Mutual Fund Voting And Pension Ties Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 21 Words: 6206 Downloads: 7 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Narrative essay Did you like this example? Because mutual funds are the largest equity holders and because the retirement assets that are managed by mutual funds have been growing, mutual fund managers may have more incentives to support management in order to attract and retain pension business. I explore whether pension business ties have an impact on voting behaviors of mutual funds by examining the link pension business ties between mutual funds and the firms to actual mutual fund voting outcomes. At the fund family level, I find a positive relation between pension ties and mutual funds voting support for management. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Mutual Fund Voting And Pension Ties Finance Essay" essay for you Create order This relation becomes stronger when there is a voting divergence among funds within the same families. At the individual fund level, I find that individual funds are more likely to vote with management if they are included as one of the investment options of the pension plan of their portfolio firms. This suggests that the SEC should at least consider the recent petition from the AFL-CIO proposing that the SEC require mutual funds to disclose business ties with the firms in which they invest. Keywords: Mutual funds, Pension ties, Proxy voting * I thank Larry Dann and Diane Del Guercio for helpful comments and suggestions. All errors are mine. INTRODUCTION As institutional ownership has increased over the last few decades, there has been much academic interest in whether institutional investors take an active role in corporate governance. It is important to note, however, that due to potential conflicts of interest, all institutions do not necessarily have the same incentives to monitor management. In particular, mutual funds, the largest equity holders in the United States, were previously considered to be free of conflicts of interest because they did not do business with portfolio firms.  [1] According to the Investment Company Institute, as of the end of 2011, 61.2 percent of 401(K) plan assets and 45.1 percent of Individual Retirement Account (IRA) market assets were invested in mutual funds.  [2]  Since one half of the IRA market assets and 401(K) plan assets have been held by mutual funds since the late 1990s, there is a potential for conflicts of interest in mutual funds, and thereby fund managers have less incentive to exert an effort to monitor management and more incentive to support management in order to attract and retain the assets from the retirement market. Several studies document that mutual fund managers pursue their own interests at the expense of fund investors. For example, Cohen and Schmidt (2008) find that fund families acting as trustees systematically overweight their sponsor firms and even increase their holdings of the sponsor firms stock when other mutual funds are engaged in aggregate selling of sponsor firms shares. Other than through trading, mutual funds can support the management of the invested firms through voting for management proposals. Since proxy voting is the primary forum through which shareholders participate in the governance of corporations, examining mutual funds voting outcomes is one way to investigate the existence of mutual funds conflicts of interest. Davis and Kim (2007), Ashraf, Jayaraman, and Ryan (2010), and Pengfei Ye (2008) provide evidence tha t mutual funds are more likely to vote for management regardless of the best interest of the investors due to the existence of conflicts of interest. In this paper, I explore whether the pension business ties between mutual funds and their portfolio firms have an impact on mutual fund voting behavior. Through mapping mutual funds pension business ties to their portfolio firms onto mutual funds actual voting outcomes, I examine 61,336 voting decisions made by 3,130 mutual funds from 101 fund families for 172 management sponsored proposals and 129 shareholder sponsored proposals voted on at 257 firms over the sample period from June 2003 to December 2005. Using a probit model, I document a positive association between mutual fund voting and pension business ties. Analysis at the fund family level shows that fund families are more likely to vote for the ISS unfavorable management proposals and to vote against the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. The influence of pension ties to mutual fund voting becomes four times stronger when there is voting divergence among funds within the same families. However, there is no evidence that voting support of mutual funds is higher for the proposals voted at their clients firms compared to non-client firms. At the individual fund level, a fund included as one of the investment options of the pension plans of a firm in which it invests is more likely to vote against the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. The results of this study extend the findings of Ashraf et al. (2010) but are different in four aspects. First, to the extent that the marginal effect of the influence of business ties on mutual fund voting support for management is greater for close votes, the sample only includes votes in which the level of the voting support of the proposal is between 40% and 60%. Second, given the evidence of the impact of the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) advice on mutual fund voting support, I segregate the sample in to the proposals recommended by the ISS and the proposals not recommended by ISS. Third, as I observe non-trivial divergence in fund votes within the same families for both management proposals and shareholder proposals, I look into whether the association between business ties and fund voting is stronger with the existence of divergence. Furthermore, the finding of divergence among fund votes drives me to analyze the data at the fund level. Given the fact that the size of mutual funds has significantly grown and is expected to grow more in the future, the findings of this paper suggest that the policy makers should consider new rules in order to mitigate the concerns from conflicts of interest. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should seriously review the recent petition from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) proposing that the SEC require mutual funds to disclose pension business ties with the firms in wh ich they invest. The paper is organized as follows: the next section reviews background; section III describes the sample data; section IV shows the empirical results; section V concludes the paper. II. BACKGROUND Conflicts of interest of mutual funds induced by pension plan business While institutional investors have grown in size and number over the last few decades, whether they play an appropriate monitoring role in corporate governance is still being debated. One possible method to reveal whether institutions exert effort in the monitoring of corporate governance is by examining proxy voting, because proxy voting is one of the primary mechanisms through which shareholders participate in corporate governance. Through management sponsored proposals, corporate management seeks approval of new and existing policies from shareholders. Likewise, through shareholder sponsored proposals, shareholders advocate changes in corporate policies. Brickley, et al. (1988) examine how large shareholders vote on management sponsored proposals for antitakeover amendment provisions during the 1984 proxy season, and they find that institutional investors are more likely to cast their votes against these p roposals. While institutional investors might have greater incentives to participate in monitoring management than do small shareholders, the incentives of all institutional investors are not necessarily the same, and there may be conflicts of interest. With respect to proxy voting, all institutional investors will not necessarily vote against management, even if they believe it will maximize share value. Some institutional investors may choose to vote for management strategically in order to facilitate business ties with companies they own. According to Pozen (2011), among institutional investors, mutual funds are the largest equity holders in the United States. Mutual funds have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of the fund owners. By sponsoring or supporting value-enhancing shareholder proposals and preventing value-destroying management proposals, mutual funds can influence corporate governance to maximize firm value in order to benefit shareholders. How ever, there is some evidence that mutual funds do not perform their fiduciary duties due to conflicts of interest. Mutual funds are able to benefit from pension fund business such as managing the 401(K) plans of their portfolio companies, providing the financial incentive for mutual funds to support management regardless of the best interests of fund owners. Cohen and Schmidt (2008) explain why being the trustee of a large 401(K) plan is attractive for mutual fund families: (1) the trustee fund family guarantees a large initial inflow invested in family funds, (2) the family receives additional inflows in retirement assets from employee savings each year, and (3) trustees of 401(K) plans rarely change. The empirical evidence that conflicts of interest for mutual funds have effects on proxy voting is as follows. Davis and Kim (2007) analyze conflicts of interest in proxy voting by mutual funds using aggregate voting outcomes and find that fund families with pension business ties a re more likely to vote with management compared to fund families without pension business ties. Moreover, by using records of actual mutual fund voting patterns on shareholder proposals, the authors compare mutual fund voting outcomes at firms in which the funds manage pension plans with their votes to firms that do not manage. The authors argue that funds are no more likely to vote with management at client firms than at non-client firms. However, their data is based on the 2003 proxy season, which is the first year of mandated voting disclosures of mutual funds. Therefore, under close public scrutiny, mutual funds might have incentives to appear to not be subject to the influence of management. Likewise, Ashraf et al. (2010) investigates whether pension ties between mutual fund families and the firms affect how fund families vote on shareholder sponsored compensation proposals. The authors find that while fund families that have business ties to the firms they own are less likely to support shareholder proposals for executive compensation, there is also no difference in voting support of fund families with pension ties between client firms and non-client firms. Other than voting for management, mutual funds can support the management of the invested firm through trading. Cohen and Schmidt (2008) find that fund families acting as trustees systematically overweight their sponsor firms and even increase their holdings of a sponsor firms stock when other mutual funds are engaged in aggregate selling of that sponsor firms shares. Duan, Hotchkiss, and Jiao (2011) investigate whether pension business ties enable mutual funds to gain informational advantage in trading. The authors find that there is a positive relation between mutual fund trading and future performance of the portfolios firms with which funds have pension business ties. In response to increasing concern that conflicts of interest allow mutual funds to vote for management regardless of the best in terest of fund owners, on January 23, 2003, the SEC adopted new regulations: (1) the SEC required mutual funds to disclose actual voting results and (2) the SEC required mutual funds to publicly disclose a set of policies on how they will make decisions on proxy votes. The advocates of these rules expected that investors would be better able to monitor whether mutual funds engage in proxy voting in the interests of investors, preventing mutual funds from voting in support of management in order to facilitate other business relations with corporations whose shares they own. Cremer and Romano (2007) investigate the impact of the 2003 mutual fund voting disclosure regulation on voting outcomes by comparing voting outcomes of similar proposals sponsored at the same firms both before and after adoption of the regulation. The authors find no evidence that the rule decreases mutual funds voting in support of management. Indeed, they show that mutual funds appear to have increased their sup port for management on executive equity incentive plans (EEIC) since the rule change. Close votes Listokin (2008) finds that there is a large difference between the frequency of management sponsored proposals passing with votes just above 50% and the frequency of proposals failing with votes just below 50%. As shown in Figure 1, there is a discontinuity in the distribution of voting outcomes in management-sponsored votes at the 50 percent level. This discontinuity suggests that management has information about the outcome of voting at a time when management can do something to change the outcome of votes. One possible explanation for this pattern could be that managers, in order to achieve success, encourage mutual funds that manage their pension. Suppose that management predicts that the percentage of voting support for a management sponsored proposal is just below 50%. In that case, to pass the proposal, management attempts to pressure mutual funds that manage its pension pl ans to vote in favor of management. With a small shift, management can win the proposal as the marginal effect of mutual fund voting shift in close votes is large.  [3]  However, management will withdraw or alter the proposal if it predicts that the proposal would fail with far below 50% of voting support. Furthermore, management will not act if it predicts the proposal will win with far above 50% of voting support. To the extent that marginal effects of voting support of mutual funds for management proposals are greater for close votes than for non-close votes, I expect that the influence on proxy voting of pension ties is more likely to be detected in close votes rather than non-close votes. Therefore, the analysis of this study involves the voting outcomes for close votes. Although there is no such discontinuity in shareholder sponsored proposal, examining close votes for shareholder proposals is also meaningful given that marginal effects of mutual voting shift is large, wit h a small shift from voting against management to voting for management. The ISS recommendation As suggested by prior literature, the ISS has a non-trivial influence on mutual fund voting behavior. As a leading proxy advisory firm, the ISS gives recommendations on proxy voting by publishing general guidelines on each issue of each proposal or by providing case-by-case recommendations. Cotter, Palmiter, and Thomas (2011) find that voting support of mutual funds decreases by 68.3% for ISS unfavorable management proposals and increases by 53.1% for ISS unfavorable shareholder proposals. Choi, Fisch, and Kahan (2010) observe that the cases in which mutual funds always follow management of their portfolio firms are twice as many as cases in which mutual funds always follow the ISS. In considering the importance of the impact of the ISS recommendation on proxy voting, Ashraf et al. (2010) segregates its sample into shareholder proposals recommended by ISS and shareholder proposals o pposed by the ISS. They detect a negative association between voting support of fund families and pension business ties only for the first case. When the ISS opposes shareholder proposals, there is no association between fund family voting and pension ties. Considering that mutual funds likely follow the ISS advice for potential value reducing shareholder proposals regardless of whether they have business ties, their finding is somewhat predictable. If we assume that the ISS provides reliable advice and that mutual funds are the only shareholders, the ISS unfavorable shareholder proposals are comparable to the ISS favorable management proposals. This is because both mutual funds and management likely consider the former as value reduction proposals and consider the latter as value improving proposals. However, for the ISS favorable shareholder proposals, mutual funds consider them to be value increasing while management votes against them as it always opposes shareholder sponsored p roposals. When there is a disagreement between management and mutual funds, management acts to influence votes by using mutual funds ability to attract pension inflows as an incentive. Likewise, for the ISS unfavorable management proposals, shareholders consider them as value deceasing while management makes efforts for them to be passed by encouraging mutual funds with business ties to side with management. Therefore, I expect the association between business ties and voting support of mutual funds is more likely to be detected when the ISS endorses shareholder proposals and when the ISS opposes management proposals, compared to when the ISS opposes shareholder proposals and the ISS endorses management proposals. Divergence in fund votes within fund families Most prior studies on mutual fund voting analyze data at the fund family level since they consider that fund families vote their shares as a block.  [4]  However, Morgan, Poulsen, Wolf, and Yang (2011) argue that for shareholder sponsored proposals there is a large divergence in voting among funds within a fund family while there is a substantial uniformity in management sponsored proposals.  [5]  Such a divergence in shareholder proposals suggests that it may be important to perform individual fund level analysis in addition to fund family level analysis. If a fund votes for a proposal of its portfolio firm and this fund is included as one of the pension investment options of the firm, the fund likely has more incentive to support management compared to other funds in the same family which are not included as an investment option. If this is the case, dispersion in voting within fund families would be more likely to be observed when one of the funds is included as an investment option of the pension plan. Furthermore this dispersion may drive a stronger association between mutual fund votes and business ties. In other words, mutual funds more strongly support their portfolio firms with busi ness ties when dispersion within the same family exists compared to when there is uniformity. Therefore, I expect that mutual funds with business ties are more likely to vote for management when there is a divergence in voting among funds within fund families, compared to those funds when there is uniformity. In a similar vein, Burtler and Gurun (2011) find that educationally connected funds are 42% more likely to vote for management when there is a divergence in voting among funds within fund families (about 19% of the observation in their data), while those funds are 7% more likely to vote for management when there is uniformity. In addition, in order to support the achievement of managements goals, mutual funds with pension ties may be more likely to diverge from their family voting policy for close votes compared to non-close votes.  Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ °Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ °Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ °. SAMPLE DESCRIPTIONS 3.1 Source of data Data on voting outcomes by mutual funds is obtained from the ISS Voting Analytics Database which includes Company Vote Results and Fund Vote Results (mutual fund N-PX filings). Company Vote Results contain aggregate voting outcomes for Russell 3000 companies shareholder meetings as well as the total number of shares outstanding, the total number of votes cast, and the ISS recommendation. Fund Vote Results show how individual funds of fund families vote on each proposal. Voting outcomes are recorded as being for, against, or abstaining per proposal per fund. I have access to voting outcomes of corporate governance related management sponsored proposals and shareholder sponsored proposals occurring from June 2003 through December 2005. Data on pension plans comes from the Form 5500 filings filed with the Department of Labor (DOL) and Internal Revenue Code and 11-K filings filed with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Form 5500 is required to be a nnually filed by plan administrators in order to report financial, investment, and operational information about pension and welfare benefit plans. The Form 5500 provides information on the fees paid to the service providers such as trustees and recordkeepers as well as the amount of assets held by investment providers. Although the Form 5500 covers most of the sample firms receiving proposals, the data is not as complete as the 11-K. The 11-K is an annual report dealing with employee stock purchases and savings plans which is required to be filed if a companys stock is offered as one of the investment options for plan participants. The 11-K filings include the identity of the trustee, total assets invested in the plan, and the proportion invested in each investment option. The analysis of this study first examines 354 firms that all have at least one corporate governance related proposal that has 40% to 60% of voting support. The percentage of votes in favor of a proposal is dif ferently computed according to the denominator of the calculation of both support level and the required threshold for each proposal.  [6]  For each firm in the initial sample, I gather pension data from both the Form 5500 and the 11-K by mapping the IRS Employer Identification Number (EIN) into CUSIP using the CRSP/Compustat Merged Database. Including firms with either the Form 5500 or the 11-K leaves me with 257 firms.  [7]  As my interest of in this study is whether mutual funds with business ties affect how mutual funds vote, by looking at the fund name and the family name. I check each sample firm to see whether the fund family of the individual fund that casts its vote is the trustee or the service provider for the firms pension plans and whether the individual fund is included as one of the pension investment options of the plans. Following Ashraf et al. (2010), I classify fund families in the sample sample as having a pension business tie if the fund family is a trus tee or service provider or if the individual fund is included among one of the investment options of the plans offered by a firm. The final step is to gather additional information about sample firms: the data on firm characteristics are from CRSP and Compustat; the data on governance index (G-index) is available freely from Metricks web-site; the data on institutional holdings is obtained from the Thomson-Reuters 13F database. The final sample of this study is constituted of 257 firms with close votes. As some firms have more than one proposal, 172 management sponsored proposals and 129 shareholder sponsored proposals are collected over the sample period from June 2003 to December 2005. The analysis at the fund family includes 13,120 voting decisions by 101 mutual fund families, and 41,407 fund voting outcomes on ISS favorable shareholder proposals are analyzed at fund level. 3.2 Summary sStatistics Table 1 provides information on the number of proposals and the number of mutual fund families that cast their votes for each type as well as information on how uniformly funds within the same family vote with management for each proposal type. Voting with management is equivalent to funds voting in favor of management proposals. This is also equivalent to voting against shareholder proposals given the fact that management always takes a position against shareholder sponsored proposals.  [8]  Given the importance of the effect of the ISS advice, I divide each proposal type according to whether the ISS endorses it or not and according to who sponsors the proposal (ISS favorable management proposals, ISS unfavorable management proposals, ISS favorable shareholder proposals, and ISS unfavorable shareholder proposals). Panel A of Table 1 shows that for the ISS favorable management sponsored proposals, fund families uniformly vote in favor of management 78% of the time and uniformly vote against management 11% of the time. The divergence in fund votes w ithin the family is, on average, 11%. Interestingly, individual funds show the greatest divergence (50%) surrounding the issue of Declassify the Board of Director, known as one of the most significant value reducing effects. Compensation related proposals such as Approve Omnibus Stock Plan, Amend Omnibus Stock Plan, and Amend Stock Option Plan have the next highest level of divergence as well as the next highest frequency. For the ISS unfavorable management proposal at in Panel B of Table 1, funds uniformly vote against management 64% of the time and vote for management 19% of the time. The average divergence of funds within fund families is registered at 17%. Unlike previous studies, I observed a non-trivial voting divergence among funds within a fund family. Compensation related proposals (Approve Omnibus Stock Plan, Amend Omnibus Stock Plan, and Amend Stock Option Plan) are again the most frequently occurring types of proposals. Panel C of Table 1 shows that for the ISS fav orable shareholder sponsored proposal types, funds are less likely to vote uniformly within families, compared to management sponsored proposals. On average, funds in a family vote identically on 73% of the proposals while votes of funds in a family differ in 27% of the proposals. Board related proposals (Require a Majority Vote for the Election of Directors and Declassify the Board of Directors) are the most common shareholder sponsored proposals. Compensation related proposals (Expense Stock Options and Performance- Based/Indexed Options) have the next highest divergence as well as the next highest occurrence. Table 2 presents the number of and the percentage of business ties of funds families with pension ties to the any of the sample firms and fund families without any pension ties. It also shows the number of proposals for which fund families cast their votes. The top five mutual funds families with business ties are Fidelity Investment, John Hancock Funds, Vanguard Group, S SGA Funds, and Oppenheimer Funds/MassMutual, and these families account for 35.8% of ties in the sample. The top 15 fund families account for 67.6% of pension ties, which is more than twice the level of pension ties of the next 50 fund families managing any pension assets of the sample firms. As shown in Panel B of Table 2, Jackson National, Thrivent Investment Management, USAA, and Munder Funds cast their vote on more than 200 proposals while these families do not engage in any pension business to any firm in my sample. Given the findings of in the previous literature showing that firm characteristics affect how institutional investors vote, I include firm characteristics such as past performance, market capitalization, market-to-book ratio, G-index, and institutional holdings as control variables. Past one year performance is definied as the one year buy and hold market adjusted abnormal returns from the meeting date of proxy voting, and market capitalization is defined as the total number of shares outstanding times the closing price at the end of the year of the proposal. Market-to-book ratio is obtained by dividing the sum of market capitalization of equity and the book value of debt by the book value of total assets. As the sample period of this study is June 2003 to December 2006, I use the G-index published in 2004. Institutional holdings are calculated according to ownership held by institutions as of the end of the meeting year. Table 3 provides information on firm characteristics in the sample. On average, past one year returns for the sample firm are 13.1%, market to book ratio is 2.9, and market capitalization is 26,536 million dollars. Average institutional ownership of the sample firm is 71.4%, and average G-index for the sample firm is 9.4. IV. EMPIRICA ANALYSIS 4.1 Analysis at fund family level The main analysis of this paper explores whether business ties have an impact on mutual fund voting behavior by comparing the association between pension business ties and mutual fund voting support. I begin with the analysis at the fund family level and then extend my analysis to the individual fund level. At the fund family level of analysis, the dependent variable is the percentage level of votes in support of management. Following Ashraf et al. (2010), the percentages of voting support in favor of management for each mutual fund family are calculated by dividing the number of individual funds within the same fund families that vote with management for a proposal by the number of funds in the family that are eligible to vote on the proposal.  [9]  Therefore, the higher voting support indicates that funds are more likely to vote with management by voting for management proposals and by voting against shareholder proposals. As the distribut ion and the level of shareholder support of management proposals differ from those of shareholder proposals, I separately estimate the impact of pension ties on management sponsored proposals and on shareholder sponsored proposals. In addition, given the previous findings on the influence of the ISS recommendation to mutual fund voting, I segregate my sample into the ISS favorable proposals and the ISS unfavorable proposals. Therefore, through segregating the proposals according to sponsors and according to whether the ISS recommends passage of a proposal, the results of this study are separately presented for management proposals recommended by ISS, for management proposals not recommend by ISS, and for shareholder proposals recommended by ISS. The sSmall sample size of shareholder proposals not recommend by ISS does not allow me to include them in the analysis. All analysis is estimated using robust standard errors (Whites heteroscedasticity consistent standard errors). The result s also hold if I use standard errors with clustered by fund family, year, and firm. Table 4 compares the percentages of voting support for management among mutual fund families with pension ties and mutual fund families without pension ties using a simple t-test. For the ISS favorable management sponsored proposals, there is no significant difference in voting support between mutual fund families with ties and mutual fund families without ties. However, for management proposals opposed by the ISS, I find that the percentage of voting support in mutual fund families with pension ties accounts for 32.7 % of the proposals while fund families without pension ties accounts for 22.6 % of the proposals. In order words, voting with management of mutual funds with pension ties is significantly greater than that of mutual funds without pension ties for the ISS unfavorable management sponsored proposals. As discussed, to the extent that shareholders are likely to consider ISS unfavorable ma nagement proposals as value reducing, management may ask affiliated institutional investors such as mutual funds managing their pension plans to support it in order to win a victory. Likewise, management may pressure its trustees of pension plans not to support shareholder proposals as shareholders are likely to consider the ISS favorable shareholder proposals as value improvement. Consistent with this hypothesis, when the ISS recommends passage of a shareholder proposal, fund families with pension ties vote with management 31.5 % of the time while fund families without pension ties vote with management 28.1% of the time, and the difference is statistically significant. Table 5 is the main analysis of this study. As the finding thatSince previous studies have found that firm size, prior performance, institutional holdings, and corporate governance affect the behavior of institutional investors, I include these factors as control variables. The dependent variable is one if the per centage of voting support for management is equal to or more than 50%; otherwise it is zero. The independent variable equals one if a fund family has business ties with the firm in which they invest and is thereforeso eligible to cast their votes; otherwise it is zero. As the dependent variable is the indicator variable, I use a probit model to examine whether pension business ties of mutual fund families affect mutual fund voting behavior. The coefficient estimates of Table 5 present marginal effects of independent variables. I begin by examining whether there is a relation between the likelihood that a fund family votes with management and business ties. As shown in column (1) of Table 5, the marginal effect of the pension ties is negatively significant for the ISS favorable management proposal, indicating pension ties decrease the probability that fund families support management by 11.3%. Although this result opposes the hypothesis that mutual funds are more likely to vote wi th management in order to attract assets from pension inflows, it is not surprising. Suppose that there are two different management proposals: one is recommended by ISS and the other is not recommended. To the extent that shareholders are more likely to vote for the ISS favorable proposal compared to for the ISS unfavorable proposal, the probability that the former proposal is passed is greater than the latter. Therefore, the managers need to exert more effort in order to pass the ISS unfavorable proposal by contacting its affiliated shareholders such as mutual funds managing their pension plans. As expected, for the ISS unfavorable proposals in column (2) of Table 5, there is a strong positive relationship between business ties and voting support of fund families. This indicates that a business tie increases by 11.6% the probability that a fund family votes with management. Regarding the ISS favorable shareholder proposals in column (3) of Table 5, the probability that the fund fa mily supports management by voting against shareholder sponsored proposals is increased by 4.3% when a business tie exists. As discussed in the previous section, the ISS favorable shareholder proposals are comparable to the ISS unfavorable management proposals given that the disparity in voting decisions between management and shareholders is large. Therefore, it is expected that management puts exerts more effort to achieve a victory through pressuring mutual funds that manage its pension plans. Although the table is not included due to inconclusive results, I provide conditional logit analysis as including fund family fixed effect to investigate whether there is a difference between voting support by fund families at their client firms versus non-client firms. Contrary to my expectation that narrowing down the sample to close votes where the marginal effects of voting shift is large would allow me to examine different voting behavior of mutual funds for their client firms and f or non-client firms, I find no difference in voting support of mutual funds across the two groups. This indicates the probability that mutual funds that manage retirement assets vote with management of their client firms is similar to the probability that those mutual funds vote with management of their non-client firms. This result is consistent with the previous findings on mutual fund voting behaviors. As argued above, there is a non-trivial divergence in fund votes within the same families. It is likely that an individual fund has stronger incentive to support management if the fund is one of the pension investment options of the firm in which it invests, compared to other funds in the same families that are not included as investment options. Therefore, I expect the influence of pension ties to be stronger when there is divergence within fund families. To test this, in Table 6 I analyze the subsample with the proposals voted by mutual funds which have divergence within fund families. When there is disparity in fund votes on the ISS favorable management proposals, I find no relation between pension ties and voting support of fund families. However, for the ISS unfavorable management proposal, a pension tie increases the probability that a fund family votes with management by 43.3%. Compared to Table 5, the marginal effect of pension ties is four times greater if there is a disparity in fund voting. Similarly, the marginal effect of pension ties becomes four times stronger when fund families do not uniformly vote for the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. 4.2 Analysis at fund level As shown in Table 7, some funds vote uniformly with other funds in the same family while other funds vote in a diverse fashion. Although most of the previous literature argues that funds within the same family tend to vote uniformly, the evidence in Table 1 suggests that mutual fund voting should be analyzed at the individual fund level rather than at the fund family l evel. To investigate how support of individual funds toward management in proxy voting is influenced by business ties, I use a probit model. Due to limited observation availability, I can only test for the ISS favorable shareholder sponsored proposal. To do this, I examine fund voting at the individual level. The dependent variable equals one if a fund votes with management, zero otherwise. The independent variables is 1 one if a fund is included as one of the pension investment options of the firm in which it invests, and zero otherwise. Table 6 illustrates that the coefficient estimate of the pension tie is positively significant, which indicates that a business tie increases by 15.3% the probability that a fund supports management. This result suggests that individual funds are more likely to vote with management if they are included as investment options in the pension plans of their portfolios firm, compared to other funds not included. Individual funds are more likely to vote against shareholder proposals to support management of the firms with large size and high market to book ratio, and with high institutional ownership. V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS This paper investigates whether pension business ties have an influence on mutual fund voting. As pension assets managed by mutual funds have been growing since the late 1990s, the concern that mutual fund managers could potentially pursue their own interest at the expense of fund owners is raised. This is because fund managers might have more incentive to support management in order to attract and retain pension business. In fact, recent studies provide evidence that mutual funds tend to support management of their portfolio firms through proxy voting or trading. Using the mutual fund voting outcomes fromoccurred the period from June 2003 to December 2005, I find a positive association between mutual fund voting and business ties. Analysis at the fund family level show that fund families are more likely to vote for the ISS unfavorable management proposals and to vote against the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. The influence of pension ties to mutual fund voting becomes four t imes stronger when there is voting divergence among funds within the same families. At the individual fund level, the a fund included as one of the investment options of the pension plans of the firm in which it invests is more likely to vote against the ISS favorable shareholder proposals. Overall, my findings provide the evidence that mutual funds are conflicted due to their pension business ties with the firm in which they invest.Only close votes have been included in the sample proposals at in this analysis. In that Since the probability that management causes an upset by encouraging mutual funds to support management in close votes is higher than in non-close votes, I expect that the difference in voting support between mutual funds with pension ties and mutual funds without pension ties in close votes would be greater than the difference in the voting support across two groups in non-close votes. I leave comparison between close votes for a future analysis.

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The Memory System Essay example - 1953 Words

Memories are creative recollections of past experiences that are unique to each individual. They define us and give us our identity. Memories are a collection of information, which at one time was new to us, and as we learned and progressed, that information became stored as memory. The main fact to memory is that practice and repetition is a key asset to making the brain encode the information as memory. When the brain encodes this information it is stored, waiting to be retrieved. When we memorize something, it is stored for a certain amount of time in the brain, the more we recall this information the more familiar we become with it, making it easier to remember and recall later in life. The process of memory is still a mystery, but†¦show more content†¦While yet it is the most complex process neuroscience has ever tried to define. Most theorists believe that the brain encodes information in two different types, motor-skills memory and factual memory. Motor-skills memory is the memorization of functions like running, walking, or eating. While factual memory is associated with the memorization of telephone number, names, places, and experiences. Some theorists believe this is the basic foundation to memories. Associated with these two types are three levels, Sensory memory, Short-term memory, and Long-term memory. Sensory memory is the level, which absorbs the things around us using the five main senses, sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste. This level of memory is thought to only last a matter of seconds, and only moves on to the next level if enough attention is given to the information. (Baddeley, 1976) If not enough attention is given to the information it is ignored by the brain and forgotten. (Howe, 1983) The second level of memory is the Short-term memory. This level is believed to only have a capacity of 7 items, and have a duration time of no more than thirty seconds. (Bjork, 1996) When memories in the short-term are used more and more it s ends it to the next level, but again this is only done by practice or repetition. A way for most people to remember more things, in the short-term is called â€Å"Chunking.† This is where someone willShow MoreRelatedThe Memory System762 Words   |  4 PagesThe Memory System Memory is a very important aspect in a person’s life. It enables that individual to store information about various things that they can recall upon at a later time when that information is needed. The applications of your memory are boundless and are used every day whether we realize it or not for example taking test, fixing something around the house, playing a sport, etc. We are able to do this by associating that memory with a certain sounds, images, or colors that are familiarRead MoreDr. Greg s Memory System1437 Words   |  6 Pagestumor that destroyed Greg’s memory system in his early 20s. However, as his brain tumor grew, it did not affect his memory until the end stages. By the time that it was discovered, the tumor had damaged his temporal lobe, the hippocampus, and the pituitary gland. Greg lived a very simple, tranquil life and he was in his mid 40s when this story was written. The damage to Greg’s temporal lobe, which is also in charge of his memory system, evidently damaged his previous memories as well. The damage to hisRead MoreLong Term Memory Storage System1537 Words   |  7 Pagesreliance on memory. Long-term memory storage system is characterized by long duration, large capacity, and accessibility. â€Å"Over the years, several different types of long-term memory have been distinguished, including explicit and implicit memory, declarative and nondeclarative memory (with further subdivision of declarative memory in episodic and semantic memory.† (Mastin. 1) Long term memory can store an incredible amount of information over an extensive period. 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Essay2709 Words   |  11 PagesMemory is a capacity that humans rely upon to relate to different events, experiences, conditions, and people. It is a vitally important process and system whereby the brain receives information from (external or internal) stimuli, stores it (encoding), and makes it available on a future occasion (retrieval). It provides continuity to people’s experiences across different periods of time. Research is increasingly concluding that the brain works as an integrated whole rather than a series of discrete

Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is simply a...

Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is simply a lighthearted comedy of the follies and tribulations of love. It does however have quite a few more complexities that just that. The relationships between all of the main characters serve to provide us with a glimpse of a deep dark truth hidden within the lighter side of the play. One way to find these deep dark truths of the characters is by analyzing the characters and their relationships. The characters that I will be analyzing are Titania and Oberon, and Theseus and Hippolyta. The fairy queen Titania and the fairy king Oberon have very different personalities that make one wonder how their relationship could ever work. Oberon is a manipulative man who wants nothing but the†¦show more content†¦She was persistent in keeping the young little boy that she had promised to her friend, the little boy’s mother, to take care of and she would not take no for an answer: The Fairyland buys not the child of me. His mother was a vot’ress of my order, and in the spiced Indian air by night full often hath she gossiped by my side and sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands, marking th’ embarked traders on the flood, when we have laughed to see the sails conceive and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind; which she, with pretty and with swimming gait, following (her womb then rich with my young squire), would imitate and sail upon the land to fetch me trifles and return again, as from a voyage, rich with merchandise. But she, being mortal, of that boy did die, and for her sake do I rear up her boy, and for her sake I will not par with him. (Shakespeare 41). Once she realized that her husband, Oberon, would not accept the little boy she had the heart and will to leave him, â€Å"Titania is principled and strong enough to stand up to her husband† (Jaimeson). Oberon being the selfish man he is did not let her live in peace. So one day she woke up and she fell in love with a donkey, which so happened to be Bottom the Weaver. She loves him and attends to him in every way possible showing her love and gratitude towards him. When Oberon was happy with how far along he got into humiliating her he took spell away and she had realized she was in love with a donkey. She became

The American Negro Academy The First Black Intellectual...

The American Negro Academy, the first Black intellectual society, started the trend of establishing Black elitist groups who valued higher education. Unlike Booker T. Washington, Crummell’s Academy taught others that the race should learn self-sufficiency, not relying on social inclusion from Whites. He understood that Whites and Blacks would probably never peacefully coincide because the â€Å"race-problem† encompassed all of American history. In fact, the growth of Black and White populations would only continue to cultivate the problem. Alexander Crummell’s arguments remained the most valid, the best explained, and the most inclusive of all four early intellectuals. Instead of appeasing Whites through Booker T. Washington’s method of accommodation, or simply moving away from the land we call our home like Marcus Garvey, Crummell taught Blacks to take pride in being both Black and Americans. Every other race in America felt racial pride and did n ot look to others for acceptance, so Blacks should not beg for White support. Blacks should possess the ability to thrive in a home forced upon them, instead of relying on handouts or uprooting to a land they know nothing about to find economic stability. Additionally, his arguments included issues relating specifically to Black women, while others ignored them: the victimization of Black women through rape and racial violence from White men, Due to Crummell’s views on Black and White relations in America, he committed toShow MoreRelatedPolitical Philosophers : Reconstruction1595 Words   |  7 Pagesmiscegenation laws and lynchings. This proved that while blacks were free of slavery, their struggle for equality was far from over. With racial integration out of the question, prominent black leaders were forced to pull their resources and rethink their political strategies. Some of these leaders were Booker T. 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Conflict Management Attributes Foreseen in Organizations

Question: Describe about the Conflict Management for Attributes Foreseen in Organizations. Answer: Introduction Conflict management is one of the most common type attributes foreseen in different organisations. The discussion on the skilled process of conflict management has been one of the most debatable concepts over the years. According to Bradley et al. (2013), conflicts are based on the work based problems, task allocations, communications, or communicative purposes. The maintenance of the skilled relationship is necessary in order to resolve the conflicting scenario within an organisation. The effective participation of the leaders or the managers is thus one of the most necessary components for maintaining a comfortable environment (Mayer et al. 2012). Moreover, it is the major responsibility of the organisational leaders to communicate with the other employees during any occurrence of the conflicts. The situational conflicts are associated with diversified scenario. The study is divided into two parts, which contain the discussion of literature review and implementation of the theoretical model. The literature review will be presenting the literature study based on the conflict management process undertaken by the organisations. The role of the organisational leaders will be described in this literature review context. The second part of the study will provide the idea about the theoretical model based on the conflict management. The explanation of the tools and techniques will provide the insightful idea about the underlying concept. Part 1: Literature Review Conceptualised idea of Conflict Management The conflict management has become of the major concerned areas for the organisation. This section of the study will be focusing on the different typologies of the conflicts that can affect the internal management scenario of the organisation. Booth (2015) implied that the conflict may arise due to several uncertain situations faced by the organisational associates. For instance, the conflicts can arise due to performance, work process, and lack of effective relationships. The roles and the responsibilities of the team are essential for driving the performance management of an organisation. Hence, if there is any performance obligation takes place due to the ineffective maintenance of roles and responsibilities, the conflict may take place. Galuppo et al. (2014) explained that many organisational associates face difficulties or conflicts due to lack of proper relationship with other associates. In many of the cases, it has been observed that the team members or the other subordinates face the lack of communications. Therefore, it affects the interpersonal relationships with the other members. Another form of conflict is task-based, which includes the disagreements of the employees in working on any particular task. It is noted that sometimes the employees face issues with the tasks that they need to complete. However, if the employees fail to manage the tasks, it might create the uncertain scenario within the organisation. Saundry et al. (2014) identified a correlation between task-based conflicts and performance-based conflicts. In supporting such statement, L and Jarzabkowski (2015) proclaimed that the task-based conflicts are often proved to be much beneficial. The performance-based conflicts and the relationship-based conflicts in an organisation may lead towards the negative influences. On the contrary, the occurrence of the task-based conflicts provides the insight of undertaking innovative techniques and strategies. Therefore, it can be considered that the task-based conflict has the positive contribution on the organisational excellence. The conflicts arise when t he different perspectives of the diversified people clashes (Bruk-Lee, Nixon and Spector 2013). In such circumstances, the leaders need to take the proactive actions. Therefore, it is essential to identify the different approaches that are needed to be undertaken for managing the conflicts. Approaches of Conflict Management Conflict management is one of the major concerns for each organisation. The pattern of managing conflicts depends on two basic motives (Kerzner 2013). The first motif is to concentrate on own self whereas the other motif is to concentrate on others. Depending on such motives, the necessary approaches or patterns of managing conflicts are needed to be recognised. Dominating: It depicts the idea of concentrating more on self and less on others. Avoiding: Less concentration paid to self and others. Obliging: More focus on others and less on self. Compromising: Moderate concerns for others and self. Integrating: High focus on both self and others. Concentrating on such patterns, the conflict resolution process can be classified into two diversified dimensions, such as assertiveness or unassertiveness and cooperativeness or uncooperativeness. The different techniques associated with the conflict management process depend on the diversified level of conflicts (Redpath et al. 2013). In order to recognise such techniques of resolving conflicts, it is important to pay the attention towards such diversified techniques. These are as follows: Incident Level: It is to be noted that the management requires taking the proactive actions when any conflict occurs within the internal management scenario. However, in some of the cases, it is notified that the management fails to address such conflicting scenario and it turns into a situational crisis (Guo et al. 2014). This level of conflict is considered as the Incident level. The sharp and short communication is recognised in such situation. Discomfort Level: At the initial stage of a conflict, it is seen that some of the scenarios are unacceptable to the associated employees and management. If analysed more closely, it can be interpreted that this type of conflict is easily avoidable once the employees chose to walk away from the situation. According to Shaikh et al. (2014), this typology of the conflicting situation is less harmful for the internal scenario of an organisation. Tension Level: In some of the cases, it has been noticed that the management or the associated leaders are unable to resolve the situational crisis occurred within an organisation. In fact, when the conflict is addressed to the higher authority, it remains unclear and unsolved. This type of conflict level leads to tension, which can create the negative impact on the organisational productivity. Wallensteen (2015) implied that this type of conflict can create the worst scenario for the existing employees since people fail to understand the proper method of resolving this. Mix-level: The mix level of conflict occurs when there is the huge misunderstanding takes place between the comfort level and incident level of conflicts. This particular typology of conflict is sometimes much troublesome to manage since the level of misunderstanding reaches to the extreme height. However, it is observed that the utilisation of the negotiation process would be less influencing for resolving such scenario. Crisis level: Snyder and Diesing (2015) defined that when the conflict reaches to the extreme point of edge, the level becomes much critical. This level of conflict has the high probability of harming the organisational scenario. Along with the employees performance parameters, the morale of the leaders is also affected (Lerbinger 2012). The relationship between the employees and the organisation can be much affected due to the occurrence of such type of conflicts. In such circumstances, it has been noticed that often the employees end up losing their jobs. Hence, the organisation requires identifying the proper solution of resolving such conflict at the initial stage. The recognition of such different level of conflicts is specifying that it is the responsibility of the authority to pay attention towards the minimal level of conflicts. If the management fails to address such conflicting scenario, it may reach to the extreme level where it can create several negative consequences. Both the employees and associated management personnel would be harmed due to such extreme level of conflicts. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the importance of resolving such uncertain issues. Necessity of Managing the Conflicting Scenario Recognition of the root cause of the conflicting situation is essential for each of the organisation. It becomes unpredictable to analyse the major reason once the conflict reach to the extreme level. The time management is thus one of the most necessary aspects for the management. The importance of managing the internal conflicts is thus described further. Establishment the effective team bonding: The conflicts between the team members create the negative impact on the organisational productivity. The use of the proper techniques of resolving the arising issues between team members would be helpful to strengthen their bonding with each other. The assimilation of the shared ideas and innovative skills would be preferable for achieving organisational excellence (Ram and Montibeller 2013). Therefore, it is essential to keep the focus on the satisfaction of the employees interests. The agreement between the team members would be effective enough in building the team strength. Increasing the Organisational Performance Parameter: Reason (2016) suggested that the conflict resolution is necessary since such uncertainties can create the negative impact on the organisational performance. It is to be indicated that the establishment of the effective conflict management process would be helpful enough in removing disagreements among the employees. Moreover, resolving the conflicts provides the opportunity to establish the effective relationship between the associated employees. Building such effective relationship between the people serves as the motivational purposes, which helps in increasing the organisational performance parameter. In such regards, the leaders have to take the initiatives to maintain such cooperation. Establishment of the Organisational Reputation: The maintenance of the sequential and strategic steps is essential for establishing the effective organisational reputation. Similarly, if any organisation requires dealing with conflicting scenario, it would affect the internal management system (Binder 2016). Hence, it is necessary to structure the proper strategy that can increase the goodwill of the organisation. Part B: Model of Conflict Management The Conflict Model of Thomas-Kilmann Conflict is the general consequences that people face in their regular lives, as the individuals find differences between their desires and expectations. In an organisation, the conflicts may arise in achieving goals, securing values, and determining different styles of approaching (Riasi and Asadzadeh 2015). However, many experts have suggested focusing on the positive side of such of the conflicts to make it fruitful for the organisational reputation. In order to achieve such goal, it is necessary to structure an appropriate model that can be used for resolving the conflicts. Thomas-Killman introduced such conflict management model that includes 5 types of the instruments along with two different dimensions. Figure 1: Conflict Management of Thomas-Killman (Source: Trippe and Baumoel 2015) Altme, Trk and Toomet (2013) explained that the five types of conflict management style in this model are accommodating, avoiding, collaborating, competing, and compromising. The description of these styles is provided further. 1) Accommodating This particular approach is determining the high degree of self-cooperativeness. When the conflict arises against the own goals and desired outcomes, this approach is needed to be undertaken. If concentrated on the model based approaches, it can be suggested that the help derived from the third party professional would be much fruitful to construct such model. Moreover, it can also be predicted that such particular style would be much helpful in strengthening the future relationship with the other parties. This style is appropriate when the competition is much higher and the internal performance styles are required to be changed. Often it has been seen that during such change performance management process, the company faces challenges and conflicts in managing the existing employees. For example, retail companies face such competitions, since the demands of the retail products are much higher. In such consequences, if the third party involves with such scenario, it would be helpful enough in resolving such conflict. 2) Avoiding In some of the cases, many organisations just avoid the issues. These organisations simply eliminates the participation of the other parties and focus on fulfilling the own determined objectives. When one organisation has no chance of winning, it becomes more interested in avoiding the situation instead of involving other parties. It is found that most of the monopolistic businesses use such conflict model style where the competition is avoidable. For example, Apple Inc. operates in a business market where the competition is much lower. Hence, the company can avoid such circumstances. 3) Collaborating The conflicts can be managed by collaborating two or more organisations. Especially, it is noted that one organisation pairs up with another party in order to achieve the similar objective. It helps the organisations to be free from the win-lose mentality and ensure the win-win paradigms. Day (2015) suggested that usually this style signifies more complex situations. However, maintaining the appropriate style would be more helpful in resolving the issues and simplifying the scenario. In addition to this, it is also noted that collaborating with other parties is helpful enough in re-framing the challenges and structure the business functionalities accordingly. This style is even especially helpful for synthesising the ideas altogether with the help of other associated business partner. For example, during the merger and acquisition process, employees feel insecure about their job stability. The participation of the merged companies would be thus helpful in such circumstances for re-st ructuring the performance management. 4) Competing According to Cai (2016), the competing style in this model signifies the win-lose approach more specifically. It is noted that each organisation holds the insight of dealing with the specific scenario in order to achieve the pre-determined goals. Similarly, the organisations required facing the competitiveness in order to ensure growth. Therefore, it is essential to take the participation in the competitive scenario by undertaking the decisive action more frequently. 5) Compromising This type of style is highlighting the lose-lose scenario, which determines that the organisation will not be able to achieve the perceived objectives. Trippe and Baumoel (2015) suggested that in such scenario, the organisations need to maintain an appreciable level of assertiveness. Even though the scenario is temporary, it may create impact on the organisational morale. The associated members in the organisation become much fond of achieving their personal goals as well. Hence, in order to eliminate such conflicting scenario, people chose to compromise. In fact, it is perceived that compromising with the situation would be perfect for leading towards better solutions. Figure 2: Steps for decision making to resolve conflict (Source: Created by Auhtor) The above analysis is highlighting the different scenario that the organisations usually face during the conflicting situations. It is to be indicated that the identification of the scenario is necessary to resolve the issues. Analysing the above context, it is noted that the dealing with the conflicting situation, it is much important t concentrate on the interpersonal cues. If it is linked with the real life scenario, it can be seen that during such situational crisis, the body language of the people changes. For example, during conflicts, the face turns red, the stomach tightens, and pulse rises. More specifically, the people associated with such conflicting scenario, usually start talking in high pitched voice. Therefore, the people involved with resolving such conflicts are needed to be calm and quiet at first. It is important to identify the real issue beyond the reflective scenario. The communication with both the parties will then decide the proper steps that can be undertake n to resolve such conflicts. The power of judgment is necessary in such cases. The roles of the leaders are thus necessary in such regards. The leaders are required identifying the underlying issues and accordingly need to undertake the relevant decisions. However, some of the organisations take the help from the third party mediator for resolving the issues. Steps for resolving the conflicts Each of the organisations needs to identify the proper procedure of resolving the underlying issues and resolve the associated conflicts. The leaders of an organisation requires following five steps in order to resolve the conflicts. These steps are descried further. Identification of the source The leaders need to be aware of source of conflicts as soon as soon they receive the information. The identification of the proper issue will be ensuring the relevant steps that are needed to be undertaken to resolve the conflicts (Snyder and Diesing 2015). The relational aspect of these issues is necessary for making any relevant decision. Looking beyond the Incident In some of the cases, it may happen that the situation is not responsible for the conflicts; rather the perspectives of highlighting the situation can be the major reason. In such cases, the leaders need to look beyond the incident to undertake the relevant judgement for resolving the conflicts (Saundry et al. 2014). The irrelevant perspectives may lead towards more hazardous scenario. Therefore, judgement should be based on the actual scenario of conflicts. Requesting the Solution Collecting the view point of both the parties, the leaders need to understand the real scenario behind such conflict. Depending on such scenario, it will be clarified that which of the situations can be changed properly to resolve the issues. The questions also can be asked to the parties if required. Identification of the solution for the support When once the solution is identified, it should be addressed to both the parties for approval. It is noted that the leader or the person who is going to solve the issue requires identifying the relevant course of action. If the solution is beneficial for the organisation and both the parties, the process can be undertaken accordingly. Agreement of the Solution Once the issue is explained to the mediator, the situation identification is necessary. Depending on such situation, the mediator will undertake the necessary step to resolve the issue. After undertaking the proper decision, the mediator needs to let both the parties know about their agreements (Bruk-Lee, Nixon and Spector 2013). It is noted that some of the mediators make an agreement paper, which is required to be approved by both the parties. This process is one of the most effective steps to resolve the conflict. Conclusion The study has been reflecting the idea of the conflict management process. It is noted that the conflicts are one of the most recognisable incidents that people have to deal with in their regular life. Each of the organisations faces such conflicting scenario and accordingly requires undertaking the relevant steps to resolve the issues. The five levels of conflict management process is much helpful to eliminate the negative situations and bring the efficiency to the organisational performance. The use of the Thomas-Killman model is relevant enough in resolving the underlying issues that may affect the organisational productivity. However, recognition of the specific issues and the actual scenario is necessary. The contextualised idea about the conflict management scenario is reflecting in the literature review section. The identification of the specific issue will be providing the insightful ideas about the solutions of the issues. References Altme, S., Trk, K. and Toomet, O.S., 2013. Thomas-Kilmann's Conflict Management Modes and their relationship to Fiedler's Leadership Styles (basing on Estonian organizations).Baltic Journal of Management,8(1), pp.45-65. Binder, J., 2016.Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. CRC Press. Booth, S.A., 2015.Crisis management strategy: Competition and change in modern enterprises. Routledge. Bradley, B.H., Klotz, A., Baur, J.E. and Banford, C.G., 2013, January. When Does Conflict Improve Team Performance? A Review of Evidence and Framework for Future Research. InAcademy of Management Proceedings(Vol. 2013, No. 1, p. 17093). Academy of Management. Bruk-Lee, V., Nixon, A.E. and Spector, P.E., 2013. An expanded typology of conflict at work: Task, relationship and non-task organizational conflict as social stressors.Work Stress,27(4), pp.339-350. Cai, D.A., 2016. Conflict Styles and Strategies.The International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication. Day, G.E., 2015. Successfully managing conflict.Leading and Managing Health Services: An Australasian Perspective, p.273. Galuppo, L., Gorli, M., Scaratti, G. and Kaneklin, C., 2014. Building social sustainability: multi-stakeholder processes and conflict management.Social Responsibility Journal,10(4), pp.685-701. Guo, Y., Tjosvold, D., Wong, A. and Li, X., 2014, January. Conflict between Leaders and Employees: The Role of Transformational Leadership. InAcademy of Management Proceedings(Vol. 2014, No. 1, p. 13673). Academy of Management. Kerzner, H.R., 2013.Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley Sons. L, J.K. and Jarzabkowski, P.A., 2015. The role of task and process conflict in strategizing.British Journal of Management,26(3), pp.439-462. Lerbinger, O., 2012.The crisis manager. Routledge. Mayer, C.H., Louw, L., Mayer, C.H. and Louw, L., 2012. Managing cross-cultural conflict in organizations.International Journal of Cross Cultural Management,12(1), p.3. Ram, C. and Montibeller, G., 2013. Exploring the impact of evaluating strategic options in a scenario-based multi-criteria framework.Technological Forecasting and Social Change,80(4), pp.657-672. Reason, J., 2016.Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Routledge. Redpath, S.M., Young, J., Evely, A., Adams, W.M., Sutherland, W.J., Whitehouse, A., Amar, A., Lambert, R.A., Linnell, J.D., Watt, A. and Gutirrez, R.J., 2013. Understanding and managing conservation conflicts.Trends in Ecology Evolution,28(2), pp.100-109. Riasi, A. and Asadzadeh, N., 2015. The relationship between principals reward power and their conflict management styles based on ThomasKilmann conflict mode instrument.Management Science Letters,5(6), pp.611-618. Saundry, R.A., Latreille, P., Dickens, L., Irvine, C., Teague, P., Urwin, P. and Wibberley, G., 2014. Reframing Resolution-Managing Conflict and Resolving Individual Employment Disputes in the Contemporary Workplace.Acas Policy Discussion Papers, pp.1-21. Shaikh, P.H., Nor, N.B.M., Nallagownden, P., Elamvazuthi, I. and Ibrahim, T., 2014. A review on optimized control systems for building energy and comfort management of smart sustainable buildings.Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews,34, pp.409-429. Snyder, G.H. and Diesing, P., 2015.Conflict among nations: Bargaining, decision making, and system structure in international crises. Princeton University Press. Trippe, B. and Baumoel, D., 2015. Beyond the ThomasKilmann Model: Into Extreme Conflict.Negotiation Journal,31(2), pp.89-103. Wallensteen, P., 2015.Understanding conflict resolution. Sage.

Cristal Mining Hatfield Gravel Pit Development †Free Samples

Question: Discuss about theCristal Mining Hatfield Gravel Pit Development 70km North of Balranald. Answer: Introduction: The sustainability in mining sector is not a trivial concept. There are various parameters and challenges included in determining the viability of mining, and the focus will largely differ according to the long term and short term goals of industry stakeholders and authoritative bodies. Over the decade the mining industry in Australia has shifted to enhance its environmental sustainability. There have been debates about has been the demand for involving sustainable development into mining as well as corporate agendas. The coercion nature of gravel mining operations generates an array of influences on the environment previously, during and completion of mining operations. The stretch and character of influence can vary from minimum to significant based on a range of factors based with each mine. These elements involve the nature of the ore body; the characteristics of technology and methods of extraction applied in mining and the on-site filtering of minerals; and the tolerance of the local environment. The environmental influences of mining, although crucial, are typically restricted to local areas. Apart from direct substantial affects of extractive activities, contamination of land, water and air may also result. Although mining in isolation may not be the key land use that affects ecological systems, as environmental effects are exponential in nature and other previous activities or events may have caused to these effects. Extraction of Gravel: Gravel is a resource belongs to the non-renewable category. It is primarily used in construction significantly for construction of roads in Western Australia. Loss of vegetation, water pollution in the ground and surface, noise, dust and erosion are the probable environmental impacts due to the Gravel pit extraction. Gravel pits should be positioned close proximity to markets to reduce the environmental impacts. As gravel is a non renewable in nature, there should be attempt to enhance the recycling and use of prebuilt structure and demolition waste in order to minimize need for the virgin product extracted from the mine. Water management: Major companies routinely administer surface water as well as ground water in the neighborhood areas in order to keep the elements within the advised limits and outline the results to the respective authorities. The important measures considered because of waste watermanagement and avoidance of water pollution can be reckoned as, mine water is depleted out and traverses through a number of distilling tanks and sometimes modified with chemicals before being clearance into the natural water bodies. The stream water from waste dumps are traverse through garland drains in to the lakes and sometimes by adding lime and flocculent before being cleared into natural bodies (McGrath 2014). Old and not used mining pits are treated either for as tailing ponds or harvesting the rain water. All the water necessitated for advancement process is coupled with this rain water. Tailings are used with lime hydrated and flocculants. The overflow is channelized into other holes which are then reused for a dvantages. About seventy per cent of water is first recycled then reused; with correspondence thirty per cent being evaporation and other wastage. Air pollution management: The key reason for the air pollution in mines is happened due to the particulate matter of different sizes and chemical elements or dusts. Thus dustmanagement at several levels of mining activities is the most crucial threat. The prime sources of pollution are dust haul roads, drilling and blasting, crushing and screaming operations, material handling and waste rock dumps. The main measures observed for dust suppression and management are the mentioned as regular water sprinkling (during breaks) on haul roads, other roads and working areas as well as active overburden dumps. Wet drilling and site mixed emulsion for drilling with less noise, vibration and dust in larger mines. Dust extractors in the crushing and screening plants, water spraying and dry fog system at the crushing plant. Rehabilitation: At the enforcement of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) the details of endangered species, ecological communities included only of those past listed under the Endangered Species Protection Act 1992.Under the EPBC Act new segments have been added for listed endangered species and ecological communities. Natural renewal of the gravel pits is generally to be futile because to the sluggish rate of recruitment to such a highly disrupted area which has no soil seed bank. It is therefore more fertile to plant and forthright seed the area, with incidental decisive weed control. Species which produce encouraging habitat for the black cockatoos are likely to be exploited, along with species like Acacia saligna which are expensive as early habitats. Tree species will also be seeded, including Corymbia calophylla and Eucalyptus marginata in the dry areas, along with Banksia littoralis and Eucalyptus rudis where conditions more closely familiar the nearby wetland (Barrow 2014). Tree management, including preserving habitat trees for cultivating cockatoos, will be critical along withinstalling further cockatubes for black cockatoo breeding to substitute any habitat trees lost. Conclusion The environmental impact of crystal mining or extraction and utilization are the duties of all stakeholders belong to the mining industry. This varies from miners to traders and also from jewelers to ultimate consumers to regulatory bodies and respective governments. The environment is the crucial source of revenue generation and will encourage livelihoods even after the renunciation of crystal mining activity. This is the main reason for the mitigation of environmental impacts due to mining. Environmental impacts are not confined to local regions. Boosting environmental sustainability in crystal mining industry is not purely about protecting Balranald. It is about preserving frail ecologies that are crucial for the bases of flora, fauna and humans in present and also in future. Fortified institutions that primarily depend on integrated management programmes are needed to organize environment and the emolument that rely on them. References: Barrow, C.J., 2014. Developing the environment: Problems management. Routledge. Baumgartner, R.J., 2014. Managing corporate sustainability and CSR: A conceptual framework combining values, strategies and instruments contributing to sustainable development. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 21(5), pp.258-271. Caton, B. and Harvey, N., 2015. Coastal management in Australia (p. 342). University of Adelaide Press. Epstein, M.J. and Buhovac, A.R., 2014. Making sustainability work: Best practices in managing and measuring corporate social, environmental, and economic impacts. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Jessup, B. and Rubenstein, K. eds., 2012. Environmental discourses in public and international law (Vol. 3). Cambridge University Press. McGrath, C., 2014. A critical evaluation of the one?stop shop policy. Australian Environmental Law Digest, (Aug 2014), p.3. Mitchell, B., 2013.Resource environmental management. Routledge. O'Riordan, T. ed., 2014.Environmental science for environmental management. Routledge. Reid, D., 2013. Sustainable development: an introductory guide. Routledge. Smith, K., 2013. Environmental hazards: assessing risk and reducing disaster. Routledge.