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Student Managed Funds (SMFs) are extremely popular investment programs at many colleges and universities that provide their students with experiential learning opportunities to manage real money. However, the size, scope and specific features of these SMFs differ substantially. The purpose of this paper is to deliberate about a panel discussion on several important SMF issues that took place at the Southern Finance Association conference in November, 2016.

The panel includes one moderator and four panelists, all of whom serve as SMF faculty directors at their respective schools.

The panelists’ answers show that almost no two SMFs are created the same, supervised the same way by different faculty directors or managed the same way by their respective students.

The panelists provide insight about their respective SMFs and offer advice on how to create SMFs and how to supervise students managing SMFs in a more effective manner.

This paper aims to provide an update to the risk management literature, as it compiles a survey of 65 recent theoretical and empirical studies on the topic.

This is a survey paper that summarizes recent theoretical and empirical research regarding the relationship between risk management and firm value.

Recent empirical evidence provides support for theoretical propositions in the literature that risk management increases firm value and returns, while reducing return and cash flow volatility. The results are largely consistent with early findings, and there have been significant empirical advances that address concerns regarding the endogeneity of risk management practices relative to corporate financial decisions. The literature has become broader and deeper, as there are now studies with larger sample sizes across more industries and geographic areas.

Firms that use sound risk management practices obtain higher valuations, achieve better financial performance and experience diminished costs of financial distress. Recent research has emerged regarding enterprise risk management and its potential for value creation and risk reduction.

The paper provides a new compilation and synthesis of recent theoretical and empirical research in risk management that addresses many of the limitations of prior research.

The purpose of this general review is to enhance understanding of the importance of a corporation’s whole ethics of governance regime and the connection to governance practices. This connection is often missing from corporate governance discussion. There is need for better business community awareness of a well-developed ethics of governance regime guiding appropriate board structure and composition choices subject to firm age and size, understanding of how these choices evolve as the firm matures and grows, plus the benefits from more emphasis in this area for company director training and development. This paper synthesises the theoretical and empirical insight from the ethics and corporate governance literatures to give guidance on best practice for large, medium size and small stock exchange listed companies. This synthesis of the literature evidences that the preferred Australian Institute of Company Directors agency theory prescription for a corporate board is not always optimal. In terms of practical implications advice is given on sound choices on board composition, director selection, plus director training and development that will give the best probability of effective board decisions and strong firm performance – this is not ‘one size fits all’ corporations advice. Future research should focus on whole ethics of governance regimes and governance practices in place for companies that have succeeded compared with companies that have failed. This will improve understanding in this area. This is a substantial future research agenda item as deeper knowledge of this contrast may add significantly to understanding of corporate success and failure.

Board diversity has been a hotly debated topic in the field of corporate governance. The paper examines the role of board chairperson and its moderating effect on the relationship between job-related diversity and boards’ strategic tasks performance. The purpose of this paper is to add on our body of knowledge about the impact of job-related diversity on boards’ strategic tasks performance.

The paper applies the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to examine survey responses from chief executive officers (CEOs). Both the measurement model and structural model have obtained good results, supporting the appropriateness of using the SEM approach.

The findings suggest that there is a positive association between job-related diversity and boards’ strategic tasks performance, which is moderated by a chairperson’s leadership efficacy and the option of a former-CEO as board chair.

To achieve the intended effect of job-related diversity in boards, policymakers need to be mindful about the importance of the board chairperson. Board chairperson’s characteristics such as leadership efficacy and a former-CEO experience would amplify the positive effect of diversity.

This research paper contributes to the literature on board diversity, board leadership and strategic management of firms. Findings validated researchers’ concern about the negligence of examining moderating factors in board diversity research. Moreover, results echo the concern that board leadership research should shift the attention from structural aspects to the behavioral issues. Finally, this study is the first to show the positive influence of a board chairperson in disseminating benefits of a diverse board.

The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of supplier selection method on key procurement outcomes such as procurement lead time (PLT), supplier performance and buyer team size.

Data were collected from a sample of 124 archival contract records from the US Department of Defense. A multiple regression model and multivariate analysis of covariance/analysis of covariance models were used to test the effects of source selection method on pertinent procurement outcomes.

The trade-off (TO) source selection method increases PLT, as does the number of evaluation factors and the number of proposals received. Substantially larger sourcing teams are also associated with the TO source selection method. Nonetheless, the TO method results in better supplier performance.

TO source selections yield superior supplier performance than low-bidder methods. However, they are costly in terms of time and personnel. Any assessment of supplier value should consider not only the price premium for higher performance but also the transaction costs associated with the TO method.

Very little research addresses a buying team’s evaluation of supplier-offered value ex ante and whether that value assessment materializes into actual value-added supplier performance. Low bidder tactics are pervasive, but price (i.e. sacrifice) is only one component of value. Benefits from superior supplier performance may yield greater overall value. If value is critical to the buyer, a TO source selection method – versus a low-bidder approach – is the appropriate tool because of higher supplier performance ex post.

Many governments and public organizations are turning to shared service arrangements to decrease costs while increasing service levels. This paper aims to elucidate the fine-grained challenges managers face as they adjust to working under a shared service arrangement.

A two-year longitudinal ethnographic field study followed the IT shared service transformation process at a large public university. Meeting observations, emails, documents and interviews were used in the qualitative analysis.

The research identifies 11 challenges faced by management undergoing a transition to shared services. The authors use a taxonomy of management challenges based on the organizational perspectives literature (Knol et al., 2014) to organize the challenges and relate them to prior literature.

The novel findings include the importance of changing organizational culture, balancing dual interests of cost and customer focus, establishing a sense of urgency and achieving process standardization through practicing when adopting a shared service arrangement. The results from a single case study may not by generalizable to other organizations.

This study provides a nuanced and fine-grained understanding of the managerial challenges of adopting IT-shared services. This unique longitudinal data set describes in nuanced detail the challenges faced by frontline managers.

Mental health problems are increasing in society. To deal with these problems effectively, it is imperative that appropriate treatments are delivered. Some evidence suggests that patients often do not complete the full course of many psychotherapy treatments. The aim of this study was to estimate the average length of treatment for patients referred to the adult specialty of a large clinical psychology department. A stratified sampling strategy was chosen to obtain an unbiased and precise estimator of the average treatment length for the population of patients whose files had been closed in one calendar year (n = 3021). The stratified sampling mean estimator for the population mean was 3.9 appointments; standard psychotherapy treatments are often planned to be more than ten appointments. These results suggest that many patients are failing to receive the full treatment planned by mental health professionals. Perhaps more psychotherapy treatments need to be delivered in a smaller number of appointments. Stratified sampling could be used to estimate treatment duration in particular contexts, thereby allowing treatments to be designed to meet local needs.

This paper aims to investigate what factors influence women’s meaningful and equitable persistence in computing and technology fields. It draws on theories of learning and equity from the learning sciences to inform the understanding of women’s underrepresentation in computing as it investigates young women who showed an interest in computing in high school and followed-up with them in their college and careers.

The mixed-methods approach compares data from quantitative surveys and qualitative focus groups and interviews. The sample comes from database of 1,500 young women who expressed interest in computing by applying for an award for high schoolers. These women were surveyed in 2013 and then again in 2016, with 511 women identifying themselves as high schoolers in 2013 and then having graduated and pursued college or careers in the second survey. The authors also conducted qualitative interviews and focus groups with 90 women from the same sample.

The findings show that multiple factors influence women’s persistence in computing, but the best predictor of women’s persistence is access to early computing and programming opportunities. However, access and opportunities must be evaluated within broader social and contextual factors.

The main limitation is that the authors measure women’s persistence in computing according to their chosen major or profession. This study does not measure the impact of computational thinking in women’s everyday lives.

Educators and policymakers should consider efforts to make Computer Science-for-All a reality.

Few longitudinal studies of a large sample of women exist that follow women interested in computing from high school into college and careers particularly from a critical educational equity perspective.

This paper aims to examine how interfirm transactional and relational assets drive firm performance (FP) in digitally integrated supply chains.

The authors combine the Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and Relational Exchange Theory (RET) frameworks to hypothesize that FP will be a function of Asset Specificity (AS), Digital Technology Usage (DTU) and Collaborative Information Sharing (CIS). In addition, the authors hypothesize that Supply Chain Integration (SCI) will partially mediate the effect of DTU and fully mediate the impact of AS and CIS on FP. A cross-sectional survey of supply chain managers is used to test the hypotheses.

Findings indicate that specific investments in digitally integrated supply chains would increase FP. In addition, SCI fully mediates the relationships between AS and FP and CIS and FP, while SCI partially mediates the influence of DTU on FP.

Managers could strategically engage in the technologies that effectively fit within the firm’s supply chain strategies and seek to develop a pragmatic expertise that enables the effective use of technology in a comprehensive setting.

The study enriches the extant literature by incorporating TCE and RET as contradictory viewpoints on AS and investigating how transactional and relational assets affect FP in digitally integrated supply chains.