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The purpose of this paper is to test the new Fama and French (2015) five-factor model relying on a thorough sample of hedge fund strategies drawn from the Barclay’s Global hedge fund database.

The authors use a stepwise regression to identify the factors of the q-factor model which are relevant for the hedge fund strategy analysis. Doing so, the authors account for the Fung and Hsieh seven factors which prove very useful in the explanation of the hedge fund strategies. The authors introduce interaction terms to depict any interaction of the traditional Fama and French factors with the factors associated with the q-factor model. The authors also examine the dynamic dimensions of the risk-taking behavior of hedge funds using a BEKK procedure and the Kalman filter algorithm.

The results show that hedge funds seem to prefer stocks of firms with a high investment-to-assets ratio (low conservative minus aggressive (CMA)), on the one hand, and weak firms’ stocks (low robust minus weak (RMW)), on the other hand. This combination is not associated with the conventional properties of growth stocks – i.e., low high minus low (HML) stocks – which are related to firms which invest more (low CMA) and which are more profitable (high RMW). Finally, small minus big (SMB) interacts more with RMW while HML is more correlated with CMA. The conditional correlations between SMB and CMA, on the one hand, and HML and RMW, on the other hand, are less tight and may change sign over time.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors are the first to cast the new Fama and French five-factor model in a hedge fund setting which account for the Fung and Hsieh option-like trading strategies. This approach allows the authors to better understand hedge fund strategies because q-factors are useful to study the dynamic behavior of hedge funds.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the link between product-mix and bank performance with a comprehensive look at the contribution of each component of banking activities.

The generalized method of moments estimation approach the authors apply to the US and Canadian large data sets deals with the endogeneity issues related to banks’ decision to diversify in fee-based activities, and the authors also control the non-linearities (asymmetries) in the innovation with a complementary EGARCH procedure.

The results suggests that the increasing involvement of banks in fee generating activities has a greater positive impact on US bank performance. On the one hand, US banks are more involved in fees related to traditional lending activities and securitization, which contributes to their higher mean return. On the other hand, Canadian banks focus more on investment banking activities, which makes their financial results more procyclical and volatile. Greater profitability notwithstanding, the authors also found that US bank non-interest income activities incorporate more credit risk, a type of risk obviously less diversifiable when credit shocks occur.

The approach shows that the endogeneity problems related to the banks’ decision to diversify in non-traditional activities may be important. The multivariate GARCH approach the authors introduced strongly suggests that diversification gains fluctuate over the business cycle, and that the decision to diversify must be understood in a dynamic setting rather than in a static one.

THE seventh annual meeting of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences had a somewhat different character from previous meetings, with greater emphasis on the instrumentation, meteorology and other problems of air transport technique and less emphasis on the more advanced phases of aerodynamics and structures. It is impossible to say whether this was accidental or the result of the fact that owing to extreme pressure on the research departments of the government and of the industry, and owing to the feeling that greater secrecy must be observed in view of the international situation, less of the really advanced research was disclosed. At any rate Mr. T. P. Wright, the retiring President of the Institute struck the key‐note of the meeting in an address in which he warned the United States that they were perhaps lagging in research behind European countries, who under threats of war were making feverish advances. “A few years ago,” Mr. Wright said, “the United States was well in the lead in research, development and production of aircraft,” a fact attested to by all who had the opportunity of visiting European countries at that time and of witnessing the scope of developments there. Little could be learned from abroad at that time. Recently, however, visitors abroad have witnessed a great change. Many huge aeronautical laboratories have been established and are occupied in intensive research investigations. Experimental development has likewise progressed. It is definitely established that the relative position of this country is reversed from 1934. We believe, however, that the situation is fully realized by governmental authorities and that American research will not lose its position in the van so readily.

Recent lapses in the management of high hazard organizations, such as the Fukushima event or the Deepwater Horizon blast, add considerable urgency to better understand the complicated and complex phenomena of leading and managing high reliability organizations (HRO). The purpose of this paper is to offer both theoretical and practical insight to further strengthen reliability in high hazard organizations.

Phenomenological study based on over three years of research and thousands of hours of study in HROs conducted through a scholar-practitioner partnership.

The findings indicate that the identification and the management of competing tensions arising from misalignment within and between public policy, organizational strategy, communication, decision-making, organizational learning, and leadership is the critical factor in explaining improved reliability and safety of HROs.

Stops short of full-blown grounded theory. Steps were made to ensure validity; however, generalizability may be limited due to sample.

Provides insight into reliably operating organizations that are crucial to society where errors would cause significant damage or loss.

Extends high reliability research by investigating more fully the competing tensions present in these complex, societally crucial organizations.

The principal objective here is to describe conceptual and research tools for achieving deeper sense‐making of what happened and why it happened –including how participants interpret outcomes of what happened and the dynamics of emic (executive) and etic (researcher) sense‐making.

This article uses a mixed research design including decision systems analysis, cognitive mapping, computer software‐based text analysis, and the long interview method for mapping the mental models of the participants in specific decision‐making processes as well as mapping the immediate, feedback, and downstream influences of decisions‐actions‐outcomes.

The findings in the empirical study support the view that decision processes are prospective, introspective, and retrospective, sporadically rational, ultimately affective, and altogether imaginatively unbounded.

Not using outside auditors to evaluate post‐etic interpretations is recognized as a method limitation to the extended case study; such outside auditor reports represent an etic‐4 level of interpretation. Incorporating such etic‐4 interpretation is one suggestion for further research.

Asking executives for in‐depth stories about what happened and why helps them reflect and uncover very subtle nuances of what went right and what went wrong.

A series advanced hermeneutic B2B research reports of a specific issue (e.g., new product innovation processes) provides an advance for developing a grounded theory of what happened and why it happened. Such a large‐scale research effort enables more rigorous, accurate and useful generalizations of decision making on a specific issue than is found in literature reviews of models of complex systems.