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The purpose of this paper is to examine formal and informal types of power, and identify the characteristics of corporate communications managers who are in the dominant coalition.

The paper reports on results of a survey sent to a representative sample of S&P 500 corporate communications managers and CEOs in the USA Data about industry sector, company size, annual revenue and profitability were collected for the responding companies and a random sample of 100 non‐responding companies. The responding companies (n=161) did not significantly differ from the non‐responding companies

The paper finds that four attributes of informal power differentiate communications managers who are in the dominant coalition from those who are not: reciprocal trust, strategic business decision‐making, social inclusion and communication expertise.

Future research should explore whether any of the 37 percent of communications managers in the dominant coalition at these top companies come from backgrounds significantly different from those of the executive elite.

The paper supports the organizational theory of the importance of informal power as a prerequisite to be in the dominant coalition – particularly friendship and “being included.” Communications managers who are in the dominant coalition are in a better position to institute ethical and excellent (symmetrical) communication practices. The findings of this study have implications for the likely success (or lack thereof) of managers with diverse backgrounds of being included in the dominant coalition.

The paper provides quantitative, generalizable results based on a representative sample where many previous studies have relied on qualitative data alone.

Boxing Not so Clever In this first issue of what will be a regular review of the world's marketing literature, it is a challenge to an editor to extricate a theme from such an abundance of riches.

This paper aims to investigate consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to brand crisis and examine an empirical model to explain consumer’s internal process in the context of negative information about a brand, analyzing the relationships between the brand association types, brand-customer relationship strength and consumers’ responses depending on the types of brand crises.

This study uses an integrative approach based on qualitative and quantitative methods: a focus-group interview and an experiment.

The results indicated that consumers’ responses were more favorable in the corporate ability (CA) crisis than in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) crisis. In addition, consumers with high brand-customer relationship strength and brand associations for CA (CSR) showed more favorable responses to a brand crisis related to CA (CSR) than to that related to CSR (CA).

Managerially, firms should improve their marketing activity to reinforce particular brand association type that strongly related customers mainly have. In addition, firms should carefully find the best timing and channel that strongly related customers usually access, to present corporate corresponding statements in brand crisis and information of their corporate crisis-coping process.

Theoretically, this study will contribute to the literature on brand crises by providing critical insights into the mechanism underlying consumers’ responses to brand crises.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the European Business Review is split into six sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Top management issues; Marketing and distribution; Personnel and training; Information management and technology; Operations and production management; Accounting and finance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of institutional investors’ investment horizons (IIIH) on a wide variety of key corporate policies.

The authors perform regression analysis to a panel data set of quarterly financial statement data for US firms over the 1981-2014 using several measures of IIIH.

The authors argue that an increase in the presence of long-term investors contributes to more effective monitoring and information quality. This results in a reduction in agency costs and informational asymmetry problems for firms that are more heavily influenced by long-term investors, which in turn influences the corporate policies they pursue. Consistent with these arguments, the evidence suggests that firms with a greater long-term institutional investor base maintain lower investment outlays, higher dividend payments, lower levels of cash and higher levels of leverage. All results hold after controlling for potential endogeneity issues.

The authors show that a greater presence of long-term institutional investors leads to higher dividends, lower investment outlays, lower cash holdings and higher leverage. The comprehensive nature of the predictions with respect to overall corporate finance policies and the supporting evidence provided represents an important contribution, as previous studies have tended to focus on one specific area of corporate behavior (i.e. such as cash holdings).

Purpose – This study examines whether or not holding a greater percentage of real assets significantly impacts the risk and risk‐adjusted return of U.S. based multinational companies. Design/methodology/approach – A series of rolling Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regression models are used to analyse the relationships among corporate real assets, systematic risk (beta), and risk‐adjusted return. Findings – The results of this study show that U.S. based multinational companies do have lower betas. However, U.S. based multinational companies’ cross border real asset holdings do not affect diversification and do not provide significantly higher risk‐adjusted returns to stockholders. Originality/value – This study builds upon the prior work of Seiler, Chatrath and Webb to consider multinational firms. This had never been done previously.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Employee Relations is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Design of Work; Performance, Productivity and Motivation; Patterns of work; Pay, incentives and pensions; Career/manpower planning, recruitment; Industrial relations and participation; Health and safety.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is a sales strategy that is used to improve the success of a product by including a donation to a charitable cause in its price. While marketers can present CRM donations to consumers as either absolute amounts or percentages, the predominant practice in marketing is to use the latter. As the influence of such presentation formats is not well understood, the purpose of this paper is to systematically examine their effects while taking into account the numerical ability (numeracy) of the consumers.

In two experiments, the presentation format of the donation amounts (absolute vs percentage) were manipulated and individual differences in numeracy were measured. The product type (hedonic vs utilitarian) and sales price were varied. We found this effect for high and low price levels and for hedonic and utilitarian products.

The results of both experiments consistently supported the hypothesis presented in this paper that for people with lower numeracy, their purchase intentions were higher when absolute donation amounts were presented. We found this effect for high and low price levels and for hedonic and utilitarian products.

The present paper shows that the current practice of presenting donations in percentages is inferior to presenting donations in absolute amounts because a large number of consumers have trouble interpreting percentages appropriately. Therefore, it indicates that the default option for marketing managers should be to present donations in absolute amounts for hedonic and utilitarian products with low and high prices.

Cross-listed firms may face unique incentives for establishing dividend policies in comparison to US firms. This study aims to test the implications of the lifecycle and signaling theories of dividend policy in the context of non-US firms cross-listed on US stock exchanges via American depository receipts (ADRs).

ADRs are classified according to the firms' dividend paying histories as regular payers, non-payers, former payers, new payers and switchers. Multinomial logit regressions measure the likelihood of dividend payers to pay dividends, as well as the possibility of a dividend amount increase, decrease, or no change, based upon previously identified determinants of dividend payments and a measure of economic conditions in the home country.

The results indicate that firm size, growth opportunities, and the mix of earned and contributed capital partially explain observed dividend policies for ADR firms. Multinomial logit regressions reveal profitability and home-country macro-economic conditions significantly affect ADR firms' decisions to change their dividend policies.

The findings suggest macro-economic conditions affect dividend payment changes among ADR firms. The results also imply that the lifecycle and catering theories may help explain dividend changes among ADR firms.