Recent evidence suggests the connection between quality improvement and financial results may be weak. Consider the case of Analog Devices, Inc., a leading manufacturer of integrated circuits. Analog's TQM program was a dramatic success. Yield doubled, cycle time was cut in half, and product defects fell by a factor of ten. However, financial performance worsened. To explore the apparent parado...

an important determinant of health system performance is contracting. providers often respond to financial incentives, despite the ethical underpinnings of medicine, and payers can craft contracts to influence performance. yet contracting is highly imperfect in both single-payer and multi-payer health systems. arguably, in a competitive, multi-payer environment, contractual innovation may occur...

Using a sample of 277 firms from eight East Asian economies, the relationship between financial distress and firm performance during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998 was tested. The crisis provides an exogenous shock which reduces the endogeneity issues between firm performance and leverage. The results from this study reaffirm that firms with low financial leverage tend to perform bette...

Existing models of financial instability tend to be based on top-down, partial-equilibrium views of markets and their interactions; they are unable to incorporate the complexity of behavior among heterogeneous firms or the tendency for all types of firms to change their behavior during a crisis. This paper argues that agent-based models (ABMs)—which seek to explain how the behavior of individua...

This study is an attempt to find a causal relation between financial ratios and tax avoidance. Aside from direct financial responsibilities, we conjecture that firms that avoid taxes will also face indirect negative financial repercussions, such as degradation of their reputation in the investment market. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility) activities are refl...

Recent years have been characterized by massive layoffs of IT workers – primarily triggered by declining corporate profitability and increased off-shoring of IT work. However, it is unclear whether IT worker downsizing has generated any economic returns or business performance improvements for IT firms. In this study, our primary objective is to investigate the financial performance impacts of ...

the corporate sector all over the world is restructuring its operations through different types  of  consolidation  strategies  like  mergers  and  acquisitions  in  order  to  face challenges  posed  by  the  new  pattern  of  globalization,  which  has  led  to  the  greater integration of national and international markets.. the intensity of cross-border operations recorded an unprecedented ...

Using comprehensive financial and accounting data on China’s listed firms from 1998 to 2002, augmented by unique data on CEO turnover, ownership structure and board characteristics, we estimate Logit models of CEO turnover and find that: (i) even if the firm is listed in the stock exchanges, there is no significant and negative link between CEO turnover and firm performance unless there is a la...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of competitive strategy and performance measurement in the Malaysian context by applying a modified version of Conant et al’s generic strategy scale and categorizing Malaysian firms along the Miles and Snow business strategy typology. Design/methodology/approach – Competitive strategy and performance measurement were...

A stock exchange is an entity which provides ‘‘trading’’ facilities for stock brokers and traders to trade stocks and other securities. How to invest in stock exchange is one of the important issues in investment, and one of the factors that can help investors in the process of investment is the efficiency of the corporation under consideration. Data envelopment analysis is a mathematical method...