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1 – 10 of over 29000Wang Dong, Weishi Jia, Shuo Li and Yu (Tony) Zhang
The authors examine the role of CEO political ideology in the credit rating process.
Abstract
Purpose
The authors examine the role of CEO political ideology in the credit rating process.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a quantitative method with panel data regressions using a sample of 5,211 observations from S&P 500 firms from 2001 to 2012.
Findings
The authors find that firms run by Republican-leaning CEOs, who tend to have conservative political ideologies, enjoy more favorable credit ratings than firms run by Democratic-leaning CEOs. In addition, the association between CEO political ideology and credit ratings is more pronounced for firms with high operating uncertainty, low capital intensity, high growth potential, weak corporate governance and low financial reporting quality. Finally, the authors find that CEO political ideology affects a firm's cost of debt incremental to credit ratings, consistent with debt investors incorporating CEO political ideology in their pricing decisions.
Research limitations/implications
Leveraging CEO political ideology, the authors document that credit rating agencies incorporate managerial conservatism in their credit rating decisions. This finding suggests that CEO political ideology serves as a meaningful signal for managerial conservatism.
Practical implications
The study suggests that credit rating agencies incorporate CEO political ideology in their credit rating process. Other capital market participants such as auditors and retail investors can also use CEO political ideology as a proxy for managerial conservatism when evaluating firms.
Social implications
The paper carries practical implications for practitioners, firm executives and regulators. The results on the association between CEO political ideology and credit ratings suggest that other financial institutions could also incorporate CEO political ideology in their evaluation in their evaluation of firms. For example, when evaluating audit risk and determining audit pricing, auditors may add CEO political ideology as a risk factor. For firms, especially those that have Democratic-leaning CEOs, the authors suggest that they could reduce the unfavorable effect of CEO political ideology on credit ratings by improving their corporate governance and financial reporting quality, as demonstrated in the cross-sectional analyses. Finally, this study shows that CEO political ideology, as measured by CEOs' political contributions, is closely related to a firm's credit ratings. This finding may inform regulators that greater transparency for CEOs' political contributions is needed as information on contributions could help capital market participants perform risk analyses for firms.
Originality/value
Credit rating agencies release their research methodologies for determining corporate credit ratings and identify managerial conservatism as an important factor that affects their risk assessments. The extant literature, however, has not empirically investigated the relation between credit ratings and managerial conservatism, which, according to behavioral consistency theory, can be proxied by CEO political ideology. This study provides novel empirical evidence that identifies CEO political ideology as an important input factor in the credit rating process.
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A social identity analysis, based on Hogg's (2000) uncertainty reduction theory, of the emergence and maintenance of ideological belief systems is presented. Uncertainty…
Abstract
A social identity analysis, based on Hogg's (2000) uncertainty reduction theory, of the emergence and maintenance of ideological belief systems is presented. Uncertainty, particularly self-uncertainty, motivates identification with high-entitativity groups and behaviors that promote entitativity. Under more extreme uncertainty, identification is more pronounced and entitativity can be associated with orthodoxy, hierarchy and extremism, and with ideological belief systems. I develop and describe a social identity and uncertainty reduction analysis of ideology, and contextualize this in a brief discussion of the concept of ideology and in coverage of other contemporary social psychological treatments of ideology, such as social dominance theory, system justification theory, right-wing authoritarianism, belief in a just world, and the protestant work ethic.
Democratization has become the prescription for peace in conflictual societies, but often stagnates in a political standoff or devolves back to war. Sustainable and effective…
Abstract
Democratization has become the prescription for peace in conflictual societies, but often stagnates in a political standoff or devolves back to war. Sustainable and effective democracy in these societies requires a citizenry which actively guides and pressures political leaders toward effective policy making for peace. But in societies with little or no democratic tradition, it takes time to develop the attitudes and organizations required. This study examines the relationship of democratic exposure to the development of the ideology of external political participation among peacebuilding NGOs. Using original field interview data, it compares the ideology of 28 peacebuilding NGOs in Northern Ireland to 37 in the less democratic context of Bosnia. The study examines the effects of exposure to democracy on “externally democratic ideology,” defined as an ideology of participation in the political processes of society external to the organization. Three aspects of exposure to democracy are examined: societal democratization, internal democracy in the NGO, and mentorship by outsiders from established democracies. The findings are that internal democracy is associated with externally democratic ideology, but outsider mentorship is not, even when controlling for dominating relationships, and neither is societal democracy, except indirectly via its effect on internal democracy. Implications for theory, policy, and future research are discussed.
This chapter explores public perceptions of health disparities by taking political ideology and political party identification into account and applies theories of cognitive…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter explores public perceptions of health disparities by taking political ideology and political party identification into account and applies theories of cognitive dissonance, cognitive prejudice, and moral prejudice to understand the impact of political ideology on perceptions of health disparities.
Methodology/approach
A statewide telephone survey asked 1,036 people about health disparities. Eight independent variables – political ideology, political party identification, gender, race, age, community type, income, and education achieved – were entered in an additive stepwise regression containing one of four dependent variables – unfair treatment based on health insurance, unfair treatment based on ability to speak English, minorities unable to get care when needed, and quality of care for minorities.
Findings
Political ideology entered all four equations while political party identity entered only two. Liberals were most likely to believe that minorities were unable to get routine care when needed and democrats that ability to speak English meant differential treatment. Respondents with low education were most likely to believe people were treated unfairly based on insurance, while those with lower incomes were more likely to believe that minorities received higher quality of care than whites.
Research limitations/implications
A public opinion survey in one state cannot be generalized for the whole country. The survey was conducted in the spring of 2009 just as the debate over the proposed health care reform legislation was reaching a crescendo, which may explain the importance of political ideology on perceptions of health disparities.
Originality/value of chapter
This chapter explicitly examines the effect of political ideology and party identification on perceptions of health disparities by utilizing theories of cognitive and moral prejudice. Political ideology reflecting cognitive and moral prejudice may combine with support for a social movement or political faction that supports or opposes reducing health disparities.
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In this article, my goal is to approach Thomas S. Kuhn's account of scientific development from the perspective of institutional theory. Reading it this way, his main work can be…
Abstract
In this article, my goal is to approach Thomas S. Kuhn's account of scientific development from the perspective of institutional theory. Reading it this way, his main work can be seen as a treatise on endogenous change of an institutional order, occurring under circumstances that do not allow the expectation of such discontinuities when deploying common institutional arguments. To elucidate the underlying mechanisms, I draw on ideology as the set of beliefs incorporated in the system of orientation Kuhn calls paradigm. From his dense description of paradigm shifts, I deduce five propositions on the role of ideology in radical institutional change. Subsequently, I reconcile these propositions with assumptions of institutional theory and identify, in addition to some convergences, points of divergence, which give impetus to extend conceptions of institutional change.
More pluralistic approaches have recently emerged in entrepreneurship, yet the discipline remains disinterested in the ideological influences underpinning its research and…
Abstract
More pluralistic approaches have recently emerged in entrepreneurship, yet the discipline remains disinterested in the ideological influences underpinning its research and teaching practices. Following Louis Althusser’s work on interpellation, the process by which ideology enrols and consummates its subjects, the chapter examines the interpellation of entrepreneurship-as-practice researchers and draws attention to the powerful nature of ideology. Critical reflexivity is put forward as an exercise to explore the researchers’ beliefs and identity and to tease out their relationship with the discipline. Finally, using three autoethnographic accounts, the chapter argues that the boundaries of the entrepreneurship discipline can only be shifted if and when researchers learn to recognise themselves as ‘the person in the mirror’. The reflexive spotlight also allows researchers to spot ideological breaks and engage in acts of ‘ideological resistance’.
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Past literature has focused on the intergenerational transmission of gender ideologies, without considering the role cultural context plays. That is, while it is understood that…
Abstract
Past literature has focused on the intergenerational transmission of gender ideologies, without considering the role cultural context plays. That is, while it is understood that there is a positive relationship between mothers’ gender ideology and that of their adolescents, how might this relationship differ among foreign-born mothers and their native-born adolescent children? This chapter extends the literature on the construction and transmission of gender ideology between immigrant mothers and their children in two ways. First, using data from the child sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N=2,202), it examines adolescent gender ideology as influenced by mothers’ gender beliefs and nativity. Second, it assesses the interaction between maternal gender ideologies and nativity as they influence adolescent ideology. Findings from this study suggest that the nativity of the mother does not affect the adolescent’s ideology, nor does it act as a moderator of maternal influence. The chapter ends with a summary and contextualization of the findings framed in developmental psychology and suggesting that factors external to the household, such as the influence of peers, may work to mitigate the effects of cultural frameworks.
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Renate E. Meyer, Kerstin Sahlin, Marc J. Ventresca and Peter Walgenbach
In this brief review, we do not attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of how the concept of ideology has developed in the different perspectives; this has been done in…
Abstract
In this brief review, we do not attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of how the concept of ideology has developed in the different perspectives; this has been done in several publications that classify and discuss ideology in great detail (see Chiapello, 2003; Thompson, 1996; Eagleton, 1991; Lenk, 1984; Therborn, 1980; Larrain, 1979, among many others). However, the brief sketch below is intended to help us find venues for combining theories of ideology and institutions. Furthermore, it helps us to place the chapters of this volume in this broader context.
Louis P. Cain and Brooks A. Kaiser
At the beginning of the 20th century, three intertwined ambitions drove federal legislation over wildlife and biodiversity: establishment of multiple-use federal lands, the…
Abstract
At the beginning of the 20th century, three intertwined ambitions drove federal legislation over wildlife and biodiversity: establishment of multiple-use federal lands, the economic development of natural resources, and the maintenance of option values. We examine this federal intervention in natural resource use by analyzing roll call votes over the past century with a Random Utility Model (Manski, 1977) and conclude that economics mattered. So did ideology, but not uniformly. After World War II, the pro-environment vote which had been conservative shifted to being liberal. All these votes involved decisions regarding public land that reallocated the returns to users by changing the asset’s physical character or its usage rights. We suggest that long-term consequences affecting current resource allocations arose from disparities between broadly dispersed benefits and locally concentrated socioeconomic and geophysical (spatial) costs. We show that a primary intent of public land management has become to preserve multiple-use option values and identify important factors in computing those option values. We do this by demonstrating how the willingness to forego current benefits for future ones depends on the community’s resource endowments. These endowments are defined not only in terms of users’ current wealth accumulation but also from their expected ability to extract utility from natural resources over time.
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