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New products are the life blood of a consumer products company, and The Quaker Oats Company is in the midst of accelerating the pace of new product introductions. For example, over the last two years we've launched more new products than at any comparable time in the company's history, mostly in U.S. Grocery Products and Fisher‐Price. Thirty‐five percent of Fisher‐Price's U.S. sales this year will come from products that didn't exist five years ago.

This case serves as an introduction to the concept of economic value added (EVA). The student is placed in the position of Valmont's CFO to decide whether EVA can live up to its promise to motivate managers to act like shareholders and ultimately lead them to make value-enhancing decisions that can reverse Valmont's weak earnings and lackluster stock-price performance. The case works best if students are acquainted with the concepts of cost of capital and net present value. The teaching note that is available for registered faculty explains how to incorporate the accompanying six-minute video supplement.

Today, with years of corporate experience in managing mergers and acquisitions, there is little excuse for deals that don’t create value. Regrettably failure is the case more often than not. Depending on the industry, a top‐performing merger can increase shareholders’ wealth anywhere from 4 to 65 percent above industry averages. But such rewards only go to companies that understand that merger success is built on two main factors: timing and execution. A.T. Kearney’s findings indicate that a company has just two years to make the deal work. After year two, the window of opportunity on forging merger synergies has all but closed. This article highlights the reasons why timing is so important to merger success, and lays out the seven ground rules‐from selecting leaders quickly, and establishing clear goals, to managing risks and expectations – that leading acquirers abide by to ensure merger success.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the claim that the pursuit of maximum value (wealth) for shareholders optimises economic and social benefits for society as a whole.

Evidence cited in support of the claim and the methodology employed by its supporters are examined. Counter‐evidence from a wide range of disciplines, including accounting, economics, finance, and medical sociology, is considered.

The evidence does not support the claim. Bias and severe methodological flaws in its supporters' research is revealed. Considerable evidence of adverse consequences is identified.

This paper draws from an unusually wide range of disciplines to expose the fallacy and a number of powerful myths about the economic and social benefits of making maximizing shareholder value the primary aim of corporate governance.

The paper aims to estimate the capacity of supreme audit institutions’ (SAIs) audits to deter potentially wasteful year-end procurement spending. It also studies heterogeneous responses to SAIs’ audits depending on whether agencies’ top managers are appointed through a competitive procedure or not.

A letter signed by the head of Chile’s SAI was sent to a hundred randomly chosen agencies two weeks before the end of the fiscal year, with instructions on year-end spending accounting and an audit threat. In addition, a hundred agencies that did not receive the letter were used as a control group.

Agencies that received the letter reduced year-end aggregate procurement spending by 33% relative to controls. Purchases of office supplies, safety equipment, personal care products and paper products experienced the most considerable reductions. The decrease in year-end spending was smaller for agencies with at least one top manager appointed through a competitive procedure.

A SAI’s audit threat significantly reduced year-end procurement spending. Larger reductions in agencies headed by political appointees and across categories of goods that have been flagged as likely to be purchased to exhaust the budget suggest the avoided expenditures would have been wasteful. Further research is needed to determine if the net social value of year-end procurement spending deterred by SAIs audits is negative as suggested.

This paper has implications for the institutional support of SAIs audits and civil service.

This paper provides novel experimental evidence of SAIs’ audits’ deterrence power on public agencies’ year-end procurement spending.

The purpose of this paper is to address the core concept of docility in Simon’s learning theories and elaborate docility as a missing link in organizational performance structures. In his book, Administrative Behavior, first published in 1947 with three subsequent editions, Herbert A. Simon introduced a new concept to the emerging field of organizational theory, docility.

In Administrative Behavior, Herbert A. Simon introduced to management and organization theorists the concept of docility. Simon adopted the concept and meaning from E.C. Tolman’s (1932) classic work, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men, and his novel views on learning processes and key concepts like purpose (goals), thought processes (cognitive psychology) and cognitive maps. This paper elaborates on docility mechanisms and the implications for social learning in organizations.

This paper addresses this lacuna in the organizational literature, and the implications for current theories of organizations and organizational learning.

Docility is a tool to link individual learning with organizational learning in complex environments and changing technologies.

The paper traces origins of Simon’s docility and learning theories.

This paper aims to deepen understanding of the influence of Barnard's Functions of the Executive in management theory by examining its early scholarly reception.

The research presented is a qualitative analysis of references to Barnard's work in academic journals prior to 1956, based on 139 articles identified through text-based searching of electronic databases.

Favorable opinions of Barnard's book tend to emphasize his practical insights as a business executive, while his conceptual frameworks are viewed more skeptically. Criticism often focuses on the “scientific” legitimacy of his approach or his perceived ideological perspective. Concepts prominently discussed vary among social science disciplines, and his name is quickly tied to those of subsequent academics whose work is “like” his – these likewise vary by discipline. As they emerge, their voices on the concepts may supersede Barnard's influence.

Since this study ends in the mid-1950s, conclusions about how its findings reflect on subsequent use of Barnard's work by management scholars are speculative. Further research could build on this work by examining scholarly literature to track how and where specific ideas or concepts from Barnard's book have been developed in management scholarship up to the present day.

This study informs current scholars interested in Barnard's work by suggesting how its early usage by academics based on boundaries of disciplinary interest may have diffused the book's early impact and influenced later attention to its concepts by management scholars.