Search results

Business cycles strongly influence corporate sales and profits, yet strategy research largely ignores the possibility that corporate management practices related to the business cycle influence profitability. This paper aims to offer initial empirical support for the view that high peformance firms use a variety of business cycle management (BCM) practices that low performance firms do not.

This exploratory study examines the association of firm performance with business cycle management behaviors identified in the prescriptive literature and further developed from a set of case analyses. The empirical analysis uses a matched sample of 35 pairs of high vs low performers from the S&P 500.

Discriminant and conditional logit analyses provide preliminary evidence that business cycle‐sensitive behaviors such as countercyclical hiring and investment associate positively with firm performance.

Future research should use larger data sets and strictly archival data to overcome the limitations of the small sample size and data coding with some subjective elements.

This research suggests a variety of business cycle related practices dealing with staffing, capital investment, acquisitions and divestitures, capital financing, credit policy, pricing, and advertising may improve firm performance.

This is the first paper to offer evidence of the impact of business cycle related practices across a range of practices and industries.

This paper draws attention to President Trump’s isolationist policies and aims to show that it is reminiscent of the era of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff of the 1930s. This paper posits that the isolationism coupled with the Trump government’s brash and uneasy relationship with other governments of the world will only harm the US economy because history has shown that isolationism does not work.

This paper briefly discusses the relationship between conflict and international trade and whether trade and economic interdependence are tools that are relevant in preventing the initiation, escalation and settlement of conflicts. It also draws a comparison between President Trump’s increasingly isolationist policies and the political climate of the USA in the 1930s, with particular reference to the Tariff Act of 1930. This paper finally explores the present tensions with other countries and likely consequences for America.

A direct relationship exists between conflict and trade because the presence of good trade relationships does not take away from but only helps to maintain peace and friendly relationships among nations. Furthermore, Trump’s isolationist policies are certainly going to harm the USA in the long run and a big part of that is because of the personality of the President himself.

This paper is an original work of the author and it strives to remind us of a similar past in US history, and warn of the dangers of the present course of the Trump administration.

Given the substantial resources of the United States, the failure of the American federal response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been both tragic and avoidable. The authors frame this response as an artifact of power-addiction among administration officials and examine the US federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of maladaptive denial by government officials, including President Trump.

The authors use qualitative research methods for this study by analyzing key events, public statements by administration officials from multiple credible media reports and US federal government websites. The authors analyzed these data using Weidner and Purohit's (2009) model describing maladaptive denial in organizations and power-addiction among leaders.

The authors' analysis identifies maladaptive denial – and the concomitant power-addiction – as significantly contributing to the Trump administration's failed response to COVID-19. Maladaptive denial and power-addiction characterized Trump as a candidate and for the three years of his presidency preceding the COVID-19 crisis. Whatever normative “guardrails” or checks and balances existed in the American system to restrict the administration's behavior before the crisis were ill-equipped to significantly prevent or alter the failed federal response to the pandemic.

The article applies the model of maladaptive denial in organizations (Weidner and Purohit, 2009) to the public sector, and explores the lengths to which power-addicted leaders and regimes can violate the public's trust in institutions in a crisis, even in the US, a liberal democracy characterized by freedom of political expression. While organizations and change initiatives may fail for a variety of reasons, this case revealed the extent to which maladaptive denial can permeate a government – or any organization – and its response to a crisis.