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Top Managers (top + managers)
Selected AbstractsFrom CR-psychopaths to responsible corporations: waking up the inner Sleeping Beauty of companiesCORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2006Tarja Ketola Many large companies seem to fulfil the psychiatric criteria for psychopaths in their corporate responsibility (CR) practices. Are they really incurable psychopaths, or is it possible that they could be counselled into accepting their responsibilities? CR studies have so far paid little attention to the variations in the CR emphases between different companies. This article, based on a conference paper (Ketola, 2005b), presents a CR emphasis model, pinpointing eight different approaches to corporate responsibility. Some companies do not voluntarily take any responsibilities. Companies acting like psychopaths need a Prince of Virtues to kiss awake their inner Sleeping Beauty from its 100-year irresponsibility sleep. All companies could take advantage of virtue ethics, which present the values shared by all humans, and hence exemplify the natural law (lex naturae). Counselling top managers and key individuals on their personal and professional values enables all personnel to integrate virtues into the company's CR practices. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Entrepreneurial Job Characteristics: An Examination of Their Effect on Entrepreneurial Satisfaction1ENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY AND PRACTICE, Issue 3 2009Leon Schjoedt The present study examined the effect of four core job characteristics on job satisfaction for entrepreneurs and a comparison group of nonfounding top managers. Significant mean differences were found between the entrepreneurs and nonfounding top managers on job satisfaction and all four job characteristics. Moreover, the results showed similar patterns of significant associations between the job characteristics and job satisfaction for the entrepreneurs and nonfounding top managers. Yet, the regression lines were found to be significantly different. Lastly, the results showed the following job characteristics were significant predictors of entrepreneurial job satisfaction: autonomy, variety, and feedback. [source] Is trait-Emotional Intelligence simply or more than just a trait?EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 4 2004Karen van der Zee The present study examined the usefulness of trait-Emotional Intelligence (EI) among a sample of 1186 top managers who filled out questionnaires for Emotional Intelligence and the Big Five and were evaluated by a consultant on their competencies. Three higher-order factors were found to underlie the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (Bar-On, 1997): sense of accomplishment, empathy, and planfulness. Trait-EI was found to be substantially related to Extraversion, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Autonomy. Nevertheless, the EI-factors predicted additional variance over and above the Big Five in competency to support. On the whole, top managers scored higher on the EI dimensions compared with a general population sample. High EI scores were particularly found among managers from enterprising occupational environments, that is environments dominated by activities that entail persuading and leading others to attain organizational goals or economic gain. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] What Would You Sacrifice?GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 1 2009Access to Top Management, life Balance, the Work This article is based on a current research, combining quantitative (human resources figures and statistics) and qualitative data (60 interviews with career managers, top managers and high potential talents, both men and women), conducted in a major French utility company on the subject of diversity and more specifically on the issue of women's access to top management positions. The main purpose of this research is to understand the difficulties women may encounter in the course of their occupational career linked to organizational aspects, including the ,glass ceiling' processes, informal norms related to management positions (such as time and mobility constraints) and social and cultural representations attached to leadership. The other perspective of this research focuses on the different strategies women and men build either to conform to the organizational norms or bypass them. The issue of work,life balance are therefore addressed both from a corporate/organizational standpoint and an individual and family perspective. [source] How leveraging human resource capital with its competitive distinctiveness enhances the performance of commercial and public organizationsHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2005Abraham Carmeli Although scholars agree that complex relationships between organizations' actual human resources (i.e., human capital stock) and means of leveraging these resources may influence performance, little empirical work has tested such propositions directly. We collected two primary data sets from privateand public-sector organizations in Israel. The multiplicative interaction between perceived human resources capital and distinctive value derived from that HR capital was significantly related to various measures of perceived and objective organizational performance. Having higher levels of human resources capital was strongly associated with performance only when top managers perceived that these resources provided distinctive value in terms of being highly valuable, inimitable, rare, and nonsubstitutable. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on strategic human resource management and the resource-based view of competitive advantage, as well as for practical efforts to develop firm-specific human resource capital that is inherently distinctive. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Managerial Pay and Governance in American NonprofitsINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2002Kevin F. Hallock This article examines the compensation of top managers of nonprofits in the United States using panel data from tax returns of the organizations from 1992 to 1996. Studying managers in nonprofits is particularly interesting given the difficulty in measuring performance. The article examines many areas commonly studied in the executive pay (within for-profit firms) literature. It explores pay differences between for-profit and nonprofit firms,pay variability within and across nonprofit industries, managerial pay and performance (including organization size and fund raising) in nonprofits, the effect of government grants on managerial pay, and the relationship between boards of directors and managerial pay in nonprofits. [source] Human resource development in the Sultanate of OmanINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2002Pawan S. Budhwar This study explores the scenario of human resource development (HRD) in the Sultanate of Oman. The investigation was conducted with the help of a questionnaire survey in stateowned enterprises (SOEs). The research findings highlight an increased emphasis on HRD initiatives at a national level in Omani firms. There is a significant degree of awareness among the top managers regarding the benefits of a strategic approach to HRD. Despite all this, the implementation of HRD programmes has not been particularly successful. This is because the state has not been able to develop the skills and competencies of the Omani workforce to the levels required under the sixth national five,year plan. The article makes a number of recommendations in this regard. It also highlights key research areas for further examination. [source] JUST SAY NO TO WALL STREET: PUTTING A STOP TO THE EARNINGS GAMEJOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 4 2002Joseph Fuller CEOs are in a bind with Wall Street. Managers up and down the hierarchy work hard at putting together plans and budgets for the next year only to discover that the bottom line falls far short of Wall Street's expectations. CEOs and CFOs are therefore left in a difficult situation; they can stretch to try to meet Wall Street's projections or prepare to suffer the consequences if they fail. All too often, top managers react by suggesting or even mandating that middle- and lower-level managers redo their forecasts and budgets to get them in line with external expectations. In some cases, managers simply acquiesce to increasingly unrealistic analyst forecasts and adopt them as the basis for setting organizational goals and developing internal budgets. But either approach sets up the firm and its managers for failure if external expectations are impossible to meet. Using the recent experiences of Enron and Nortel, the authors illustrate the dangers of conforming to market pressures for unrealistic growth targets. They emphasize that an overvalued stock, by encouraging overpriced acquisitions and other value-destroying forms of overinvestment, can be as damaging to the long-run health of a company as an undervalued stock. Ending the "expectations game" requires that CEOs reclaim the initiative in setting expectations and forecasts so that stocks can trade at close to their intrinsic value. Managers must make their organizations more transparent to investors; they must promise only those results they have a legitimate prospect of delivering and be willing to inform the market when they believe their stock to be overvalued. [source] The Development of Corporate Identity: A Political PerspectiveJOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 5 2008Suzana Rodrigues abstract A corporate identity denotes a set of attributes that senior managers ascribe to their organization. It is therefore an organizational identity articulated by a powerful interest group. It can constitute a claim which serves inter alia to justify the authority vested in top managers and to further their interests. The academic literature on organizational identity, and on corporate identity in particular, pays little attention to these political considerations. It focuses in an apolitical manner on shared meanings when corporate identity works, or on cognitive dissonance when it breaks down. In response to this analytical void, we develop a political analysis of corporate identity and its development, using as illustration a longitudinal study of successive changes in the corporate identity of a Brazilian telecommunications company. This suggests a cyclical model in which corporate identity definition and redefinition involve power relations, resource mobilization and struggles for legitimacy. [source] Incremental Organizational Change in a Transforming Society: Managing Turbulence in Hungary in the 1990sJOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 3 2000Laszlo Czaban The rapid liberalization of the former state socialist economies of Eastern Europe coupled with privatization were thought by many in the early 1990s likely to generate effective capitalist firms quite quickly. However, the radical institutional transformation and collapse of Soviet markets resulted in considerable uncertainty for most companies which, together with high sunk costs and lack of resources, inhibited organizational restructuring and strategic change. Despite high levels of foreign ownership and control by the mid-1990s, many Hungarian companies continued to produce much the same kinds of products for mostly the same customers with inputs from mostly the same suppliers as in 1990. While most had reduced employment substantially, and many had disposed of ancillary organizational units, the bulk of the companies considered here had not greatly altered their work systems and overall organizational structures. In the few enterprises where the production process had been extensively reorganized by 1996, this was funded and directed by foreign firms who had taken them over. These foreign firm-controlled companies also tended to have new top managers from outside the enterprise. They additionally introduced new products more often than Hungarian firms, albeit within rather narrow product lines that usually dominated the domestic market. Overall, most of the enterprises studied were still doing much the same set of activities in the mid-1990s, though with fewer staff, as at the start of the decade, and privatization per se had not led to major shifts in enterprise structure and strategy, nor did it seem likely to do so in the foreseeable future. [source] Analysis of corporate social responsibility in the service sector: does exist a strategic path?KNOWLEDGE AND PROCESS MANAGEMENT: THE JOURNAL OF CORPORATE TRANSFORMATION, Issue 2 2008Armando Calabrese This paper proposes a strategic path managers might follow in order to optimise the outcome of the implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. As a starting point, we analysed the practice of CSR and its impact within a service industry, namely the Italian banking sector. Our aim was to understand the impact of CSR on the service company both externally and within the company itself and consequently our research was conducted on two different levels. The corporate level considers CSR as it is perceived by top management, and the operational level takes into account the perspectives of the front line employees and customers. Analysis at the corporate level was carried out by means of a thorough examination of the social reports and Internet sites of the service companies concerned, whereas the front line was studied by administrating a structured questionnaire, issued both to employees and to customers in a sample of bank branches. The research demonstrates that service companies are in fact implementing CSR initiatives and that stakeholders have a considerable interest in such initiatives. However, should the CSR initiatives be used as a tool solely to improve the brand equity rather than to improve relationships with their main stakeholders (employees and customers), then a boomerang effect is produced whereby the stakeholders pinpoint the CSR initiatives as one of the main reasons for their discontent with the service company. Although top managers invest in CSR initiatives in order to increase the satisfaction of the stakeholders, should the main stakeholders be unsatisfied with the management of the service company core business, the CSR initiatives might be rendered rather ineffective. As a result, the CSR initiatives may be a sign of underlying rift between top managers and the front line employees within the company, which in turn might also damage the relationship between bank and its customers. The implications of the findings in this paper provide a managerial tool for use in the implementation of CSR. This tool dictates a specific path to be followed which also requires precise timing for its success. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] HOW DO MANAGERS BEHAVE IN STOCK OPTION PLANS?THE JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2009CLINICAL EVIDENCE FROM EXERCISE AND SURVEY DATA Abstract We use unique case study data to analyze the behavior of top managers in an executive stock option plan. We gather questionnaire data on the managers' traits and combine it with exercise data. Managers in our sample expect low volatilities (compared to historical estimates) and are well diversified and modestly risk averse. This implies that the value,cost wedge of options can be smaller than usually assumed. The exercise decisions vary with expected volatility, managerial wealth, and mental accounting. Managers expecting lower volatility exercise earlier. This result is consistent with the predictions of expected utility models using our managers' survey parameters. [source] Company Competencies as a Network: The Role of Product DevelopmentTHE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2000Hanne Harmsen Product development managers and academics like to assure themselves and each other that new product development is one of the most critical areas of company competence and contributes positively to company success. But does top management agree? Because if they do not, the consequences will heavily influence the resource allocation to product development and career possibilities of new product developments manager. This study examines how top managers view the importance of product development relative to other central competence areas. Although asking managers about their perception is one way of evaluating the importance, its contribution to company success is another important measure. In this study, the impact of product development, relative to other important competence areas, is measured to assess further how critical product development is for overall company success. The authors investigate these matters in a survey of top managers in 513 Danish production companies. Ten areas important for achieving company objectives are identified. These are product development, market intelligence, production management, strategy and vision, sales, market responsiveness, promotion, internal co-operation, image, and supply management. Product development is rated a fairly important competence as it ranks number four, with sales, market responsiveness, and production management ranking numbers one to three. Yet a distressing negative impact on overall company success is found for product development proficiency, whereas success is positively related to production management, image, and differentiation of products. Further analysis reveals that product development contributes positively to success by enabling product differentiation and enhancing promotion proficiency. Influenced by and influencing many other competencies, product development is found to be a central competence. Results support a nonfunctional and broad perspective of how bundles of competences interact and impact on success and establish a positive overall contribution to product development. [source] Short-term versus Long-term Impact of Managers: Evidence from the Football IndustryBRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2010Mathew Hughes Studies into the impact of top manager change on organization performance have revealed inconsistent findings. Using longitudinal data over a 12-year period on football organizations, we test for the short-term and long-term effects of manager change in comparison to the tenures of incumbent top managers. We find that long incumbent tenures are associated with performance far above the average. But when looking at change events, contrary to theoretical expectations, we find that change in the short term leads to a brief reprieve in poor performance only for performance to deteriorate in the long term as underlying weaknesses once again take hold. Our findings reveal the illusion of a short-term reprieve and the long-term consequences of this illusion. We map several implications for research and practice from our work. [source] Are Friendly Acquisitions Too Bad for Shareholders and Managers?BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue S1 2006Friendly Acquirers, Long-Term Value Creation, Top Management Turnover in Hostile The well-documented failure of the majority of acquisitions to create value is often identified in popular discussion with hostile acquisitions, whereas friendly acquirers seem to get a friendly press. The relative performance of friendly and hostile acquirers therefore warrants a rigorous empirical investigation. Clear evidence of superior value creation in hostile over friendly acquisitions allows us to judge the efficacy of the market for corporate control. In this article we examine the long-term shareholder wealth performance of four types of acquirers , friendly bidder, hostile bidder, white knight and hostile bidder facing a white knight or another hostile bidder. For a sample of 519 acquisitions of UK target firms during 1983,1995, we estimated the three-year post-acquisition gains to acquirer shareholders and found that hostile acquirers deliver significantly higher shareholder value than friendly acquirers. We found that friendly acquirers with high stock-market ratings destroyed more value than hostile acquirers with a similar rating. Friendly acquirer top managers suffered greater job losses than those of hostile acquirers, perhaps paying the price for their inferior value-creation performance. Our study provides evidence of the superior value-creation performance of hostile acquirers and makes the case against takeover regulatory rules that may impede hostile takeovers. [source] How Issues Become (Re)constructed in the Media: Discursive Practices in the AstraZeneca MergerBRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2002B. Hellgren In this article, we put forward a novel way of exploring difference and contradiction in merging organizations. We examine how the media (re)constructs meanings in a major cross-border merger. Based on an analysis of press coverage, we attempt to specify and illustrate how particular issues are (re)constructed in media texts through interpretations of ,winning' and ,losing'. We also show how specific discourses are drawn on in this (re)construction. In the merger studied, discourse based on economic and financial rationale dominated the media coverage. Discourse promoting nationalistic sentiments, however, provided an alternative discursive frame to the dominant rationalistic discourse. We argue that the two basic discourses are enacted in three analytically distinct discursive practices in the media: factualizing, rationalizing and emotionalizing. We suggest that the ability of different actors such as top managers to make use of different discursive strategies and resources in promoting their ,versions of reality' in the media (or public discussion) is a crucial avenue for research in this area. [source] | |||||||||||||