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Describes the conceptual meaning of the cost of capital (COC) and relates its use of COC in decisions that add value to a company. Illustrations provide the basis for an intuitive feel of the crucial role of COC in the pursuit of generating value. Explains the meaning of true economic value added (TEVA) and relates TEVA to COC and economic returns. Relates COC to the value generating cycle of a firm. Supplements the conceptual and intuitive notions of COC with pragmatic guidelines useful to the practising manager. Capital and the employment of capital have an especially crucial role in emerging and transition economies. Outlines the vital nature of COC in these economies and in decision making. Addresses issues at a level appropriate for professional managers regardless of their area of expertise and functional assignment.

Examines how individual projects will affect the organization’s stated desire to “add value” by its operations, particularly how the market will judge each project on this basis. Considers rates of return, risk and cost of capital. Provides practical guidance for managers seeking to establish the cost of capital for a number of different types of project. Also provides special guidelines useful in the analysis of cost reduction projects.

Understanding capital structure and its practical implications is important to the professional manager regardless of functional area of expertise. The seminal work in the area of capital structure earned the researchers Nobel Prizes. In subsequent years, researchers have provided much additional and very important work on capital structure theory. Decodes capital structure theory and its implications in a manner useful to the practitioner. Explains the conceptual issues, consequences, and implications. Managers face an uncertain world that does not co‐operate with many of the assumptions of theory. Suggests practical strategies for applying capital structure theory to increase firm value. Relates the attendant choices and management of capital structure to the value generation cycle of the company. Includes a section on the important issues in capital structure for companies in emerging and transition economies.

The paper empirically investigates how family firms appropriate acquired resources to become more innovative in the context of merger waves. It draws on resource-based view and the theory of first mover (dis)advantages to examine the implications of the timing of acquisitions on innovation in family firms.

The paper uses a panel data set of Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 manufacturing firms followed over a period of 31 years.

The study finds empirical support for the predictions that family firms are more able to utilize acquired resources better than nonfamily firms. Furthermore, targets acquired during the upswing of a merger wave are more valuable to family firms and associated with more innovation than for nonfamily firms.

The paper establishes that resources acquired during the upswing of a merger wave are more valuable, provide better resource synergies and impact innovation positively in family firms than nonfamily firms. Second, the paper makes an empirical contribution that family firms absorb external resources markedly differently and more efficiently than nonfamily firms. Third, the paper enhances a better understanding of the influence of family ownership on the relationship between acquisitions and innovation outputs.

Inspired by increasing public interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the intensified focus of research on family firms (FFs) over the past few decades, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the existing literature on CSR in FF through a citation analysis.

This paper overviews the structure of research on CSR in FF, identifying influential publications, authors, and key lines of discussion. The authors identified the underlying sample through a systematic, keyword-based literature search of seven databases. Starting with this sample, the authors analyzed a database of 4,342 references of 3,025 different sources cited in the 63 articles.

The findings show that the cited literature on CSR in FF is widespread, confirming that the research field has great heterogeneity. The authors identified the most-cited researcher as Luis R. Gómez-Mejía (University of Notre Dame, USA), with 93 citations. The average author in the group of the 22 most-cited authors (with a three-way tie for 20th-most-cited author) counts 45.45 citations in the sample of 13.95 different sources. Because the citations mostly refer to journal articles, the authors further investigated the particular journals of publication. The 20 most-influential journals cover 45.28 percent of all citations, with the Journal of Business Ethics being the most influential (6.38 percent of all citations). Within the 3,025 different sources cited in the whole sample, the publication by Dyer and Whetten (2006), which is titled “Family firms and social responsibility: preliminary evidence from the S&P 500,” is the most-cited (29 citations in 46.03 percent of the analyzed 63 peer-reviewed journal articles).

The authors conclude with a call for more research on CSR in FF (especially qualitative case studies). Moreover, as scholars of North America and Western Europe dominate the current landscape of research, the authors would like to encourage scholars from other countries and cultures to provide insights from their countries.

The purpose of the study is to examine the zero-leverage (ZL) phenomenon in family and non-family firms.

The authors consider three hypotheses and empirically test them using a sample of the largest US firms over the 2001–2016 period.

The authors find that, on average, 19.20% of family firms have zero debt vs 10.42% for non-family firms. The authors also find that family firms strategically choose to be ZL to maintain financial flexibility for future investments and exercise control over the decision-making process, consistent with the hypotheses of financial flexibility and control considerations. However, non-family firms are more likely to have zero debt if they have financial constraints and the credit market does not lend them money at affordable credit rates, consistent with the financial constraint hypothesis.

This paper contributes to different strands of literature. First, the authors contribute to the literature examining family firms' financial decisions. Second, the authors complement previous studies by exploring the reasons for the ZL behavior of family firms compared to non-family firms. The authors also examine the previously unexplored impact of ownership concentration on the ZL question.

The overall goal of science is to build a valid and reliable body of knowledge about the functioning of the world and how applying that knowledge can change it. As personnel and human resources management researchers, we aim to contribute to the respective bodies of knowledge to provide both employers and employees with a workable foundation to help with those problems they are confronted with. However, what research on research has consistently demonstrated is that the scientific endeavor possesses existential issues including a substantial lack of (a) solid theory, (b) replicability, (c) reproducibility, (d) proper and generalizable samples, (e) sufficient quality control (i.e., peer review), (f) robust and trustworthy statistical results, (g) availability of research, and (h) sufficient practical implications. In this chapter, we first sing a song of sorrow regarding the current state of the social sciences in general and personnel and human resources management specifically. Then, we investigate potential grievances that might have led to it (i.e., questionable research practices, misplaced incentives), only to end with a verse of hope by outlining an avenue for betterment (i.e., open science and policy changes at multiple levels).

The latest international research on vitamin C and its possible role in reducing the risk of cancers, heart disease and other serious ailments was presented at a conference held recently in Glasgow. The conference was held to celebrate ten years of production of vitamin C by Roche Products at Dairy. Professor Ronald Anderson from the University of Pretoria reviewed the origins and adverse effects on health of oxygen‐free radicals, and other reactive oxidants generated during activation of the human immune system, and the protective role of the anti‐oxidant nutrient vitamin C in the prevention of free radical‐mediated immune dysfunction, tissue damage and carcinogenesis during inflammatory responses. Here we include extracts from his paper.

The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice have focused primarily on individuals’ characteristics and behaviors as a means to understand “who” is influential in organizations, with substantially less attention paid to social networks. To reinvigorate a focus on network structures to explain interpersonal influence, the authors present a comprehensive account of how network structures enable and constrain influence within organizations. The authors begin by describing how power and status, two key determinants of individual influence in organizations, operate through different mechanisms, and delineate a range of network positions that yield power, reflect status, and/or capture realized influence. Then, the authors extend initial structural views of influence beyond the positions of individuals to consider how network structures within and between groups – capturing group social capital and/or shared leadership – enable and constrain groups’ ability to influence group members, other groups, and the broader organizational system. The authors also discuss how HRM may leverage these insights to facilitate interpersonal influence in ways that support individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.