Susan F. Storrud-Barnes

Incentive Alignment, Control, and the Issue of Misleading Financial Disclosures

The accounting scandals of recent years have raised concerns about the efficacy of incentive alignment and control systems. Among matched firms that either did or did not restate misleading financial disclosures during the period 1994-2003, both managerial equity ownership and contingent compensation were positively related to restatements when considered independently of other factors such as firm performance and board characteristics. When these variables were introduced, performance positively moderated the relationship between ownership and restatements, although contingent compensation was no longer significant. Finally, misleading disclosures were less prevalent in firms whose boards had high levels of business experience and long tenure.

Nonverbal emotion recognition and performance: differences matter differently

Purpose – This paper aims to explore and test the relationship between emotion recognition skill and assessment center performance after controlling for both general mental ability (GMA) and conscientiousness. It also seeks to test whether participant sex or race moderated these relationships.Design/methodology/approach – Using independent observers as raters, the paper tested 528 business students participating in a managerial assessment center, while they performed four distinct activities of: an in‐basket task; a team meeting for an executive hiring decision; a team meeting to discuss customer service initiatives; and an individual speech.Findings – Emotion recognition predicted assessment center performance uniquely over both GMA and conscientiousness, but results varied by race. Females were better at emotion recognition overall, but sex neither was related to assessment center performance nor moderated the relationship between it and emotion recognition. The paper also found that GMA moderated the e...

Uncertainty, risk preference, and new‐venture strategies

Purpose – Conventional wisdom holds that the difference between entrepreneurs and managers is large, while uncertainty and risk are virtually interchangeable. Uncertainty and risk are treated as separate constructs and then real‐options thinking and prospect theory are drawn upon to determine how they affect the actions of entrepreneurs and managers. The purpose of this paper is to determine specifically, how the above constructs interact to affect the strategies entrepreneurs and managers are likely to adopt when undertaking new ventures.Design/methodology/approach – The research uses deductive theorizing to build a theoretical model.Findings – Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is concluded that the difference between entrepreneurs and managers is less than believed, while the effect of the difference between uncertainty and risk is larger. It is determined that entrepreneurs and managers use similar strategies when faced with similar conditions of uncertainty and when they have similar risk preference...

Uncertainty, Risk, and Real Options: Who Wins, Who Loses?

Purpose – Real‐options have moved from being an academic theory to a decision‐making tool that is being used by managers. The thinking underpinning real options has remained true to its financial options‐pricing heritage, which means that it is based on an assumption of managerial risk‐neutrality. Managers can be risk‐seeking or risk‐averse, depending on whether or not they are meeting performance targets. This paper aims to explore the questions of what happens when the assumption of risk neutrality is relaxed and how the outcomes of managerial decisions on investments affect the firms stockholders and bondholders.Design/methodology/approach – The work is conceptual in its approach.Findings – Managers, stockholders, or bondholders do not lose when managers are performing above target and when environmental uncertainty is high, or below target when environmental uncertainty is low, but managers win at the expense of stockholders when they are meeting performance targets and uncertainty is low, and manage...

Corporate entrepreneurship and market performance: A content analysis of earnings conference calls

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a firm’s entrepreneurial proclivity on market performance for large, publicly traded US firms. This study draws upon the five-dimensional view of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and develops hypotheses aimed at understanding the effects of direct effect of CE cues of proactiveness, autonomy, innovativeness, competitive aggressiveness and risk-taking on stock performance during earnings conference calls. Design/methodology/approach The entrepreneurial orientation of 339 firm post-earnings announcement conference calls is analyzed through a content analysis of transcripts, and the impact of CE cues on stock price is measured using event-study methodology. Findings The results suggest that the cueing the CE dimensions of innovativeness, risk-taking and especially autonomy have a positive effect on market performance during conference calls, while competitive aggressiveness has a negative effect. No effect was found for proactiveness. Research limitations/implications The effect of entrepreneurial proclivity on firm value is not uniform. Not all dimensions of CE have a positive effect on market performance at a corporate level, and measuring each dimension of CE separately may be a valuable approach for future research. Practical implications Firms may create more value when they cue specific entrepreneurial attributes, and cueing competitive aggressiveness may not be desirable. Originality/value This study fills a gap in the literature by measuring the direct effect of CE cues on market performance through an innovative research design which relies on computer-aided text analysis.

Firm-specific risk, managerial certainty and optimism

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on investor reactions to unanticipated changes in income, and whether those reactions can be mitigated by managerial discussion. The authors investigate how top-management team certainty and optimism during post-earnings announcement conference calls can serve as corrective actions and add back firm value in times of unexpected changes in firm-specific risk. Design/methodology/approach – The research question is tested empirically in the context of large, publicly traded, US firms’ quarterly earnings announcements, and their subsequent post-earnings announcement conference calls. The authors use the advanced content analysis software DICTION to measure the levels of managerial certainty and optimism displayed during post-earnings announcement conference calls, and event-study methodology to measure investors’ reactions. Findings – Results indicate that earnings surprises are negatively associated with firm value, but that this relationship is mitigated posit...

Patenting as a competitive tactic in multipoint competition

Purpose – The papers aim is to build a model that predicts the optimum tactics for capitalizing on inventions within the context of competitive interaction among large firms. For patenting, the paper seeks to show how invention value and firm rivalry drive the tactics of competing, deterring competitors, retreating from markets, and cooperating. It also aims to explore the effects of the contingencies of patent bulking, technology complexity, spheres of influence, resource similarity, and complementary‐resource tacitness.Design/methodology/approach – The work is conceptual.Findings – The base model shows that patenting can be used to protect markets where there is high invention‐value and high rivalry. When both invention‐value and rivalry are low, the best tactic is to cooperate. When value is high and rivalry low, patenting can be used as a signaling and deterring mechanism, but when value is low and rivalry is high the best option is to let patents lapse and retreat from markets. The moderating effect...

Open Innovation and the Implications for Sustainable Profits

Using economics and strategic management literature, we analyze how the phenomenon of open innovation and its associated intellectual communities have an impact on traditional income streams derived from monopoly, Ricardian, and entrepreneurial rents. In doing so, we find that our existing models of property rights, barriers to competition, organizational cost structures, and innovation capacity require adjustment to account for these phenomena. Open innovation modifies the sources of rents. Traditional entry, distribution and capital barriers decline with declining property rights, as do market power and scale effects. Switching costs will remain unchanged. However, rents from knowledge, experience effects, and more perfect differentiation are expected to increase. Importantly, capturing rents may be more difficult because the source of the innovation remains outside the firm’s control.