Dan Dalton

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Kelley School of Business

Board independence is an important element in the perception of the quality of a firm's governance. This issue, however, can be exacerbated for new ventures because the CEOs are often the founders. For the new venture, then, it is possible that (i) the founder is the CEO, (ii) the founder is also the board chairperson, and (iii) the board is not in...

Board structure refers to whether the chief executive officer (CEO) concurrently serves as chairperson of the board of directors. Board composition refers to the relative proportions of inside (management) and outside directors. While these two board configurations are most salient in the corporate context (i.e., firms whose stock is publicly trade...

We investigate four facets of the post-editorship research performance of journal editors (i.e., number of articles in refereed journals, books, book chapters, and presentations at professional conferences) and their relationship with nonresearch performance at the university (i.e., department, school/college, university) and professional (i.e., pr...

We adopt a construct validity lens to provide a critical reexamination of established corporate governance research. In particular, we focus on the body of work relying on the theoretical bases of agency theory and involving boards of directors’ independence, CEO duality, equity holdings, and their relationships to corporate financial performance....

The file drawer problem rests on the assumption that statistically non‐significant results are less likely to be published in primary‐level studies and less likely to be included in meta‐analytic reviews, thereby resulting in upwardly biased meta‐analytically derived effect sizes. We conducted 5 studies to assess the extent of the file drawer probl...

Each year shareholders, via exercise of their proxy votes, have the opportunity to voice their support or displeasure with firms and director nominees. Examining over 2,000 Fortune 500 director nominees, we explore those indicators available to shareholders at the time of directors' (re)election to provide insight into shareholder discontent with d...

The authors provide two examples of contemporary and contentious issues related to the governance of publicly traded corporations—the composition of boards of directors and the choice of CEO or board chairperson leadership structures. In each case, despite voluminous empirical attention, there is virtually no evidence related to the financial perfo...

Continued attention in both the popular and academic press regarding negotiation and the related concepts of influence and persuasion is nothing short of astonishing. The topics on which we focus in this article, however, are rarely--if ever--vetted in such outlets. We venture, with some measure of caution, into the dark side of negotiation: those...

Few aspects of corporate board diversity have generated the focused attention that the participation, position, and promise of women's service on the board has generated, especially in recent years. Of particular note is the extent to which women serve on large firm boards of directors (e.g., Fortune 500 firms). Increases in levels of participation...

Meta-analysis is the dominant approach to research synthesis in the organizational sciences. We discuss seven meta-analytic practices, misconceptions, claims, and assumptions that have reached the status of myths and urban legends (MULs). These seven MULs include issues related to data collection (e.g., consequences of choices made in the process o...

Although women are making slow inroads onto the boards of the Fortune 500, those who have arrived are gaining influence at a good clip. The percentage of women sitting on, and heading, crucial committees - such as audit, compensation, and nominating and corporate governance - is increasing markedly.

In recent years, the entire fabric of corporate governance, certainly in the United States, has dramatically changed. With the passage of what has colloquially become known as SOX (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), US-based corporations have operated under stricter governance guidelines than at any previous time, especially as regards the structure...

Director compensation can potentially represent an ethical minefield. When faced with supporting strategic decisions that can lead to an increase in director pay, directors may consider their own interests and not solely those of the shareholders to whom they are legally bound to represent. In such cases, directors essentially become agents, rather...

A central tenet of agency theory is that there is potential for mischief when the interests of owners and managers diverge. In those circumstances, and for a variety of reasons, managers may be able to exact higher rents than are reasonable or than the owners of the firm would otherwise accord them. While that foundational element of agency theory...

Purpose – This paper discusses shareholder activists in the public forum. Design/methodology/approach – This as a viewpoint paper in which the authors discuss the roles played by shareholder activists in the public forum. Findings – There are a variety of responses that companies may take in response to activism. Originality/value – The authors...

Purpose – This paper discusses perquisites for executives. Design/methodology/approach – This as a viewpoint paper in which the authors discuss perquisites for executives. Findings – Not only must the amounts of compensation, perquisites in particular, be listed, the Compensation Committee of the Board (or equivalent group) must also provide the...

The authors' role is to comment on the four articles that compose this feature topic of Organizational Research Methods on meta-analysis. In that spirit, the authors note the common themes addressed in this work and its contribution to a growing body of literature addressing pivotal aspects of meta-analyses. Also, the authors discuss some elements...

Purpose – The paper discusses some finer points on CEO succession. Design/methodology/approach – This as a viewpoint paper in which the authors discuss the merits and disadvantages of various approaches to CEO succession Findings – CEO succession planning is a fundamental element of enterprise risk. A board must have an effective CEO and the boar...

One strategic action which is often taken by firms in need of a turnaround is to bring in a new chief executive officer (CEO). Many observers argue, however, that having done this the new CEO must replace large numbers of top managers in order to effect a change in the firm's interactions and subsequent performance. Critics of this perspective insi...

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to look at CEO succession in light of regulations and post‐Sarbanes‐Oxley (post‐SOX) dynamics. Design/methodology/approach Describes best‐in‐class practices for boards of directors responsible for CEO succession. Findings Finds that the post‐SOX dynamics promise to even further confound boards of directors' res...

Purpose The paper aims to at CEO succession in light of regulations and post‐SOX dynamics. Design/methodology/approach The paper examines CEO succession in light of regulations and post‐SOX dynamics. Findings It has been increasingly argued that the formal CEO succession process is in disrepair. The post‐SOX dynamics described in previous section...

There is extensive and persuasive documentation that the gender of an individual may bias a wide variety of managerial decisions. Potential differences in workplace justice as a function of the “defendent's” gender, however, have received little attention in organizational studies, and remain untested outside laboratory protocol. This study of 361...

Many areas of personnel research are “sensitive.” We provide an empirical assessment of the unmatched count technique (UCT) to determine the base rate for a number of proscribed behaviors for professional auctioneers. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical application of a UCT technique in organizational studies. Advantages of the UCT are di...

Purpose – Looks at increasing number of related party transactions despite regulatory scrutiny. Findings – Although related party transactions per se are not illegal or underhanded, they have the potential to raise red flags more readily than other transactions. Practical implications – Provides executives with information on related party transa...

Purpose - Examines new SEC guidelines for the reporting of "Executive Compensation and Related Party Disclosure". Design/methodology/approach - The study discusses the new SEC guidelines for the reporting of "Executive Compensation and Related Party Disclosure". Findings - The compensation of governance boards should not include contingent arrangem...

The Journal of Management, now one of the preeminent journals in the discipline, completed its 30th year of publication in 2004. To provide an understanding of the journal's development, this article reviews its origins as recounted in reflections by its past editors, examines three decades of publication statistics, and provides a brief look at th...

Purpose This paper looks at the failure of corporate boards to incorporate best practices into their functioning. Design/methodology/approach The study discusses the failure of corporate boards to incorporate best practices into their functioning. Findings One answer to the continued failure of corporate governance, albeit not likely the answer,...

A considerable amount of research has investigated the linkage between top management team (TMT) characteristics and firm financial performance. Much of this research relies on demographic data. While these data are reliable and accessible, findings across studies are not consistent. Meta-analysis of several TMT indicators and firm financial perfor...

Purpose This paper aims to look at whether an organization should grow by acquisition or organic (internal) growth. Design/methodology/approach The study discusses problems with non‐organic growth and gives reasons why organic growth is a better alternative. Findings The study finds that firms relying on organic growth derive most of their expans...

Purpose – Looks at the decision by some public companies to go dark and avoid regulatory requirements. Findings – To go dark, companies must meet only minimal guidelines. It may be a tempting option in light of Sarbanes Oxley and other regulations and it can save a company the time and money for reporting. But going dark may be a very risky strate...

Relying on one of the more notable entrepreneurial settings, an initial public offering (IPO), this article extends prior work on top management team (TMT) characteristics. We examine whether or not prestigious TMTs at the time of an IPO enhance organizational legitimacy and thereby provide a signal to potential investors. Because an IPO represents...

Purpose – Looks at group decision making by Boards and impact of diversity on effectiveness. Findings – Extensive research fails to demonstrate the superiority of the separate board leadership structure. Other factors supersede the need for independence where board leadership is concerned. There is no substitute for a single strong leader who is a...

Using event history analysis, we found that CEOs and CFOs of firms filing a material financial restatement were more than twice as likely to exit their firms as their counterparts in a matched sample. Directors and audit committee members were approximately 70 percent more likely to exit in restatement firms. The magnitude, ubiquity, and temporal p...

Purpose Looks at modern guidelines for corporate governance as essentially an exercise in profiling. Sarbanes‐Oxley, oversight agencies, and self‐regulatory agencies focus on the adoption of certain board composition configurations in a purely subjective way and on the basis of factors not clearly linked to outcomes. This paper suggests that other...

Meta-analysis has been relied on relatively infrequently in strategic management studies, certainly as compared to other fields such as the medical sciences, psychology, and education. This may be unfortunate, as there are several aspects of the manner in which strategic management studies are typically conducted that make them especially appropria...

Purpose Looks at the issue of repricing stock options for CEOs and other senior managers when existing option are under water. The board of directors has the option of exchanging existing options (i.e. the underwater options) for new options with a lower exercise price. Design/methodology/approach Opinion piece. Findings There is no evidence that...

This study examines the impact that the publication of ratings of boards of directors by the business press has on stockholder wealth. We report findings from an event study of price reactions to the publication of Business Week's 1996 and 1997 ratings of boards of directors of U.S. corporations. As hypothesized, favorable ratings resulted in signi...

Purpose – Looks at attempts to avoid Sarbanes‐Oxley guidelines over past few years. It has been widely reported, for example, that the number of public companies announcing their intention to privatize has increased 30 percent since the enactment of SOX. Some other companies will elect not to seek initial public offerings but will remain private en...

Boards of directors and corporate governance, more generally, continue to capture the attention of practitioners and scholars alike. There are now several reports, such as the Higgs Review, that offer both descriptions of past board structures and practices, and prescriptions for effective corporate governance practices going forward. This paper pr...

In this study, we examine those factors generally considered to impact IPO performance to assess the extent to which investment bankers might utilize this information in determining the spread within which the offering price is likely to be set and in setting the offering price. Interestingly, we find no evidence that the variables investigated are...

Purpose – Looks at the current structure of boards where the CEO fills all leadership roles. Benefit is in having a single voice. Disadvantage is having CEO self‐monitor. Findings – A lead independent director (LID) can crate an effective system of corporate governance. The LID is chosen form among the ranks of outside board members and serves as...

Not since the passage of the Securities and Exchange Commission Act of 1934 have matters of corporate governance received such concentrated attention. The failures of a series of notable US companies, beginning with Enron Corporation, have reignited attention toward effective corporate governance. The single most remarkable governance-related outco...

Empirical research has not consistently identified antecedents for predicting post-acquisition performance. We employ meta-analytic techniques to empirically assess the impact of the most commonly researched antecedent variables on post-acquisition performance. We find robust results indicating that, on average and across the most commonly studied...

This paper examines two recent trends relative to boards of directors' compensation, and their potential incompatibility. There has been some progress in increasing board diversity, specifically the inclusion of women and minorities on boards. The increasing trend requiring directors to hold/purchase equity as a requirement of board membership may...

Recent research has suggested that stock options and equity ownership have different motivational implications for executive risk taking. We examined investors' reactions to the differing incentive properties of stock options and equity ownership in the context of firms undertaking initial public offerings (IPOs). We found that stock options and eq...

While a ubiquitous phenomenon, initial public offerings (IPOs) have received no attention in the ethics literature. We provide an overview of a series of potential conflicts of interest that pervade the IPO process. We also report the results of an empirical assessment of IPOs and those elements that may inform a substantive moral hazard faced by k...

The field of corporate governance is at a crossroads. Our knowledge of what we know about the efficacy of corporate governance mechanisms is rivaled by what we do not know. This special topic forum is dedicated to continuing the rich tradition of research in this area, with the hope that the models and theories offered will propel corporate governa...

Initial public offerings (IPOs) have been a prominent focus of academic and popular press attention, especially in recent years. Much of this attention can be attributed to the increase in IPO activity as a function of the “dot com” phenomenon. Of particular interest to both academics and practitioners is IPO underpricing. Review of existing resear...

States that there are several recent developments in the area of corporate governance (CG) reform that highlight issues of board independence and CG “best practices”. Notes that CG reforms often focus on achieving board independence. Concludes, that ultimately, the performance of any board is a function of the individual characters comprising it.

The governance of organizations with dispersed ownership has received academic attention for over seven decades. Early research focused largely on managerial opportunism and mechanisms for minimizing its impact on shareholder wealth. The governance landscape has dramatically changed in the past several decades with the emergence of powerful owners...

Agency theory dominates research on equity holdings-firm performance relationships; however, extant studies provide no consensus about the direction and magnitude of such relationships. Consistent linkages have not been demonstrated for firm performance and CEO, officer, director, institutional, or blockholder equity. We conducted a series of meta-...

Are they an effective executive retention strategy? Studies say no.

A close look at a number of studies reveals that equity compensation is not a prescription for performance.

The repricing of stock options—resetting option values when the strike price falls below the current trading price of a firm's stock—is a controversial tactic. Detractors suggest that repricing is tantamount to rewarding the failure of firms' management to secure a level of stock value that exceeds the strike price of options. The arguments of prop...

Corporate governance has been a central focus of strategic management research, particularly the associations among governance structures, strategic leaders, and firm performance. Extant research, however, provides little evidence of systematic relationships in these areas. There are a series of theoretical/conceptual rationales suggesting that suc...

IPO underpricing is inherently related to both wealth retention and wealth creation. This paper reviews the relationship between IPO underpricing and wealth, then presents the results of an empirical study of the impact of CEO founder status (i.e., is the CEO also the founder?) on IPO underpricing. Results based on data collected from 368 IPO-stage...

This paper discusses legal and ethical issues related to genetic screening. It is argued that persons identified with actual or perceived deleterious genetic markers are protected by the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991, if members of a protected group, regardless of whether or not they are currently ill. Howe...

The relationship between boards of directors and firm performance, whether in the entrepreneurial context or otherwise, has long intrigued scholars. To date, no systematic relationship has been established, leading researchers to explore specialized contexts where such relationships may emerge. We believe the initial public offering (IPO) process p...

While many aspects of stock and option based compensation for corporate officers remain controversial, we suggest that the growing trend for similar practices in favor of boards of directors will prove to be even more contentious. High-ranking corporate managers do not set their own salaries nor authorize their own stock options. By contrast, board...

This study investigates the impact of various top management team characteristics on firm international diversification. Relying on data from 126 firms in the electronics industry, we find that certain top management team characteristics are related to international expansion. Specifically, results indicate that lower average age, higher average te...

Attention is increasingly focused on the potential individual career and firm-level benefits of international experience for upper level executives. This research examines the relationships between CEO international experience, CEO tenure, firm internationalization, succession events, and corporate financial performance. Results indicate a signific...

The past two decades have given rise to considerable discussion and debate regarding the extent to which women have made progress in breaking the glass ceiling. This debate is especially salient when considering women’s ascension to the boardroom and executive suite. Some organizational observers suggest that considerable progress is evident, while...

Although a host of theory-driven rationales suggest a relationship between board of directors size and firm performance, the literature provides no consensus about: the direction of that relationship, A meta-analysis of 131 samples (N = 20,620) provided systematic evidence of nonzero, positive, true population estimates of board size-performance re...

Organizational research often relies on surrogate variables. By “surrogate” we do not refer to family of construct, factor, or latent variables. Rather, we address the situation where one variable is literally the substitute for another variable that is generally unavailable. Consider, for example, the use of “intent to turnover” or “intent to tran...

Over two dozen operationalizations of board composition can be identified from the empirical literature. A structural equations confirmatory factor analysis (LISREL 8.03) suggests that these operationalizations do not constitute a single construct of board independence. Instead, analyses strongly indicate three separate constructs. Common operation...

This study examines the extent to which women have circumvented the glass ceiling by empirically examining whether there has been an increase in women’s representation on corporate boards and CEO positions over the 10-year period from 1987 to 1996. Results indicate greatly increased representation on corporate boards. There is, however, no evidence...

Besides the press, many other observes have been outspoken in theri criticism of execute compensation. Until recently, however, the companesation of the directors of corporate boards who, themselves, set executibve salaries, has receive little attention. Boards are routoinely accused of bd judgment, lack of attention, or lack of independce from man...

Extant research examining the relationship between a firm's board and its CEO's compensation has focused primarily on the composition of the board-at-large. However, it may be the nature of the compensation committee, not the board as a whole, that is at issue. This study was a longitudinal assessment of the relationship between the composition of...

Careful review of extant research addressing the relationships between board composition, board leadership structure, and firm financial performance demonstrates little consistency in results. In general, neither board composition nor board leadership structure has been consistently linked to firm financial performance. In response to these finding...

Careful review of extant research addressing the relationships between board composition, board leadership structure, and firm financial performance demonstrates little consistency in results. In general, neither board composition nor board leadership structure has been consistently linked to firm financial performance. In response to these finding...

In the criminology literature, the iron law of paternalism suggests that women receive less serious sanctions in the judicial system. This examination of three years of grievance outcomes (n= 1216) and arbitration outcomes (n= 1146) tests this iron law in the context of organizational disciplinary and dispute resolutions. These data, across several...

In spite of the importance of workplace training in human capital accumulation, relatively little is known on its returns for workers and firms. Our investigation tries to fill this gap by developing an alternative modelling that examines the determinants of firm productivity and wages, on the one hand, and the internal rate of return to firm train...