BACKGROUND Early onset sepsis (EOS) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in preterm infants, yet diagnosis remains inadequate resulting in missed cases or prolonged empiric antibiotics with adverse consequences. Evaluation of acute phase reactant (APR) biomarkers in umbilical cord blood at birth may improve EOS detection in preterm infants with intrauterine infection. METHODS In this n...

Acquisitions enable target chief executive officers (CEOs) to remove liquidity restrictions on stock and option holdings and diminish the illiquidity discount. Acquisitions also enable acquirer CEOs to improve the long-term value of overvalued holdings. Examining all firms during 1993 to 2001, we show that CEOs with higher holdings (illiquidity discount) are more likely to make acquisitions (ge...

We study management turnover in the set of top 5 executives for a sample of 443 large firms from 1993-1998. Using information from news articles and severance disclosures in proxy statements, we find that the rate of forced turnover for non-CEOs is at least as great as the rate for CEOs, but the sensitivity of turnover to aggregate firm performance is relatively smaller for non-CEOs. The probab...

We examine experimentally how Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) respond to incentives and how they provide incentives in situations requiring trust and trustworthiness. As a control we compare the behavior of CEOs with the behavior of students. We find that CEOs are considerably more trusting and exhibit more trustworthiness than students – thus reaching substantially higher efficiency levels tha...

An opportunity exists to develop useful and authentic Knowledge Management strategies for competitive advantage through facilitating organizational decision makers within their world, in terms of their reality and purposes instead of adapting existing thinking to this area and calling it Knowledge Management. Whilst HR specialists may connect knowledge with what people have learnt or their expe...

in the wake of the global financial crisis. Recent indignation over seemingly exorbitant CEO compensation in the face of poor company performance have given rise to the question: Does CEO pay accurately reflect CEO ability? If so, does the CEO make a difference to company performance? Practitioners intuitively know the importance of top CEOs, however does academic research concur? Despite its e...

Recent empirical results have found a declining trend in the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of acquiring firms during an M&A program. Should one conclude that CEOs undertaking M&As are infected by hubris and unable to learn? We first confirm the existence of this declining trend. However, we find a positive CAR trend for CEOs most likely to be infected by hubris and a negative (and significan...

New Zealand firms exhibit significant variation in the extent to which they formally involve CEOs in the executive pay-setting process: a considerable number sit on the compensation committee, while others are excluded from the board altogether. Using 1997-2005 data, we find that CEOs who sit on the compensation committee obtain generous annual pay rewards that have low sensitivity to poor perf...

In this paper, I examine possible reasons behind observed differences in audit committee composition and activity. The governance structures of audit committees appear to be sensitive in meeting the monitoring and litigation risk needs of the parent firm. However, boards with stronger CEOs also have a higher probability of placing insiders and interested directors on their audit committees than...