Managerial Effort Research Articles

P96 Your Child is Overweight, Now What? Understanding How North Carolina Head Start Staff Communicate with Families about Childhood Obesity

Background Children (3-5 years) enrolled in Head Start (HS) are at increased risk for obesity. In an effort to prevent childhood obesity, HS implemented a Body Mass Index screening program in 2012. This program provides opportunities for HS to engage families by communicating information about children's weight status; however, limited research is available to describe the barriers and facilitators HS staff face when communicating this information to families. Objective Explore common experiences of HS Health/Nutrition Managers when communicating information to families about their child's weight status. Study Design, Setting, Participants Researchers conducted 15 in-depth telephone interviews with Managers across North Carolina. Measurable Outcome/Analysis Phenomenology was used to guide study design and analysis. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Researchers identified significant statements through open-coding and grouped them into themes focusing “what” and “how” participants experienced the phenomenon. Results Researchers identified 3 themes: Process of Communication; Barriers to Communication; and Communication Supports. Programs used different methods to communicate about children's weight (eg, letters, meetings, no communication). Parent reactions to children's weight status often dictated communication methods chosen; negative reactions often resulted in limited communication. Managers perceived parents’ backgrounds (socioeconomic status, education) and the “shame” associated with having an overweight/obese child as communication barriers. HS (eg, consulting dietitian) and community-based (eg, WIC) educational/counseling opportunities for families were identified as supportive of Manager efforts to communicate about children's weight status. Conclusions Participating HS programs acknowledged the importance of communicating with parents about their children's weight status. However, findings also indicated parents’ personal feelings about their child's weight status may influence the type of communication they receive and their willingness to utilize other educational/counseling opportunities. More research is needed to explore parents’ perceptions of HS communication methods, as well as effective strategies for supporting and educating parents about healthy weight in childhood. Funding East Carolina University Graduate Student Thesis Award.

Factors Affecting Adoption of Industry 4.0 by Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Case in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The fourth industrial revolution has attracted much academic attention in these past few years. However, research on systematic and extensive factors affecting adoption of Industry 4.0 by SMEs in developing countries, especially in Vietnam, has been unavailable. This study aims to explore the impact of factors that influence the actual adoption of Industry 4.0 by SMEs in Ho Chi Minh City. Mixed-method research was utilized in this study including in-depth interviews of 12 participants and quantitative research of 396 respondents who are representative of SMEs by both online and via paper surveys. The SPSS and SmartPLS 3 software were employed to help analyze the collected data. The results indicate that perceived development of the human resource, perceived on-time, perceived saving cost, perceived improve product quality, perceived saving time, perceived ease-of-use, business resources, and conditions of the business environment, perceived usefulness, perceived enhanced customer relationship, and adoption intention, all have a positive significant effect on actual adoption of Industry 4.0. The results seem to suggest that managerial efforts aimed at increasing the factors' perceptions of adoption of Industry 4.0 and personal relevance of the technology will contribute to implementation success, where success is defined as effectual usage of the Industry 4.0.

Rewarding for Causal Impact: Integrating Policy Evaluation and Incentive Alignment in the Design of Cross-Sector Contracts

Despite the emergence of contracts between governments and private actors involved in public services, a critical issue is how to enforce payments based on outcomes such as student learning or prisoner recidivism. Imperfect measurement may fail to reflect changes in outcomes that were caused by superior managerial effort. A possible way to address this problem is to adopt policy evaluation techniques that use control groups to examine what would have happened without the intervention, as is done in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and other methods of counterfactual assessment. However, our database of outcome-based contracts launched or in development worldwide shows that the majority of contracts (70%) simply assess changes in outcomes measured in the treated population. In this paper we bridge the literatures of contractual incentives and policy evaluation to explain this puzzle. We develop a theoretical model to compare payment rules based on the assessment of the treated to payment rules based on a comparison between treated and control groups. Building on the idea of statistical power, we show that the later contracts may under certain conditions undermine effort. This occurs, for instance, when the number of treated subjects is small and there is limited investment per treated subject, which is associated with potential effect size. Preliminary evidence from our database of outcome-based contracts is consistent with our predictions. Our results suggest that under certain conditions RCTs and other evaluation techniques may not be optimal to reward for social outcomes, even though they are considered best practice to assess policy interventions.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN MANAGING SECURITY CHALLENGES: A CASE STUDY OF KADUNA STATE

Insurgencies and other security challenges have caused significant setbacks for sustainable development in Kaduna state. This study assesses the role of the Kaduna state government in managing the security challenges within the state. In this study, significant factors that affects the management of security and its challenges as well as the disposing conditions were critically analyzed. The objective of the study was to examine the managerial effort of the government in tackling security challenges in Kaduna state being critical in the daily running of the state and proposed appropriate measures that could help improve the current situation. Relevant data for this study were collected from both primary and secondary sources. The study employed the exploratory research method. Indigenes of Kaduna state from different LGAs comprised the study population out of which 100 questionnaires were administered serving as sample size. The study employed descriptive statistical instruments such as frequencies and percentages in analyzing the obtained data. The study showed that majority (51.3%) of the respondents indicated that the government is the most active agent in the fight against insecurity in the state with little corroboration from other agencies. Lack of finance was observed to be the major challenge in the fight against insecurity in the state. Though, most of the state’s managerial strategies were credible, yet laudable to some extent. It was however observed that the little corroboration from other agencies such as NGOs, civil societies, traditional rulers and other security agencies played a significant role. The study therefore, recommends that a more inclusive decision-making approach between the state and other agencies be promoted to ensure cross sectional development and fight against insurgencies in the state.
 Abdullahi, I. | Department of Geography and Environmental Management, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria

Building friendship with Boss: Strategic prosocial behaviors in the agency model

In reality, friendship is not a zero or one relationship and it is not always reciprocal. We analyze how the degree of CEO-directors friendship and players’ recognition of this degree can affect the actions in the agency model. The degree of friendship will determine ones’ prosocial preferences, which then affect managerial efforts and compensation. Our results show that, when players’ prosocial preferences are publicly known and when the CEO cares more about directors, he puts in more effort to increase the firm value. On the other hand, if directors care more about the CEO, then they are willing to reward a higher salary to compensate for the CEO’s effort cost. However, if directors were to know that the CEO cares about their welfare more and the CEO himself would have a high incentive to put in effort, then directors should reward the CEO less! This indicates that the CEO has an incentive to hide his prosocial preference. Our discussions on the two private information cases help explain players’ incentives of strategic hiding, by characterizing the pooling, separating and partial pooling equilibria in the signaling frameworks.

Dynamic Nonlinear Pricing of Inventories over Finite Sales Horizons

Nonlinear pricing is frequently used by fast-fashion retailers (e.g., Zara). Discounts of the form “Buy 2, get 20% off” or “Buy 3 and save 30%” are becoming common. As revealed in a recent study by Gallego et al. (2019), nonlinear dynamic pricing can significantly improve a company’s revenue, by as much as 30%–90%, especially when inventories are high and the relative value of the marginal unit is neither too low nor too high, a situation that is common in fast-fashion retailing. They find that a single quantity discount threshold can capture most of the benefits of nonlinear pricing. The simplicity of this policy validates observed practice and concentrates managerial efforts to dynamically selecting the threshold and the depth of the discount.

Tumor-Agnostic Treatment for Cancer: When How is Better than Where.

In the evolving landscape of precision oncology, genomic characterization of tumor has become crucial in order to move toward a molecular-based therapy for the vast majority of cancers. Recently, translational research has offered new perspectives in systemic cancer treatment thanks to the identification of novel oncogenic targets and the development of new targeted therapies, followed by the latest applications of genomic sequencing. Simultaneously, next-generation sequencing (NGS) has expanded its accessibility, being incorporated into clinical studies at the time of the initial screening, disease progression, and often in longitudinal monitoring of molecular changes. Consequently, new potentially targetable molecular alterations have been identified in several different types of tumors, leading to the development of tumor-agnostic treatments. Being highly selective for specific molecular alterations, these drugs are active against different subtypes of oncogene-addicted cancers. Three of these drugs-pembrolizumab [an anti-programmed death 1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibody (MAb)], larotrectinib [a pan-tropomyosin receptor tyrosine kinase (TRK) inhibitor], and entrectinib [a pan-TRK, anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) and ROS-1 inhibitor]-received US FDA approval in 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. In this article, we critically review the clinical studies responsible for FDA approval and the most recently updated results. We then discuss the benefits and limitations of these new methodological approaches, paying particular attention to the largest precision medicine master protocol, NCI-MATCH. Among the benefits, there are the increased chances of offering targeted therapies for patients with specific alterations identified in different types of tumors. Among the limitations, we highlight that the same driver mutation may require different therapeutic strategies in different types of cancers. Additionally, the complex study design undeniably requires a dynamic strategy to enroll patients with considerable economic and managerial efforts.

Executive compensation and competitive pressure in the product market: How does firm entry shape managerial incentives?

Motivated by empirical evidence, we develop an incentive contracting model under oligopolistic competition to study how incumbent firms adjust managerial incentives following deregulation policies that enhance competition. We show that firms elicit higher managerial effort by offering stronger incentives as an optimal response to entry, as long as incumbent firms act as production leaders. Our model draws a link between an industry-specific feature, the time needed to build production capacity, and the effect that product market competition has on executive compensation. We offer novel testable implications regarding how this industry-specific feature shapes the incentive structure of executive pay.

Aile İşletmelerinde Büyüme Stratejisi olarak Uluslararasılaşma Seçeneği: Nitel Bir Araştırma (Internationalization Option as a Growth Strategy in Family Businesses: A Qualitative Research)

Purpose – This study was conducted to determine how internationalization is considered as an alternative method of growth strategy in family businesses. In the literature, a study that explores the option of internationalization as a growth strategy for family businesses has not yet been conducted. Based on this gap, this research was carried out on family businesses that operate in local and international levels. Design/methodology/approach – This study was conducted as a qualitative research. For this purpose, 14 family businesses representatives were interviewed by applying a semi-structured interview process in order to evaluate “family business identity”, “growth”, and “internationalization strategies”. The data was analyzed by applying a qualitative content analysis. Findings – Our findings suggested that “family business identity” was protected despite all the disadvantages. Moreover, internationalization in growth was not consider a privileged growth strategy regardless of whether the firm operating at local or international levels. Discussion – After all, it was seen that internationalization was not considered as a significant option in the growth decision of family businesses and all managerial efforts were still directed towards solving the problems of being a family business.

Methodological Approaches to the Assessment of Spatial Differentiation of the Basic Sectors of Subsoil Use of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is a major raw-material region of Russia. Large deposits of diamonds, gold and hydrocarbons are concentrated on the territory. The paper studies the territorial location of mineral resource and production potentials of the basic subsurface management sectors (oil and gas production, as well as diamond, gold and coal mining industries). The mining industry potential in the municipal districts of the region is comprehensively rated by using the method of integrated assessment on a ten-point scale. The assessment identified four local zones of development and location of subsurface management sectors: Arctic, Western, Southern and Eastern; which will allow creating territorial and sectoral clusters in the region in the future, providing the concentration of organizational and managerial efforts and the rational involvement of financial resources. The results of this study can be applied in the strategic planning of socio-economic development of local zones and municipal districts of the republic.

Non-financial performance measures, CEO compensation, and firms’ future value

This study examines whether non-financial performance measures (NFPMs) included in CEO bonus contracts are complementary to equity-based compensation, and whether they jointly explain future firm value. We predict that in a performance evaluation system, NFPMs integrated into CEO bonus contracts complement the use of equity-based compensation, and that they are jointly and positively associated with firms’ long-term value. Consistent with our predictions, we find that the inclusion of NFPMs in bonus contracts is positively associated with the relative importance of equity-based compensation (especially in the form of restricted stocks), indicating a complementary relationship between NFPMs and equity-based compensation. We also show that equity-based compensation is marginally associated with higher future firm value when the firm uses NFPMs in its CEOs’ bonus contracts. Overall, our findings suggest that equity-based compensation is more effective in aligning managerial efforts and actions with firms’ long-term value when firms include NFPMs in CEO bonus contracts.

When is Effort Contagious in New Venture Management Teams? Understanding the Contingencies of Social Motivation Theory

AbstractConsistent with social motivation theory, prior research on managerial motivation suggests that effort is contagious across management team members. In this study, we draw on belongingness theory to develop a model on important boundary conditions to social motivation theory in the management team context. The model predicts that new venture managers react to their teammates’ higher effort levels by investing higher effort levels themselves primarily when they are confronted with a threat – namely, low venture performance and high environmental hostility – but that effort is less contagious when managers face little threat. We test our model with a sample of 103 new venture managers nested in 51 management teams in a longitudinal setting capturing managerial effort over 26 weeks. While we do not find a direct relationship between teammates’ effort and a new venture manager’s subsequent effort, we find support for the crucial role of threat in triggering the contagion of managerial effort. We discuss the contributions of our study for research on management teams, performance feedback, and entrepreneurial effort in new ventures.

A probabilistic model that determines the social ecological system (SES) attributes that lead to successful discard management

The social ecological system (SES) framework is used to investigate the success of discard management, by gathering knowledge from worldwide examples of discard management applications. The literature search confirmed that most efforts aiming to reduce discards were implemented under top-down management schemes. For about half of the case studies where management tools were applied, a reduction of discards was achieved. To determine the attributes that influence the discard management success, a probabilistic classifier model (Naive Bayes Classifier) was used. This revealed that commonly used interventions to reduce discards can be ineffective unless advice is given in alternative forms that have societal acceptance. The role of social cohesion and stakeholder enforcement mechanisms is underlined and increases the odds of meeting successfully the recommendations for achieving sustainable fisheries. A successful combination of attributes that can lead to the minimization of discards requires robust social capital along with top-down measures. Overall, the classification algorithm proves the usefulness of the SES framework to describe the fishery response to managerial efforts that aim to reduce discarding. Establishment of links between fishing communities and scientists are the key for enhancing stakeholder engagement, increasing compliance and minimizing discards.

Performance Assessment of Japanese Electric Power Industry: DEA Measurement with Future Impreciseness

This study examines the performance of Japanese electric power companies from 2003 to 2020. We use an observed data set from 2003 to 2015 and a forecasted data set from 2016 to 2020. The Japanese deregulation of the industry needs to be completed by April 2020. As a method, this study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) environmental assessment, which measures performance from a holistic perspective. This research adds a new analytical capability to the DEA-based assessment by including an analytical ability to handle an “imprecise” data set. We apply the proposed approach to investigate the performance of these companies before and after the disaster of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (11 March 2011). All electric power companies have suffered from business damage due to the nuclear disaster. The Japanese government has developed a policy scheme on how to recover from the huge handling costs resulting from the disaster. Nuclear energy has been long considered the most useful approach to handle climate change. However, many industrial nations have changed policy direction since the nuclear disaster. The Japanese government allocates the costs to not only Tokyo Electric Power Company, which produced the nuclear disaster, but also the other incumbent electric power companies that own nuclear power plants. Under the current Japanese scheme, financial conditions have been gradually recovering from the damage due to the managerial efforts and by indirectly allocating the expenditure to consumers and tax payers.

Managerial Overconfidence and Self-Reported Success

I consider the optimal contract for an overconfident manager in a principal-agent model with moral hazard where the contract is written on the earnings of the firm. Overconfidence causes the manager to overestimate his ability to affect the outcome of the firm. Overconfidence first reduces cost of agency, and if the level of overconfidence is significant enough, it causes the manager to wager on his wrong beliefs. The accounting system obscures the outcome of the manager's effort, which attenuates the effect of significant overconfidence and decreases the principal's profit. Inducing the manager to truthfully communicate his self-observed success allows the principal to directly contract on the cause of disagreement, the manager's effect on firm outcome. This reduces the risk premium for a slightly overconfident manager and emphasizes the wager effect for a significantly overconfident manager. The value of communication is first decreasing in overconfidence for a slightly overconfident manager and then increasing in overconfidence for a significantly overconfident manager.

Riparian health improves with managerial effort to implement livestock distribution practices

Optimising the spatial distribution of free-ranging livestock is a significant challenge in expansive, grazed landscapes across the globe. Grazing managers use practices such as herding (i.e. droving), strategic placement of off-stream livestock drinking water and nutritional supplements, and strategic fencing in attempts to distribute livestock away from sensitive streams and riparian areas. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 46 cattle-grazed riparian areas and associated stream reaches embedded in rugged range landscapes to examine relationships between implementation of these management practices, stocking rate, and riparian health. We determined in-stream benthic invertebrate assemblages at each site to serve as an integrative metric of riparian health. We also collected information from the grazing manager on stocking rate and implementation of livestock distribution practices at each site over the decade before this study. Off-stream livestock drinking-water sources were implemented at just two sites (4.3%), indicating that this was not a common distribution practice in these remote management units. We found no significant relationship of riparian health (i.e. invertebrate richness metrics) with stocking rate (P ≥ 0.45 in all cases), or with the simple implementation (yes/no) of off-stream nutritional supplements, fence maintenance, and livestock herding (P ≥ 0.22 in all cases). However, we did find significant positive relationships between riparian health and managerial effort (person-days spent per year for each individual practice) to implement off-stream nutritional supplements and fence maintenance (P ≤ 0.017 in all cases). Livestock herding effort had an apparent positive association with riparian health (P ≥ 0.2 in all cases). Results highlight that site-specific variation in managerial effort accounts for some of the observed variation in practice effectiveness, and that appropriate managerial investments in grazing distributional practices can improve riparian conditions.

The Role of Cloud Computing in Energy Cyber-Physical Systems

Due to the latest advancements in innovative communication technologies, Energy Cyber-physical Systems (ECPS) have gradually transformed from a conventional simple type of system into a heterogeneous and more complex system incorporating computational and communication abilities that enables various embedded devices to monitor, communicate, sense and control the physical world. As a system with huge computational and storage needs, cloud computing seems to be a promising solution offering several possibilities and functionalities coupled with access to unlimited resources in a virtualized and scalable manner. Cloud computing has the ability to create an on-demand facility to gain admission into networks coupled with several integrated computational resources that can be promptly delivered with least managerial effort or little or no interaction from service providers. In this work, the role cloud computing plays in an energy cyber-physical system is explored with a view to analyzing its integration, characteristics and requirements and ascertaining its relevance in the research space. Results show that Cloud computing in energy cyber-physical systems is gradually receiving attention amongst researchers in this field.

Converging Technologies for Safety Planning and Inspection Information System of Portable Firefighting Equipment

Many construction workers are getting injured or killed in fires and explosion accidents each year. The workers are prone to severe fatal accidents due to unavailability of permanent firefighting system in many construction sites, thus they typically rely on portable firefighting equipment (PFE) to minimize fire damage. Many occupational health and safety agencies have developed safety regulations for PFE installation and monitoring in construction. However, in the traditional construction fire safety management process, the installation spots for PFE's are visually identified in a 2D floor plan and then top-down supervisory approach is used to inspect the active availability of the PFE's. Such manually operated conventional methods of PFE installation and monitoring are expensive, prone to manipulation, and do not provide sufficient motivation for voluntarily following fire safety policies. Therefore, this research study develops a fire safety rule-based PFE installation approach and proposes an alternative method for shifting the top-down inspection approach to the bottom-up voluntarily approach for convenient, transparent, and automated safety inspection information delivery. To validate the bottom-up approach concept, a visual language algorithm is initially developed for PFE installation planning system (PFE-IPS) in BIM, followed by an optical character recognition (OCR) and blockchain -based android application for safety inspection information system (SIIS). This article also presents two case studies to evaluate the feasibility and practicality of the developed systems. The proposed approach out-turn reduces the safety manager's manual efforts and burdens of government safety auditors while enhancing efficiency and reliability.

Innovation and by-product valorization: A comparative analysis of the absorptive capacity of food processing firms

The transition toward the bioeconomy concerns how firms innovate, especially how they utilize bio-based resources. This qualitative study explores how incumbent firms in a low-tech industry like food make use of technological developments to create high added-value for their by-products. The paper compares managerial efforts to utilize biotechnology in a meat and a dairy firm in the Norwegian food processing industry. The theoretical approach draws on the concept of absorptive capacity from organizational learning literature and innovation studies. The study finds that firms in the same industry with quite similar structures (i.e. the form of ownership) can nevertheless pursue divergent strategies toward developing innovations for by-product utilization. Through the process of learning, the study notes the role of firms’ absorptive capacity—exploratory, transformative, and exploitative—in acquiring external knowledge, experimenting with the newly acquired knowledge, and mobilizing necessary resources to adopt and develop technological innovations during the transition process. The study highlights the importance of inter-industry learning and research collaboration, market understanding, and supportive policies and regulations in fostering a bioeconomy.

Employee tenure and earnings management through real activities manipulation

ABSTRACT We extend prior studies on the role of employee on financial reporting by investigating the relation between employee tenure and earnings management through real activities manipulation. On the one hand, employees with longer tenure would be better in detecting real activities manipulation with better knowledge and experience on daily operations, yielding a negative relation between employee tenure and real earnings management. On the other hand, employee tenure would be positively associated with earnings management through real activities manipulation if rent-seeking managers persuade long-tenured employees who have a better ability to control daily operation, or if employees with longer tenure believe that real activities manipulation benefits the long-term survival of the firm. Our empirical analysis presents the positive relation between employee tenure and upward earnings management via reduction in discretionary expenses and overproduction. Further, we find that the positive association between employee tenure and REM could be attributable to employees’ collaboration in response to managerial efforts to provide the benefit to the firm by building creditability with the capital market and by signaling future better performance.