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Why is it that highly trained and seasoned executives fail? On the surface, this doesn’t make sense because they are very successful; yet research in the organization sciences provides no shortage of evidence to prove just that. From the classic Mann Gulch fire disaster of Weick’s famous collapse of sensemaking study, to studies of myopia of learning, escalation of commitment, threat-rigidity, dominant logic, the architecture of simplicity, the Icarus Paradox, to core competencies turning into core rigidities, and navigating new competitive markets using “old” cognitive maps, and many more such examples point to a ubiquitous phenomenon where highly trained and experienced professionals find themselves “stuck” in the heat of battle, unable to move and progress. On the one hand, for some, there is a desperate need for change, but are unable to do so, due to their trained incapacities. On the other hand, some simply cannot see the need for change, and continue with their “business as usual” mentality. For both, their visions of the world shrink, they have a tendency to cling onto their past habitual practices and oversimplify the complexity of the situation. In moments like these: DROP YOUR TOOLS and UNLEARN! This book chapter introduces a framework (grounded in clinical psychology) that has had consistent success in helping seasoned executives and key decision-makers open up the alternatives whenever they find themselves stuck with complexity.

In December 2008, as the financial and economic crisis continued on its devastating course, a new scandal erupted. After the 1998s failure of Long-Term Capital Management, Madoff's fraud once again discredits the hedge funds industry. This scandal is, however, of a different kind. Indeed, Madoff's firm is not a standard hedge fund but a developed Ponzi scheme. By explaining Madoff's system and exploring the reasons for its collapse, this paper draws risk management lessons from this fraud, especially for operational risk management, due diligence processes, and the use of quantitative replication, regulatory, and standardizing approaches of the hedge fund industry.

Drawing on debates on deliberative and participatory democracy, I argue that social movements can be considered to be promoting democratization when they are able to compel governments to increase effective participation in the policy-making process, and/or when their democratic claims are translated into an agenda and/or policy impact. This indicates that a social movement has increased the responsiveness of the government it is challenging. Based on this premise, in this paper, I trace the political impact of the Student Movement in Chile. Spearheading the largest protests since the reinstatement of democracy, in 2006, and most notably, in 2011, the Student Movement forced a debate on education and political reforms, and a series of policies to address these issues. The analysis is grounded on more than 50 interviews, and an exhaustive analysis of organizational documents and newspaper data. The case examined in this paper illustrates how the expansion of political opportunities that is necessary for pursuing democratizing reforms not only is driven “from above,” but also “from below.” Studying this process, social movement scholarship can learn a great deal from recent cases of social mobilization in Latin America. These experiences also call for more attention to the role of social movements in democratization studies.

Many argue that the design of compensation contracts for public company chief executive officers (CEOs) is often not guided by a goal of value maximization. Yet, there is limited direct empirical evidence on the negative consequences of the proposed inefficient contracting between shareholders and CEOs. Using data on CEO bonus contracts of the S&P 500 firms, we investigate potential firm performance implications of the use of qualitative criteria such as leadership and mentoring in those contracts. We maintain that unlike quantitative criteria, qualitative criteria are difficult to define and measure on an objective basis, possibly resulting in an inefficient and biased incentive structure. Twenty-five percent of the sample observations have CEO bonus contracts that include a qualitative criterion for bonus payment determination. Our results show that employee productivity, asset productivity, capital expenditures, and future abnormal stock returns are lower for firms that use a qualitative criterion in CEO bonus contracts than those that do not. Further, contrary to the argument in prior literature that earnings management decreases with the use of subjective performance indicators in incentive contracts, we find that income-increasing accruals are actually higher when the CEO bonus contract includes a qualitative criterion. We recommend that compensation committees set concrete, measurable performance goals for CEOs, providing CEOs with better guidance and helping improve their corporate decision making.

Predicting a patient's length of stay (LOS) in a hospital setting has been widely researched. Accurately predicting an individual's LOS can have a significant impact on a healthcare provider's ability to care for individuals by allowing them to properly prepare and manage resources. A hospital's productivity requires a delicate balance of maintaining enough staffing and resources without being overly equipped or wasteful. This has become even more important in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, during which emergency departments around the globe have been inundated with patients and are struggling to manage their resources.

In this study, the authors focus on the prediction of LOS at the time of admission in emergency departments at Rhode Island hospitals through discharge data obtained from the Rhode Island Department of Health over the time period of 2012 and 2013. This work also explores the distribution of discharge dispositions in an effort to better characterize the resources patients require upon leaving the emergency department.

Purpose – In this chapter, copula theory is used to model dependence structure between hedge fund returns series.

Methodology/approach – Goodness-of-fit tests, based on the Kendall's functions, are applied as selection criteria of the “best” copula. After estimating the parametric copula that best fits the used data, we apply previous results to construct the cumulative distribution functions of the equally weighted portfolios.

Findings – The empirical validation shows that copula clearly allows better estimation of portfolio returns including hedge funds. The three studied portfolios reject the assumption of multivariate normality of returns. The chosen structure is often of Student type when only indices are considered. In the case of portfolios composed by only hedge funds, the dependence structure is of Franck type.

Originality/value of the chapter – Introducing goodness-of-fit bootstrap method to validate the choice of the best structure of dependence is relevant for hedge fund portfolios. Copulas would be introduced to provide better estimations of performance measures.