” actually plays in the recent sociological literature. We examine a random sample of 147 articles in sociology journals that use the concept of “agency” with the aim of identifying the ways in which the term is used and what function the concept serves in the sociological explanations offered. We identify four principal (often overlapping) uses of “agency”: (1) purely descriptive; (2) as a synonym for “power”; (3) as a way to identify resistance to “structural” pressures; and (4) as a way to describe intelligible human actions. We find that in none of these cases the notion of “agency” adds anything of analytical or explanatory value. These different uses have one thing in common, however: they all tend to use the term “agency” in a strongly normative sense to mark the actions the authors approve of. We conclude that “agency” seems to serve the purpose of registering the authors' moral or political preferences under the guise of a seemingly analytical concept.
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Nathaniel A. Nakashima and Francis J. Flynn
We propose that social projection – assuming a connection between your and others’ attitudes – can promote participation in generalized exchange.
Abstract
Purpose
We propose that social projection – assuming a connection between your and others’ attitudes – can promote participation in generalized exchange.
Methodology/approach
Drawing on the social projection literature, we posit that false consensus (overestimating the similarity between our attitudes and others’) can increase people’s willingness to participate in generalized exchange. In contrast, we expect that pluralistic ignorance (underestimating the similarity between our attitudes and others’) can undermine the same motivation. We propose that false consensus will not only make people more inclined to participate in generalized exchange but also lead to more successful exchanges through an advantageous self-selection process. Finally, we propose that perceived similarity will lead to false consensus, and in turn, increased participation in generalized exchange, whereas perceived dissimilarity will lead to pluralistic ignorance.
Practical implications
We suggest several ways to influence false consensus in order to promote a healthy pattern of generalized exchange.
Originality/value
We put forth a set of novel predictions concerning the relationship between social projection and social exchange. Our theorizing contributes to the existing literature on antecedents of generalized exchange.
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Matthew A. M. Thomas and Jacqueline Mosselson
Many researchers and practitioners in the field of comparative and international education (CIE) also work as educators, teaching CIE courses to cadres of students across various…
Abstract
Many researchers and practitioners in the field of comparative and international education (CIE) also work as educators, teaching CIE courses to cadres of students across various levels. In teaching these courses, CIE educators play a significant role in shaping the field’s future: the perspectives they privilege and the pedagogies they utilize arguably leave lasting impressions on students, who themselves go on to become teachers, researchers, policymakers, international development practitioners, and more. However, scant attention has been paid to the teaching of CIE. This chapter explores the possibilities and potential benefits of linking the teaching of CIE more deeply with both the emerging scholarship on it and the current debates and dilemmas with which the Comparative and International Education Society and CIE journals have engaged in the past few years such as decolonizing development and education. The chapter raises questions about the future of teaching CIE and concludes with a renewed call for additional research on the scholarship of teaching CIE.
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Urs Alexander Fichtner, Lukas Maximilian Horstmeier, Boris Alexander Brühmann, Manuel Watter, Harald Binder and Jochen Knaus
One of the currently debated changes in scientific practice is the implementation of data sharing requirements for peer-reviewed publication to increase transparency and…
Abstract
Purpose
One of the currently debated changes in scientific practice is the implementation of data sharing requirements for peer-reviewed publication to increase transparency and intersubjective verifiability of results. However, it seems that data sharing is a not fully adopted behavior among researchers. The theory of planned behavior was repeatedly applied to explain drivers of data sharing from the perspective of data donors (researchers). However, data sharing can be viewed from another perspective as well: survey participants. The research questions (RQs) for this study were as follows: 1 Does data sharing increase participant's nonresponse? 2 Does data sharing influence participant's response behavior? The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
To answer the RQs, a mixed methods approach was applied, consisting of a qualitative prestudy and a quantitative survey including an experimental component. The latter was a two-group setup with an intervention group (A) and a control group (B). A list-based recruiting of members of the Medical Faculty of the University of Freiburg was applied for 15 days. For exploratory data analysis of dropouts and nonresponse, we used Fisher's exact tests and binary logistic regressions.
Findings
In sum, we recorded 197 cases for Group A and 198 cases for Group B. We found no systematic group differences regarding response bias or dropout. Furthermore, we gained insights into the experiences our sample made with data sharing: half of our sample already requested data of other researchers or shared data on request of other researchers. Data repositories, however, were used less frequently: 28% of our respondents used data from repositories and 19% stored data in a repository.
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, their study is the first study that includes researchers as survey subjects investigating the effect of data sharing on their response patterns.