Papers by Edward J Carberry
Business & Society, 2017
Although the literature on social innovation has focused primarily on social enterprises, social ... more Although the literature on social innovation has focused primarily on social enterprises, social innovation has long occurred within mainstream corporations. Drawing upon recent scholarship on social movements and institutional complexity, we analyze how movements foster corporate social innovation (CSI). Our context is the adoption of green information systems (“green IS”), which are information systems employed to transform organizations and society into more sustainable entities. We trace the historical emergence of green IS as a corporate response to increasing demands for sustainability reporting, a key social innovation that environmental activists helped to create. Drawing upon extensive survey data from more than 400 U.S. firms, we then examine how managers perceived environmental activism in relation to broader field pressures for change and how their perceptions of both were related to green IS adoption. The results reveal that activists were more effective at influencing ...
Human Resource Management Journal, 2014
In this paper, we add to the growing literature on defined contribution plans that invest in empl... more In this paper, we add to the growing literature on defined contribution plans that invest in employer stock by examining employee preferences for employer stock over other investment alternatives. Existing work has focused on actual or self-reported investment behavior rather than employee preferences. In addition, we broaden the range of possible explanations for investment behavior by developing a set of hypotheses based on research in behavioral economics, organizational psychology, and existing research on other forms of employee ownership. We test our hypotheses by analyzing original data on employee preferences in a sample of 900 employees in four French companies. These results suggest that employees do not see stock ownership exclusively as a financial investment. On the contrary, when stock ownership is presented by top management as a management practice aimed at developing a common corporate culture, sharing common goals and interests, and empowering employees, they appear to be more willing to invest in their company.
[Excerpt] This book showcases the diverse state of cutting-edge academic work on shared capitalis... more [Excerpt] This book showcases the diverse state of cutting-edge academic work on shared capitalism. More specifically, this book attempts to illuminate a representative cross section of current research about shared capitalism, enliven academic debates about it, and embolden new research initiatives. The works in this volume do not provide a complete picture of the current state of employee ownership or research about it, but by showcasing a representative sample of work, they illuminate shared capitalism's complexity as an organizational, psychological, sociological, and economic phenomenon that requires deep interdisciplinary understanding. Another goal of this volume is to demonstrate to broader groups of policy makers, shareholder activists, journalists, business intellectuals, economic and social justice activists, and citizens the ongoing relevance of shared capitalism and its potential for improving broader social and economic outcomes beyond employee well-being and firm productivity, such as promoting economic growth, innovation, and employment stability, as well as addressing the alarming growth in wealth inequality that has occurred in the last two decades. Although this book and its introduction focus primarily on employee ownership in the United States and, to a lesser extent, western Europe, it is important to note that shared capitalism can be found in all parts of the globe, from broad-based employee stock options in Korea, to the privatization of formerly state-owned industries in eastern Europe, to worker cooperatives in Argentina that were created in response to the financial crisis of the early 2000s. This diversity provides a rich set of experiences on which we can draw to assess the potential offered by shared capitalism and to inform policies to encourage it. This volume represents a modest step in that direction.
Journal of Management Studies, 2012
for their comments and feedback on earlier versions of this paper. We also thank Victor Krumov fo... more for their comments and feedback on earlier versions of this paper. We also thank Victor Krumov for his essential assistance with data collection and Barbara Baksa for her insights on stock option accounting.
Journal of Management, 2012
Although studies about the determinants of CEO compensation are ubiquitous, the balance of eviden... more Although studies about the determinants of CEO compensation are ubiquitous, the balance of evidence for one of the more controversial theoretical approaches, managerial power theory, remains inconclusive. The authors provide a meta-analysis of 219 U.S.-based studies, focusing on the relationships between indicators of managerial power and levels of CEO compensation and CEO pay-performance sensitivities. The results indicate that managerial power theory is well equipped for predicting core compensation variables such as total cash and total compensation but less so for predicting the sensitivity of pay to performance. In most situations where CEOs are expected to have power over the pay setting process, they receive significantly higher levels of total cash and total compensation. In contrast, where boards are expected to have more power, CEOs receive lower total cash and total compensation. In addition, powerful directors also appear to be able to establish tighter links between CEO...
Making sense of organizational environments: the adoption of employee stock options in the Indian technology sector
The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2012
Using data collected from interviews with human resource managers, corporate executives, and comp... more Using data collected from interviews with human resource managers, corporate executives, and compensation consultants in India, this paper examines the adoption of US-style employee stock option (ESO) plans among Indian information technology firms and foreign-based multinational corporations operating in India between 1998 and 2004. The findings suggest that Indian firms adopted ESOs more cautiously and granted options more selectively than
A Sociocognitive Approach to Explaining Variation in Investor Reactions to Corporate Misconduct
Academy of Management Proceedings
This paper develops a general framework for explaining variation in stock market reactions to cor... more This paper develops a general framework for explaining variation in stock market reactions to corporate misconduct by using insights from sociocognitive perspectives from the management literature. We identify two specific sets of factors that likely influence investor reactions to misconduct, including those that make investors and other stakeholders more likely to notice an act of misconduct (visibility and familiarity) and those that signal to investors that stakeholders are more likely to impose costs on the firm engaged in misconduct (severity). We test our theoretical claims in a sample of 423 acts of corporate misconduct in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg from 1995 to 2005. Our findings provide broad support for the theoretical approach we develop. Our findings provide broad support for the theoretical approach we develop. More specifically, we find that, similar to the U.S., European investors react more negatively to misconduct that relates to direct ...
Journal of Management Inquiry
Merton’s Matthew Effect essay led to a vast literature on the cumulative advantages associated wi... more Merton’s Matthew Effect essay led to a vast literature on the cumulative advantages associated with prestige. Most management research in this vein focuses on the benefits that come to organizations that receive greater recognition for their performance than their lower status counterparts. In this essay, we argue that increased recognition can also be associated with greater exposure to certain risks when an organization engages in misconduct. We identify two specific mechanisms through which these risks emerge and discuss implications for future research on the complex role that status can play in intensifying and mitigating the risks posed by misconduct.
Towards an institutional theory of managerial power on CEO compensation: an international test
Academy of Management Proceedings
This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my father, Joseph P. Carberry, who endured with e... more This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my father, Joseph P. Carberry, who endured with extreme grace the painful symptoms of Parkinson's Disease and ultimately succumbed to the disease during my tenure in graduate school. His intelligence, humor, lack of tolerance for economic injustice, and deep respect for others have guided me in all of my pursuits, both academic and otherwise. It is also dedicated to my mother, Katherine A. Carberry, whose strength and endurance in the face of my father's ordeal was a source of great inspiration, and whose support for all of my endeavors has been unconditional and ceaseless.
Executive Stock Options After Enron: Theorizing Managerial Power Within Institutional Environments
Journal of Management Inquiry, 2018
Merton’s Matthew Effect essay led to a vast literature on the cumulative advantages associated wi... more Merton’s Matthew Effect essay led to a vast literature on the cumulative advantages associated with prestige. Most management research in this vein focuses on the benefits that come to organizations that receive greater recognition for their performance than their lower status counterparts. In this essay, we argue that increased recognition can also be associated with greater exposure to certain risks when an organization engages in misconduct. We identify two specific mechanisms through which these risks emerge and discuss implications for future research on the complex role that status can play in intensifying and mitigating the risks posed by misconduct.
Journal of Management Studies, 2020
Socio-Economic Review, 2020
The corporate scandals and market crashes of the 2000s generated significant criticism of the sha... more The corporate scandals and market crashes of the 2000s generated significant criticism of the shareholder value orientation (SVO) in the USA. We offer a sociopolitical analysis of how this criticism triggered changes in stock-based executive compensation , a central practice associated with the SVO. We first analyze how corporate stakeholders redefined different forms of stock-based compensation, motivated new regulations and wielded direct challenges to specific firms. We then predict how firm-specific differences in external challenges and intra-firm power relationships were related to changes in the use of stock options and restricted stock grants (RSGs), testing our predictions using a longitudinal dataset of S&P 500 executives between 2002 and 2012. We find that firms facing negative media coverage of their executive compensation practices made less use of both forms of stock-based compensation , while firms facing shareholder activism only made less use of stock options, the form that was more heavily criticized. In addition, firms with more powerful CEOs utilized RSGs more heavily and did so even when facing media criticism. Our findings demonstrate that while stock options were vulnerable to change, stock-based compensation remained resilient because the structural power of CEOs, a core corporate governance feature of the SVO, also remained resilient.
Although there is ample evidence that stock markets react negatively to unethical corporate behav... more Although there is ample evidence that stock markets react negatively to unethical corporate behavior, our understanding of the mechanisms that shape variation in these reactions across different incidents of misconduct remains underdeveloped. We propose and test a framework for explaining this variation by focusing on the role of the media in disseminating initial information about misconduct. We argue that the signaling effects of this information are important for investors because corporations have strong incentives to limit the information they disclose about misconduct. More specifically, we hypothesize that investors are more likely to react negatively when the media presents clear and credible information that misconduct occurred, that the firm was responsible for it, and that the misconduct was the result of deeper organizational problems. We also predict that information which signals that a firm has restorative capacity tempers investor reactions when the media places blame for misconduct on the corporation rather than specific individuals. We test our hypotheses in a unique sample of 345 acts of corporate misconduct in five European countries. Our findings provide broad support for our hypotheses, and we discuss implications for research on corporate misconduct and the role of non-state actors in regulating unethical corporate behavior.
Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: An International Journal
This article assesses how employees from historically marginalized groups (white women, nonwhite ... more This article assesses how employees from historically marginalized groups (white women, nonwhite men and women) perceive Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” in terms of two outcomes that are related to diversity and inclusion: fairness and camaraderie. We focus on fairness as a way to measure perceptions of general treatment with respect to demographic characteristics associated with bias and discrimination, and on camaraderie as a way to measure perceptions of the inclusiveness of coworker relationships. We use hierarchical linear regression models to analyze survey responses from 620,802 employees in 1,054 companies that applied for the “100 Best Companies to Work For” list between 2006 and 2011 in the United States. We compare the perceptions of employees in firms that are selected for the list to those of their demographic counterparts in firms not selected for the list. We also compare the perceptions of employees from historically marginalized groups to those of white men within firms that make the list and examine how these differences compare to the same differences within firms that do not make the list. Our findings reveal that the perceptions of men and women of color and white women in companies that make the “best” list are more positive than their demographic counterparts in companies that do not make the list. We also find, however, that the perceptions of employees from historically marginalized groups are more negative than those of white men in the “best” workplaces, and these patterns are similar to those in firms that do not make the list. For perceptions of fairness, the differences between employees from historically marginalized groups and white men are smaller in companies that make the list.
Business Ethics Quarterly
Although there is ample evidence that stock markets react negatively to unethical corporate behav... more Although there is ample evidence that stock markets react negatively to unethical corporate behavior, our understanding of the mechanisms that shape variation in these reactions across different incidents of misconduct remains underdeveloped. We propose and test a framework for explaining this variation by focusing on the role of the media in disseminating initial information about misconduct. We argue that the signaling effects of this information are important for investors because corporations have strong incentives to limit the information they disclose about misconduct. More specifically, we hypothesize that investors are more likely to react negatively when the media presents clear and credible information that misconduct occurred, that the firm was responsible for it, and that the misconduct was the result of deeper organizational problems. We also predict that information which signals that a firm has restorative capacity tempers investor reactions when the media places blame for misconduct on the corporation rather than specific individuals. We test our hypotheses in a unique sample of 345 acts of corporate misconduct in five European countries. Our findings provide broad support for our hypotheses, and we discuss implications for research on corporate misconduct and the role of non-state actors in regulating unethical corporate behavior.
Although the literature on social innovation has focused primarily on social enterprises, social ... more Although the literature on social innovation has focused primarily on social enterprises, social innovation has long occurred within mainstream corporations. Drawing upon recent scholarship on social movements and institutional complexity, we analyze how movements foster corporate social innovation (CSI). Our context is the adoption of green information systems (" green IS "), which are information systems employed to transform organizations and society into more sustainable entities. We trace the historical emergence of green IS as a corporate response to increasing demands for sustainability reporting, a key social innovation that environmental activists helped to create. Drawing upon extensive survey data from more than 400 U.S. firms, we then examine how managers perceived environmental activism in relation to broader field pressures for change and how their perceptions of both were related to green IS IS adoption. The results reveal that activists were more effective at influencing adoption indirectly by transforming organizational fields than by directly influencing corporate managers. Combined with the historical analysis, these findings suggest that CSI emerged out of ongoing interactions between activists, corporate managers, and other influential actors within a broader social innovation system. Activists helped to create conditions for social innovation, but corporations took the lead in developing new practices.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0007650317701674
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Papers by Edward J Carberry
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0007650317701674