Christine Shropshire

A longitudinal study of significant change in stakeholder management

Despite rich theoretical development, empirical research on stakeholder management is scant, save its relationship with financial performance. Recent research shows significant intrafirm variability in stakeholder management across time. This study seeks to explain why firms would experience significant changes in stakeholder management. Adapting Wood’s framework to discuss three principles of stakeholder management, the authors identify antecedents of change at the institutional, organizational, and executive levels. Pressures for legitimacy at the institutional level suggest that firm age and size, along with industry shifts in stakeholder management, will increase the likelihood of changes in stakeholder management for the focal firm. The authors posit that organizational risk and performance will also affect the likelihood of change, as will managerial discretion, ownership, and succession. The authors test their predictions using a longitudinal sample of stakeholder management data and discuss the implications of the findings for research and practice.

Introducing Functional Data Analysis to Managerial Science

In this article, we introduce functional data analysis (FDA), a set of statistical tools developed to study information on curves or functions. We review fundamentals of the methodology along with previous applications in other business disciplines to highlight the potential of FDA to managerial science. We provide details of the three most commonly used FDA techniques, including functional principal component analysis, functional regression, and functional clustering, and demonstrate each by investigating measures of firm financial performance from a panel data set of the 1,000 largest U.S. firms by revenues from 1992 to 2008. We compare results obtained from FDA with hierarchical linear modeling and conclude by outlining ideas for future micro- and macro-level organizational research incorporating this methodology.

Perspectives on Strategic Implications of Shareholder Activism

Shareholder activism has attracted significant attention in research ranging from finance to strategy, management, and organizational theory, as the phenomenon has become increasingly prominent in the last few decades. However, strategic implications of shareholder activism have remained vague. Specifically, the papers take the perspective of activists and other shareholders, of the management of targeted firms, and of the management of non- targeted firms. By bringing these perspectives together, we aim to expand current literature and raise important questions regarding the strategic implications of shareholder activism that can affect diverse stakeholders. Shareholder Engagement in the Face of Conflicting Shareholder Interests Presenter: Maria Goranova; U. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Presenter: Lori Verstegen Ryan; San Diego State U. Examining Focus and Style as Predictors of Activist Investors Rates of Success Presenter: Christine Shropshire; Arizona State U. Presenter: Jisun Kim; U. of Mississippi The Ri...