Performance feedback research addresses how firms respond to performance that diverges from their aspirations. Whereas the majority of research in this vein involves financial performance, we apply ...this framework to product quality performance, arguing that when performance diverges either below or above aspirations, firms will pursue a slower subsequent product introduction rate, either to identify the cause of the underperformance or to incorporate the successful product characteristics in the case of overperformance. We also investigate whether our predictions hold when two boundary conditions are applied. Since product quality aspirations are derived from the “reputations for quality” of the firm and its peers, we argue that the stability of these reputations will amplify the delaying effects of below- and above-aspiration performance. Consistent with research on firm responses to financial performance, we also predict that greater sales revenues relative to sales aspirations will attenuate the delaying effects of aspiration-relative performance divergence. Our analysis of 1,332 video games released by 48 publishers from 2006 to 2009 is largely consistent with these predictions.
Research summary: Scholars have traditionally conceptualized board leadership as a dichotomous construct. A combined CEO and board chair position is interpreted as reflecting a more collaborative ...approach to corporate governance, whereas separate positions are interpreted as ensuring greater board control. I challenge this conceptualization and posit that a separate board chair can be oriented toward collaboration as well as—or in place of—control. I analyze newly available data from corporate proxy statements to identify these two board chair orientations and test competing perspectives on how they impact profitability growth in a sample of S&P 500 firms. The results indicate that board leadership is a more nuanced phenomenon than the extant literature would suggest. Managerial summary: What is the role of the board chair when not the CEO? Corporate governance experts assert the board chair's role is to monitor and control the CEO. Yet, board chairs often play another, more collaborative role. Board chairs frequently provide advice and guidance to CEOs and relieve CEOs of board leadership burdens, enabling the CEOs to focus on their primary responsibilities. In this study, I examine the effect of board chair orientations on financial performance and find that, as with separating or joining the CEO and board chair positions, the profitability implications of the selected orientation are far from universal. Board chairs must consider their firm's performance context in order to get the most out of a particular approach to being the CEO's boss.
Transmitted/founder (TF) simian-human immunodeficiency viruses (SHIVs) express HIV-1 envelopes modified at position 375 to efficiently infect rhesus macaques while preserving authentic HIV-1 Env ...biology. SHIV.C.CH505 is an extensively characterized virus encoding the TF HIV-1 Env CH505 mutated at position 375 shown to recapitulate key features of HIV-1 immunobiology, including CCR5-tropism, a tier 2 neutralization profile, reproducible early viral kinetics, and authentic immune responses. SHIV.C.CH505 is used frequently in nonhuman primate studies of HIV, but viral loads after months of infection are variable and typically lower than those in people living with HIV. We hypothesized that additional mutations besides Δ375 might further enhance virus fitness without compromising essential components of CH505 Env biology. From sequence analysis of SHIV.C.CH505-infected macaques across multiple experiments, we identified a signature of envelope mutations associated with higher viremia. We then used short-term in vivo mutational selection and competition to identify a minimally adapted SHIV.C.CH505 with just five amino acid changes that substantially improve virus replication fitness in macaques. Next, we validated the performance of the adapted SHIV in vitro and in vivo and identified the mechanistic contributions of selected mutations. In vitro, the adapted SHIV shows improved virus entry, enhanced replication on primary rhesus cells, and preserved neutralization profiles. In vivo, the minimally adapted virus rapidly outcompetes the parental SHIV with an estimated growth advantage of 0.14 days-1 and persists through suppressive antiretroviral therapy to rebound at treatment interruption. Here, we report the successful generation of a well-characterized, minimally adapted virus, termed SHIV.C.CH505.v2, with enhanced replication fitness and preserved native Env properties that can serve as a new reagent for NHP studies of HIV-1 transmission, pathogenesis, and cure.
In recent years, many firms have chosen to separate their CEO and board chair positions. Prior research has demonstrated that there are three forms that a CEO—board chair separation can take: ...apprentice, departure, and demotion. In this paper, we examine the antecedents of these three types. Our results show that the three types of separation each have different profiles in terms of the prior performance of the firm, the independence of the board, and the career horizon of the incumbent CEO. The findings in this paper provide unique insights into the factors that drive boards' structural choices. As questions about board leadership structure become more nuanced and more relevant in both scholarship and practice, a full understanding of these factors will only become more important.
Past research has consistently shown that separation of CEO and board chair roles has no systematic effect on firm performance. In this study, we introduce the different forms of such separation: ...apprentice, departure, and demotion. In a study of Standard & Poor's (S&P) 1500 and Fortune 1000 firms, we find that separation of the two leadership roles positively impacts future firm performance when current performance is poor, but negatively impacts future firm performance when current performance is high. We find that this effect is most dramatic for demotion separations. Finally, we test theory about the permanency of CEO-board chair separation. Our results show that the different types of CEO-board chair separation have very distinct consequences.
Innovation in the Boardroom Semadeni, Matthew; Krause, Ryan
Academy of Management perspectives,
05/2020, Letnik:
34, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Why has innovation in corporate governance consistently fallen short of expectations? Little progress has been made to improve corporate governance outcomes despite repeated calls for change from ...activist shareholders, arbiters of good governance, and government regulators. We argue that the problem lies in the need for any corporate governance innovation to be recognized as legitimate from the outset, which is unlikely given that innovation itself is inherently illegitimate. We examine the legitimacy shortcomings of a number of corporate governance innovations, assessing them according to the categories of pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy. Failure to achieve multiple categories of legitimacy destines the innovation to contention and limited application, while gaining two or more suggests that the innovation will be widely adopted. We close with a call for greater conceptual and functional flexibility to allow firms to experiment with various corporate governance innovations and react more dynamically to changing firm and environmental conditions.
We develop a competitive contingency model of the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance, focusing on the moderating effects of industry-based factors. ...We conceptualize corporate social performance as a form of strategic differentiation and predict that the positive link between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance is strongest when a firm competes in an environment that is not conducive to corporate social performance. Analyses of data from roughly 2500 publicly traded firms between 2002 and 2009 support the moderating effects of industry munificence and social orientation. We discuss the implications of our contingency model for firms seeking a competitive advantage through corporate social performance.
Traditional agency theory views the proper role of the board chair exclusively as providing independent oversight to monitor and control the CEO. Recently, firms have introduced innovations in board ...leadership that have confounded these theoretical expectations. One notable innovation is the executive board chair, a corporate governance hybrid responsible for both oversight and strategic decision-making, challenging agency theory's prescription that the two activities remain separate. In this study, we argue that an executive board chair position can resolve the trade-off between independent oversight and involvement in strategy and therefore generate a performance advantage. We also predict that, owing to the blurring of lines between the CEO and board chair roles that the executive board chair position creates, the relationship will be stronger the greater the need to monitor and control the CEO but weaker when organizational complexity and board leadership demands are greater. Analysis of S&P 1500 firms from 2003 to 2017 provides general support for our arguments.
At the pinnacles of organizations, comparative tests of unity of command and shared command are nearly impossible because only one individual sits atop most organizations. In organizations led by ...co-CEOs, however, such a test is possible because co-CEOs can truly share power. But do they? Our research pits the unity-of-command principle against the shared-command principle and finds overall support for the former, even within the co-CEO context. Our sample of 71 co-CEO pairs at publicly traded U.S. firms shows that increasing power gaps between co-CEOs are positively associated with firm performance. This positive association wanes and turns negative, however, as power gaps become very large. We conclude that whatever benefits the co-CEO structure might offer likely lie outside the shared command paradigm.
