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The proliferation of mergers during the 70s and 80s has generated voluminous amounts of research with a primary focus on the impact to the shareholders from both the acquired and the acquiring firms. Relatively little research has been placed on the valuation process itself, especially within the international merger setting. To fill the void, this article details a valuation process based on capital budgeting. This approach is designed for use by foreign firms contemplating mergers or acquisitions across international borders. The framework may also be used to help explain the increasing numbers of non‐US acquisitions of US firms and to make inferences about divestiture and leveraged buy‐out (LBO) activity.

This study utilizer systematic risk as measured by its accounting beta to proxy IPO ex ante risk for examining the relationship between risk and underpricing. Unlike the IPO's standard deviation for returns, the risk measure employed by Ritter (1984), a firm's accounting beta is an ex ante factor available to investors before the initial public offering. Utilizing accounting betas from 701 firms, our regression analysis corrected for heteroskedasticity shows a positive relationship between accounting beta and the subsequent degree of underpricing. Thus, our finding suggests that systematic risk, as measured by an accounting beta, is a good proxy for ex ante uncertainty.

This article proposes an evaluation of capital investments that accounts for not only the initial assets, but also any potential growth options.

Using a piecewise linear approximation, a robust valuation technique is demonstrated for analyzing capital investment opportunities containing expansion options in a finite time horizon.

This process not only recognizes the option‐like characteristics of the initial investment opportunity, but also recognizes the option‐creating characteristics of the investment. This analysis shows that the value of capacity expansion options created by the initial investment has different dynamic characteristics from the assets in place. Although the growth options do not appear in the early investment premium, its impact on the investment decision is embedded in the investment threshold. When the time to expiration is short and the cost to delaying the assets in place is low, this analysis suggests that the initial investment decision might be made by ignoring the growth options.

This real option methodology provides a continuous solution to the optimal investment threshold and is a viable alternative to the traditional finite difference approach.

The field of behavioral business ethics has come a long way since its inception nearly five decades ago. Pioneered in part in response to a number of high-profile corporate scandals, the early field of business ethics was thought by many to be a fad that would recede along with the salience of the scandals of the day. Yet, this could not have been further from the truth. The need for behavioral business ethics research remains ever-present, as evidenced by the sustained number of scandals and unethical behavior within and by organizations. Moreover, research in this area has burgeoned. In the 1980s, only 54 articles had been published on this topic (Tenbrunsel & Smith-Crowe, 2008); today, a similar search yields over 3,000 “hits.” In light of the area’s growth, we suggest the need to take a look back at the seminal work that sparked social scientific work in the field. In particular, this chapter has two main objectives. First, we provide a review of select foundational work. In so doing, we identify some of the key trends that characterized early knowledge development in the field. Second, we draw on this historical context to consider how past trends relate to current work and speak to future research opportunities.

Organizational behavior scholars have long recognized the importance of a variety of emotion-related phenomena in everyday work life. Indeed, after three decades, the span of research on emotions in the workplace encompasses a wide variety of affective variables such as emotional climate, emotional labor, emotion regulation, positive and negative affect, empathy, and more recently, specific emotions. Emotions operate in complex ways across multiple levels of analysis (i.e., within-person, between-person, interpersonal, group, and organizational) to exert influence on work behavior and outcomes, but their linkages to human resource management (HRM) policies and practices have not always been explicit or well understood. This chapter offers a review and integration of the bourgeoning research on discrete positive and negative emotions, offering insights about why these emotions are relevant to HRM policies and practices. We review some of the dominant theories that have emerged out of functionalist perspectives on emotions, connecting these to a strategic HRM framework. We then define and describe four discrete positive and negative emotions (fear, pride, guilt, and interest) highlighting how they relate to five HRM practices: (1) selection, (2) training/learning, (3) performance management, (4) incentives/rewards, and (5) employee voice. Following this, we discuss the emotion perception and regulation implications of these and other discrete emotions for leaders and HRM managers. We conclude with some challenges associated with understanding discrete emotions in organizations as well as some opportunities and future directions for improving our appreciation and understanding of the role of discrete emotional experiences in HRM.

In this chapter, we explore the implications of benign and malicious envy in the workplace and suggest methods by which leaders can manage the situational context to minimize negative responses to envy and promote positive responses. We argue that three aspects of the organizational context are especially influential in the development of envy: perceptions of fairness, employees’ feelings of control over their situation, and organizational culture. All three impact whether felt envy will be benign or malicious. In addition, the right organizational culture can prevent any feelings of malicious envy from leading to undesirable behaviors. We suggest that by fostering justice, promoting employee feelings of control, and exemplifying an ethical organizational culture leaders can manage the manifestation of envy and resulting behaviors in a positive direction.

Occupational stress is common in the workplace and leads to various negative outcomes such as burnout, turnover, and medical problems. Although occupational stress is associated with negative connotations, it also can foster workplace resiliency. Workplace resiliency involves the ability to recover quickly in the face of adversity. Emotionally laborious jobs, or jobs in which employees must modify, manage, or regulate their emotions as part of their work role, are inherently stressful. Thus, such jobs, while stress-inducing, may also offer employees opportunities to become more resilient at work. Currently, display rules, rules encouraging the suppression and expression of certain emotions, dictate workplace emotions and thus, interactions. Ultimately, display rule adherence makes it difficult for employees engaging in emotional labor to build resilience. In this chapter, the authors detail how and when emotional labor encounters lead to episodic and prolonged workplace resilience. Specifically, the authors outline instances in which employees engaging in emotional labor can create and sustain workplace resiliency by not deploying an acting strategy and instead, breaking character. The authors further discuss individual and organizational factors that may impact this process as well such as personality and organizational culture that serve as potential boundary conditions to workplace resilience capacity. The authors conclude with implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Persistent change has placed considerable pressure on organizations to keep up or fade into obscurity. Firms that remain viable, or even thrive, are staffed with decision-makers who capably steer organizations toward opportunities and away from threats. Accordingly, leadership development has never been more critical. In this chapter, the authors propose that leader development is an inherently dyadic process initiated to communicate formal and informal expectations. The authors focus on the informal component, in the form of organizational politics, as an element of leadership that is critical to employee and company success. The authors advocate that superiors represent the most salient information source for leader development, especially as it relates to political dynamics embedded in work systems. The authors discuss research associated with our conceptualization of dyadic political leader development (DPLD). Specifically, the authors develop DPLD by exploring its conceptual underpinnings as they relate to sensemaking, identity, and social learning theories. Once established, the authors provide a refined discussion of the construct, illustrating its scholarly mechanisms that better explain leader development processes and outcomes. The authors then expand research in the areas of political skill, political will, political knowledge, and political phronesis by embedding our conceptualization of DPLD into a political leadership model. The authors conclude by discussing methodological issues and avenues of future research stemming from the development of DPLD.

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate Penn State Extension 4-H volunteer leaders’ leadership development needs and preferred delivery methods for leadership development. The participants were 147 volunteer leaders who attended Penn State Extension Annual 4-H Leader Forum and filled out the survey. We found that the overall mean score for leadership skills needs among volunteer leaders was 4.33 (SD =.45). Volunteers’ overall leadership skills needs do not differ based on volunteer gender, level of education, age, and previous volunteer experience. The preferred delivery methods of leadership development for Penn State Extension 4-H volunteer leaders were workshop and in-service training. Leadership education is critical in advancing volunteers’ skills and preparing them to delivery well-developed, state of the art contemporary leadership education programs.