A review of hedge funds and their investor activism: do they help or hurt other equity investors?

Hedge funds tend to be highly activist investors who exercise their ??principal power?? over their portfolio firms. We observe that, compared to other investor types, hedge funds appear to be even more activist than is predicted by a comprehensive Investor Activism Model, due to the unexpectedly large role of several antecedent variables. This conclusion suggests that the relatively lightly regulated environment of hedge funds affects the weighting of conventional activism-antecedent variables. We explore how their access to several investing and trading strategies is allowing hedge funds to redefine investor activism. In the process, we find that, while hedge funds and their activism tend to benefit fellow investors, the potential exists for some specific hedge fund types to expropriate value from minority shareholders, creating ??principal?Cprincipal?? conflict. The potentially detrimental impact of hedge fund activism on other equity investors is demonstrated, illuminating several current policy concerns.     

Education,training and development policies and practices in medium-sized companies in the UK: do they really influence firm performance?

This paper sets out to examine the relationship between training and firm performance in middle-sized UK companies. It recognises that there is evidence that “high performance work practices” appear to be associated with better performance in large US companies, but argues that this relationship is less likely to be present in middle-sized companies. The paper's key contribution is to justify the wider concept of education, training and development (ETD) as applicable to such companies. It then finds that clusters of some ETD variables do appear to be associated with better middle-sized company performance.