Katja Rost

Meta-Analysis Of Economics Research Reporting Guidelines

Meta‐regression analysis (MRA) can provide objective and comprehensive summaries of economics research. Their use has grown rapidly over the last few decades. To improve transparency and to raise the quality of MRA, the meta‐analysis of economics research‐network (MAER‐Net) has created the below reporting guidelines. Future meta‐analyses in economics will be expected to follow these guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta‐analysis must deviate from them.

Do Rankings Reflect Research Quality

Publication and citation rankings have become major indicators of the scientific worth of universities and countries, and determine to a large extent the career of individual scholars. We argue that such rankings do not effectively measure research quality, which should be the essence of evaluation. For that reason, an alternative ranking is developed as a quality indicator, based on membership on academic editorial boards of professional journals. It turns out that especially the ranking of individual scholars is far from objective. The results differ markedly, depending on whether research quantity or research quality is considered. Even quantity rankings are not objective; two citation rankings, based on different samples, produce entirely different results. It follows that any career decisions based on rankings are dominated by chance and do not reflect research quality. Instead of propagating a ranking based on board membership as the gold standard, we suggest that committees make use of this quality indicator to find members who, in turn, evaluate the research quality of individual scholars.

Management Fashion Pay-for-Performance for CEOs

We show theoretically and empirically that Pay-for-Performance, like many management fashions, has not achieved its intended aim. Our research focuses on previous empirical studies that examine the relation between variable executive pay and firm performance on various different dates. Our results indicate that a variable CEO income contributes very little to the increase of the firm’s performance, and that CEO salary and firm performance are not linked. The example of Pay-for-Performance shows that in the long run, many management fashions do not solve the problems that they promise to solve.

Promotors or Champions? Pros and Cons of Role Specialisation for Economic Process

According to the Great-Man Theory, the creation of something new used to be accredited solely to one outstanding individual: the champion. This prevailing notion in A nglo- American research was first challenged by Witte (1973), who concluded that an innovation cannot be a one-man decision, since the creation of something new usually involves highly complex and multi-person decision processes. Witte’s model credits the success not to one all-around individual, but to the cooperation of several different specialized persons (so called promotors). Even though the Great-Man Theory is still leading the discussion, the idea of specialized promotors should not be underestimated. I n this article we discuss the circumstances under which specialized promotors or generalized champions are better suited for economic progress. We find extensive empirical proof for both roles.

The Corporate Governance of Benedictine Abbeys: What can Stock Corporations Learn from Monasteries?

The corporate governance structure of monasteries is analyzed to derive new insights into solving agency problems of modern corporations. In the long history of monasteries, some abbots and monks lined their own pockets and monasteries were undisciplined. Monasteries developed special systems to check these excesses and therefore were able to survive for centuries. These features are studied from an economic perspective. Benedictine monasteries in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and German speaking Switzerland have an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them broke up as a result of agency problems. We argue that this is due to an appropriate governance structure, relying strongly on the intrinsic motivation of the members and on internal control mechanisms.

Trust, involvement profile and customer retention - modelling, effects and implications

This study proposes and tests a structural model of customer retention. It measures the effects of trust and involvement on customer retention assuming general customer satisfaction. The model is tested in an empirical study in the context of an existing long-term customer relationship. As expected, customer satisfaction is not a construct on its own but is combined with retention. Trust serves as a strong trigger for enhancing customer retention. Involvement is revealed to play a prominent role in explaining both trust creation and customer retention. Applying the scale of Jain and Srinivasan, effects of different involvement profiles are analysed. Based on a discussion of the conceptual framework and an empirical proof of its operationalisation, five different dimensions of involvement are distinguished. Trust creation is primarily triggered by affective components of involvement, whereas the cognitive components show distinct effects. Further differences between the individual dimensions of involvement are revealed, in accordance with theoretical considerations. We conclude that relational customer retention, where trust is a major constituent element, is differently supported by affective and cognitive involvement. Consequently, the focus of innovation and new product management should shift from the mere design of new physical properties towards a broader, proactive perspective of shaping both consumer involvement and long-term retention.

The corporate governance of Benedictine abbeys

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse the governance structure of monasteries to gain new insights and apply them to solve agency problems of modern corporations. In an historic analysis of crises and closures it asks, if Benedictine monasteries were and are capable of solving agency problems. The analysis shows that monasteries established basic governance instruments very early and therefore were able to survive for centuries.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a dataset of all Benedictine abbeys that ever existed in Bavaria, Baden‐Wurttemberg, and German‐speaking Switzerland to determine their lifespan and the reasons for closures. The governance mechanisms are analyzed in detail. Finally, it draws conclusions relevant to the modern corporation. The theoretical foundations are based upon principal agency theory, psychological economics, as well as embeddedness theory.Findings – The monasteries that are examined show an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them dissolved as...

Reporting Biases in Empirical Management Research The Example of Win-Win Corporate Social Responsibility

Reporting biases refer to a truncated pool of published studies with the resulting suppression or omission of some empirical findings. Such biases can occur in positive research paradigms that try to uncover correlations and causal relationships in the social world by using the empirical methods of (natural) science. Furthermore, reporting biases can come about because of authors who do not write papers that report unfavorable results despite strong efforts made to find previously accepted evidence and because of a higher rejection rate of studies documenting contradictory evidence. Reporting biases are a serious concern because the conclusions of systematic reviews and meta-analyses can be misleading. The authors show that published evidence in win-win corporate social responsibility (CSR) research tends to overestimate efficiency. The research field expects to find a positive association between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP), and findings meet that expectation. The authors explain how this pattern may reflect reporting bias. The empirical results show strong tentative evidence for a positive reporting bias in the CSP–CFP literature but only weak tentative evidence for CSP efficiency. The study also examines which factors, such as time trends, publication outlet, and study characteristics, are associated with higher reporting biases within this literature.

Quantitative and Qualitative Rankings of Scholars

In a former article we started to argue that publication and citation rankings of individual scholars do not effectively measure research quality, which should in fact be the essence of evaluation (Frey and Rost (2010)). For the field of economics we show that an alternative ranking based on membership on academic editorial boards of professional journals is randomly correlated with citation and publication rankings of these scholars. In this article we go a step further by hypothesizing a systematic, inverted U-shaped relationship between quantitative and qualitative rankings. By relying on a longitudinal data set of management scholars who are part of the international top-community in organization science the findings support this multi-tasking effect. While a certain amount of publications indeed reflects aspects of research quality, it also suggests that maximizing publications ignores other essential aspects of research quality that are doubtlessly hard to measure. It follows that if career decisions are only based on high scores in publication rankings the result will be not only haphazard but may be even counterproductive for science.

Monastic Governance: Forgotten Prospects for Public Institutions

To overcome agency problems, public sector reforms started to introduce businesslike incentive structures to motivate public officials. By neglecting internal behavioral incentives, however, these reforms often do not reach their stated goals. This research analyzes the governance structure of Benedictine monasteries to gain new insights into solving agency problems in public institutions. A comparison is useful because members of both organizational forms, public organizations and monasteries, see themselves as responsible participants in their community and claim to serve the public good. This research studies monastic governance from an economic perspective. Benedictine monasteries in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and German-speaking Switzerland have an average lifetime of almost 500 years, and only a quarter of them broke up because of agency problems. The authors argue that they were able to survive for centuries because of an appropriate governance structure, relying strongly on the intrinsic motivation of the members and internal control mechanisms. This governance approach differs in several aspects from current public sector reforms.