Australian Journal of Management

The importance of asymmetry in investment assessment is established and past research into the matter for Australian and U.S. equities is reviewed. Asymmetry, especially of the positive variety, is found to be a prevalent empirical phenomenon for Australian shares. Diversification is found to increase average asymmetry decreases with diversification. Evidence regarding the stationarity of cross-sectional asymmetry distributions is mixed.

This paper presents the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) in a finite economy for the familiar case of quadratic utility functions. The standard APT result of a linear relationship between expected returns and the covariances of returns is shown to be approximately true, and an expression for the error of the approximation is given. Some suggestive calculations indicate that the error in the approximation is likely to be small.

Ruback (1983) proposed a novel test of competition in the market for corporate control. He argued the market would be competitive if, in the context of two or more bidders, it did not pay an unsuccessful offeror to lift his bid to the successful offeror's price. Ruback's evidence was consistent with the American corporate acquisitions market being competitive, in this sense. We use Australian data to replicate Ruback's test. Our results mirror Ruback's, in that 58 out of 72 takeovers were consistent with a competitive Australian market. The 14 inconsistencies could have been due to bidder collusion, strategic behaviour, legal impediments, or quite possibly, confounding events.

Within the context of the job characteristics model, Bottger and Chew (1986) argue that capacity for growth, rather than need for growth, would predict individual differences in growth satisfaction. In three large samples, they show that propensity to assimilate work experience (AWE) has a significant main effect on growth satisfaction, independent of job scope and context satisfaction. By contrast, growth need strength (GNS) has a null main effect and weak interaction effect on growth satisfaction. The present study assesses a possible threat to the internal validity of the Bottger and Chew findings. It examines whether higher order needs, namely growth need strength and needs for achievement, dominance and autonomy actually explain the AWE effect on growth satisfaction. Two samples of managers (N = 440 and N = 708) from the original Bottger and Chew study are used here. Using regression analysis, we show that the AWE effect is not attributable to needs.

This paper re-presents the essentials of Ross' (1976) derivation of his Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) and explains the empirical implications of recent extensions to the APT due to Chamberlain & Rothschild (1983). The natural statistical methodology for empirically testing Ross' for Mulation is to factor-analyze a certain variance-covariance matrix. This factor analysis bears a close relationship to the natural empirical counterpart of Chamberlain & Rothschild's generalisations of the APT: computation of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors. An important implication is that this new method for testing the APT is simpler than factor analysis but perfor Ms as well, is much less of a computational burden, and includes a new way to count the factors.

This paper investigates sex effects in the role behaviours of practising managers: Do female managers show high levels of consideration, consistent with existing stereotypes? The literature suggests conversely that female managers are male-oriented in their approach. Using a matched sample of 38 university administrators, from the same institution, and self-reports of job behaviours, this conclusion is not supported for this group. There are no significant differences between the sexes on the Hersey and Blanchard (1982) measures. The importance of contextual factors which might influence these findings is discussed.

Wage systems have an significant impact on the community and, over the years, a variety of wage policies have been used in Australia. The basic attitudes of political parties, the union movement and employer organisations are well known but public opinion has not been extensively probed. A sample of adults in Perth, Western Australia was asked a series of questions about five wage policies. Joint mapping procedures were used to explore the cognitive dimensions by which people evaluated such policies and the preferences they had towards them. The results obtained are outlined and discussed.