This paper argues that mainstream economic theory, far from providing an indisputable plea in favor of shareholder value-maximization, offers striking arguments showing quite the opposite: profit-maximization cannot be a legitimate prioritarian goal for private firms. This opens the door for a...

Economic theory predicts that agents will work harder if they believe in the "mission" of the organization. Well-identified estimates of exactly how much harder they will work have been elusive, however, because agents select into jobs. We conduct a real effort experiment with participants who...

This paper discusses a new meta-DEA approach to solve the problem of choosing direction vectors when estimating the directional distance function. The proposed model emphasizes finding the “direction” for productivity improvement rather than estimating the “score” of efficiency; focusing...

This study investigates the performance feedback and goal achievability in incentive effects on employees' effort and performance. We perform an experiment to examine whether the use of goal-specific feedback and incentive contracts have an interaction effect on task performance. Using the...

Private certification mechanisms are a key component of the regulatory infrastructure in the financial sector and other commercial settings. It is generally assumed that certification intermediaries have profit-based incentives to deliver accurate information to the certified market. But this...

The use of tangible rewards in the form of non-cash incentives with a monetary value has become increasingly common at organizations (Peltier, Schultz and Block 2005). Despite their use, the behavioral and performance effects of tangible rewards have received minimal research attention. Relative...

Employee resistance against innovations is a virulent phenomenon and there is a broad theoretical literature on its determinants. The empirical evidence is scarce, however, and mainly provides descriptive evidence on the incidence of the phenomenon and concentrates on the effectiveness of change...

Management control systems (MCS) are designed to achieve the greatest possible goal congruence, where people pursue personal goals that are conducive to the organizational goal. Use and design of MCS are crucial aspects for achieving goal congruence, but they are thought to be contingent to...

Our study builds on extant theory on embeddness to concentrate on the process of preservation and dissolution of the target firm’s embedded ties in acquisitions. We identify four critical areas - communication, idiosyncratic investments, inter-personal relations and, personnel turnover –...