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Teams in extreme and disruptive contexts face unique challenges that can undermine coordination and decision-making. In this study, we evaluated how affective differences between team members and team process norms affected the team's decision-making effectiveness.

Teams were placed in a survival simulation where they evaluated how best to maximize the team's survival prospects given scarce resources. We incorporated multisource and multirater (i.e., team, observer, and archival) data to ascertain the impacts of affect asymmetry and team process norms on decision-making effectiveness.

Results suggest that teams with low positive affect asymmetry and low process norms generate the most effective decisions. The least effective team decision performance occurred in teams characterized by high variance in team positive affectivity (high positive affect asymmetry) and low process norms. We found no similar effect for teams with high process norms and no effect for negative affect asymmetry, however, irrespective of team process norms.

These findings support the affect infusion model and extend cognitive resource theory, by highlighting how affect infusion processes and situational constraints influence team decision-making in extreme and disruptive contexts.

Purpose: In reality, financial decisions are made under conditions of asymmetric information that results in either favorable or adverse selection. As far as financial decisions affect growth of the firm, the latter must also be affected by either favorable or adverse selection. Therefore, the core objective of this chapter is to examine the determinants of each financial decision and the effects on growth of the firm under conditions of information asymmetry.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This chapter uses data for the non-financial firms listed in S&P 500. The data cover quarterly periods from 1989 to 2014. The statistical tests include linearity, fixed, and random effects and normality. The generalized method of moments estimation method is employed in order to examine the relative significance and contribution of each financial decision on growth of the firm, respectively. Standard and proposed proxies of information asymmetry are discussed.

Findings: The results conclude that there is a variation in the impact of financial variables on growth of the firm at high and low levels of information asymmetry especially regarding investment and financing decisions. A similar picture emerges in the cases of firm size and industry effects. In addition, corporate dividen d policy has a similar effect on firm growth across all asymmetric levels. These findings prove that information asymmetry plays a vital role in the relationship between corporate financial decisions and growth of the firm. Finally, the results contribute to the vast literature on the estimation of information asymmetry by demonstrating that the classical and standard proxies for information asymmetry are not consistent in terms of the ability to differentiate between favorable or adverse selection (which corresponds to low and high level of information asymmetry).

Originality/Value: This chapter contributes to the related literature in two ways. First, this chapter offers updated empirical evidence on the way that financing, investment, and dividends decisions are made under conditions of favorable and adverse selection. Other related studies deal with each decision separately. Second, the study offers new proxies for measuring information asymmetry in order to reach robust estimates of the effects of financial decisions on growth of the firm under conditions of agency problems.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate whether a firm’s cost structure (specifically, its cost stickiness) is associated with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sustainability factors of performance and disclosure.

Methodology/approach – This study uses MCSI Research KLD Stats (KLD) and Bloomberg databases for the 13-year period from 2003 to 2015 in constructing ESG performance and disclosure variables, respectively. The authors adopt the general cost stickiness models from Anderson, Banker, and Janakiraman (2003) and Banker, Basu, Byzalov, and Chen (2016) to perform the analysis.

Findings – The authors find that a firm’s level of cost stickiness is positively associated with certain sticky corporate social responsibility (CSR)/ESG activities (both overall and when separately classified as strengths or concerns) but not with other nonsticky CSR activities. The authors also show that the association between cost stickiness and ESG disclosure is incrementally stronger for firms with CSR activities classified as sticky. Furthermore, the authors provide evidence that ESG disclosure is greater when both cost stickiness and the degree of sticky CSR activities increase. The authors show that when cost stickiness is high and CSR activities are sticky, management has incentives to increase CSR/ESG sustainability disclosure to decrease information asymmetry.

Originality/value – The findings present new evidence to understand how management integrates cost management strategies with various dimensions of sustainability performance decisions and show that not all ESG activities are equally effective when it comes to cost stickiness. The authors also demonstrate that increased sustainability disclosure helps reduce information asymmetry incrementally more when both costs are sticky and CSR activities are sticky.

Purpose – There are a number of ongoing debates in the organizational literature about conflict in groups and teams. We investigate two “conflicts about conflict” (i.e., two meta-conflicts) in the literature: we examine whether and under what conditions conflict in workgroups might be beneficial and we also explore the idea that group members may not always perceive the same levels of conflict.

Design/approach – We bring together the research and theorizing of the past 15 years to inform the current state of literature and move forward research on these conflicts about conflict. We examine and develop the two meta-conflicts to illustrate the importance of studying these ideas and to provide guidance for future research.

Findings – These two meta-conflicts in the conflict literature are important to investigate as conflict is a multifaceted construct that contains many dimensions that may influence group outcomes. We explore these two issues by briefly reviewing the literature on conflict and then highlighting some of the recent research on the conflict debate (i.e., is conflict constructive or destructive?) and conflict asymmetry in workgroups.

Originality/value – We identify interesting areas that future researchers could explore with respect to team conflict and conflict asymmetry.

In asymmetrical wars the asymmetry does not refer to a quantitative difference in belligerants’ strength or power, but to the qualitative differences in means, behavioral standards, goals, and values of conflicting parties. In the asymmetrical conflicts it seems that war functions have changed.

The purpose of this paper is to put in evidence the various expertises and skills that a soldier must have to operate in such a changed context.

In order to reach this purpose, the diversity model has been applied to the new conflicts, as already used to analyze the difference between CROs and the traditional soldiers’ job. To these respect, the definition of the further evolution of the role of a soldier called upon to intervene in the new operational environments can be considered as a preliminary finding: such a soldier must always be flexible and able to operate in a Constabulary context, but with more points in common with the warrior ideal type than with the peacekeeper one. A soldier who has to be able to gear his action in terms not of “dissymmetry” but of asymmetry as defined above. This implies a perception of the qualitative as well as quantitative differences in their own characteristics and in those of the adversary. In particular behavioral style, values, and strategic culture. However, there is no question of a return to the past, but the latest evolution in the range of flexible soldier that is so important in the asymmetric conflicts.

Practical implications of this analysis are bound to offer a deeper understanding of the events concerning asymmetrical conflicts, in the education as well as training of soldiers deployed in these kinds of conflict theaters.

The relationship between CEO compensation and firm performance is a field of intense theoretical and empirical research. The purpose of this study is to gain additional insights into the nature of this relationship by examining empirically the relatively unexplored areas of its non-linearity. The findings of this study show strong evidence that supports the view that the relationship between executive compensation and firm performance is non-linear and asymmetric. Additionally, the structure of asymmetry is found to be dependent upon the measure of performance. Convexity characterizes the asymmetry of the relationship between executive compensation and market returns, while concavity distinguishes the asymmetry of the relationship between executive compensation and accounting returns.

The purpose of the study is to examine whether superiors (i.e. principals), who evaluate the performance of their subordinates (i.e. agents), take information asymmetry into account by assuming that subordinates shirk when the accounting system does not provide information on subordinates’ effort levels. A decision making experiment was conducted to examine the effect of information asymmetry on effort attribution and the effect of effort attribution on performance evaluation. The results show that the presence of an agency problem significantly affected managers’ beliefs regarding the level of effort they attributed to the subordinate, which affected their evaluation of the subordinate.

This exploratory study aims to contribute to theory extension regarding the unique factors that characterize performance evaluation in the public sector.

The chapter reviews the Public Sector and the Interpretation literatures and develops a framework that introduces the concept of interpretation asymmetries, and then uses two case studies and a survey applied to both South American and European public managers to illustrate and analyze propositions derived from the framework.

Public agencies and managers are not assessed by their activities and outcomes but by how the general public may come to interpret and perceive them. Public officers – besides getting their organizations’ job done – struggle to show the truth of their organizations and preserve their organizations’ legitimacy due to the conditions of interpretation asymmetry and the dynamics of politicization prevalent in the public domain.

This study was designed to be exploratory and fundamentally oriented to theory extension. As such, the findings and conclusions are tentative and require further research.

Governments, public officers, politicians, and researchers would benefit from going beyond usual considerations of information asymmetries and start paying attention to, understanding, and managing interpretation asymmetries.

This chapter contributes to the increasing research on the intersection of performance management and the public sector, and provides new concepts that enhance our understanding of the dynamics of assessment in environments prone to politicization. While prior research has been mainly focused on agent’s dysfunctional responses to performance measures, this chapter illustrates functional behaviors through which agents aim to increase the dimensionality and integrity of principals’ interpretations.

This paper considers efficient venture capital investment duration for different types of entrepreneurial firms so that on exit information asymmetries between the venture capitalist (as seller) and the new owners of the investment are minimized, and capital gains maximized. We hypothesize that a number of factors are likely to affect investment duration, and our empirical tests confirm the statistical significance of some of these variables (stage of firm at first investment, capital available to the venture capital industry, whether the exit was preplanned, and whether the exit was made in response to an unsolicited offer). However, the fit between our theoretical model and the data is stronger in the United States than in Canada, offering evidence in support of the view that institutional factors have distorted investment duration in Canada.