Who Should Select New Employees, Headquarters or the Unit Manager? Consequences of Centralizing Hiring at a Retail Chain

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 173-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Deller ◽  
Tatiana Sandino
Keyword(s):  
Data Availability ◽  
Business Unit ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Decision Rights ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
New Employees ◽  
Retail Chain ◽  
Unit Manager ◽  
Local Advantage ◽  
Retail Company

ABSTRACT We examine how changing the allocation of hiring decision rights in a multiunit organization affects employee-firm match quality, contingent on a unit's circumstances. Our research site, a U.S. retail chain, switched from a decentralized hiring model (hiring by business unit managers—in our case, store managers) to centralized hiring (in this study, by the head office). While centralized hiring can ensure that enough resources are invested in hiring people aligned with company values, it can also neglect the unit managers' local knowledge. Using difference-in-differences analyses, we find that the switch is associated with relatively higher employee departure rates and, thus, poorer matches if the business unit manager has a local advantage; that is, if the store serves repeat customers, serves a demographically atypical market, or poses higher information-gathering costs for headquarters. In these cases, the unit manager may be more informed than headquarters about which candidates best match local conditions. Data Availability: The analyses presented in this study are based on data shared by a U.S. retail company. The data are confidential, according to a nondisclosure agreement between the company and the authors.

The effect of CEO friendship and perceived pay equity on the earnings management behavior of business-unit managers

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-447
Author(s):  
Andrea Gouldman ◽  
Lisa Victoravich
Keyword(s):  
Earnings Management ◽  
Ceo Compensation ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Management Control ◽  
Business Unit ◽  
Pay Equity ◽  
Management Behavior ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Unit Manager ◽  
Ceo Pay

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the possibility of adverse consequences regarding the recently enacted Dodd–Frank Act (DFA) pay-equity disclosure requirement in the USA, which will likely lead to lower levels of perceived Chief Executive Officer (CEO) pay fairness by subordinates. Specifically, the study examines whether the pay-equity disclosure leads to increased earnings management when business-unit managers have friendship ties with the CEO. Design/methodology/approach An experiment is conducted wherein participants assume the role of a business-unit manager and are asked to provide an estimate for future warranty expense, which is used as a proxy for earnings management. The study manipulates friendship between the CEO and a business-unit manager and the saliency of CEO compensation pay-equity. Findings CEO friendship ties, which are associated with lower levels of social distance, result in less earning management in the absence of the DFA CEO pay-equity ratio disclosure. However, CEO friendship may result in negative repercussions in terms of higher earnings management in the post-DFA environment when managers are provided with the pay-equity disclosure. Research limitations/implications Future research may expand this study by examining how the adverse consequences of the CEO compensation saliency disclosure can be mitigated. Practical implications Management, audit committees and internal auditors should consider the possibility of unintended consequences of the increased transparency of CEO pay-equity while designing management control systems. Social implications This study highlights the importance of understanding how employees’ social relationships with leaders may influence their behavior. Originality/value Unlike prior research, which focuses on senior executives’ direct incentives to manipulate earnings and subsequently increase their compensation, this study provides evidence regarding the earnings management behavior of business-unit managers.

Pricing of highway infrastructure for transportation asset management

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taehoon Lim ◽  
Juan Diego Porras-Alvarado ◽  
Zhanmin Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Performance Measures ◽  
Asset Management ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Cost Information ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Economic Productivity ◽  
Transportation Asset Management ◽  
Capital Value ◽  
Highway Assets

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology for estimating the “price,” or the not-to-loss value, of individual highway assets, which reflects not only the assets’ capital value but also economic productivity, by adopting a productivity-based asset valuation framework. The price tags can be used in prioritizing highway assets in support of transportation asset management processes. Design/methodology/approach The methodology adopts the utility theory to consider multiple performance measures reflecting the economic productivity generated by the assets, as well as their capital value. Key performance measures are first selected, and their values are retrieved from highway asset management databases. Next, the utility functions representing decision makers’ preferences convert the performance measures into utility values, which adjust the replacement cost (RC) of each highway asset to estimate price tags. To demonstrate its applicability, case studies were conducted for the highway networks of Texas and Washington State in the USA. Findings The methodology yielded price tags that better reflect the importance of highways’ roles in the economy in comparison to methods where only RCs are used. Furthermore, it was proven to be flexible enough to accommodate local conditions such as varying data availability. Originality/value The research provides a practical and reasonable way to prioritize critical highway assets in purport of maintenance and rehabilitation resource allocations, based on their economic productivity as well as physical condition and historical cost information, enhancing the overall efficiency and effectiveness of highway asset management.

Aggregate Performance Measures in Business Unit Manager Compensation: The Role of Intrafirm Interdependencies

1995 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Bushman ◽  
Raffi J. Indjejikian ◽  
Abbie Smith
Keyword(s):  
Performance Measures ◽  
Business Unit ◽  
Unit Manager ◽  
Manager Compensation

scholarly journals Case Article—The RealPro Customer Benefits Program: Rekindling Shopper Loyalty Through a Subscription Service

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnd Huchzermeier ◽  
Jannik Wolters ◽  
Marcel Uphues
Keyword(s):  
Combine Data ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Business Decisions ◽  
Point Of Sale ◽  
Retail Chain ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Market Test ◽  
Subscription Service

In this case study, students combine data-based insights with strategic considerations to make fundamental business decisions at the German grocery retail chain Real. In response to dwindling numbers of customers and reduced revenues, Real developed the RealPro customer benefits program to achieve a quick turnaround. For a fixed annual fee, RealPro members receive substantial and permanent discounts of 20% on nonpromoted items from a broad range of food categories. Students employ data analytics methods to extract insights from the provided data set, which contains point-of-sale information from the actual market test of RealPro. Based on these insights, decisions concerning the rollout and design of the RealPro program must be made. We provide data analysis solutions in both Excel and R to analyze 75 thousand customer transactions. In the case extension, students can apply the difference-in-differences method and two covariate balancing algorithms for in-depth statistical analyses. For this purpose, we provide an additional unbalanced data set with 83 thousand transactions, on which the students can test and analyze propensity score matching and entropy balancing models.

scholarly journals UFlow 1.0: A Computer Model for Projections of Urban Sprawl

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Koscianski
Keyword(s):  
Urban Sprawl ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Reverse Mode ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Good Agreement

Abstract. Cities concentrate most of the world’s population and are the stage of difficult problems around logistics, economy, or quality of life, to enumerate just a few. As an object of research on itself, a urban agglomeration is difficult to characterize; it is both an ensemble of various disconnected heterogeneous elements, and the product of numerous actions and effects between those elements. Studies of the structure and the functioning of cities date back to one century ago, with an increased interest in the last decades on the phenomenon of expansion and all of its impacts. Models of city growth face the complex nature of this system and are approximative. Different representations seek to balance characteristics as data availability, level of detail of internal processes, or precision. The uflow model approaches the problem with the metaphor of an abstract field, which evolves over time and signals the conversion from empty to urban cells. The procedure for calibration adjusts parameters according to the history of the region under study, and is able to capture local conditions. The implementation takes advantage of parallel hardware, and the simulation can be performed in reverse mode, a feature that can be useful to verify the adaptation of the tool to a given scenario, or to compute approximations of the past state of a region. Tests confirmed the expected behaviour of the algorithms, and good agreement with actual data. The flexibility of the concept of intensity of urbanization is open to the integration of different data sources into the model, and the possibility of simulating their evolution over time.

scholarly journals Moral Rights Laws and Income Disparity Between Artists in High and Low GDP States

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Avanesov ◽  
Robert Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
T Test ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Impact

The United States' laissez-faire approach to moral rights legislation has left many academics questioning the impact that these laws have on artists' welfare. In using artists' income as one component of measuring overall well-being, states with additional statewide moral rights legislation have been shown to contribute to more significant artist losses, in contrast to states with only federal legislation. At the same time, moral rights laws have been shown to have no impact on artists' choice of residency, leaving some artists possibly disadvantaged regarding their choice of residency. Utilizing a difference in differences framework, this paper explores the impact of moral rights legislation on artists' weekly incomes between moral rights states of varying outputs of GDP. Although results suggested that artists would lose approximately $0.18 per one billion dollar increase in GDP at the statewide level, after conducting an additional t-test, these findings were shown to have no statistical significance. Several limitations, most prominently a lack of data availability in the pre-law values required for the difference in differences framework, may have contributed to these findings. These indeterminate results leave the question of whether some artists remain economically disadvantaged as a result of moral rights legislation uncertain.  

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