Alireza Daneshfar

Management simulations: determining their effectiveness

Purpose – The overall purpose of this research is to increase understanding of the factors that promote the effective use of simulations in management education.Design/methodology/approach – This study uses data from 49 teams of respondents performing a management simulation exercise to achieve the research purpose. Respondents took part in the simulation in teams and were required to manage a business in the global athletic industry. Respondents completed a 21‐item instrument designed to assess individual learning. Learning was factor‐analyzed and three factors derived that correspond to problem‐solving skills, teamwork and seeing oneself as a manager. Measures were developed to assess team dynamic factors (emotional and task conflict), the user‐friendliness and realism of the simulation.Findings – The study showed that the nature of the simulation and team dynamics affected learning and performance. First, the extent to which users perceived the simulation as reflective of real life situations was posit...

Auditor Probability Judgments: Discounting Unspecified Possibilities

Tversky and Koehlers support theory attempts to explain why probability judgments are affected by the manner in which formally similar events are described. Support theory suggests that as the explicitness of a description increases, an event will be judged to be more likely. In the present experiment, experienced decision-makers from large, international accounting firms were given case-specific information about an audit client and asked to provide a series of judgments regarding the perceived likelihood of events. Unpacking a hypothesis into four formally equivalent hypotheses more than doubled its perceived likelihood. These results are largely consistent with support theory, extending its generalizability to applied contexts involving business professionals. Further, the paper finds that task-specific factors, a previously untested area, can also affect support theory interpretations.

The effect of pre‐existing financial indicators on investor valuation of strategic alliances

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend the line of research on the ex ante valuation of the economic payoff from strategic alliances. The paper links a firms related pre‐alliance situation to an alliance announcement, to predict how investors value the alliance.Design/methodology/approach – The researchers collected data on marketing alliances in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Using an empirical model, three hypotheses predicting how investors value alliances in the light of their knowledge of how the firm is doing before the alliance announcement were tested.Findings – The findings indicate that investors assign higher value to marketing alliances for firms with lower inventory liquidity and product demand. Investors, in fact, rewarded firms with weak pre‐alliance positions, indicating that the alliance was perceived as a useful strategy to turnaround the weak situation.Research limitations/implications – As is common with other event study research, the study is unable to pr...