This article discusses the relational and rhetorical foundations of more than 300 first letters sent in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by merchant or banking houses based in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Americas to two prominent French firms: Roux Brothers and Greffulhe Montz & Cie. We used a quantitative analysis of qualitative aspects of first letters to go beyond the standard opposition between premodern personal exchanges and modern impersonal transactions. The expansion of commercial networks during the period under analysis is often believed to have relied on families and ethnic networks and on explicit recommendations worded in the formulas prescribed in merchant manuals. However, most first letters did not use such resources. In many cases, commercial operations began thanks to a mutual acquaintance but without a formal recommendation. This was in fact the norm in the eighteenth century—and an underestimated foundation of the expansion of European commercial networks. In the early nineteenth century, this norm became less prevalent: it was replaced by diverse relational and rhetorical strategies, from recommendations to prospective letters dispensing with any mention of relationships. Whether before or after 1800, the relational and rhetorical resources displayed in letters did not systematically influence the sender’s chances of becoming a correspondent; instead, they depended on the receiving firm’s commercial strategy.

This article investigates the impact of cross-level interplay between team members’ and their leaders’ goal orientations (learning, performance approach, and performance avoidance) on knowledge sharing using samples from design teams in two companies in China. Our results show that team leaders’ learning goal orientation plays a critical moderating role. Specifically, team leaders’ learning goal orientation strengthens the positive relationship between team members’ learning orientation and knowledge sharing; positively moderates the relationship between team members’ performance approach orientation and knowledge sharing; and weakens the negative relationship between team members’ performance avoidance orientation and knowledge sharing. Team leaders’ performance approach orientation demonstrates a positive moderating effect when there is congruence between the performance approach orientation of leaders and members. Finally, team leaders’ performance avoidance orientation negatively moderates the relationship between team members’ learning and performance approach orientation on knowledge sharing. This research enhances our understanding of the conditions under which knowledge sharing occurs among team members, using the lens of Trait Activation Theory.

Employers who are open to the establishment of a neuro-diverse workforce, including adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), often encounter challenges resulting from both personal characteristics and environmental barriers. Employees with ASD demonstrate evident abilities and a high motivation to work, yet their employment rate remains low. This qualitative phenomenological study explored the perspectives of 11 employers of individuals with ASD from the open labour market. Three themes emerged: employers’ perception of employees with ASD; their motivation to employ an employee with ASD; and accessibility of the work environment: reasonable adjustments. The findings support the importance of factors in the work environment that serve to either inhibit or facilitate the inclusion of people with ASD in the open labour market as much as their personal characteristics. The results relate to workplace accessibility within the context of the organization’s management and justice climate.

Scholars often assume that reference groups are industry-wide, homogeneous, and stable. We examine this assumption and suggest hypotheses based on managers’ motivations such as self-enhancement and self-improvement, social identity, and affiliation-based impression management. We test hypotheses on failure-induced changes in reference groups and their direction in terms of upward and downward comparisons. An empirical examination of changes in reference groups for firms listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index between 1993 and 2008 shows that performance below social aspirations induces changes in reference groups and toward upward comparisons. The results indicate that managers can choose to change the reference group – a cognition-centered response – as an alternative to such action-centered responses as organizational search and risk-taking in response to poor performance from social aspirations and that upward comparisons may be the result of social performance shortfalls to give a better impression and to improve firm performance.

In business the future is not predetermined, and the unexpected often happens. So how should entrepreneurs (and businesses) try to address that future uncertainty? This paper suggests that there are two main options:

1. 1. The often-preferred approach seeks to reduce uncertainty by forecasting and planning, using ‘left-brained’ logic and analysis.

2. 2. The alternative way seeks to live with, and to benefit from, uncertainty by using ideas derived from exploration, effectuation, antifragility and ‘trial and error’.

This paper compares the two approaches and considers their rationales and potential effectiveness. It suggests that forecasting and planning has many drawbacks and is often not the best way to operate in uncertain conditions. Nevertheless, it is often advocated and its thinking seems to have been adopted as the default philosophy for business. Therefore if, as has been suggested, uncertainty is the norm, do we need to advocate adopting a different way of thinking?

Organizations adopt formal sanctioning systems to deter ethical violations, but the formal systems’ effectiveness may be undermined by informal sanctioning systems which promote violations. I conducted an ethnographic study of six trading crowds on two financial exchanges to understand how informal and formal sanctioning systems, which are grounded in different interpretations of equity, interact to affect trader deviance from rules established by the financial exchange (exchange deviance). To deter informal trader norms that conflict with exchange rules, the exchanges formally prohibit traders’ informal sanctions. The exchanges, however, underestimate traders’ informal sanctions related to ostracism and social rejection, which are not only difficult for the exchanges to detect, but also interpersonally hurtful and harmful to trader performance. Consequently, the traders’ informal social sanctions lead to secondary sanctions from trading firms. Ultimately, the informal sanctioning system evades the formal sanctioning system by exploiting what the exchanges deem to be minor rule violations.

We show that market volatility of volatility is a significant risk factor that affects index and volatility index option returns, beyond volatility itself. The volatility and volatility of volatility indices, identified model-free as the VIX and VVIX, respectively, are only weakly related to each other. Delta-hedged index and VIX option returns are negative on average and are more negative for strategies that are more exposed to volatility and volatility-of-volatility risks. Further, volatility and volatility of volatility significantly negatively predict future delta-hedged option payoffs. The evidence suggests that volatility and volatility-of-volatility risks are jointly priced and have negative market prices of risk.

Autistic individuals often face significant challenges to obtaining and maintaining meaningful employment – more so than other disability groups. Work placements appear to be an important step to promote employment outcomes, yet there remains a lack of knowledge about the real-life experiences of those involved in such schemes. This study is the first to take a multi-informant, longitudinal approach to examine corporate work-placement schemes: specifically, an internship for autistic graduates at Deutsche Bank, UK. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with interns, their hiring managers and the colleagues who worked alongside them. Results demonstrated positive, meaningful experiences for the majority of those involved, however, some interns also reported anxiety, difficulties in judging communication and confusion regarding office rules. The current findings contribute to a better understanding of the experiences of skilled autistic individuals in work, and should inform the creation of subsequent programmes aimed to promote employment opportunities for autistic people.

We examine the effects of chief executive officer (CEO) turnover in banks. Incoming bank CEOs face problems of information asymmetry because banks’ operations are opaque and bank risk can change dramatically in a short time. These CEOs may therefore change bank policies to manage their personal risks. Since CEO turnover is usually endogenous, we utilize a setting in which CEO turnover is based solely on retirement age and is thus exogenous to bank performance. Consistent with our thesis, incoming CEOs increase provisioning for future delinquencies and shrink lending. Bank stock prices decline following these changes. Politically motivated lending or ever-greening cannot explain our results.

Research departments are managed by directors of research (DORs). Subordinate analysts working for higher-quality DORs provide superior earnings forecasts that elicit stronger market reactions, provide better investment recommendations, and have better career outcomes. For the broker, higher-quality DORs drive more trading commissions. Economically, analysts benefit the most from DOR–analyst industry alignment resulting from DORs’ former analyst experience. We provide several tests to mitigate endogeneity concerns and explore various mechanisms to explain these results. Overall, our article identifies a unique channel whereby the industry-specific and general human capital of top management filters through to individual subordinates and consequently improves organizational performance.

Our study of entrepreneurial engagement within a depleted New Zealand community contributes to understanding the role of place and legitimacy in entrepreneurial practice. General decline characterised Stanton until a newcomer entrepreneur started several businesses that rejuvenated the town. She became a local economic hero to many stakeholders; but others deployed social narratives of place that drew on different values. Our analysis of interactions shows how perceptions of place legitimise or vilify and we demonstrate how place intercedes upon economically generated legitimacy of entrepreneurial practice. Social constructions of place and notions of embeddedness influenced this entrepreneurial enactment. Conceptually, we challenge ideas about universal legitimacy ensuing from economic entrepreneurial benefits. Our theoretical contribution offers socio-spatial propositions for understanding entrepreneurial legitimacy through place.

The objective of this paper is to understand the influence of emotional intelligence on creativity, considering the mediating roles of job resourcefulness, self-motivation and organizational commitment moderated by individual success. The investigation is based on data from 519 questionnaires collected from a sample of Portuguese workers. Structural equation modeling was used with multigroup analysis.The results show a positive influence of emotional intelligence on creativity and other behavioral variables, and individual success appeared to moderate most of the presented relationships. The sample used in this study is not probabilistic, thus the results are difficult to generalize. This investigation identifies several work-related outcomes of emotional intelligence and highlights its importance and raises new ideas for training programs, namely in the field of soft skills. This investigation is innovative in that we analyze the mediating effects of different variables, like job resourcefulness, on emotional intelligence’s relationship with creativity, moderated by individual success.