Suppliers are increasingly being forced by dominant retailers to clean up their supply chains. These retailers argue that their sustainability mandates may translate into profits for suppliers, but many suppliers are cynical about these mandates because the onus to undertake the required investments is on them while potential gains may be usurped by the mandating retailer.
A BloombergView article on the negative economic effects of the growing number of mega companies dominating American markets features the latest research co-authored by Kenan Institute Director Greg Brown. The research looks at how the dramatic change in the number and composition of firms listed on major U.S. exchanges over the past two decades – namely, more larger, older companies and fewer companies overall – has resulted in historically low levels of idiosyncratic risk.
Worker attrition is a costly and operationally disruptive challenge throughout the world. Although large bodies of research have documented drivers of attrition and its operational consequences, managers still lack an integrated approach to understanding attrition and making decisions to address it on a forward-going basis.
The New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography is the most comprehensive and significant statement about the value and potential of economic geography in 2017. Sixty-six leading economists and geographers from around the world investigate the rival theories and perspectives that have sustained the development of economic geography. The Handbook also focuses on linkages, including those between inequality, instability, and sustainability in the global economy; economic behavior, strategies, and practices; mobility and creativity; resources and development; and distribution and consumption.
This monograph introduces Management Accounting to Operations Management researchers and illustrates how unleashing this accounting information perspective into the world of Operations Management can improve our understanding of topics of interest to Operations Management researchers and practitioners.
Goals and the performance feedback on those goals are fundamental to organizational learning and adaptation. However, most research has focused on single overall, high-level organizational goals, while ignoring important operational goals farther down in the goal hierarchy.
Economic forecasting is a key ingredient of decision making both in the public and in the private sector. Because economic outcomes are the result of a vast, complex, dynamic and stochastic system, forecasting is very difficult and forecast errors are unavoidable. Because forecast precision and reliability can be enhanced by the use of proper econometric models and methods, this innovative book provides an overview of both theory and applications. Undergraduate and graduate students learning basic and advanced forecasting techniques will be able to build from strong foundations, and researchers in public and private institutions will have access to the most recent tools and insights
A Triangle Business Journal article on the Kenan Institute’s Dean’s Speakers Series featuring Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman last week. Schwarzman and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Dean Doug Shackelford discussed the makings of a CEO in their Kenan Center fireside chat before students, faculty, staff and UNC Chapel Hill community members.
We empirically investigate the effects of political uncertainty on corporate tax behavior. To identify the effects of political uncertainty, we construct a data set that tracks whether firms’ tax avoidance varies systematically around the occurrence of national elections. Our dataset includes firms exposed to 103 national elections in 30 countries. We find that corporate tax avoidance varies systematically across the election cycle, peaking in election years and declining the next year. The effect on tax avoidance is greatest for elections with greater electoral uncertainty, and for elections in countries with relatively lower quality of law, relatively weaker tax enforcement, and relatively lower book-tax conformity. The evidence suggests that firms use both conforming and nonconforming tax avoidance strategies, although the results for conforming tax avoidance are marginal.
We investigate the relation between tax avoidance and tax uncertainty, where tax uncertainty is the possibility of losing a claimed tax benefit upon challenge by a tax authority. On average, we find that tax avoiders, i.e., firms with relatively low cash tax rates, do bear significantly greater tax uncertainty than firms that have higher cash tax rates. However, we find that this relation is driven by firms with tax haven subsidiaries and high levels of R&D expense, proxies for intangible-related transfer pricing strategies. Thus, contrary to expectations, general tax avoidance (i.e., unrelated to tax havens) does not explain variation in tax uncertainty. The findings have implications for several puzzling results in the literature but also raise new questions.
We investigate Chinese firms’ use of variable interest entities (VIEs) to evade Chinese regulation on foreign ownership and list in the US. VIEs are explicitly designed to circumvent the intent of Chinese law on foreign control, and potentially exacerbate agency conflicts within the firm.
Sharing economy has risen rapidly in recent years, and it imposes several challenges for policy makers. This paper examines how a pioneer of sharing economy — Airbnb — affects local economy. Using venture capital infusions as plausibly exogenous shocks to Airbnb’s expansion into a new county, we find that Airbnb expansion leads to poorer hotel performance in the local county.
Firms should disclose information on material cyber-attacks. However, because managers have incentives to withhold negative information, and investors cannot discover most cyber-attacks independently, firms may underreport them. Using data on cyber-attacks that firms voluntarily disclosed, and those that were withheld and later discovered by sources outside the firm, we estimate the extent to which firms withhold information on cyber-attacks.
DaimlerChrysler’s origins date as far back as 1883, when its predecessor “Benz & Co. Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik, Mannheim” was founded by Karl Benz in Germany. The Chrysler Corporation was founded in the United States in1925 by Walter P. Chrysler. In November 1998 Chrysler and Daimler Benz completed a $36 billion merger, forming DaimlerChrysler, the fifth largest automaker in the world with estimated sales of $160 billion.
ABN AMRO’s origins date as far back as 1824, when its predecessor Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij was founded in the Netherlands. More recently the Dutch-based international bank is the result of the 1991 merger of ABN bank and AMRO bank. Today, ABN AMRO ranks 10th in Europe and 22nd in the world based on tier 1 capital. It has over 3,000 branches in more than 60 countries, a staff of over1105,000 full-time equivalents and total assets of EUR 560 billion (as per end 2003). The firm is listed on several exchanges, including the Amsterdam, London and New York Stock Exchanges.
“When are you going to change this Children’s Safe Drinking Water program and make money for your company? Surely Procter & Gamble wants you to profit on the water purification technology—you can’t sustain your program as a non-profit!” Greg Allgood sighed internally at this question, as it seemed to surface frequently despite the continued and rapid growth of the Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) program at P&G. Allgood (Director of the CSDW program) was not actually frustrated with the query, as he had an easy answer ready. Rather, he wished that people could more easily see how his team’s non-profit work was adding greater value to the $80 billion dollar company than a for-profit sales model ever could. Procter & Gamble is a data-driven company, and after 24 years as a “Proctoid” he knew this better than anyone. Greg had significant qualitative and some quantitative information to support the idea that, in some cases, a non-profit business model could do much more for the bottom line than could a for-profit model. However, he knew that he needed to do even more to clarify this point for others.
Graham, N.C.-based Lindley Mills has been awarded the Family Business Award from the Triad Business Journal. Vice President of Marketing Caroline Lindley (BSBA '14, MBA '17) represents her family's 10th generation at the mill. She continues to work closely with the Family Enterprise Center, a Kenan Institute affiliate. Lindley also serves on the Kenan Institute's Kenan Scholars Board of Mentors.
This article describes an American community survey and a survey of business owners of which the data are merged to assess the experiences of minority- versus white-owned small businesses between 2007 and 2012. This is highlighted due to it being a period encompassing the worst economic downturn since The Great Depression. White firms declined while minority firms grew rapidly. Despite recent efforts to create inclusive entrepreneurial and business ecosystems, however, minority business owners made little progress toward achieving equity or parity with white business owners. Policy prescriptions and implications for future research are discussed.
In Never Stop Learning, behavioral scientist and operations expert Bradley R. Staats describes the principles and practices that comprise dynamic learning and outlines a framework to help you become more effective as a lifelong learner. Replete with the most recent research about how we learn as well as engaging stories that show how real learning happens, Never Stop Learning will become the operating manual for leaders, managers, and anyone who wants to keep thriving in the new world of work.
Find out what opportunities the institute has for you. Join us for the 2018 annual Welcome Reception in the Kenan Center Dining Room.