Spotlight on new research publications in June

Are you interested in the different aspects that shape and drive management and leadership? This month’s research publications from CBS include studies on personality characteristics of CEO candidates, as well as the introduction of ‘Slow Management’ as a new and alternative approach to management. Read more about these and many other studies here.

01/06/2021

Bjarke MacCarthy
Foto: Bjarke MacCarthy

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From Self-evident Norms to Contingent Couplings: A Systems-theoretical Analysis of Changes in the Relationship between Schools and the Function Systems in Denmark.
Abstract: Taking a point of departure in the paradoxical fact that the increase in educational knowledge leads to an increase in uncertainty for educational organisations, this article explores how uncertainty and contingency have increasingly become an integral part of school governance. The article draws on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of ‘World Society’ as a functional differentiated society providing a range of different symbolic media for educational organisations. To trace the increase in the complexity of governing, we provide a historical account of the shifting couplings between schools and function systems. We show how the school becomes linked to an increasing number of symbolic media so that education becomes only one out of many other concerns. The article studies the consequences these shifting couplings have for how schools are governed and how they are expected to self-manage their relationship to different function systems.

The article adds to existing studies of how education has become more and more differentiated with the argument that this has also led to new forms of couplings between schools and the education system with a number of important implications for the teaching profession.

Journal: European Educational Research Journal
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, Justine Grønbæk Pors

Genres and Inequality in the Creative Industries
Abstract: Genres organize and facilitate cultural, creative and media production and consumption but are rarely central categories in extant research on creative industries. With this editorial article, we aim to reassert, reassess and revisit the salience of genres for understanding inequalities in the cultural and creative industries. We argue that genres, as classificatory devices, structure and order a gendered and racialized division of labour and occupational practice. Genres sanction what is and what is not aesthetically and ethically appropriate to do and think within specific textual categories and, hence also, within genre-specific production cultures. Genres draw boundaries, shaping and normalizing the gendered and racialized professional values and norms that underpin unequal patterns of access, distinction and career advancement within creative occupations. Cultural producers, in turn, are compelled to forge professional genre identities at the same time as constantly having to negotiate their gender and racial fitness to work and prosper in specific categories of cultural production. The contributions to this special issue elucidate, through a plethora of methodological and theoretical approaches, the links between genres and persisting inequalities across the book, screen and music industries.

Journal: European Journal of Cultural Studies
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Ana Alacovska

The Santa Cruz Sluicing Data Set
Abstract: This report describes a new research resource: a searchable database of 4,700 naturally occurring instances of sluicing in English, annotated so as to shed light on the questions that have shaped research on ellipsis since the 1960s. The paper describes the data set and how it can be obtained, how it was constructed, how it is organized, and how it can be queried. It also highlights some initial empirical findings, first describing general characteristics of the data, then focusing more closely on issues concerning antecedents and possible mismatches between antecedents and ellipsis sites.

Journal: Language
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Daniel Hardt

Legislative Capacity in Germany's Parliaments
Abstract: We present new data on the legislative capacity (or professionalism) of Germany's national and subnational parliaments including legislator salary, informational expenditures, and counts of committee and plenary sessions. We describe these data and aggregate them into a summary measure modeled after the Squire Index as well as a measure derived from factor analytic decomposition. The internal validity of these measures is assessed in a case study of recent parliamentary reforms in Baden‐Württemberg and the external validity is assessed via comparison to electoral turnover. We conclude with suggestions for future research and hope that our colleagues will both make use of these data to study the causes and consequences of legislative capacity in Germany and also be motivated to collect and disseminate similar data for new contexts.

Journal: Legislative Studies Quarterly
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: David Fortunato

The Trump Administration and China: Policy Continuity or Transformation?
Abstract: The long-run consequences of the Trump presidency on US foreign policy have been a subject of debate. Policy towards China is one arena in which observers have argued that Trump's impact has been significant and is likely to outlast him. Indeed, it might be considered transformational. Many of the commentaries have, however, been largely anecdotal. So as to provide a more rigorous analysis of policy transformation we employ a previously developed framework that focuses on ideational shifts, the development of new or reconfigured interests that are allied to a particular policy, and institutional changes as a basis for change to be considered transformational and thereby enduring. Applying these criteria to Trump's China policy we argue that while there has been a paradigmatic change structured around the embrace of “strategic competition”, there have been some, but rather more limited, shifts in the character of interest configurations and institutional structures. We nonetheless conclude that while policy transformation is incomplete the changes that the Trump White House wrought have been profound and are very likely to shape the actions of future administrations.

Journal: Policy Studies
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Edward Ashbee

Macro Longevity Risk and the Choice between Annuity Products: Evidence from Denmark
Abstract: We study a unique data-set containing individuals who were given the opportunity to substitute a guaranteed pension product with relatively low levels of risk for a market-sensitive pension product with both a higher degree of financial risk and exposure to macro longevity risk. Implicitly there is a longevity hedge built into the guaranteed product that is abolished when one switches to the market-sensitive product. The analysis shows that situations might arise where expected pension payments in the market-sensitive product fall below expected pension payments in the guaranteed product, despite the fact that the former has a higher expected return from financial assets. We find that young male residents of Copenhagen with a degree in economics who are guaranteed a low return on their pension savings and have moderate pension wealth are more likely to switch to the market-sensitive pension product.

Journal: Insurance: Mathematics and Economics
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Jesper Rangvid

Rewarding Behavior with a Sweet Food Strengthens Its Valuation
Abstract: Sweet foods are commonly used as rewards for desirable behavior, specifically among children. This study examines whether such practice may contribute to reinforce the valuation of these foods. Two experiments were conducted, one with children, the other with rats. The first study, conducted with first graders (n = 214), shows that children who receive a food reward for performing a cognitive task subsequently value the food more compared to a control group who received the same food without performing any task. The second study, conducted on rats (n = 64), shows that rewarding with food also translates into higher calorie intake over a 24-hour period. These results suggest that the common practice of rewarding children with calorie-dense sweet foods is a plausible contributing factor to obesity and might therefore be ill advised.

Journal: PLOS ONE
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Jan Michael Bauer

On Sparse Ensemble Methods: An Application to Short-term Predictions of the Evolution of COVID-19
Abstract: Since the seminal paper by Bates and Granger in 1969, a vast number of ensemble methods that combine different base regressors to generate a unique one have been proposed in the literature. The so-obtained regressor method may have better accuracy than its components, but at the same time it may overfit, it may be distorted by base regressors with low accuracy, and it may be too complex to understand and explain. This paper proposes and studies a novel Mathematical Optimization model to build a sparse ensemble, which trades off the accuracy of the ensemble and the number of base regressors used. The latter is controlled by means of a regularization term that penalizes regressors with a poor individual performance. Our approach is flexible to incorporate desirable properties one may have on the ensemble, such as controlling the performance of the ensemble in critical groups of records, or the costs associated with the base regressors involved in the ensemble. We illustrate our approach with real data sets arising in the COVID-19 context.

Journal: European Journal of Operational Research
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Dolores Romero Morales

A Second Look at Primary Generators
Abstract: Jane Darke’s 1979 article “The Primary Generator and the Design Process” appeared in the very first issue of Design Studies. In the four decades of design research that followed, the article became a classic. In the article’s revaluation of the role subjectivity plays in design, Darke posits a construct called the “the primary generator”—a limited set of (typically subjective) constraints—as a way for architects to engage with design tasks characterized by complexity. The primary generator acts as a random starting point, located within a subset of constraints, which is iteratively adjusted as the design process takes place. It may be construed as a subjectively valued organizing principle driving the design process. It may also be read as either a liberating force of subjective creative freedom, or as a subjective source of bias and fixation that the architect may be unwilling or unable to later escape. Darke herself held both these positions over time. Her ideas on the malleability of the design space and the very initiation of the creative design process by imposition of constraints have been critical in the evolution of constraint research, which represents a rich strand of interdisciplinary design research.

Journal: She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Bo Christensen

The Ethos of Poetry: Listening to Poetic and Schizophrenic Expressions of Alienation and Otherness
Abstract: In the Letter of Humanism, Heidegger reinterprets the Greek notion of ethos as designating the way in which human beings dwell in the world through a “unifying” language. Through various down strokes in the autobiographical and psychopathological literature on schizophrenia as well as in literary texts and literary criticism, this paper, experimental in its effort, argues that the language productions of schizophrenia and poetry, each in its own way, seem to fall outside this unification of a language in common. Furthermore, it argues that this “falling outside” is related to radical experiences of “alienation” and “otherness,” which call for an alteration of conventional language. However, whereas poetry appears to open new linguistic possibilities, schizophrenia runs the risk of reducing language to the silence of incomprehensible “nonsense.” The paper ends with the suggestion that a poetic employment of language may hold a double potential with regard to the understanding and possible treatment of schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Journal: Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Cathrine Bjørnholt Michaelsen

Perlmutter Revisited: Afslører den anomiske tankegang
Abstract: Sortimentet af problemer, der opstår i situationer, hvor der er en forskel mellem ledernes nuværende tankegang og kravene i deres komplekse driftsmiljø, er endnu ikke afsløret fuldt ud. Når vi kritisk engagerer os i Perlmutter's rammer og den bredere globale tankegangslitteratur og trækker på indsigt kurateret fra en 2-årig feltundersøgelse, afslører vi eksistensen af ​​den anomiske tankegang blandt en kohorte af internationale ledere. Vi konceptualiserer denne tankegang som et lager af viden, kognitive og psykologiske egenskaber, der resulterer i, at disse ledere vender tilbage til og forankrer sig i en forældet, sandsynligvis idealiseret, verdensbillede af forretning i modsætning til en skiftende socioøkonomisk kontekst. Dens tilstedeværelse ser dem modstå snarere end at tilpasse sig den globalisering, der omgiver dem, og fører dem til at gå i omveje fra vejen mod udviklingen af ​​et globalt tankesæt. I modsætning til den etnocentriske tankegang, der beskriver forudgående ledertænkning i organisationer, der bevæger sig mod internationalisering, skyldes den anomiske tankegang ledernes efterfølgende svar efter en langvarig periode med involvering i international forretning. Dens eksistens åbner en betydelig debat om fremskridt i og udsigterne til globalisering og udvikling af globale tankesæt sammen med deres bevarelse over for denne vedvarende anomie. den anomiske tankegang er resultatet af lederne efterfølgende svar efter en langvarig periode med engagement i international forretning. Dens eksistens åbner en betydelig debat om fremskridt i og udsigterne til globalisering og udvikling af globale tankesæt sammen med deres bevarelse over for denne vedvarende anomie. den anomiske tankegang er resultatet af lederne efterfølgende svar efter en langvarig periode med engagement i international forretning. Dens eksistens åbner en betydelig debat om fremskridt i og udsigterne til globalisering og udvikling af globale tankesæt sammen med deres bevarelse over for denne vedvarende anomie.

Journal: Journal of International Business Studies
Published: May 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Aseem Kinra

On Some Antecedents of Behavioural Economics
Abstract: Since its inception in the late 1970s, behavioural economics has gone from being an outlier to a widely recognized yet still contested subset of the economic sciences. One of the basic arguments in behavioural economics is that a more realistic psychology ought to inform economic theories. While the history of behavioural economics is often portrayed and articulated as spanning no more than a few decades, the practice of utilizing ideas from psychology to rethink theories of economics is over a century old. In the first three decades of the 20th century, several mostly American economists made efforts to refine fundamental economic assumptions by introducing ideas from psychology into economic thinking. In an echo of contemporary discussions in behavioural economics, the ambition of these psychology-keen economists was to strengthen the empirical accuracy of the fundamental assumptions of economic theory. In this article, we trace, examine, and discuss arguments for and against complementing economic theorizing with insights from psychology, as found in economic literature published between 1900 and 1930. The historical analysis sheds light on issues and challenges associated with the endeavour to improve one discipline’s theories by introducing ideas from another, and we argue that these are issues and challenges that behavioural economists continue to face today.

Journal: History of the Human Sciences
Published: Apeil 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Kristian Bondo Hansen, Thomas Presskorn-Thygesen

Crowdfunding as Donations to Entrepreneurial Firms
Abstract: The bulk of today's (“preorder-,” “reward-,” “gift-,” and “donation-based”) crowdfunding raises funds for small, private entrepreneurial ventures without granting funders private claims to the projects’ income or the ability to guarantee the realization and delivery of project outcomes. We theorize and show empirically – via a mixed-method approach applied to a representative and remarkably informative case – that the payoff structure for crowdfunders, akin to a public good contribution problem, leads to the tangible value of main project outputs exerting little influence on contributions to crowdfunding. This then raises the question of which funder motivations fund seekers may have to address to crowdfund their projects. We demonstrate the especially large role of non-pecuniary motivations and pinpoint three particular motivations that profit-seeking entrepreneurs may stimulate to be financed through crowdfunding. The findings hold important implications for entrepreneurs’ crowdfunding strategies, platform design, and our understanding of how this funding institution works in general. The study also adds to emerging research on the implications of the public good nature of crowdfunding.

Journal: Research Policy
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Lars Bo Jeppesen, Toke Reichstein

Private Authority and Public Policy Interactions in Global Context: Governance Spheres for Problem Solving
Abstract: Private organizations play a growing role in governing global issues alongside traditional public actors such as states, international organizations, and subnational governments. What do we know about how private authority and public policy interact? What are the implications of answering this question for understanding support for, and effects of, policy development generally? The purpose of this article is to reflect on these questions by introducing, and reviewing, a special issue that challenges explicit claims, and implicit methodologies, that treat private and public governance realms as distinct and/or static. We do so by advancing a theoretical and conceptual framework with which to explore how the contributions to this special issue enhance an understanding about governance interactions across a range of empirical, sectoral, and regional domains. We specifically introduce the concept of governance spheres to capture the proliferation of issue domains denoted by highly fluid interactions across public and private governance boundaries.

Journal: Regulation & Governance
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Jeremy Moon

Dynamic Global Currency Hedging
Abstract: This article proposes a model for discrete-time currency hedging based on continuous-time movements in portfolio and foreign exchange rate returns. The vector of optimal currency exposures is given by the negative realized regression coefficients from a one-period conditional expectation of the intraperiod quadratic covariation matrix for portfolio and exchange rate returns. Empirical results from an extensive hedging exercise for equity investments illustrate that currency exposures exhibit important time variation, leading to substantial volatility reductions when hedging, without sacrificing returns. A risk-averse investor is willing to pay several hundred annual basis points to switch from existing hedging methods to the proposed dynamic strategies.

Journal: Journal of Financial Economics
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Rasmus T. Varneskov

An Evaluation of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Perceived Social Distancing Policies in Relation to Planning, Selecting, and Preparing Healthy Meals: An Observational Study in 38 Countries Worldwide
Abstract: Objectives: To examine changes in planning, selecting, and preparing healthy foods in relation to personal factors (time, money, stress) and social distancing policies during the COVID-19 crisis. Methods: Using cross-sectional online surveys collected in 38 countries worldwide in April-June 2020 (N = 37,207, Mage 36.7 SD 14.8, 77% women), we compared changes in food literacy behaviors to changes in personal factors and social distancing policies, using hierarchical multiple regression analyses controlling for sociodemographic variables. Results: Increases in planning (4.7 SD 1.3, 4.9 SD 1.3), selecting (3.6 SD 1.7, 3.7 SD 1.7), and preparing (4.6 SD 1.2, 4.7 SD 1.3) healthy foods were found for women and men, and positively related to perceived time availability and stay-at-home policies. Psychological distress was a barrier for women, and an enabler for men. Financial stress was a barrier and enabler depending on various sociodemographic variables (all p < 0.01). Conclusion: Stay-at-home policies and feelings of having more time during COVID-19 seem to have improved food literacy. Stress and other social distancing policies relate to food literacy in more complex ways, highlighting the necessity of a health equity lens.

Journal: Frontiers in Nutrition
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Lucia A. Reisch

Transformations of Trust in Society: A Systematic Review of how Access to Big Data in Energy Systems Challenges Scandinavian Culture
Abstract: In the era of information technology and big data, the extraction, commodification, and control of personal information is redefining how people relate and interact. However, the challenges that big data collection and analytics can introduce in trust-based societies, like those of Scandinavia, are not yet understood. For instance, in the energy sector, data generated through smart appliances, like smart metering devices, can have collateral implications for the end-users. In this paper, we present a systematic review of scientific articles indexed in Scopus to identify possible relationships between the practices of collecting, processing, analysing, and using people's data and people's responses to such practices. We contextualise this by looking at research about Scandinavian societies and link this to the academic literature on big data and trust, big data and smart meters, data ethics and the energy sector, surveillance capitalism, and subsequently performing a reflexive thematic analysis. We broadly situate our understanding of culture in this context on the interactions between cognitive norms, material culture, and energy practices. Our analysis identified a number of articles discussing problems and solutions to do with the practices of surveillance capitalism. We also found that research addresses these challenges in different ways. While some research focuses on technological amendments to address users’ privacy protection, only few examine the fundamental ethical questions that discuss how big data practices may change societies and increase their vulnerability. The literature suggests that even in highly trusting societies, like the ones found in Scandinavian countries, trust can be undermined and weakened.

Journal: Energy and AI
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Kristian Høyer Toft

Inbound Open Innovation and Innovation Performance: A Robustness Study
Abstract: In studies of firm's innovation performance, regression analysis can involve a significant level of model uncertainty because the ‘true’ model, and therefore the appropriate set of explanatory variables are unknown. Drawing on innovation survey data for France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, we assess the robustness of the literature on inbound open innovation to variable selection choices, using Bayesian model averaging (BMA). We investigate a wide range of innovation determinants proposed in the literature and establish a robust set of findings for the variables related to the introduction of new-to-the-firm and new-to-the-world innovation with the aim of gauging the overall healthiness of the literature. Overall, we find greater robustness for explanations for new-to-the-firm rather than new-to-the-world innovation. We explore how this approach might help to improve our understanding of innovation.

Journal: Research Policy
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Keld Laursen

The Lure of the Private Sector: Career Prospects Affect Selection Out of Congress
Abstract: Does the potential for a successful private sector career induce legislators to leave office? How does this affect the representation voters receive? I show that when former US senators—who now work as lobbyists—become more successful, currently serving senators with similar characteristics are more likely to take private sector employment. I replicate all results on data from the House. A number of tests suggest that senators react to the opportunity costs of holding office. Investigating selection effects, I find that legislative specialists are attracted the most in the Senate. Preliminary evidence suggests that the least wealthy respond most strongly in the House. This suggests that the revolving door shapes the skill set of legislators and the representation voters receive.

Journal: Political Science Research and Methods
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Benjamin Egerod

The True Price of Quality: On the Infrastructures of Tea in Postcolonial Kenya
Abstract: In Kenya, tea is a “political crop” (Ochieng 2007). Tea is one of Kenya’s largest exports and is an important foreign exchange earner and source of revenue. At the same time, tea is key to the livelihoods many smallholder farmers in central Kenya and west of the Rift Valley, so that the price of tea is a recurrent focus of political campaigns. Keenly aware of tea’s political and economic value, county governments grapple with the national government over tea policy, while key industry actors challenge and resist attempts at reform. These politics around the “true” price of tea are situated in and regenerated through the infrastructures through which Kenyan tea is produced, processed and marketed.

Journal: Commodity Frontiers
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Hannah Elliott, Martin Skrydstrup

Management Insulation and Bank Failures
Abstract: How does management insulation from shareholder pressure influence banks’ resilience to crises? To address this question, we develop a measure of management insulation based on legal provisions. Unlike the existing alternatives, our measure considers the interactions between different provisions. We use this measure to study the relationship between management insulation and bank failure during the 2007–09 financial crisis. We find that banks in which managers were more insulated from shareholders in 2003 were less likely to be both bailed out in 2008/09 and targeted by activist shareholders. By contrast, alternative measures of management insulation fail to predict both bailouts and shareholder activism.

Journal: Journal of Financial Intermediation
Published: July 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Tom Kirchmaier

Understanding the Influence of Servitization on Global Value Chains: A Conceptual Framework
Abstract: Purpose
This paper examines the servitization phenomenon in the context of global value chains (GVCs) and presents a conceptual framework by connecting the two literature streams—servitization and GVCs—to depict the interconnected multilevel processes by which the influence of servitization on GVC structure and governance is manifested.

Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on cross-disciplinary literature, the authors develop a multilevel conceptual framework. The theoretically informed framework advances research on servitization and GVCs and provides a line of inquiry to be explored as avenues for future research opportunities.

Findings
The authors argue that servitization instigates the formation of new ecosystems and collaborative structures within GVCs, reduces the fragmentation of the overall network structure and increases embeddedness within the subclusters of GVCs. These changes are expected to be reflected in the increase in the complexity of firms' GVC governance tasks, a greater reliance on relational governance, and an increase in the dependency on local partners in terms of the governance of GVCs.

Originality/value
This conceptual paper establishes the link between servitization and GVCs, anchors the servitization phenomenon in GVCs, explains how servitizing firms can engage in and shape GVCs and offers insights into the servitization-driven changes in GVCs. The conceptual framework is intended to lay the foundation for future empirical research on the link between servitization and GVCs.

Journal: International Journal of Operations and Production Management
Published: May 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Jawwad Raja

Taking Leadership Fashions Seriously as a Vehicle for Leadership Learning
Abstract: Popularized and commercialized leadership ideas are often criticized as mere fashions that dumb down leadership discourse, research, and learning. By contrast, we take leadership fashions seriously as an important vehicle for individual and collective leadership learning. We extend the neo-institutional theory of management fashions to define leadership fashions as a process that constantly reconfigures the rational norms and expectations attached to leadership, and that elevates certain approaches as the best way to fulfill those norms and expectations. Combining Weber’s broad understanding of rationality with our own concept of affective rationality, we account for the many different instrumental, practical, moral, and sometimes deeply personal and emotional norms and expectations that drive the leadership fashion setting process. This approach contributes a theoretical foundation for understanding the sociological significance of leadership fashions, for exploring the leadership industries that produce and promote them, and for researching further the ways that leadership fashions and the leadership industries influence leadership research, learning, and practice.

Journal: Management Learning
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Eric Guthey, Nicole Capriel Ferry

The Governance of Foundation-owned Firms
Abstract: The burgeoning literature on corporate governance, both in economics and in law, has focused heavily on the agency costs of delegated management. It is therefore striking to encounter a large number of well-established and highly successful companies that have long been under the complete control of a self-appointing board of directors whose compensation is divorced from the profitability of the company and who cannot be removed or replaced by anyone except themselves.

The companies in question are those controlled by “industrial foundations,” which are nonprofit entities that possess a controlling interest in an otherwise conventional business corporation. Although common throughout Northern Europe, industrial foundations are particularly numerous in Denmark, where they control a quarter of the country’s 100 largest corporations. We work with a data set of 110 foundation-owned Danish firms to explore whether, and how, the governance structure of industrial foundations helps explain the strong performance of the firms they control. Given the absence of substantial material incentives, we concentrate on governance structures. We find a strong and robust relationship between the structure of foundation governance and firm performance. These results reinforce the view that, with the proper governance structure, pure fiduciaries can perform more efficiently than conventional economic models would predict. More specifically, these results underline the potential importance of the legislation that, in 2018, removed the long-standing barrier to forming industrial foundations in the USA.

Journal: Journal of Legal Analysis
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Steen Thomsen

Market Entry Timing: The Impact of Complementary Capabilities on Strategic Outcomes
Abstract: Using data on firm entries into the U.S. market for four product categories, we examine: (1) the complementary impact of marketing and R&D capabilities on firms’ market entry strategies, (i.e., entry timing, product innovativeness, and product line breadth); (2) the extent that entry timing mediates the relationship between marketing-R&D capability complementarity, product line breadth and product innovativeness; and, (3) the effects of the three market entry strategies on firms’ survival in the product categories. We provide three important contributions. First, we clarify the role of entry timing in influencing other market entry imperatives. Second, by providing evidence that both entry timing and product line breadth determine survival duration, we propose that the ‘optimal’ entry time varies along an entry-timing continuum. Third, we provide a more holistic examination of market entry considerations, which reveals the indirect relationship between marketing and R&D capability complementarity and survival through mediated paths.

Journal: Journal of Business Research
Published: August 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Robert E. Morgan

Are CEOs Different?
Abstract: Using 2,603 executive assessments, we study how CEO candidates differ from candidates for other top management positions, particularly CFOs. More than half of the variation in the 30 assessed characteristics is explained by four factors that we interpret as general ability, execution (vs. interpersonal), charisma (vs. analytical), and strategic (vs. managerial). CEO candidates have more extreme factor scores that differ significantly from those of CFO candidates. Conditional on being considered, candidates with greater general ability and interpersonal skills are more likely to be hired. These and our previous results on CEO success suggest that boards overweight interpersonal skills in hiring CEOs.

Journal: The Journal of Finance
Published: March 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Morten Sørensen

Slow Management
Abstract: Management is a practice that runs on ideas. Unfortunately, ideas that organizations must constantly change are prevalent. This can easily lead to junky ‘Fast Management’: management that is change-obsessed, attention-starved and over-hyped; that binges on mass-produced ideas; and that lacks substance. Inspired by the Slow Food Movement, this paper develops a more wholesome alternative. Slow Management is about doing less, but better management that is more thoughtful and less flashy. It emphasizes the context-specific and craft-based dimension of managerial work; the necessity of industry-specific, non-transferable competence; and the long-term and commitment-dependent nature of substantive organizational improvement and innovation.

Journal: Scandinavian Journal of Management
Published: June 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Dan Kärreman, Rasmus Koss Hartmann

The Deep Organisation: The Organisational View in a Public Management and Leadership Development Programme
Abstract: This article studies the organisational view inherent in a public management and leadership development programme. Organisational views are important to study as they guide and frame the actions of the members of the organisation. In the management and leadership development programme under investigation the organisational view was a linguistic-discursive representation that was empirically inept, but which nevertheless was offered as a guide to the managers. Inspired by Clifford Geertz’s notion of religion we suggest conceptualising the presented organisational view as the deep organisation. The analysis contributes to the literature on public management and leadership development programmes by calling attention to the implicit concepts of organisation that on the one hand provide managers with the motivation and authority to carry out their daily ordering of the constantly fluctuating empirical organisation, while to some extent making managers immune to experience-based learning on the other. The notion of the deep organisation expands our understanding of the layered nature of assumptions about organisations, through which seeming contradictions can be handled. In the discussion we outline three important implications of the analysed organisational view.

Journal: Teaching Public Administration
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Morten Knudsen, Magnus Larsson

What Makes a City Cool? Understanding Destination Coolness and its Implications for Tourism
Abstract: Cool cities have an appeal with tourists and destination managers intuitively know that being considered cool pays out. Yet, existing literature does not provide an answer for what ‘destination coolness’ is and what attributes characterize cool cities. The current research is the first to address these important questions. The author employs a combination of qualitative and quantitative studies to conceptualize destination coolness and thereby identify what makes a city cool in the eyes of tourists: Cool cities are perceived as authentic, rebellious, original and vibrant. In two consecutive quantitative studies, the author develops a multi-dimensional reliable, valid and parsimonious coolness scale, and documents its importance for research and practice empirically. Coolness is an important driver behind relevant attitudinal and behavioral phenomena, such as intention and actual visit behavior, a destination's social return and city-self connection. The author concludes by explaning the implications of the study and paving new research avenues.

Journal: Tourism Management
Published: October 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Florian Kock

Understanding and Managing the Threat of Common Method Bias: Detection, Prevention and Control
Abstract: Common method bias can appear when both the independent and dependent variable is captured by the same response method. While the consequences of common method bias can be detrimental to a study's validity, they are, as the authors empirically show, often neglected in tourism research. The authors provide a comprehensive discussion of sources of common method bias, as well as methods to identify and control for it. They structure these controls and critically discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each. The authors develop a decision tree that features recommendations for choosing appropriate procedural and statistical controls. By doing so, they hope to spur recognition of the threat of common method bias and active management thereof in future tourism research.

Journal: Tourism Management
Published: October 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Florian Kock

Digitaliseringens frontløbere i værdiskabelse: Autentiske aktører og digitale agenter
Abstract: Alle brugere af digitale medier bevæger sig i informationssamfundet, hvor der er nye muligheder og spilleregler for værdiskabelse sammenholdt med de kendte fra den analoge verden. Artiklen belyser:    Digitale agenter fremkommet igennem det seneste årti er de nye “indbyggere” i informationssamfundet. De har ikke direkte reference til autentiske personer. Hvordan kan vi forstå deres betydning for såvel analog som digital kommunikation og sociale relationer? (Afsnit A)   Hvilken form for værdiskabelse er knyttet til de digitale agenter og agens? (Afsnit B)   Hvilke værdiskabende muligheder og konsekvenser indebærer digital agens: Eksempler (Afsnit C)   Hvilke er de socio-økonomiske udviklingsmuligheder med digital agens? (Afsnit D)   Hvilke regulatoriske udfordringer stiller de digitale agens til virksomheder og til samfundet? (Afsnit E)   I artiklen behandles disse spørgsmål ud fra samfundsvidenskabelige teorier om digitalisering, værdiskabelse og regulering.

Journal: Samfundslederskab i Skandinavien
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Mogens Kühn Pedersen

The Fallacy of Discrete Authentic Leader Behaviours: Locating Authentic Leadership in Interaction
Abstract: The concept of authentic leadership is increasingly the focus of much leadership scholarship, and many have called for a review of the basic assumptions that underpin it. Taking an interactional approach to authentic leadership (AL) and using naturally occurring workplace interaction as data, we seek to question two basic assumptions of AL scholarship, namely (1) that authentic leadership emanates from the atomized leader and (2) that there is a causal logic to it so that authentic leadership behaviours are the cause of follower outcomes. Addressing the research questions – what is the nature of the empirical phenomenon that is called AL and where can this be ontologically located? – our findings indicate that these two fundamental assumptions that underpin current AL research are not justified. Rather, what is taken to be AL is better understood as a collective and collaborative achievement, which can neither simply be attributed to the leader nor can the leader’s actions alone lead to follower outcomes.

Journal: Leadership
Published: May 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Magnus Larsson

Central Bank Communication and the Yield Curve
Abstract: In this paper, we argue that monetary policy in the form of central bank communication can shape long-term interest rates by changing risk premia. Using high-frequency movements of default-free rates and equity, we show that monetary policy communications by the European Central Bank on regular announcement days led to a significant yield spread between peripheral and core countries during the European sovereign debt crisis by increasing credit risk premia. We also show that central bank communication has a powerful impact on the yield curve outside regular monetary policy days. We interpret these findings through the lens of a model linking information embedded in central bank communication to sovereign yields.

Journal: Journal of Financial Economics
Published: May 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Paul Whelan

Neither-And Thinking: Understanding James March's Unique Solution to Paradox
Abstract: In this article, I propose a typology of thinking pattern that helps us understand the variants of the so-called ‘both/and thinking’ shared by many organizational paradox scholars in the West and China. The variants are distinguished by the ‘primary thinking-secondary thinking’ structure between the combined elementary thinking. One of the variants, i.e., Neither-And thinking, is associated with James March's discussion of logic of consequences and logic of appropriateness. An examination of March's writings reveals an additional ‘principle-practice’ structure underlining March's unique solution to paradox. Incorporating the ‘principle-practice’ structure into the proposed typology in turn helps us better understand the other variants of ‘both/and thinking’ such as ambidexterity, contingency, and Zhong-Yong. The typology shows March's Neither-And solution is unique because it embraces a primary neither/nor thinking while all the other variants do not. To demonstrate the value of March's unique solution, I apply Neither-And thinking characterized by the ‘principle-practice’ relationship to paradoxes outside organization studies, e.g., in Deconstruction, Buddhism, and quantum physics. The wide application of Neither-And thinking implies that James March's unique solution to organizational paradox may have provided a key to understanding paradox in general.

Journal: Management and Organization Review
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Xin Li

The Entitlement to Tax: A Critical Commentary to the Development of the International Tax Regime
Abstract: As a result of the significant need for additional discussions on the inequality which currently shape international tax matters, Copenhagen Business School hosted a conference concerning inequality within the international tax regime in September 2020. The conference brought together researchers at the forefront of their respective fields to identify, discuss, and to underline future challenges associated to inequality in the international tax context. This special issue is an outcome of papers presented at the conference and concerns the relationship between developing and developed states with an emphasis on present shortcomings when allocating taxing rights in a fair and sustainable manner.

Journal: Nordic Journal on Law and Society
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Yvette Lind

Global Value Chains and Intermediaries in Multi‐stakeholder Initiatives in Pakistan and India
Abstract: In this article, we analyse the role of regulatory intermediaries of the Better Cotton Initiative, a multi‐stakeholder initiative (MSI) in the global cotton value chain, with a regional focus on India and Pakistan. We conceptualize how the key roles of regulatory intermediaries — translating and verifying compliance with abstract rules in ways that make these rules practical and intelligible for target audiences (in this case, cotton farmers) — may be compromised by global value chain pressures and contradictory MSI requirements, thereby undermining the aim of mainstreaming sustainability standard systems. In other words, we theorize how MSIs can become subject to regulatory capture, serving the needs of global brands (for rapid upscaling, price minimization and verification) and sustainability standard bodies (contradictory demands for capacity building and compliance) at the expense of the intended beneficiaries — farmers at the base of global value chains. Based on an empirical analysis of the Better Cotton Initiative's implementing partners in Pakistan and India, we conclude that such weaknesses in standard implementation are likely to translate into poorer field‐level results in terms of ensuring the large‐scale, global mainstreaming of more sustainable commodity production sought by MSI practitioners.

Journal: Development and Change
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Peter Lund-Thomsen

Looking over Your Shoulder: Embodied Responses to Contamination in the Emotional Dirty Work of Prison Officers
Abstract: Fear of contamination is central to our thinking about ‘dirty work’, that is, tasks and occupations that carry a stigma due to being perceived as having degrading, disgusting, or immoral qualities. However, most existing literature focuses on the symbolic dimension of taint, particularly, dirty workers’ cognitive, ideological tactics to counter taint. While contamination has more material consequences, the processes through which it is experienced and contained in dirty work have not yet been well-explicated. Drawing on an ethnographic study of work in two Danish prisons, this article offers an opportunity to see behind the walls and gain insight into the extreme emotional dirty work of prison officers as they face burdensome emotional encounters with manipulative and intimidating inmates. As society’s agent in the containment of inmates’ emotional dirt, officers, as emotional labourers, risk contamination if they give into inmates’ pressure and manipulation and do them illicit favours. I use embodied phenomenology as an original and fertile approach to deepen the understanding of how contamination occurs in emotional dirty work and the bodily responses that workers engage in to resist it. Drawing on these findings, I extend our understanding of emotional dirty work.

Journal: Human Relations
Published: May 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Elisabeth Naima Mikkelsen

Narrating Plastics Governance: Policy Narratives in the European Plastics Strategy
Abstract: The European Union (EU) aspires to be an important global agenda-setter on how to treat and regulate the growing plastics problem. We present an analysis of the plastic policy narratives shaping European plastics governance, in particular through the European Commission’s Plastics Strategy. Our aim is to first uncover the policy narratives at play, and then examine how actors make use of those narratives through strategic construction. Based on interviews with key stakeholders and document analysis, we identify four narratives: fossil feedstock dependency, resource inefficiency, pollution, and toxicity. We find that the resource inefficiency and pollution narratives figure most prominently in European plastics governance, and that the circular economy is being advanced as a policy solution that cuts across the different narratives. However, surface agreement on the need for ‘circularity’ hides deeper-lying ideological divisions over what exactly the circular economy means and the different directions this implies for plastics governance.

Journal: Environmental Politics
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Jacob Hasselbalch

Political Candidacy and Sibling Sex Composition: Your Sister Will Not Make You Run For Office
Abstract: Women are less likely than men to run as candidates in political elections. One reason for this is gendered upbringing, which depresses political ambition among women and strengthens such ambition among men. Furthermore, gendered upbringing can be more pronounced when parents have children of both sexes. Based on these previous findings, we therefore test the theory that both women and men have a higher likelihood of becoming a political candidate if they have sisters rather than brothers. To establish whether the likelihood of running for office is affected by sibling sex composition, we utilize the fact that nature randomly assigns the sex of the younger sibling when parents decide to have a second child. Using data covering the entire adult Danish population and every candidate in national and local elections between 1990 and 2015, we find, however, no evidence that men and women with a younger sister are more likely to run for office. These findings run counter to previous findings on the effects of siblings and gendered upbringing.

Journal: Political Behavior
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Jens Olav Dahlgaard

How Business Models Evolve in Weak Institutional Environments: The Case of Jumia, the Amazon.com of Africa
Abstract: We advance research on the antecedents of business model design by integrating institutional and imitation theories to explore how the business model of new ventures evolves in a weak institutional environment. Based on a case study of Jumia—an online retailing company in Africa established with the aim to emulate the success of Amazon.com—we propose a process model entitled “imitate-but-modify” that explains how business models evolve through four distinct phases (i.e., clarification, legitimacy, localization, and consolidation). In essence, this model explains how new ventures surrounded by considerable uncertainty deliberately seek to learn vicariously by imitating the business model template of successful firms. However, because of significant institutional voids, the ventures’ intentional imitation is progressively replaced by experiential learning that blends business model imitation with innovation.

Journal: Organization Science
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Marcus Møller Larsen

Between Vulnerability and Resistance: How a Woman Copes with Dramtic Implications of COVID-19 in Russia
Abstract: During the summer of 2020, a woman in Russia not only contracted COVID‐19 herself but also lost her husband to virus‐related health complications and, later, lost her job. This article is based on interviews with her about vulnerability and ways of coping with the pandemic’s effects as the sole caregiver and breadwinner for her four‐year‐old child. Her ways of dealing with this chain of severe, life‐changing events inspired us to analyse her case through Judith Butler’s feminist lens of vulnerability, conceptualised as the very source of resistance. The results of the analysis illustrate vulnerability and emergent modes of resistance as gendered responsibilities of giving and receiving care, as well as the power of solidarity. Furthermore, the study shows how the political, social and economic context of Russia shapes gendered experiences of vulnerability and possibilities for resistance.

Journal: Gender, Work and Organization
Published: May 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Sara Louise Muhr

Extreme Value Theory for Spatial Random Fields – With Application to a Lévy-Driven Field
Abstract: First, we consider a stationary random field indexed by an increasing sequence of subsets of Zd. Under certain mixing and anti–clustering conditions combined with a very broad assumption on how the sequence of spatial index sets increases, we obtain an extremal result that relates a normalized version of the distribution of the maximum of the field over the index sets to the tail distribution of the individual variables. Furthermore, we identify the limiting distribution as an extreme value distribution. Secondly, we consider a continuous, infinitely divisible random field indexed by Rd given as an integral of a kernel function with respect to a Lévy basis with convolution equivalent Lévy measure. When observing the supremum of this field over an increasing sequence of (continuous) index sets, we obtain an extreme value theorem for the distribution of this supremum. The proof relies on discretization and a conditional version of the technique applied in the first part of the paper, as we condition on the high activity and light–tailed part of the field.

Journal: Extremes
Published: May 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Mads Stehr, Anders Rønn-Nielsen

Dealing with Surprise Attacks: Decomposing ERM as a Dynamic Capability to Handle Crises
Abstract: Purpose
Turbulent hypercompetitive market conditions make small and medium enterprises (SMEs) vulnerable to abrupt crises caused by unexpected competitor moves. In these situations, enterprise risk management (ERM) can serve as a dynamic capability (DC) to overcome the impending crisis and improve SMEs' survival rates. To explore this capacity, which has only been vaguely addressed in prior research, we conduct an exploratory, abductive study to update the extant (ERM and DC) literature with empirical evidence from expert interviews.

Design/methodology/approach
We conduct an exploratory, abductive study using empirical evidence from expert interviews.

Findings
Our findings reveal ERM as a second-order DC in the micro-foundational components of competitive intelligence gathering, alliance building and integrative capabilities. We find that competitive intensity and government policy moderate the effects of these foundational capabilities. Finally, our study proposes a survivability model that provides new valuable knowledge of ERM as a DC for SMEs to deal with competition-driven crises.

Originality/value
This research survivability model shows how ERM as DC can facilitate the survivability of SMEs against competitive surprises. Although restricted to crises arising out of competitive surprises, this study provides valuable knowledge to the literature on what type of DCs are useful for specific situations. The study findings not only extended Teece's (2007) DCs framework to competitive crises but also placed it within a hierarchy of capabilities. The research findings indicate that an ERM culture in SMEs promote the growth and development of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring capabilities, vital for tiding competitive crises.

Journal: Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Torben Juul Andersen

Researching Digital Entrepreneurship: Current Issues and Suggestions for Future Directions
Abstract: This report documents the outcomes of a professional development workshop (PDW) held at the 40th International Conference on Information Systems in Munich, Germany. The workshop’s goal was to identify how information systems (IS) researchers can contribute to enriching the understanding of digital entrepreneurship—that is, the intersection of digital technologies and entrepreneurship. The PDW assembled numerous IS researchers working on different aspects of digital entrepreneurship. Jointly, we delineated digital entrepreneurship from related phenomena and conceptualized different roles of digital technologies for entrepreneurial endeavors. We also identified relevant strategies, opportunities, and challenges in conducting digital entrepreneurship research. This report summarizes the shared views that emerged from the interactions at the PDW and during the collaborative writing of this report. The report provides IS researchers interested in digital entrepreneurship with food for thought and a foundation for future research.

Journal: Communications of the Association for Information Systems
Published: April 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Philipp Hukal, Daniel Fürstenau

Da krisen ramte: Genforhandlingerne af amerikansk-jødiske samfundsværdier
Abstract: Jeg viser i denne artikel, hvordan corona-pandemien sammen med sommerens raceuroligheder har rystet de amerikansk-jødiske samfund i deres fundament. Nødvendighed og krise, usikkerhed, nye tankeformer og idealisme er tilsammen i gang med at omforme, hvordan jødisk liv bliver levet i dagens Amerika. Empirisk beskriver jeg fire forskellige faser, som det amerikansk-jødiske samfund foreløbig har undergået gennem krisen. Teoretisk argumenterer jeg for, at disse faser viser, hvordan krisen har igangsat en omkalfatring af amerikansk-jødiske kerneværdier, hvor jødisk solidaritet og enhed igen fremstår som centrale værdier, der samler det jødiske samfund og jøder som gruppe. Samtidig udfordrer denne nyfundne solidaritet jøderne i deres forhold til landets øvrige problemstillinger og befolkningsgrupper.

Journal: Tidsskrift for Islamforskning
Published: 2021
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Contact CBS researcher: Maja Gildin Zuckerman

 
Sidst opdateret: Sekretariat for Ledelse og Kommunikation // 11/07/2023