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Explainable Performance
No full textWe introduce the XPER (eXplainable PERformance) methodology to measure the specific contribution of the input features to the predictive or economic performance of a model. Our methodology offers several advantages. First, it is both model-agnostic and performance metric-agnostic. Second, XPER is theoretically founded as it is based on Shapley values. Third, the interpretation of the benchmark, which is inherent in any Shapley value decomposition, is meaningful in our context. Fourth, XPER is not plagued by model specification error, as it does not require re-estimating the model. Fifth, it can be implemented either at the model level or at the individual level. In an application based on auto loans, we find that performance can be explained by a surprisingly small number of features, XPER decompositions are rather stable across metrics, yet some feature contributions switch sign across metrics. Our analysis also shows that explaining model forecasts and model performance are two distinct tasks
Interdependencies and Ownership: The Impact of Relatedness and Multimarket Contact on Cash Flow Rights in Multiunit Firms
No full textWe examine the influence of interdependencies on parent companies’ cash flow rights in their subsidiaries, focusing on two forms of interdependency that characterize multiunit firms: relatedness and multimarket contact. Specifically, we argue that interdependencies affect the extent of a parent’s cash flow rights in a subsidiary through their influence over value creation and the value capture potential of that subsidiary. Accordingly, we hypothesize that parent companies will have higher cash flow rights in highly related subsidiaries. We also hypothesize that there will be an inverted-U shaped relationship between the extent of multimarket contact and parents’ cash flow rights in subsidiaries that operate in industries with multimarket rivals. We tested our predictions and found corroborating evidence in a sample of subsidiaries that had been newly added to French manufacturing firms. In supplementary analyses, we also found that relatedness and multimarket contact affect the position of a new subsidiary in the hierarchical structure of a firm, as measured by the subsidiary’s number of direct paths to and hierarchical distance from the parent. Our study, which builds on the theory of ownership as a governance mechanism, provides initial evidence surrounding the role of interdependencies as antecedents of cash flow rights within multiunit firms
Competing for narrative authority in capital markets: activist short sellers vs. financial analysts
No full textActivist short sellers (AShSs) and financial analysts are information intermediaries who analyze firm disclosures as well as produce and disseminate influential investment narratives. This study aims to better understand narrative challenges surrounding the legitimate expertise of financial analysts. Specifically, we examine how AShSs challenge sell-side financial analysts’ narrative authority (i.e., the perception that they produce expert knowledge) in interpreting firms’ performance and future prospects. We investigate how analysts respond (or do not respond) to this challenge. We use 442 AShS reports, 12 interviews with AShSs and analysts, and analysts’ stock recommendations and target prices. In their criticisms of analysts (found in one-third of reports), AShSs frequently frame analysts as lacking market expertise and critical thinking – two core dimensions of analysts’ narrative authority. Sixty-six percent of analysts, although explicitly criticized in AShS reports, do not engage in written responses in their equity research reports because they reportedly either adopt a renunciation attitude to the challenge or they engage in off-the-record discussions with certain market participants. However, 34% of analysts respond overtly by counter-framing AShSs as lacking market expertise and objectivity. After the dissemination of AShS reports, analysts, on average, do not revise their highly visible stock recommendations but they revise target prices downward. Theoretically, this study extends our understanding of the construction of narrative authority in capital markets as we examine a challenge to the expertise of influential information intermediaries
Advertising by Recruiting Influencers
No full textThe persistent growth of social media platforms has allowed their users to view them as valuable information sources and firms to adopt them as effective marketing tools. Firms often seek to advertise their products through intermediaries called ``influencers'' who are viewed as less biased than the firms themselves in the advice they give. Another considerably unbiased source of information is reviews of past consumers. In this paper, we address some of the firm's challenges of influencer marketing and the effect of consumer reviews on the marketing decisions. We consider different types of influencers and different partnership schemes with them. First, we show that it is optimal for a firm to partner with a single influencer type through a single type of partnership when customers are equally likely to follow the same influencer. Second, we show that firms should advertise more in the presence of social learning. Third, we consider a society split into classes such that individuals are more likely to follow influencers from their class. We show that a diverse mix of marketing channels, in terms of the types of influencers or partnerships, may be optimal when the one influencer class has a more concentrated follower base than the other
Name and Shame: A Comparative and International Analysis of Whistleblowing Laws
No full textName and Shame practices consist of publicly identifying an individual or corporate entity that is breaking the law. These practices are also called whistleblowing in the legal vocabulary. Already known in Roman times, they have developed throughout the centuries and were formally recognized in the European Union Directive of 23 October 2019 on the ‘protection of persons who report breaches of Union law’. Although EU Member States were supposed to transpose this directive by 17 December 2021, the transposition process is very slow and so far very few countries have adopted a corresponding law. In this context, this article presents this important EU directive and a panorama of whistleblower laws in several sample countries, three covered by the EU Directive (Germany, Spain, France), and three outside its scope (the US, the UK, Japan). This article also offers some reflections on general key aspects of whistleblowing: the defense of the targeted entities, whether a criminal offence can be committed for the purpose of whistleblowing, the key features of a whistleblowing system, and the matters subject to whistleblowing
Integration of an exploration program with its parent organization: A lifecycle perspective
No full textInternational audienceExploration programs are collections of interconnected exploration projects that are identified, coordinated, and managed in order to pursue a strategic objective of exploring radical innovations to be developed by the parent organization. Based on a longitudinal fine-grained study of a firm that has launched such an initiative, we offer a characterization of an exploration program and outline the coexistence of its integration with, as well as its isolation from, its parent organization. This is achieved through mechanisms and boundary activities complementing each other and undertaken by actors involved in the program and located at different levels of the parent organization. We show how this integration with the parent organization evolves between the program initiation and its implementation and how the differences lie in its exploratory nature, i.e., the definition of its scope, which is not known at its launch, the potential leveraging of the firm's existing resources to execute the exploration projects and then to further develop them, and the capitalization on the projects’ outcome and the use of the knowledge that has been built in excess.Thus we further bridge the literature on project and program management with the literature on innovation management and show how an exploration program can contribute to achieving ambidexterity at the firm level
Credit Rating Agencies, Information Asymmetry and US Bond Liquidity
No full textDo rating announcements reduce information asymmetries? We investigate the effect of rating disclosures on the volatility and liquidity of the US bond market. Although rating agencies' decisions often are anticipated by credit spread changes, we show that in the case of no regulatory change their release can reduce volatility and the bid-ask spread. This reduction is stronger when the rating agency announcement has been anticipated by the market, namely, after downgrades, whereas upgrades trigger mixed reaction. These findings are consistent with the predictions of a simple sequential trade model with event uncertainty, and noise and informed traders
Assembling Homo Qualitus: Accounting for Quality in the UK National Health Service
No full textThis paper describes the historical emergence of an accountable quality in public policies and reforms of the UK National Health Service: that is a notion of quality which is expressed through accounting and other formal measurement and management devices. It also specifies the idealized subject of an accountable quality, homo qualitus, and attends to instances of his/her incomplete realization. Doing so contributes to the problematization and rethinking of the way that accounting, professionalism, and the relationship between the two, are often understood. It shows that an accountable quality involves attempts to transform accounting from something external to, and imposed upon, or selectively adopted by, medical professionals into a measure of, in principle, any healthcare workers’ individual enthusiasm for, and commitment toward, quality itself. The incomplete nature of this transformation offers insights into complex ways in which discourse and practice may interact
Stationary social learning in a changing environment
No full textWe consider social learning in a changing world. With changing states, societies can remain responsive only if agents regularly act upon fresh information, which drastically limits the value of observational learning. When the state is close to persistent, a consensus whereby most agents choose the same action typically emerges. However, the consensus action is not perfectly correlated with the state, because societies exhibit inertia following state changes. Phases of inertia may be longer when signals are more precise, even if agents draw large samples of past actions, as actions then become too correlated within samples, thereby reducing informativeness and welfare
Entrepreneuriat et critique : (re)faire problème
No full textInternational audienceLe projet critique en entrepreneuriat suggère notamment de défier et défaire certaines hypothèses fortes ayant contribué à l’édification de ce champ de connaissances. Une étude récente semble montrer que certaines rigidités resteraient en place en entrepreneuriat si l’on souhaitait alors aller dans ce sens (Frank et Landström, 2016). Plus que d’autres en gestion, ce champ est travaillé par un ensemble d’évidences, de métaphores puissantes ou de causalités naturalisées qui a été porté et est maintenu par toutes ses parties prenantes (académiques, politiques, acteurs de l’accompagnement…). Ces hypothèses fortes, si elles ne sont pas questionnées, conduisent inlassablement à la répétition des mêmes recherches et donc d’un système de croyances, ce qui se traduit par la recherche constante de vides dans la connaissance (Alvesson et Sandberg, 2013). Cela passe par exemple par l’extension de théories prêtes à l’emploi, et avouons-le assez commodes, à des phénomènes considérés comme nouveaux sans questionner les possibilités de générer de nouvelles avenues mais aussi sans s’interroger sur le respect des acteurs en situation. Outre que cela prive la communauté des chercheurs de maintenir une saine écologie des idées en ouvrant les interprétations, une tendance à la répétition la rend aujourd’hui fragile car son objet – porté par des théories relativement a-paradigmatiques – est de plus en plus investi par d’autres sciences humaines et sociales, y compris en gestion. Ces dernières, notamment les études organisationnelles, proposent des théorisations inédites défaites des contraintes institutionnelles de production des connaissances et donc évitent le biais de répétition. La banalisation de la pratique entrepreneuriale, ou sa démythologisation, va ainsi de pair avec une ouverture des frontières disciplinaires, propice à un véritable retour à l’effort de problématisation des recherches