Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the recent financial trends affecting grain and farm supply cooperatives.

Review of and descriptive analysis of current cooperative finance topics.

In recent years three important trends have become apparent among grain marketing and farm supply cooperatives. These farmer-owned firms have been rapidly investing in infrastructure, reformulating profit distribution and equity strategies, and have pursued consolidation with other cooperatives.

Grain and farm supply cooperatives are changing at a rapid clip to meet the needs of their evolving and growing farmer-owners. New research is needed to help these cooperatives meet these needs, and this paper identifies new areas of research in cooperative finance.

Community banks were affected distinctly by changes in banking regulation in the 1990s when compared with large commercial banks. These banks offer non-traditional finance items, presumably to compete with these financial institutions. This study aims to examine the importance of accounting for off-balance sheet (OBS) items when estimating the financial performance of community banks.

This study applies a two-stage analysis pathway that initially calculates X-efficiency scores as part of the overall cost structure and then deploys data envelopment analysis bootstrapping method for a second-stage ordinary least square model.

Study findings indicate that failure to include OBS items in the X-efficiency calculation for community banks understates the efficiency performance of these banks. Furthermore, results indicate that factors internal and external to the community bank affect X-efficiency. Increases in OBS items are associated with growth in assets and growth in net non-interest income. Therefore, OBS items become an attractive alternative source of income and a mechanism for expanding output with the same volume of inputs. In addition, OBS items allow the largest community banks to deleverage their balance sheet, whereas the smallest community banks still emphasize on traditional lending products and benefit from existing equity. Also, larger banks may be using OBS items as a mechanism to isolate their performance from macroeconomic fluctuations.

Research limitations include a reduced number of community banks as consolidation accelerates partly because of compliance concerns.

The approach used supports a series of community bank managerial approaches that may be adopted by management.

The results of this study show several reasons why community banks may have managerial incentives to include OBS items. As observed by Gilbert et al. (2013), community banks are adjusting their product line so as to operate efficiently. Community banks must provide a product line which provides margin and meets customer needs at a profit to the firm. OBS items allow existing staff to provide funds without additional equity requirements from the balance sheets. The increase in OBS activities may signal the perception that the associated interest income is less risky and less costly than other alternatives, including adopting technologies to diversify traditional loan product offerings. As community banks tend to have lower default rates than their larger counterparts, the most likely explanation is that the OBS interest risk is more attractive than compliance or development of mechanisms to offer a broader suite of traditional loan products.

This paper presents a model for determining the optimal capital structure for cooperatives and explores the relationship between financial leverage and the ability of cooperatives to retire member equity.

A model is developed to determine the optimal capital structure and explore the relationship between capital structure and the rate at which a cooperative can retire member equity. Using data from cooperative financial statements, ordinary least-squares regressions are conducted to test two hypotheses on capital structure and equity retirement.

The model shows that the optimal capital structure is determined by the ratio of the rate of return on capital employed to the interest rate on borrowed capital and the required level of interest coverage. The regressions suggest that cooperatives choose their capital structure largely according to the rate of return on capital employed and the interest rate in a manner consistent with maximizing the rate of return on equity and that the rate at which cooperatives can retire member equity is directly related to leverage.

The model does not consider unallocated earnings. Analysis of the relationship between leverage and equity retirement yields results contrary to the assumptions of earlier studies.

Cooperatives can use the model because the necessary parameters are easily understood and readily available from financial statements, lenders and industry sources.

The model is developed specifically for determining the capital structure of cooperatives and differs substantially from the corporate model. A theoretical basis is provided for the relationship between leverage and equity retirement.

Precision agriculture has been practiced since the early 1990s, but the adoption rate of this technology has been slower than experts had predicted. This study explores the role of public‐ and private‐sector financial assistance in the adoption of variable‐rate fertilizer application. Public‐ and private‐sector financial assistance are modeled to show the marginal impacts of changes in the traditional flow of government assistance, sales consultant visits, and financial risk. Results indicate that deviation from traditional Aone stop shopping@ has a negative and significant impact on the adoption of alternative fertilizer application technology. However, sales consultant visits, in conjunction with conservation and environmental quality incentive programs and the availability of financing opportunities, significantly favor the adoption of variable‐rate fertilizer application. Changes in business risk produced opposite movements in financial risk to facilitate increased adoption of variable‐rate fertilizer application technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to assess product and service arrays of community banks within competitive markets that are impacted by varying sized financial institutions. A cost efficiency model is used to understand the relationship of product offerings and business cycle response upon bank performance.

A cost efficiency model is used to understand the relationship of product offerings and business cycle response upon bank performance. Markets comprised of alternate size and type of financial institutions are compared.

Greater values of X_EFF _i when institutions compete are observed in this analysis. Cost efficiency is lowest when community banks are the only institution in the market, and second lowest when credit unions are the only competing institutions. Call report data are analyzed from 1994 to 2013. The number of big banks increases community bank efficiency and efficiency of large banks. Also, the number of community banks does affect big bank cost efficiency. The magnitude of the effect pertaining to the number of community banks upon big bank efficiency is much smaller than that of the number of big banks on community bank efficiency.

This study considers cost efficiency and profitability as measures of institution on the performance of a competing institutional type. The modeling approach uses cost efficiency as a method of observing the performance of financial institutions and an explanation of how firms persist, grow, and respond to changes in technology or regulation. The effects of the presence of each type of financial institution on the performance of another type are compared. Situations in which any number of one or more institutional types is present in a market are considered for analysis purposes.

Advancements in digital technology, collectively known as Industry 4.0, are profoundly changing dynamics in multiple industries. The coaching industry is impacted by this shift, as companies offering digital coaching technologies begin to take market share. To effectively serve clients in this rapidly changing market, coaches must adopt a digital mindset, upskill their capabilities, and transform their business models to leverage current and nascent technology.

Organizations are increasingly including executive coaching as part of their leadership development interventions to improve their executive leaders' abilities. Previous studies have linked outstanding leader performance to an intentionally developed relational climate. Therefore, the relational climate crafted between the coach and executive leader is critically important to create shared purpose, experience compassion, energize interactions, impact performance, and realize a quality, effective executive coaching engagement.

This is the first study to explore relational climate as a driver of coaching relationship quality. My empirical findings reflect that relational climate has a significant, positive impact on coaching relationship quality, which in turn contributes to an executive leader's effectiveness. The three goals of this study are: (1) to understand the factors that contribute to crafting a quality and effective coaching relationship; (2) to address scholarly gaps in past research regarding the relationship between a coach and client; and (3) to provide clarity for coaches how to better address, leverage, and realize an executive coaching relational climate within the context of Industry 4.0. Those crafting effective and quality coaching relationships should ensure that there is shared vision between the coach and client, that both parties demonstrate compassion, and that the coach and client each infuse the relationship with positive energy and vitality to create relational energy.

The quality of strategic decisions made at the helm of corporations matters a great deal. Predominantly, research on strategic decision-making has focused on CEOs as if they decide alone. Yet in reality, even the most powerful CEO makes strategic decisions together with an executive board. This chapter offers a theoretical explanation of strategic board decision-making through the emotional contagion between the CEO and board members.

We used both previous research and qualitative material – two case studies and interviews with several dozen CEOs of large corporations as well as the board members of one of them – to build our theoretical model.

Our inBoard Emotional Contagion Model (inBECM) specifies the following individual–collective emotional dynamics: After a strategic affective event has triggered an affective discussion within the boardroom, the emotionally intelligent CEO communicates verbally in order to – through an emotional contagion – homogenize board members’ emotional states leading to shared sense-making of the event and – potentially – to improved decision-making.

Suggestions are made for the inBECM contribution to emotion theory. Implications are stated for the key role of emotion in improving board decision-making and strategizing.

In this chapter, network analysis has been used to map out disciplinary areas of research and authorship in economic history. A total of 5,330 peer-reviewed articles published in the leading economic history journals has been surveyed. Since 1980, the number of publications has risen and then rapidly accelerated over the last 2 decades. This rise has been fueled by research being conducted within European universities instead of US or UK ones.

The reported inquiry-based learning (IBL) study was designed in 2012–2013 for the highest achieving undergraduate students at a research-intensive university in the United Kingdom (U.K.). In 2005, the University received national funding from the U.K. Higher Education Academy (HEA) to develop an innovative model of IBL to be used in a multidisciplinary context (Tosey, 2006). As a consequence, IBL was an obvious tool when, in 2012, the authors set out to design learning interventions to improve the teamwork and leadership skills of high-attaining students. In the process of exploring the application of IBL to this task, the need to ensure the intervention allowed for development in the conative domain was considered important. Historically, IBL practice at the University had catered well for cognitive and affective learning but had not been focussed to develop conation. A conative-heavy element was therefore purposefully designed into the latest IBL intervention.