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We highlight two mechanisms of limited attention for expert information intermediaries, i.e., analysts, and the effects of such limited attention on the market price discovery process. We approach analysts' limited attention from the perspective of day-to-day arrival of information and processing of tasks. We examine the attention-limiting role of competing tasks (number of earnings announcements and forecasts for portfolio firms) and distracting events (number of earnings announcements for non-portfolio firms) in analysts' forecast accuracy and the effects of such, on the subsequent price discovery process. Our results show that competing tasks worsen analysts' forecast accuracy, and competing task induced limited attention delays the market price adjustment process. On the other hand, distracting events can improve analysts' forecast accuracy and accelerate market price adjustments when such events relate to analysts' portfolio firms through industry memberships.

In this study we investigated the effects of news reports on acquirer short-term performance. Our focus was on the extent to which key deal characteristics – the type of deal, during a merger wave or not or the presence of a significant premium – are made explicit. Moreover, we looked for the effect of the assessment of the deal characteristics by different key informants: board members, top management team members, and analysts. Configurations derived using the set-theoretic approach suggest that media-transmitted signals form complex interrelations among content and informant. We found that investors react positively to deals that are surrounded by unequivocal signals of synergy potential: they contain explicitly stated deal characteristics as well as deal endorsements from the boards and/or top management of acquirer and target companies. Analysts’ assessments of the deals seem to bear little influence on investor reaction. Meanwhile, investors react negatively to deals with low or absent media coverage as well as deals surrounded by signals of ambiguous synergy potential.

The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.

This chapter is a speculative examination of the way in which theory is used in the social accounting literature. It is intended as an initial guide for those approaching the area for the first time; it is intended as a map for those in the field who would like to adopt a bigger picture for their work and it is intended as a wake-up call to those of us stuck in unconscious ruts. The chapter's departure point is the recognition that social accounting requires a reasonably sophisticated awareness of theory – not least because the subject matter itself is so contentious and conditional. The chapter's ambitions are to encourage a more evaluative and policy-based approach to the subject matter of social accounting; to offer a pedagogic basis to help others make some sense of theory in social accounting and to seek to empower and liberate social accounting scholars by assisting the range of their theorising. Social accounting scholars tend to approach the area with concerns and desires for liberation and possibility. Theory can help articulate those concerns and can support and encourage that desire. Above all, the chapter is explicitly partial, speculative and tentative, and it is not a formal or informed attempt to produce a theory of theories in social accounting. To articulate a range of the possible theories, we offer a simple heuristic through which we may navigate our way through the soup of concepts and perceptions that can blend into a potential infinity of ways of looking and seeing. We hope to encourage diversity and speculation rather than narrowness and alleged certainty.

The over 125-year-old economic miracle called the Corporation is suddenly shaken in its foundations. The corporate business world is rapidly changing not only in the USA, but also across the globe. The front covers of business magazines and dailies, once dominated by names and faces of “Corporate Giants,” are now being replaced with success stories of great startups and small business entrepreneurs. The reasons for these radical changes progressively reveal the imperfections existing in the current corporation and the business boardroom paradigm. For over a century, huge corporate entities spawned by capitalism have established and entrenched themselves in their respective industry arenas and have since been ruling the world, dominating money, capital, cash, and market opportunity. Once they provided solutions to people’s employment and career needs, they have made a fortune for themselves thereby. In the course of their evolution, the businesses have transformed into corporations, seeking people’s money for doing business and, in turn, giving a share of proportionate ownership to the investor people in the form of dividends and capital gains. Such a brilliant method of raising capital has empowered the corporations to grow and expand beyond physical and political boundaries. Today, however, the corporations are run by the BOD, most of whom are representing gigantic promoter-investor institutions. That is, the main administrative role is now replaced by private equity firms and hedge funds that provide the required capital but who also exert undue pressures on CEOs to focus on short-term strategies that have massive profitability potential, thus defying the usual business management model and paradigm the CEOs were trained for in B-schools. The massive CEO exodus that has migrated from the traditional corporations to newly created startups and smaller business entrepreneurial ventures has also made the corporation an endangered species. In such a market turbulence, how do we redefine, redesign, and reinvent the morally embattled corporation? This chapter explores solutions.

Investors frequently make judgments and decisions in the presence of affect (i.e., mood or emotion). Investors' moods may influence the extent to which they incorporate available financial information in their investment judgments. I propose that investors interpret their moods as signals of the extent to which financial information should be processed to make investment judgments, but only when other, more direct signals regarding the need for in-depth processing are unavailable. Consistent with research in psychology, my experimental results suggest that investors experiencing positive mood exert less effort to process available financial information than investors experiencing negative mood. Consequently, positive mood results in lower-quality financial judgments in my setting. However, when investors receive cues suggesting that initially received information is subjective, the effect of mood on effort to process financial information is mitigated. Overall, my results suggest that factors associated with positive investor mood (e.g., positive market sentiment) reduce the depth of investor analysis and lower judgment quality absent signals regarding the subjectivity of financial information.

German ethical banks have experienced a significant increase in customers, deposits, and lending. They aim to establish a fairer banking system. But the simultaneous pursuit of social, ecological, and economic goals leaves them vulnerable to conflicting orders of worth. The authors examine the normative foundations that ethical bank employees refer to when they describe their everyday practices and identify the specific problems that arise from negotiating between moral principles and economic demands to provide insights into the impacts, constraints, and paradoxes of normatively oriented business practices. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the sociology of critique, the authors assume that moral categories, social processes of interpretation, and justification are an essential part of markets. Ethical banking is characterized by the need to meet both market-limiting and market-expanding requirements, and this particularly becomes contentious when dealing with economic growth. By analyzing ethical banks’ freely accessible documents, the authors first outline the institutional guidelines. In a second step, the authors analyze 27 qualitative interviews with employees of ethical banks to gain insights into everyday lending practices and action-guiding normative orientations. The goal of this chapter is to examine the tensions that may arise from applying normative guidelines under the condition of increasing economic requirements and to disclose the way that ethical banks negotiate between mechanisms of expansion and limitation. The analysis of this chapter points out a paradox of ethical banking: due to the banks’ economic expansion, investments corresponding to their ethical commitments tend to become a luxury they cannot afford.

Private, middle-market companies that choose to implement mergers, acquisitions, or growth strategies in today’s environment often face challenges when engaging with the capital markets, particularly when bridging the valuation gap between market values and owner values¹ (Marks, K., Slee, R., Blees, C., & Nall, M. (2012). Middle market M&A: Handbook for investment banking and business consulting. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.). This chapter applies traditional corporate finance theory to the real-world dynamics of private, middle-market companies and outlines practical steps to shrink the value gap and increase transaction readiness.