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This paper aims to examine the impact of a firm’s governance characteristics on the signals released during the initial public offering (IPO) process. This paper focuses on the role of the firm’s founder and how different signals convey or diminish agency issues of adverse selection and moral hazard prior to IPO. This study also explores the performance impact (underpricing) of firm founder involvement on signal effectiveness.

This paper examines 122 firms during the IPO process to determine the influence that the founder’s presence, position and ownership has on signaling behaviors as well as on firm performance.

The authors find that founders influence how often the firm files amendments to the prospectus. Furthermore, the results suggest that agency-reducing signals are complicated and can interact to enhance either positive or negative signals that impact underpricing at IPO.

The findings offer insights concerning how signalers can more effectively manage multiple signals that may interact negatively with firm characteristics. This study also provides contributions to both signaling and agency theories, discusses implications for practitioners and suggests opportunities for future research.

This has important implications for founders and managers of firms approaching IPO. The results suggest that founders are better off filing fewer addendums to their S-1 during the IPO process as this decreases underpricing. Underwriters and investors will be interested in these outcomes as identifying signals is an important factor when pricing firm valuation. Similarly, investors seek to identify firms that have a higher likelihood of underpricing because underpricing increases investor recognition and subsequent long-term impact on performance.

The findings offer insights concerning how signalers can more effectively manage multiple signals that may interact negatively with firm characteristics. The authors extend research in entrepreneurship and marketing by exploring indirect ways firms can communicate to investors using signaling, to increase value during the IPO process. This study provides contributions to both signaling and agency theories, discusses implications for practitioners and suggests opportunities for future research.

Massive shifts in the recruitment landscape, the continually changing nature of work and workers, and extraordinary technological progress have combined to enable unparalleled advances in how current and prospective employees receive and process information about organizations. Once the domain of internal organizational public relations and human resources (HR) teams, most employment branding has moved beyond organizations’ control. This chapter provides a conceptual framework pertaining to third party employment branding, defined as communications, claims, or status-based classifications generated by parties outside of direct company control that shape, enhance, and differentiate organizations’ images as favorable or unfavorable employers. Specifically, the authors first theorize about the underlying mechanisms by which third party employment branding might signal prospective and current employees. Second, the authors develop a framework whereby we comprehensively review third party employment branding sources, thus identifying the different ways that third party employment branding might manifest. Third, using prototypical examples, the authors link the various signaling mechanisms to the various third party employment branding sources identified. Finally, the authors propose an ambitious future research agenda that considers not only the positive aspects of third party employment branding but also potential “dark sides.” Thus, the authors view this chapter as contributing to the broader employment branding literature, which should enhance scholarly endeavors to study it and practitioner efforts to leverage it.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a dynamic control method to improve bus schedule adherence under connected bus system.

The authors developed a dynamic programming model that optimally schedules the bus operating speed at road sections and multiple signal timing plans at intersections to improve bus schedule adherence. First, the bus route was partitioned into three types of sections: stop, road and intersection. Then, transit agencies can control buses in real time based on all collected information; i.e. control bus operating speed on road sections and adjust the signal timing plans through signal controllers to improve the schedule adherence in connected bus environment. Finally, bus punctuality at the downstream stop and the saturation degree deviations of intersections were selected as the evaluation criteria in optimizing signal control plans and bus speeds jointly.

An illustrative case study by using a bus rapid transit line in Jinan city was performed to verify the proposed model. It revealed that based on the proposed strategy, the objective value could be reduced by 73.7%, which indicated that the punctuality was highly improved but not to incur excessive congestion for other vehicular traffic.

In this paper, the authors applied speed guidance and the adjustment of the signal control plans for multiple cycles in advance to improve the scheduled stability; furthermore, the proposed control strategy can reduce the effect on private traffics to the utmost extend.

With the intensification of market competition, there is a growing demand for weak signal identification and evolutionary analysis for enterprise foresight. For decades, many scholars have conducted relevant research. However, the existing research only cuts in from a single angle and lacks a systematic and comprehensive overview. In this paper, the authors summarize the articles related to weak signal recognition and evolutionary analysis, in an attempt to make contributions to relevant research.

The authors develop a systematic overview framework based on the most classical three-dimensional space model of weak signals. Framework comprehensively summarizes the current research insights and knowledge from three dimensions of research field, identification methods and interpretation methods.

The research results show that it is necessary to improve the automation level in the process of weak signal recognition and analysis and transfer valuable human resources to the decision-making stage. In addition, it is necessary to coordinate multiple types of data sources, expand research subfields and optimize weak signal recognition and interpretation methods, with a view to expanding weak signal future research, making theoretical and practical contributions to enterprise foresight, and providing reference for the government to establish weak signal technology monitoring, evaluation and early warning mechanisms.

The authors develop a systematic overview framework based on the most classical three-dimensional space model of weak signals. It comprehensively summarizes the current research insights and knowledge from three dimensions of research field, identification methods and interpretation methods.

This study seeks to examine differences in the signals of brand quality that consumers utilize in and across different countries. The approach is driven by the practical goal of helping international firms understand how they could tailor their marketing mix to target consumers based on the particular signals of brand quality that they use in different countries.

Survey data are collected from Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Russia, Singapore, Thailand and the USA and analyzed using factor analysis to identify the signals that are used as extrinsic and intrinsic cues of brand quality in different clusters of countries. Two major dimensions of signals of quality are identified and used to generate four clusters of countries representing different beliefs in signals of brand quality.

Two major dimensions of signals of quality are identified and used to generate four clusters of countries representing different beliefs in signals of brand quality. These dimensions broadly fall in to those that can be characterized as external signals (brand popularity, retailer's name and volume of advertising) and internal signals (brand name, price and country of origin) with the eight countries clustering in terms of these signals. Thus, Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong and the USA form one cluster with Thailand and Russia forming another cluster while Indonesia and Singapore show differences in their signal preferences.

Practical implications in terms of standardization versus differentiation of marketing mix strategies are discussed. The most important implication is that differentiation of marketing strategies would seem to be advantageous contrary to the commonly held view that international firms need to standardize their marketing strategies in the face of increasing globalization and alleged consumer convergence.

This study seeks to examine differences in the signals of brand quality that consumers utilize in and across different countries.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the analysis and performance of a hybrid multiple access scheme which combines interleave division multiple access (IDMA) and code division multiple access (CDMA), referred to as IDMA/CDMA. With experimentations, the scheme can achieve good performance with simple user ends for the system.

IDMA technique is employed as the uplink transmission and CDMA technique as the downlink transmission. The performance comparison of IDMA and IDMA/CDMA downlink is studied with Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the bit error rates. For IDMA/CDMA downlink, the signals are interleaved by random interleavers, spreaded by M‐sequence and orthogonal Gold sequence, respectively, and then transmitted over an AWGN with BPSK modulation. Moreover, a channel estimation approach for IDMA based on expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is also presented.

The multi‐user detection (MUD) algorithm in uplink IDMA systems is much simpler than that used in traditional CDMA systems. It is also well known that the orthogonal spreading codes in CDMA can effectively help suppress the MAI in the synchronized environments. But for the asynchronized application, the performance of CDMA systems will degrade due to the serious multiple user interference. According to traditional IDMA and orthogonal code division multiple access/IDMA signal detection algorithms, every UE has to detect all of the signals of other users for iterative detection. The advantages of IDMA and CDMA technologies can be utilized substantially.

The proposed hybrid multiple access scheme can achieve a very simple chip‐by‐chip iterative MUD strategy at base station, and the simplified receiving operation at UE. On the other hand, this paper also evaluates channel estimation approach for IDMA based on EM algorithm.

The aero-engine array electrostatic monitoring technology (AEMT) can provide more and more accurate information about the direct product of the fault, and it is a novel condition monitoring technology that is expected to solve the problem of high false alarm rate of traditional electrostatic monitoring technology. However, aliasing of the array electrostatic signals often occurs, which will greatly affect the accuracy of the information identified by using the electrostatic sensor array. The purpose of this paper is to propose special solutions to the above problems.

In this paper, a method for de-aliasing of array electrostatic signals based on compressive sensing principle is proposed by taking advantage of the sparsity of the distribution of multiple pulse signals that originally constitute aliased signals in the time domain.

The proposed method is verified by finite element simulation experiments. The simulation experiments show that the proposed method can recover the original pulse signal with an accuracy of 96.0%; when the number of pulse signals does not exceed 5, the proposed method can recover the pulse peak with an average absolute error of less than 5.5%; and the recovered aliased signal time-domain waveform is very similar to the original aliased signal time-domain waveform, indicating that the proposed method is accurate.

The proposed method is one of the key technologies of AEMT.

Service providers on highly competitive online outsourcing platforms employ various signals to entice buyers to make online purchases. One such signal—the solution exemplars—attracts attention through depictions of exemplary prior work completed by the service providers. Unfortunately, it is not known the extent to which solution exemplar characteristics affect sales performance nor is it clear how such signals perform in the presence of complementary signals such as service provider expertise. This paper explores these issues.

Extending signaling theory, the authors develop a model to explore the effects of solution exemplar characteristics (i.e. exemplar quantity, exemplar diversity and exemplar popularity) on sales performance under the moderating impact of service provider expertise. The authors test the model using proprietary data from ZBJ.com, a leading online outsourcing platform in China.

Exemplar quantity and exemplar popularity positively affect sales performance; exemplar diversity has no significant impact on sales performance and service provider expertise positively moderates the relationships between exemplar quantity, exemplar popularity and sales performance.

This work makes several significant contributions. First, the authors enrich the research on signals in online outsourcing by exploring the impact of solution exemplar characteristics on sales performance. Second, the authors analyze three solution exemplar characteristics: exemplar quantity, exemplar diversity and exemplar popularity. Third, this work shows that service provider expertise moderates the relationship between solution exemplar characteristics and sales performance. Important practical implications for both online outsourcing platforms and service providers are discussed.

Authenticity is a complex character that is valued in service contexts. Frontline service employees (FSEs), as both brand representatives and individuals who interact with clients, can signal their authenticity to customers. The purpose of this study is to investigate how FSEs signal their authenticity to customers. The authors investigate authenticity signal themes and develop a typology of how FSEs use these signals in the workplace.

This research uses a multi-method approach: qualitative data were collected through in-depth interviews with FSE and customers and quantitative data were collected in a follow-up survey using a sample of financial planners.

Findings from both studies show that FSE can use signals reflecting the display of client-centricity, positive emotions, transparency and disclosure of personal information. A latent profile analysis reveals three authenticity signal profiles, differing in the extent to which FSE uses each of these signals.

This study identifies how FSEs can shape perceptions of authenticity in a service context, thus expanding theory by integrating both personal and brand authenticity perspectives. The findings further demonstrate that authenticity can be signaled on multiple dimensions, reflecting the complex nature of this construct.

The findings from this research can guide managers in developing workplace policies that enable FSEs to display authenticity in various ways to customers. Managers can further use the insights from this research to identify needs for FSE training and development.

The authors create novel insights into how FSEs signal authenticity to customers given their dual roles as individuals and brand representatives. This study offers nuanced insights into different types of signals and their application in a service context.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on some important limitations of the ISO 26000 standard for corporate social responsibility (CSR) for the credible communication of corporate CSR claims. The paper aims to identify and explore firm-level strategies to signal adherence to the standard effectively and their legitimacy consequences for the standard.

The identification of firm-level signaling strategies is mainly derived from an institutional description of the ISO 26000 standard and based on anecdotal evidence from current business practice, initiatives that have been taken worldwide by organizations such as national standards institutes, the ISO 26000 text and adjacent ISO documents, including ISO post-publication surveys. The paper is grounded in signaling theory.

Five signaling strategies for firms are derived and explored which may reduce information asymmetries and engage in efficacious signaling of their underlying CSR quality and thus guide the communication of firms’ adherence to the ISO 26000 standard.

The findings urge to empirically investigate the use of ISO 26000 signaling strategies including their legitimacy consequences for firms.

The findings of this paper have implications for decisions firms make when considering working with ISO 26000 and communicating their adherence, notably regarding the enhancement of the credibility of their CSR claims. Also, it offers suggestions for certification organizations, national standards bodies and policy makers that want to encourage the adoption of CSR standards, ISO 26000 in particular.

This paper may have implications for evaluating the CSR claims of firms by stakeholders and broader society.

This paper is the first one to address inherent signaling problems of ISO 26000 and to identify signaling strategies to counter these problems in a structured way.