Search results

The purpose of this study is to explore whether the level of language content matching (LCM) between the chair and the CEO varies with their firm's financial performance.

This study examines a sample of 119 Australian firms and 476 annual letters to shareholders produced by the firms' chairs and CEOs over a four-year period. Chair–CEO LCM is measured by calculating the similarity score between the chair's and CEO's written text to shareholders within each firm year, while firm profitability is measured by return on assets. Univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests as well as three multivariate linear models are used to examine the research question.

The results show that the profitability of the firm is significantly associated with the level of chair–CEO LCM. When a firm is profitable, there is a lower level of chair–CEO LCM than when the firm is unprofitable and that profitability is related to a lower level of chair–CEO LCM. Firm size is positively and significantly related to the level of chair–CEO LCM. These findings are supportive of the view that the written communications of the chair and CEO are the outcome of strategic considerations and depend on a firm's specific economic situation.

Future studies may consider alternative approaches to measure textual similarity.

LCM may provide insights into management techniques that may be used to explain firm performance and provide a signal to external stakeholders, such as shareholders and fund managers.

This study provides new insights into the letters written by the chair and the CEO to explain or justify their firm's financial performance. Rather than focus on a single letter, this study examines the level of LCM between the shareholder letters of two different people in a firm (the chair and CEO) and finds that the extent of chair–CEO LCM is varying with firm performance and size. The findings of this study suggest that LCM is an important dimension of the communications of a firm's chair and CEO.

This study examines the association between firm profitability and the “voice” of the CEO measured through tones they convey in their annual letter to shareholders. The paper examines whether the tones corresponds to a firm's profitability and the extent to which CEO tone varies with changes in profitability.

The authors analyze 187 Australian CEOs communications in 748 annual letters to their shareholders between 2010 and 2013. Two-word lists created by previous researchers are used to assess tones for their positive-negative plurality, uncertainty and use of modal words. Firm profitability is identified using return on assets. The authors examine the relationship between profitability and tones using simple ANOVA as well as a linear mixed model and then a change (differences) model. The change model captures any inertia or genre effect in the CEO letter to shareholders.

Using both the level and change model, the authors find that firm profitability is associated with CEO's tones that are more optimistic and less pessimistic. The authors also find that the use of negative words has more communicative value than positive words or “net” positive words. The authors also observe some genre effect when CEOs use strong modal words.

The sample is restricted to a selection of Australian firms that had the same CEO for the fiscal years 2010–2013; which reported in each financial year and which survived the global financial crisis. Generalizing the findings to other periods, types of firms, or to CEOs with shorter tenure, might be questionable. This study was conducted in Australia, which may limit the applicability of the findings to other jurisdictions.

The significant link between firm profitability and CEOs' use of positive, net positive and negative words implies that investors may place reliance on the use of these tones in the CEO's annual letter to accurately reflect the profitability of the firm.

The study extends the existing literature by examining whether a change in firm profitability is linked to a change in CEO tone. It concludes that even in periods of general financial stress, shareholders should be confident that CEOs' letters to shareholders provide credible information that corresponds to firm performance.

Previous research suggests that a CEO’s attitude can impact a firm’s performance. More particularly, there appears to be a link between the CEO’s revealed level of optimism and firm’s market value. The purpose of this paper is to measure the level of optimism revealed by Australian CEOs in their shareholder letters and compares this with their firms’ current and future valuations.

This study assesses the CEO’s level of optimism using text analysis of the annual letters to shareholders in 180 Australian-based firms from 2010 to 2013. The market valuation of their companies over the same period is calculated using Tobin’s Q, and the results compared with the level of CEO optimism.

Comparing the level of revealed optimism with their firms’ valuations over four years, CEO optimism is positively correlated, both currently and prospectively with firm valuation. Given the period under study immediately followed the global financial crisis (GFC), the results suggest CEO optimism may be an important factor in adding to firm’s market resilience.

The study examines the link between revealed CEO optimism and firm valuation over a turbulent period of the business cycle. While the sample period follows the GFC, and Tobin’s Q has some known deficiencies, the results imply that further research should be undertaken to examine the importance of CEOs tone and communicated attitudes on their firms’ financial outcomes.

The link between CEO optimism and the firm’s valuation suggest that shareholders and boards should pay particular attention to the values, cognitions and psychological and demographic characteristics of top executives when selecting CEOs. In particular, the results suggest that given two otherwise similar CEOs the one whose record of communication is optimistic should be preferred over a similarly qualified but less sanguine individual.

The paper represents the first study demonstrating the link between CEO’s communicated optimism and Australian firms’ valuations. The study uses three different measures of optimism to improve the robustness of its conclusions, and a comprehensive measure of firm value – Tobin’s Q. It is the first to quantify the association between CEO optimism and firm value shortly after a period of financial upheaval (the GFC). The findings indicate that CEO optimism contributes significantly to firm value. The study also tests whether “excessive” optimism negatively impacts firm performance and conclude there is no evidence of this in the sample period. The study suggests that more research should be done to examine the contribution of positive business attitudes to periods of economic stress.

The purpose of this paper is to examine threshold concepts in the context of teaching and learning first-year university economics. It outlines some of the arguments for using threshold concepts and provides examples using opportunity cost as an exemplar in economics.

The paper provides an overview of the theoretical literature around threshold concepts in economics and provides exemplars from previous research, and current practice, to illustrate how they might be applied in economics.

The notion of threshold concepts such as opportunity cost can be extremely useful in pedagogic design. They focus on how learning concepts changes student thinking, rather than the standard approach which treats many concepts as equal in importance. Designing appropriate instructional materials around threshold concepts is time consuming and this may prove a barrier to the notions widespread adoption.

This paper contributes to the literature discussing the practical application of threshold concepts in teaching first-year economics as well as identifying possible reasons for its relatively slow adoption as a teaching tool in university.

Utilising data from 18 in‐depth case studies, this study seeks to explore training, development and human resource development (HRD) practices in European call centres. It aims to argue that the complexity and diversity of training, development and HRD practices is best understood by studying the multilayered contexts within which call centres operate. Call centres operate as open systems and training, development and HRD practices are influenced by environmental, strategic, organisational and temporal conditions.

The study utilised a range of research methods, including in‐depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, documentary analysis and observation. The study was conducted over a two‐year period.

The results indicate that normative models of HRD are not particularly valuable and that training, development and HRD in call centres is emergent and highly complex.

This study represents one of the first studies to investigate training and development and HRD practices and systems in European call centres.

This chapter focusses on the links between economic ideas, sustainability and the circular economy. Economics begins with the view that all resources are scarce and careful and informed choices must be made to ensure resources are used efficiently and not wasted. Given the fundamental importance of markets to human resource allocation decisions, unless economic concepts, especially markets and prices, are used to help transition towards the circular economy, a sustainable economic growth process is unlikely to be achieved. Economists have long grappled with the problems of resource depletion, unsustainable growth and intergenerational equity. Their ideas and views about the interconnection between markets, the environment and resource use have been in existence for several centuries. While frequently overlooked, some of these ideas have important insights for sustainable development and the implementation of a circular economy. The chapter will consider how economic concepts could be used to help society transition to a circular economy. It will also argue that difficulties with the implementation of a circular economy lie less with the application of economic instruments, and more with the political and institutional constraints that reduce our ability to think creatively and innovatively about ‘cradle-to-cradle’ processes.

This chapter compares interdisciplinary research that engages genomic science from economics, political science, and sociology. It describes, compares, and evaluates concepts and research findings from new and rapidly developing research fields, and develops a conceptual taxonomy of the social environment.

A selection of programmatic and empirical articles, published mostly since 2008 in leading economics, political science, and sociology journals, were analyzed according to (a) the relationship they pose between their discipline and genomic science, (b) the specific empirical contributions they make to disciplinary research questions, and (c) their conceptualization of the “social environment” as it informs the central problematique of current inquiry: gene-environment interaction.

While all three of the social science disciplines reviewed engage genomic science, economics and political science tend to engage genomics on its own terms, and develop genomic explanations of economic and political behavior. In contrast, sociologists develop arguments that for genomic science to advance, the “environment” in gene-environment interaction needs better theorization and measurement. We develop an approach to the environment that treats it as a set of measurable institutional (rule-like) arrangements, which take the forms of neighborhoods, families, schools, nations, states, and cultures.

Interdisciplinary research that combines insights from the social sciences and genomic science should develop and apply a richer array of concepts and measures if gene-environment research – including epigenetics – is to advance.

This chapter provides a critical review and redirection of three rapidly developing areas of interdisciplinary research on gene-environment interaction and epigenetics.