Frederik Drescher addresses the timing of non-mandatory insolvency filings based on threatening illiquidity (18 InsO) with the aim of a company's restructuring as an agency problem between owners and management. Using a decision model, the author develops the hypothesis of a tendency towards delayed insolvency filings and confirms it experimentally. Moreover, he analyzes different incentive instruments potentially leading to earlier insolvency filings. Contents Insolvency Timing as an Agency Problem Financial Distress and Insolvency Timing Managerial Insolvency Timing Decision Experimental Testing of Interest Alignment Instruments Target Groups Researchers and students in the field of business economics with a focus on corporate restructuring and decision theory Practitioners in corporate restructuring and insolvency professionals, managers and company owners.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the analytical productiveness of a discursive power perspective in understanding interdisciplinary teams' inefficient decision processes, and to discuss the ethical consequences of such an approach.Design/methodology/approachBased on a case study of an interdisciplinary team in a Danish hospital, the paper analyzes the team's decision practices as a result of discursive power operations that privilege and marginalize groups and persons.FindingsThe paper shows that a discourse of equality dominates the team's decision practices. This produces a tendency among members to word observations as reflections whereas expert assessments are rendered unlikely and unwelcome. The paper demonstrates that this analysis is productive in understanding why interdisciplinary teams struggle to develop efficient decision processes. Furthermore, the paper suggests that managers should respond ethically to these discursive power operations with political interventions.Originality/valueA variety of theoretical models have been proposed to understand interdisciplinary teams' problematic decision processes. This paper makes an original contribution to this field by shoving how a discursive framework provides a productive analytical strategy. Moreover, the paper's proposition of political intervention as an ethical way of securing social sustainability is unprecedented.
The present dissertation applies findings from the field of cognitive psychology to the business context. Specifically, it examines the influence of different types of similarity on decisions in the areas of innovation and strategy. Similarity and related concepts, such as strategic fit, play an important role in these fields, such as when generating or assessing the value of ideas. However, recent findings in cognitive psychology, indicating that a purely taxonomic, traditional model of similarity does not capture the entire picture of similarity, have widely been ignored in the business context. Two entities are taxonomically similar if they belong to the same category based on features they share (e.g., dog and cat). In contrast, entities are thematically similar if they co-occur or interact in the same scenario or event (e.g., dog and bone). Thematic thinking builds on the latter type of similarity. The present dissertation focuses on the role thematic similarity plays in managerial decision making and takes the first steps toward establishing thematic thinking as a business-relevant concept, using a multi-study approach. After explaining the conceptual basis of thematic thinking, hypotheses are derived and tested, using four different samples of field data and applying different methods of data collection. The main body of the dissertation comprises four empirical studies. The first study that is presented examines individual antecedents and outcomes of thematic thinking based on a sample using survey data from 199 individuals. Positive affect and experience are shown to be positively related to thematic thinking. A negative relationship is postulated for thematic thinking and formal education; the relationship found is indeed negative, yet not significant. The empirical findings related to the outcomes of thematic thinking turn out to be the opposite of the postulated relationships: creativity is found to be significantly negatively related to thematic thinking, while adaptation is significantly positively related to it. The second empirical study investigates the relationship between thematic thinking and individual performance within the research and development (R&D) context. The findings are based on a sample of 172 R&D professionals. As hypothesized, a significant positive relationship between thematic thinking and innovativeness as well as job performance are hown. The relationship between thematic thinking and job performance is mediated by innovativeness. Furthermore, post-hoc analyses reveal that the relationship between thematic thinking and job performance is moderated by political skill.
Previous studies have researched many factors that predict life satisfaction. However, research that focuses on testing the role of decision-making on life satisfaction is still limited, even though almost every aspect of human life involves decision-making and the results can determine one's life situation. There were prior studies attempted to explore the relationships between life satisfaction and decision making, however the results are not conclusive. Therefore, this study aims to test the relationship between decision-making styles and life satisfactions. Convenience sampling used in data collection, and there were 154 university students participated in this study. This study uses a cross-sectional survey design to test the research hypothesis. The survey consisted of research information, informed consent, demographic, and measuring instrument for research variables. Decision making styles measured using General Decision-Making Styles (Scott & Bruce, 1995) and Maximizing Scale (Schwartz et al., 2002).Life satisfaction measured using Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1995). The result of multiple linear regression analysis shows that rational decision-making style and tendency to satisfice significantly predict higher level of life-satisfaction, while spontaneous decision-making style and tendency to maximize predict lower level of life-satisfaction. On the other hand, intuitive, dependent, and avoidant decision-making style do not significantly predict life-satisfaction. The implication and direction for future research are discussed.
