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Purpose – Investor activism is the attempt by a dissident shareholder to alter firm behavior by filing a shareholder resolution with the firm. Faced with a shareholder resolution, management can either oppose it or attempt to negotiate a settlement. This study examines the factors that would cause a firm to adopt a compromise position with a dissent investor.

Methodology – A logistic regression is run in which the result of the shareholder resolution (whether or not a compromise has been researched) is a function of the topic of the resolution, the proposer of the resolution, and the firm’s history of compromising on previous shareholder resolutions. The model is tested using a sample of 762 shareholder resolutions filed in Canada over an eleven-year period from 2000 to 2010.

Results – The results indicate that compromise is more likely to occur when the shareholder resolution addresses an environmental or social responsibility issue, and when the dissident shareholder is an investment or mutual fund.

Practical implications – Institutional and mutual funds control the financial resources necessary for the firm’s survival. As such, firms are more likely to compromise when these powerful investors put forward shareholder resolutions. Furthermore, firms are more likely to compromise when the resolution does not address the core activities of the firm.

Originality – This study examines the factors that encourage Canadian firms to adopt a compromising strategy when confronted by dissident shareholders.

Integrating conceptual perspectives from social exclusion, thinking style and context effects, this study aims to examine how different types of social exclusion influence attraction and compromise effects.

Eight studies were conducted. To establish the causal relationship between social exclusion types and context effects, this study uses experimental designs in all studies.

The attraction effect is stronger when consumers feel rejected than ignored, whereas the compromise effect is stronger when they feel ignored than rejected. Consumers who feel rejected increase their propensity to think holistically, which in turn leads to their choice preferences for asymmetrically dominant options. Conversely, those who feel ignored increase their propensity to think analytically, which in turn leads to their choice preferences for compromise options.

The findings show that consumer preferences for one option over the other alternatives in choice contexts are susceptible to subtle differences in the manner that exclusion is communicated. The studies are limited to recall tasks and scenarios that previous research has shown to be effective. Future research may use actual exclusion to corroborate this study’s findings.

Marketing practitioners may benefit from this study’s findings when it comes to an increase in the relative share of their target brand against their competitor brands by introducing a third option.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to provide evidence that exclusion communicated in an explicit manner produces the attraction effect, whereas exclusion communicated in an implicit manner produces the compromise effect. Given that threatening situations often influence individuals’ preferences and choices, how social exclusion shapes cognitive processes is an empirical question worthy of investigation.

Going beyond odd and even prices, this paper aims to explore the rationale behind the widespread practice of setting prices ending in “50” or “80” in the luxury industry. The authors argue that when they set such prices, managers agree to reduce their profit margin to limit the anticipated guilt luxury consumers associate with luxury shopping while also protecting their brand luxury. The authors label these prices compromise prices and formally define compromise pricing as the practice of choosing a price’s ending so that the price falls below (but not just below) a round number to boost sales without damaging brand luxury.

Following the observation of the overrepresentation of prices ending in “50” and “80” in the luxury clothing category, an experiment explores the impact of compromise prices on anticipated guilt and brand luxury in the luxury watch category. Then, to identify when luxury pricing managers typically favor compromise prices, multinomial regressions investigate prices collected on two online luxury fashion retailers for the luxury clothing and handbag categories.

Compromise prices reduce the anticipated guilt luxury consumers associate with luxury shopping compared with even prices while enhancing brand luxury compared with odd prices and interestingly, with even prices also. This finding gives rationale to luxury managers’ preference for compromise prices in the ninth hundred (i.e. €X950, €X980), especially for higher-priced products, i.e. when the potential for price underestimation and/or the risk of damaging brand luxury are more important.

This research contributes to the field of luxury pricing by providing evidence to an original price-ending practice, coined compromise pricing, which consists in agreeing to a slight reduction in prices and unit margin to protect brand luxury.

This paper aims to review numerous known drivers and antecedents of compromise behavior, proposing a basic categorization of the various contributions. This is done with the goal to integrate drivers and antecedents, previously largely discussed in isolation of one another, into a single conceptual model. This sheds light on the issue of previously overstated or understated relevance of individual drivers. The picture is completed by the proposition of new potential drivers of the compromise effect like lay rationalism and approval motivation.

The paper takes a conceptual approach in reflecting on prior findings from the field of compromise effect research and adjacent fields to develop a number of propositions aggregated in a conceptual model.

A number of previously overlooked, but potentially highly relevant interaction effects among known drivers of the compromise effect are proposed along with the proposition of several new drivers.

This conceptual paper offers a novel, broadly applicable categorization of compromise effect research. Further, it seems to be the first paper dedicated to an extensive review of established drivers of the compromise effect to examine the interdependence and possible interaction effects and of those drivers. Additionally, completely new potentially relevant drivers are discussed in detail and integrated into a conceptual model.

To understand how collaborative work practices emerge and evolve throughout activities, the purpose of this paper is to comprehend the making of compromises from a process view. Compromises are here understood as constantly evolving throughout activities.

The author relies on the Actor-Network Theory to define two dynamics participating in the making of compromises: the translation and the association. These two dynamics are then illustrated with a case study about the development of a Human Resource Management device that took place in a bank in Luxembourg. From this case, the author focuses on the emergence of various compromises about the project’s purpose.

Based on the insights brought by the theoretical framework and case studies, compromise is understood as a temporary result of the translations and associations between humans and non-humans. Compromise is also anything that is shared by actors (meaning, categories, objectives, etc). that enables them to make their collective activity possible. This process view of compromises makes three contributions: it fully recognizes that compromise is not stable but situated in practices, it highlights the mediating role of compromises and it insists on the interrelation between compromises throughout the activity.

The matter of compromise has mainly been studied from a moral standpoint as a stable agreement, whatever the context. This article also provides an alternative approach to understanding compromise as situated in practices.

This study aims to understand whether and how the use of performance measures in the context of healthcare organizations facilitates the dynamics of compromise or whether it creates moral struggles among a wide variety of actors. It offers novel insights into the concept of hybridity by investigating its underlying moral dimension. Drawing upon the sociology of worth theory (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991, 2006), this paper examines how actors negotiate and compromise over time concerning issues of justice, involving the use of performance measures on a day-to-day basis.

The article presents a single case study of a medical unit in a French public hospital. Data were obtained through the ethnographic method, semi-structured interviews and internal financial and accounting documents.

Unlike earlier accounting studies, the authors analyze whether, and how, accounting, on one hand, contributes to the dynamics of compromise between actors with divergent values that characterize hybrid organizations, and, on the other hand, increases tensions among actors with convergent values involved in caregiving. This offers practical insights into three relational mechanisms underlying the dynamics of compromise and their limits through the time dimension.

The authors use a single case study in a country-specific context.

This study helps managers of healthcare organizations to understand the relationships between the use of performance measures and their impact on the evaluation of worth in practice.

In terms of theoretical contribution, the authors show how the sociology of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991, 2006) complements the analysis of hybridity and develop an original approach to understanding the ambivalent role of performance measures in bringing together divergent values within French public hospitals.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the multiplicity of views on integrated reporting and to consider the possibility of, and impediments to, reconciling these multiple rationales (“orders of worth”) and thus gain legitimacy through a compromise. This sheds light on the understanding of integrated reporting as such, as well as shows how legitimacy struggles are resolved in practice around complex accounting practices in heterogeneous environments.

This explorative paper empirically applies Boltanski and Thévenot's sociology of worth (SOW) framework to analyse integrated reporting in the Dutch reporting field. Data were collected using multiple methods, including 64 semi-structured in-depth interviews with a wide range of relevant actors, and documentary analysis. Data were coded for the presence of orders of worth and legitimating compromise mechanisms.

The author's analysis suggests that integrated reporting combines the disparate domains of industrial, market, civic and green order of worth. These different logics of valuation need to be reconciled in a compromise in order for integrated reporting to become a legitimate practice. Such a compromise requires a common interest, avoidance of clarification and maintenance of ambiguity. The author's analysis suggests these mechanisms are violated though, with the risk that integrated reporting gets captured by investors and accountants, leading to local private arrangements rather than durable legitimate compromise.

First, SOW informs the understanding of integrated reporting. It highlights in particular its fragility as fundamentally different rationales need to be reconciled, which is a challenge yet also gives rise to creative frictions. Second, the SOW framework creates the possibility for scholars to look closer at the dynamics of legitimacy and at the possible mechanisms to attain legitimacy in fragmented and heterogeneous environment.

The SOW framework offers tools for practitioners, in particular those working within a pluralistic context. The various mechanisms of compromise discussed in this paper provide practical guidelines for how to manage this complexity and gain or maintain legitimacy.

This rich empirical study combines a novel theoretical approach (the SOW framework) with an analysis of the relatively unexplored topic of integrated reporting. At the same time it introduces a conceptualisation of legitimacy that highlights communicative and constitutive dialogue and goes beyond fit and compliance.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the unexplored relationship between employees' perceptions that they have made compromises in their careers (i.e. perceived career compromise) and their turnover intentions, as well as how it might be moderated by two personal factors (materialism and idealism) and two contextual factors (abusive supervision and decision autonomy).

Survey data were collected among employees who work in the education sector in Canada.

Employees' frustrations about unwanted career adjustments lead to an enhanced desire to leave their organization. This process is more likely among employees who are materialistic and suffer from verbally abusive leaders, but it is less likely among those who are idealistic and have more decision autonomy.

For human resource managers, these results provide novel insights into the individual and contextual circumstances in which frustrations about having to compromise career goals may escalate into the risk that valuable employees quit.

This study contributes to human resource management research by detailing the conditional effects of a hitherto overlooked determinant of employees' turnover intentions, namely, their beliefs about a discrepancy between their current career situation and their personal aspirations.

This paper examines the ways in which Chinese university middle managers evaluate subordinate performance in response to the Chinese Double First-Class University Plan, a national project that ranks the performance of universities. In exploring compromise arrangements, the hybridised valuing activity of middle managers is found to be shaped by emergent and extant macro-foundations.

The qualitative data from 49 semi-structured interviews at five Chinese public universities were conducted. Drawing on macro-foundational studies and the sociology of worth (SW) theory, the analysis helps to identify socially shared patterns of actions and outcomes.

The findings elucidate the interplay between diverse economic, social, political and institutional values and the compromise-making by middle managers. The authors find that contextual factors restrict Chinese academic middle managers' autonomy, preventing workable compromise. Through the selective adoption of international and local management practices, compromise has evolved into a private differential treaty at the operational level.

A nuanced explanation reveals how the macro-foundations of Chinese society influence middle managers who engage with accounting when facilitating compromise. This study helps outsiders better understand the complex convergence and divergence of performance evaluative practices in Chinese universities against the backdrop of global market-based forces and the moral dimensions of organisational life. The findings have wider implications for the Chinese government in navigating institutional steps and developing supportive policies to enable middle managers to advance productive but also sustainable compromise.

What change in the distribution of a population’s health preserves the level of inequality? The answer to this analogous question in the context of income inequality lies somewhere between a uniform and a proportional change. These polar positions represent the absolute and relative inequality equivalence criterion (IEC), respectively. A bounded health variable may be presented in terms of both health attainments and shortfalls. As a distributional change cannot simultaneously be proportional to attainments and to shortfalls, relative inequality measures may rank populations differently from the two perspectives. In contrast to the literature that stresses the importance of measuring inequality in attainments and shortfalls consistently using an absolute IEC, this chapter formalizes a new compromise concept for a bounded variable by explicitly considering the two relative IECs, defined with respect to attainments and shortfalls, to represent the polar cases of defensible positions.

We use a surplus-sharing approach to provide new insights on commonly used inequality indices by evaluating the underpinning IECs in terms of how infinitesimal surpluses of health must be successively distributed to preserve the level of inequality. We derive a one-parameter IEC that, unlike those implicit in commonly used indices, assigns constant weights to the polar cases independent of the health distribution.