London Business School

About: London Business School is a education organization based out in London, England, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Portfolio & Equity (finance). The organization has 1138 authors who have published 5118 publications receiving 437980 citations. The organization is also known as: LBS.

The impact of HR practices on the performance of business units

Abstract: This article examines the impact of HR practices and organisational commitment on the operating performance and profitability of business units. Using a predictive design with a sample of 50 autonomous business units within the same corporation, the article reveals that both organisational commitment and HR practices are significantly related to operational measures of performance, as well as operating expenses and pre-tax profits.

Trust and Performance in Cross-Border Marketing Partnerships: A Behavioral Approach

Abstract: Existing research on international partnerships focuses primarily on the ex ante structuring of interorganizational relationships This study departs from this research by taking a behavioral approach to understand the ex post maintenance of cross-border marketing partnerships A conceptual model is developed by identifying the antecedents of trust and performance in such partnerships The model is empirically tested on a sample of US firms having distributor and licensing relationships with firms from Asia, Europe, and Central/South America Findings support the importance of bilateral relational norms and informal monitoring mechanism in building interorganizational trust and improving market performance of international partnerships

Personality and domain-specific risk taking

Abstract: The concept of risk propensity has been the subject of both theoretical and empirical investigation, but with little consensus about its definition and measurement. To address this need, a new scale assessing overall risk propensity in terms of reported frequency of risk behaviours in six domains was developed and applied: recreation, health, career, finance, safety and social. The paper describes the properties of the scale and its correlates: demographic variables, biographical self‐reports, and the NEO PI‐R, a Five Factor personality inventory (N = 2041). There are three main results. First, risk propensity has clear links with age and sex, and with objective measures of career‐related risk taking (changing jobs and setting up a business). Second, the data show risk propensity to be strongly rooted in personality. A clear Big Five pattern emerges for overall risk propensity, combining high extraversion and openness with low neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. At the subscale level, sensa...

Accounting in its social context: Towards a history of value added in the United Kingdom

Abstract: Although the relationship between accounting and society has been posited frequently, it has been subjected to little systematic analysis. This paper reviews some existing theories of the social nature of accounting practice and, by so doing, identifies a number of significant conceptual problems. Using the case of the rise of interest in value added accounting in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, the paper conducts a social analysis of this particular event and then seeks to draw out the theoretical issues and problems which emerge from this exercise. Finally, the implications of these for the social analysis of accounting are discussed.

Open Platform Strategies and Innovation: Granting Access vs. Devolving Control

Abstract: This paper studies two fundamentally distinct approaches to opening a technology platform and their different impacts on innovation. One approach is to grant access to a platform and thereby open up markets for complementary components around the platform. Another approach is to give up control over the platform itself. Using data on 21 handheld computing systems (1990--2004), I find that granting greater levels of access to independent hardware developer firms produces up to a fivefold acceleration in the rate of new handheld device development, depending on the precise degree of access and how this policy was implemented. Where operating system platform owners went further to give up control (beyond just granting access to their platforms) the incremental effect on new device development was still positive but an order of magnitude smaller. The evidence from the industry and theoretical arguments both suggest that distinct economic mechanisms were set in motion by these two approaches to opening.