First Look

Publications

Prospects for the Professions in China

Abstract

Professionals are a growing group in China and increasingly make their presence felt in governance and civil society. At the same time, however, professionals in the West are under increasing pressure from commercialism or skepticism about their ability to rise above self-interest. This book focuses on professionals in China and asks whether developing countries have a fateful choice: to embrace Western models of professional organization as they now exist, or to set off on an independent path, adapting elements of Western practices to their own historical and cultural situation. In doing so, the authors in this volume discuss a wealth of issues, including the historic antecedents of modern Chinese professionalism; the implications of professionalism as an import in China; the impact of socialism, the developmental state, and the rampant commercialism on the professions in China; and the feasibility of liberal professions in an illiberal state. To conclude, the book considers whether there might be an emerging professionalism with Chinese characteristics and how this might have an impact on the professions elsewhere.

Publisher's Link: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t927286744

Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis

Abstract

Emphasizing the "different costs for different purposes," this text focuses on strategy and the decision-making process.

Publisher's Link: http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Cost-Accounting/9780132109178.page

Mixed Source

Abstract

We study competitive interaction between a profit-maximizing firm that sells software and complementary services and a free open source competitor. We examine the firm's choice of business model between the proprietary model (where all software modules are proprietary), the open source model (where all modules are open source), and the mixed source model (where some—but not all—modules are open). When a module is opened, users can access and improve the code, which increases quality and value creation. Opened modules, however, are available for others to use free of charge. We derive the set of possibly optimal business models when the modules of the firm and the open source competitor are compatible (and thus can be combined) and incompatible and show the following: 1) when the firm's modules are of high (low) quality, the firm is more open under incompatibility (compatibility) than under compatibility (incompatibility); 2) firms are more likely to open substitute, rather than complementary, modules to existing open source projects; and 3) there may be no trade-off between value creation and value capture when comparing business models with different degrees of openness.

Why Do Intermediaries Divert Search?

Abstract

We analyze the incentives to divert search for an information intermediary who enables buyers (consumers) to search affiliated sellers (stores). We identify two original motives for diverting search (i.e., inducing consumers to search more than they would like): 1) trading off higher total consumer traffic for higher revenues per consumer visit and 2) influencing stores' choices of strategic variables (e.g., pricing). We characterize the conditions under which there would be no role for search diversion as a strategic instrument for the intermediary, thereby showing that it occurs even when the contracting space is significantly enriched. We then discuss several applications related to online and brick-and-mortar intermediaries.

American Exceptionalism?: A Comparative Analysis of the Origins and Trajectory of U.S. Business Education Development

Abstract

As business education in an academic setting becomes an increasingly global phenomenon, the university-based business school in America remains a unique institution. This holds true despite the fact that the American business school as it evolved in the post-World War II era has become the dominant model for business schools in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Most observers looking at these institutions as they exist today, without an awareness of their differing historical origins and development, would likely conclude that business schools inside and outside of the United States exhibit more similarities than differences. Yet the uniqueness of the American business school lies not so much in the widely imitated strategies and practices it has developed over the last sixty years as in the way that, for more than a century, it has articulated and shaped for the larger society a set of ideas, aspirations, and norms concerning business and management. Moreover, the visions and values animating the university-based business school in America—which arguably account more than any other factor for the great influence it has enjoyed in American society—have changed significantly from the era when the earliest schools were founded up until the present day. Thus the institution that came to be the major influence on business education worldwide in the postwar era is significantly different from the one that preceded it in the first half of the twentieth century, when American and European business schools developed along largely separate lines.

Advance Recovery and the Development of Resilient Organizations and Societies

Abstract

Societies face a wide array of significant hazards—ranging from the possibility of natural disasters to industrial accidents to large-scale terrorist incidents.

Book: http://media.swissre.com/documents/pub_risk_dialogue_Integrative_Risk_Management.pdf

Understanding and Coping with the Increasing Risk of System-Level Accidents

Abstract

The world has seen a number of recent events in which major systems came to a standstill, not from one cause alone but from the interaction of a combination of causes. System-level accidents occur when anomalies or errors in different parts of an interconnected system negatively reinforce one another, spiraling up out of control until they eventually drive the system outside of its sustainable boundaries, resulting in system "collapse." Systems with multiple components that are tightly linked to one another are prone to such events. Increasingly, our industrial, commercial, and social systems are coming to have the characteristics that predict system-level accidents—in some cases, driven by consistent economic forces that cause tighter interconnections to form within existing systems—and there seems to be a rising frequency of such events. Since we inhabit an increasingly tightly interconnected global collection of such systems, finding ways to reduce and to manage systemic risk is an important priority.

Book: http://media.swissre.com/documents/pub_risk_dialogue_Integrative_Risk_Management.pdf

Organising Response to Extreme Emergencies: The Victorian Bushfires of 2009

Abstract

How can people and organisations best respond to emergency events that are significantly beyond the boundaries of what they had generally anticipated, expected, prepared for—or even imagined? What forms of organisations are likely to be best able to cope with such events—and what procedures and practices will aid in their ability to do so? Obviously, extreme events—events that are in scope or scale or type beyond the range of our ordinary experience and expectations—by definition will occur only relatively rarely (and very rarely to any given emergency organisation). Nonetheless, when they do occur they tend to be of defining importance to the people and institutions that are thrust into them and that must find their way through them. September 11, 2001 in Manhattan and at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia; the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004; Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast of the United States in 2005; major earthquakes like the ones in Pakistan in 2005, Wenchuan in 2008, Haiti in 2010, Chile in 2010, and Christchurch in 2010—these and other catastrophic events catapult people and response agencies into a new, unfamiliar, and largely unexplored dimension.

Deliberate Learning to Improve Performance in Dynamic Service Settings: Evidence from Hospital Intensive Care Units

Abstract

Dynamic service settings—characterized by workers who interact with customers to deliver services in a rapidly changing, uncertain, and complex environment (e.g., hospitals)—play an important role in the economy. Organizational learning studies in these settings have largely investigated autonomous learning via cumulative experience as a strategy for performance improvement. Whether induced learning through the use of deliberate learning activities provides additional performance benefits has been neglected. We argue that the use of deliberate learning activities offers performance benefits beyond those of cumulative experience because these activities counter the learning challenges presented by rapid knowledge growth, uncertainty, and complexity in dynamic settings. We test whether there are additional performance benefits to using deliberate learning activities and whether the effectiveness of these activities depends on interdisciplinary collaboration in the workgroup. We test our hypotheses in a study of 23 hospital neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) involved in a quality improvement collaborative. We find that using deliberate learning activities is associated with better workgroup performance, as measured by NICUs' risk-adjusted mortality rates for 2,159 infant patients, but only after two years. In the shorter term, using these activities is associated with worse performance. By the third year, the positive impact of using deliberate learning activities is similar to the benefit of cumulative experience (18% and 20% reduction in odds of mortality, respectively). Contrary to prediction, interdisciplinary collaboration mediates, rather than moderates, the relationship between using deliberate learning activities and workgroup performance. Thus, our data suggest that using deliberate learning activities fosters interdisciplinary collaboration.

Strategy Research Initiative: Recognizing and Encouraging High-quality Research in Strategy

Abstract

The Strategy Research Initiative—a cross-disciplinary group of mid-career, research-oriented faculty—has organized to coordinate activities that promote high-quality research in the field of strategy. This editorial essay summarizes the group's view of the characteristics of high-quality research in strategy, and it calls on journal editors, teachers, and individual scholars to act to foster these characteristics.

Strategies and Tactics in NGO-Government Relations: Insights from Slum Housing in Mumbai

Abstract

Relationships between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and government agencies have been variously described in the nonprofit literature as cooperative, complementary, adversarial, confrontational, or even co-optive. But how do NGO-government relationships emerge in practice, and is it possible for NGOs to manage multiple strategies of interaction at once? This article examines the experience of three leading NGOs in Mumbai, India involved in slum and squatter housing. We investigate how they began relating with government agencies during their formative years and the factors that shaped their interactions. We find that NGOs with similar goals end up using very different strategies and tactics to advance their housing agendas. More significantly, we observe that NGOs are likely to employ multiple strategies and tactics in their interactions with government. Finally, we find that an analysis of strategies and tactics can be a helpful vehicle for clarifying an organization's theory of change.

Basking in Reflected Glory: Symbolic and Substantive Implications of Winemaker Mobility

Abstract

When a skilled employee moves from one organization to another, the effects on the hiring organization can be substantive (i.e., changes in actual outcomes) and symbolic (i.e., changes in expectations or valuations and therefore prices). We theorize that strong or even purely symbolic effects can materialize when former employers are highly prominent because these hires increase the hiring organization's market visibility. Leveraging an idiosyncratic feature of wine markets (i.e., the variable time lag between a wine's production and its release to the market), we isolate an effect of winemaker mobility on wine prices that is not accompanied by a substantive effect on quality. Within-winery analysis of 65 wineries' wines released before and after a hiring event reveal that hiring a winemaker from a more prominent winery negligibly influences wine quality but positively influences wine prices—even for wines that were produced and bottled prior to the new winemaker's arrival. In the absence of substantive justification (i.e., increased quality), the hiring wineries appear to be basking in the reflected glory of their prominent affiliations when setting prices. Implications for research on the substantive and symbolic effects of inter-organizational affiliations are discussed.

Management and the Financial Crisis (We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us.)

Abstract

The financial crisis of 2008-2009 has revealed that our broad model of corporate governance is broken, independent of the shortcomings in the regulatory system. Managers and boards of directors in scores of systemically important firms failed to protect employees, customers, or shareholders, and placed the global financial system at risk. I assert that the root cause of the crisis can be found in five related systems: incentives, risk management and control, accounting, human capital, and culture. The worst firms had lethal combinations of strong incentives, weak control and risk management, flawed internal and external accounting, low skill and/or low integrity people, and corrosive cultures. Piecemeal attempts to fix elements of corporate governance will fail. The problem, to illustrate, is not just the structure of compensation. Nor will increasing required capital prevent problems at companies with strong incentives and weak controls. I believe that we may need a new kind of external agency for systemically risky firms that would take a holistic look at the five systems to identify weaknesses, make recommendations to managers and boards, and set regulatory policies, including assessing charges for insuring against losses. Without such a comprehensive assessment and improvement plan, boards cannot do their jobs, and the system will remain as subject to calamitous events as it was before the crisis.

Property Rights for Foreign Capital: Sovereign Debt and Private Direct Investment in Times of Crisis

An abstract is unavailable at this time.

Publishers Link: http://www.vcc.columbia.edu/yearbook