Paul Tosey, Heather Cairns-Lee and James Lawley
In this book the terms ‘clean language’ and ‘clean language interviewing’ are written using lower case, according to the convention of the American Psychological Association…
Abstract
NB
In this book the terms ‘clean language’ and ‘clean language interviewing’ are written using lower case, according to the convention of the American Psychological Association (sixth edition). ‘Clean language interviewing’ is sometimes abbreviated to CLI.
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James Tompkins and Robert Hendershott
Takeovers create a potential conflict of interest between target shareholders and directors. While mergers generally create value for the target shareholders, their directors will…
Abstract
Purpose
Takeovers create a potential conflict of interest between target shareholders and directors. While mergers generally create value for the target shareholders, their directors will typically lose their board seats and likely face a financial loss or loss of prestige. The purpose of this paper is to examine evidence to support or refute that directors may act in their own best interests at the expense of shareholders.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors reason that if directors act in their own best interests, then acquiring firms will seek targets with older board members who are closer to director retirement and are therefore less reluctant to give up their board seats. The paper uses data of 528 banks between 1999 and 2004 to estimate logistic regressions controlling for variables relevant to takeover probability. In the hypotheses, the authors test for the significance of the average director age on a board.
Findings
The paper finds a highly positive significant relation between the average age of a board of directors and the probability of takeover. Furthermore, this variable is more robust and has greater explanatory power in predicting takeover targets than all other financial, ownership and governance variables commonly controlled for and included in this study. This suggests that older directors are less prone to agency problems and more willing to make decisions that will likely result in the loss of their board seat.
Practical implications
These findings have important policy implications on director retirement policies such as director age versus term limits. The results also have implications on the use of director golden parachutes. Finally, the authors highlight a strategic consideration for acquiring firms seeking takeover targets.
Originality/value
This paper is the first, to the best of the authors' knowledge, to document board age as an important governance characteristic.
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Rongbing Huang and James G. Tompkins
The purpose of this paper is to study the role of corporate governance in abnormal returns around announcements of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) by publicly traded US firms…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the role of corporate governance in abnormal returns around announcements of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) by publicly traded US firms from 2001 to 2004.
Design/methodology/approach
Cross‐sectional regression analysis was used to determine which variables are important to the market's reaction to the SEO, with a particular focus on corporate governance variables.
Findings
It was found that investors react more positively for firms in which different people hold the CEO and board chairman positions. Limited evidence was found that investor reaction is more positive when the board has a greater representation of outside directors, the CEO has less ownership, and the board is not too large. These findings suggest that investors react more favorably to SEOs by firms with stronger corporate governance mechanisms that reduce adverse selection or agency problems.
Practical implications
This paper's findings are evidence that stronger boards can reduce a firm's cost of raising additional equity capital. Originality/value – There is not believed to be any other published paper that examines the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on the reaction to SEOs with such a comprehensive sample or in post‐Enron periods.
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The purpose of this article was to identify the steps that need to be taken when choosing an effective third party logistics provider. Based on the research completed, it was…
Abstract
The purpose of this article was to identify the steps that need to be taken when choosing an effective third party logistics provider. Based on the research completed, it was determined that third party logistics are beneficial to many companies. The use of third party logistics provides a competitive advantage in today’s business world. The optimal solution for a company choosing a third party logistic provider would be a five‐step process.
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Deborah Sullivan and Leah Rohlfsen
Rural areas that are struggling to recruit and retain qualified health practitioners are caught in the crossfire of turf battles between allied health practitioners and physician…
Abstract
Rural areas that are struggling to recruit and retain qualified health practitioners are caught in the crossfire of turf battles between allied health practitioners and physician groups. The most intensely political of these inter-occupational turf battles is between anesthesiologists (MDAs) and certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), who are the sole providers of anesthesia in two-thirds of rural hospitals (American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA), 2007a, 2007b). The ability of many rural hospitals to provide anesthesia services is dependent on CRNAs. This study uses data collected from CRNAs in Iowa and Arizona in 2005 to focus on the impact of the turf battle on the professional interactions and opinions of CRNAs. Arizona and Iowa were chosen for this study because not only do the policies in these states contrast with each other, but the contexts in which CRNAs practice are also dissimilar. The majority of Arizona's CRNAs work in urban areas in close proximity with MDAs. Most CRNAs in Arizona report that their workplace interactions with MDAs have suffered as a result of the turf battle, despite the lack of any action to opt out of the federal Medicare requirement of physician supervision of CRNAs. While most CRNAs in Iowa perceive that job opportunities and the quality and cost of health care have improved as a result of opting out of the federal supervision requirement of CRNAs, the impact on their social interactions in the workplace depends on location and the structural context of their work. Most CRNAs in Iowa's urban areas continue to work in a structural context of de facto supervision by MDAs. As a result, only a minority report that their professional interactions in the workplace have improved. The outcome for Iowa's rural CRNAs is decidedly different. The majority function as independent practitioners and have experienced an improvement in their social interactions in the workplace and greater economic reward. These occupational privileges should improve the ability of Iowa's rural hospitals to recruit and retain CRNAs and, as a consequence, surgical services in rural areas.
Automated material‐handling techniques have been successfully applied in industry for over a decade. The techniques and systems developed to automate warehouse operations directly…
Abstract
Automated material‐handling techniques have been successfully applied in industry for over a decade. The techniques and systems developed to automate warehouse operations directly apply to libraries. The problem of storing a growing mass of little used but “valuable” materials can be resolved by new material handling strategies, which will also generate improved library services. The characteristics of a miniload automated storage and retrieval system are described, and formulas are presented for calculating the size of system needed by a library. Also included are “rule‐of‐thumb” prices for calculating the approximate costs of a system of a specific size.
Modelling is a research methodology that has received little academic attention since it began to be formulated in the 1970s. On the spectrum of clean language interviewing (CLI…
Abstract
Chapter Summary
Modelling is a research methodology that has received little academic attention since it began to be formulated in the 1970s. On the spectrum of clean language interviewing (CLI) applications described in Chapter 1, the most sophisticated is modelling, and especially modelling that takes place in real time during the interview.
This chapter defines what we mean by ‘a model’ and ‘modelling’ and explains how they are related to CLI. We situate the chapter by recounting how modelling became linked to CLI. To conclude we consider some of the methodological challenges faced by both the interviewee and interviewer involved in a modelling research project.
We also explain how interviewee metaphors discussed in Chapter 3 can support the modelling process. Much of the modelling that takes place during an interview resides in the background of the interaction. To illustrate modelling we provide an annotated transcript of a symbolic modelling interview that uses clean language to model the skill of ‘knowing what is essential’.
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Maaike Nooitgedagt and Wendy Nieuwland
This chapter describes an application of clean language interviewing to organisational change work through a process we call modelling shared reality (MSR). This process was…
Abstract
Chapter Summary
This chapter describes an application of clean language interviewing to organisational change work through a process we call modelling shared reality (MSR). This process was developed in 2006 by Stefan Outober, James Lawley, Annemiek van Helsdingen, Wendy Nieuwland and Maaike Nooitgedagt (Van Helsdingen & Lawley, 2012). It is based on the clean language & symbolic modelling process (Lawley & Tompkins, 2000). MSR has been applied in a multitude of settings over the last 15 years in the context of organisational change and development, as well as policy decisions and evaluations and other participative processes.
We believe that how people in organisations behave is steered mostly by how they perceive ‘reality’ (Nieuwland & Nooitgedagt, 2018). MSR aims to facilitate movement and change in organisations by enabling participants to explore their individual and collective perceptions of reality.
In this chapter, we describe the principles and steps of the MSR process, highlighting the role of clean language interviewing (CLI). MSR represents a form of action research, the aim of which is to facilitate organisational change rather than to produce abstract knowledge. Illustrated by a case study of a finance department in a social housing corporation, the chapter shows how CLI can be used to work with shared constructs of reality.
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The roots of the present human rights regime vis-a-vis children go back to the aftermath of World War I, when Eglantyne Jebb – cofounder of the Save the Children Fund – drafted…
Abstract
The roots of the present human rights regime vis-a-vis children go back to the aftermath of World War I, when Eglantyne Jebb – cofounder of the Save the Children Fund – drafted, as part of her work with refugee children in the Balkans, a Children's Charter. In this document, she argued that there were certain rights for children that should be claimed and universally recognized and indeed that it was the duty of the international community to put such rights to the very forefront of their planning decisions: ‘[i]t is our children’ Jebb argued ‘who pay the heaviest price for our shortsighted economic policies, our political blunders, our wars’ (Hammarberg, 1990, p. 98). What Jebb in fact created was a practical document later used as the basis for the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child that was adopted by the League of Nations in September 1924 and that set out five precepts governing the ‘duties’ that mankind had, ‘beyond and above all considerations of race, nationality or creed’. These included allowing the child to be first in receiving relief in times of distress and providing all manner of support to the ‘needy’ child (defined at the time as being those suffering hunger and sickness, orphans and those who were ‘backward’ or ‘delinquent’). The language of the Declaration may have moved on, but it remains a landmark document in that it set the tone for many of the child's rights initiatives that followed, in particular, in terms of the ‘children first’ ethos that was to become a fundamental element in later child rights campaigns (Hammarberg, 1990, p. 98). Indeed, the 1924 Declaration has been widely depicted as a turning point for international political efforts relating to the child, and too for the advocacy movement that surrounds them, providing inspiration for many of the efforts on their behalf that were to follow. Like many of these subsequent efforts towards putting children first, however, political events overtook political will, and the attempt to improve children's lives at this time stalled as the world moved once again towards war. It would therefore be much later – in the aftermath of World War II, and following the 1948 approval by the UN General Assembly of the Universal Declaration – before the international community turned its attention once more to the welfare of the child, and it is in the work that was done during this time that the roots of the current international legal regime governing children can perhaps most clearly be recognised.