Contracting and Organizations Research Institute publications (MU)
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Item Contracting for Consistency: Hog Quality and the Use of Marketing Contracts(Social Science Research Network, 2009-03) Jang, Jongick; Sykuta, Michael E.Despite the dramatic change in the organization of the US hog industry over the past two decades, the existing literature offers little insight into the decision by pork packers to use long-term marketing contracts, which represent the dominant form of hog procurement transactions. Existing studies focus instead on the efficacy of incentive mechanisms for which contracts are neither necessary nor sufficient, on hog producers' motivations for accepting contracts, or on packers' use of production contracts or vertical integration, which represent a relatively small share of slaughtered hogs. This paper offers a framework to explain pork packers' adoption of marketing contracts based on packers' downstream strategic market positioning and their resulting demands for specific hog quality attributes. Based on an analysis of hog procurement contract terms and of survey data related to packers' procurement practices, we provide support for the argument that packers' use of contracts is driven by issues of measurement costs and demand for intertemporal consistency of quality rather than by technological and market structure factors associated with asset specificity arguments.Item Farmer Trust in Producer- and Investor-owned Firms: Evidence from Missouri Corn and Soybean Producers(Agribusiness: An International Journal, 2004-12) James, Harvey S. (Harvey Stanley); Sykuta, Michael E.We examine whether cooperatives are characterized by greater trust than investor-owned firms. We survey 2000 Missouri corn and soybean farmers and find that trust and farmer perceptions of honesty and competence are higher in cooperatives than in investor-owned firms and that trust is a significant factor explaining the choice of farmers to market to cooperatives rather than investor-owned firms. Interestingly, we find that trust is more significant in producers' decisions for marketing soybeans than for corn.Item Are Internal Capital Markets Good for Innovation?(2007-07) Klein, Peter G.Which type of firm is more innovative: the decentralized, diversified corporation or the smaller, more narrowly focused “entrepreneurial” firm? According to one argument, diversified corporations can do more R&D because their operating units have access to an internal capital market. Other writers argue that decentralized, diversified firms over-rely on financial accounting criteria to evaluate the performance of their operating units, discouraging divisional managers from investing in projects like R&D with long-term, uncertain payoffs. This paper uses a comprehensive sample of diversified and nondiversified firms from 1980 to 1999 to study the relationship between diversification and innovation. I find a robust negative correlation between diversification and R&D intensity, even when controlling for firm scale, cash flow, and investment opportunities. Industry-adjusted R&D—the difference between the R&D intensity of a diversified firm and the R&D intensity it would most likely have if its divisions were standalone firms—is negative, consistent with the hypothesis that diversification reduces innovation by discouraging R&D investment. However, other evidence suggests that internal-capital-market inefficiencies, rather than managerial myopia, are driving the negative relationship between diversification and innovation.Item Universal Banking and Conflicts of Interest: Evidence from German Initial Public Offerings(Social Science Research Network, 2003-09) Klein, Peter G.; Zoeller, KathrinThis paper investigates conflicts of interest associated with relationship banking. Using a sample of 270 German initial public offerings (IPOs), we ask if universal-bankunderwritten IPOs perform differently from IPOs underwritten by specialized investment banks. We find that universal-bank affiliation is correlated with higher first-day returns (underpricing) but uncorrelated with long-term performance. This suggests that underpricing compensates for potential conflicts of interest. The results also suggest that preexisting bank relationships, rather than issuer characteristics, may determine the choice of underwriter.Item Resources, Capabilities, and Routines in Public Organizations(Social Science Research Network, 2010) Klein, Peter G.; Mahoney, Joseph T.; McGahan, Anita M.; Pitelis, ChristosStates, state agencies, multilateral agencies, and other non-market actors are relatively under-studied in strategic management and organization science. While important contributions to the study of public actors have been made within the agency-theoretic and transaction-cost traditions, there is little research in political economy that builds on resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and behavioral approaches to the firm. Yet public organizations can be characterized as stocks of human and non-human resources, including routines and capabilities; they can possess excess capacity in these resources; and they may grow and diversify in predictable patterns according to behavioral and Penrosean logic. This paper shows how resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and behavioral approaches to understanding public agencies and organizations shed light on their nature and governance.