¡§People¡¨ is the key to a company¡¦s success, as all processes from R&D, sales to services were handled by people. Therefore, quality of a team determines whether a company will be successful or not, and this is exactly why companies starting to pay increasing attention to ¡§core competency¡¨. Technology, products and services can easily be duplicated, but employees are the only, and most important, assets in a company that can not be replaced. Excellence employees will lead to the competitiveness and profitability of a company and are the foundation of successful companies. It is an imperative for modern companies to cultivate employees¡¦ ¡§core competency¡¨ so that companies can reasonably leverage, motivate and accumulate top quality human assets in order to reach maximum productivity and support the actualization of operation strategy. This study aims at using case study of a software development company of high tech industry to understand the construction of the core competency model and its process. Through literature review, focus groups and executive interviews, the study comes up with the core competency of all employees and the managerial core competency of managers. The study hopes to be able to help other industries to introduce their core competency so as to increase the overall organizational efficiency. Core competency means the knowledge, skills, behaviors and traits that employees need in order for a company to actualize its operation strategy. Therefore, the mid- to long-term business strategy is the base of the development of core competency. The 5 core competencies in the study were developed based on the following factors: company mission and vision, 3 year strategies and goals, unique competitive advantages, key successful factors and the benchmarking of other model companies. Each core competency must have very clear definition and description of its corresponding behaviors of the contribution and impact for various levels of employees. The definition and behaviors descriptions serve as the base for the company¡¦s core competency evaluation and also set the future direction for the company. This study results showed that the company, after introducing core competency system, was able to understand precisely the core competency gap between its individual manager and the team average. The study also demonstrated the fact that the individual manager¡¦s core competency improved visibly in a year through training on the targeted core competencies. This study validated that the organizational efficiency can be increased by the constructing of core competency system and the implementation of the performance management system.

Recently, the market of mutual fund is getting larger and larger; and the need of determining which fund to buy is more important as well. In this study, we want to find out the relationship between mutual fund managerial team and mutual fund performance. We examine the performance of 64 mutual funds over the 3 year period 1997 through 1999 using Fama and French¡¦s 3-factor model. Then we test the persistence of mutual fund performance and whether a mutual fund manager have market timing ability. Results show that a fund¡¦s performance is significantly impacted by its manager¡¦s number, fund age, turnover, expense, and mutual fund company¡¦s age. All else equal, investors can expect better performance from funds with few manager numbers, low fees, low buy turnovers, high sale turnovers, and younger mutual fund companys. On average, mutual fund managers do not have market timing ability, and mutual funds exist performance fersistence over the 3 year period.

This thesis indicates that the relationship between the budgetary participation and managerial performance of Japanese companies in Taiwan is practical. If organizational performance is an intervening variable of budgetary participation and organizational commitment, it proves that the relationship budgetary participation and organizational commitment is positive and obvious. It also reveals that organizational commitment and managerial performance also have a positive relationship. In addition, budgetary participation can get an indirect influence to increase managerial performance by adding organizational commitment., The demonstrations show that the relationship between budgetary participation and managerial performance is negative, which is the same as the outcome of Sterdry (1960), Bryan & Locke (1967), Blumenfield & Leidly (1969) and Cherrington (1973). However, it is different from that of Argyris (1955), Brownell (1982), Brownell & McInnes (1986), Govindarajan (1986), Dunk (1990), Kren (1992). Therefore, the relationship between budgetary performance and managerial performance has not reached a consistent conclusion until now. In order to explain the inconsistent relationship between budgetary participation and managerial performance, the studies are based on the organizational commitment as an intervening variable. After the demonstrations, without dividing into groups, organizational commitment has an indirect influence between budgetary participation and managerial performance. However, by dividing into groups, it does not indicate the causation relationship except that of the group of Taiwanese managers to join the formal budgetary participation. According to different nations and different ways to join in a group by dividing into variable groups, with an advanced research, it reveals that the relevant coefficient of organizational commitment and managerial performance is positive for Japanese managers. Moreover, the relevant coefficient of the group of informal budgetary participation is much higher than that of the group of formal budgetary participation. Thus, it proves that Japanese managers prefer to the informal budgetary participation, which matches the assumption of studies. For Japanese companies, the pattern to make decisions depends on the agreement of each member, and the managers prefer to cooperate with them in private (NEMAWASHI). For Budgetary Participation, it is just formal. Although the relevant coefficient of budgetary participation and organizational commitment for Taiwanese managers shows the positive aspects, it is impossible to achieve the indirect affection to increase the managerial performance within the use of organizational commitment. It indicates that Taiwanese managers can¡¦t possess the power to make decisions in the Japanese companies. Though they join those formal meetings of budgetary participation, they still can¡¦t increase managerial performance without any incentives. Therefore, it is not ideal to establish the budge of each department in a company only to encourage them to join meetings. It is to reward them or to give them spiritual support that can increase the managerial performance. This research can provide Japanese companies in Taiwan with the most important references to design or implement the budgetary system in achieving the expected goal.

The dysfunctional consequences of budgetary controls have received a great deal of attention. One motivation for the current study was to test whether effects exist between two alleged dysfunctional consequences of a rigid budgetary control form: budget slack creation and managerial short-term orientation. According to the research: A rigid budgetary control will reduce budget slack creation and increase managerial short-term orientation. Reducing one form of dysfunctional behavior (slack creation) through rigid controls seems to raise another form (stronger management focus on business matters that affect short-term results). However, the budgetary control forms that organizations implement may be affected by two important antecedents: past business unit performance and environmental uncertainty. The results indicate that business units that have been more profitable are subject to more rigid budgetary controls, which reduce the propensity to build slack and, as a result, lead indirectly to managers¡¦ emphasis on short-term effects. The high environmental uncertainty of the business units is subject to less rigid budgetary controls from upper management allowing them to build slack, which seems in line with the flexibility required to respond effectively to changes in their environment as well as the tendency for managers to think about long-term effects. We collected 138 samples from 1,017 respondents, who are business unit managers of public owned companies in Taiwan, and used path analysis to test our hypotheses.

Since chain convenience store becomes the main trend in the retail industry, and the store managers play the important roles to run the business, therefore this research is trying to find out what the competences are necessary for the store managers. Furthermore, this research would like to find out if different characteristics of managers would affect their emphasis degree on the managerial competency. The results are as follows: 1. The 7 competences for the store managers are: (1) business improving ability; (2) daily work managing ability; (3) planning ability; (4) leadership; (5) selling field managing ability; (6) instructing ability; (7) goal approaching ability. 2. The relations between demographics valuables and managerial competences: (1) store managers from ¡§ the middle area¡¨ put the least emphasis on selling field managing ability, leadership and instructing ability; (2) store managers working in ¡§ Family¡¨ put the least emphasis on goal approaching ability; (3) store managers working in ¡§ regular chain¡¨ put more emphasis on planning ability, daily work managing ability and leadership than franchise chain; (4) store managers who work less than one year put the least emphasis on planning ability, goal approaching ability and business improving ability. 3. The moderate effect of individual performance: when individual performance interacting with education, it would affect the emphasis degree toward planning ability and daily work managing ability.

Service industries increase every year in global industry, more and more labors work in this industry, thus this research is aimed at understanding the current situation of management development of first-line manager in service industry. The population of our survey is confined to the first-line manager of service industry. The questionnaire survey was adopte for the study. Of totally 332 distributed questionnaires, there are 91 effective. Through statistics analysis, the main results of the study are concluded as follows: 1.About managerial competency demand, ¡§customer service-oriented¡¨ and ¡§relationship competencies¡¨ are most important in all service industries, ¡§joint venture¡¨ and ¡§balance life and work¡¨ are relative not important. As the scope of management becomes wider, ¡§nurturing¡¨ and ¡§problem solving¡¨ become important. 2.As regard to management development techniques, ¡§personal skills training¡¨ is most important, ¡§talent selection¡¨ is second. Different services industries may use some techniques upon industries characteristics. 3.Management development assessments are not popular in service industries, only ¡§group discussion¡¨ and ¡§simulation game¡¨ are used often, both of them could be related to work in practice. 4.In all service industries, ¡§on-the-job-experiences¡¨ and ¡§management skill training¡¨ are most used management development techniques, ¡§evaluate past experiences¡¨ and ¡§evaluate competencies¡¨ are most used management development assessments.

For decades, two key characteristics in budgeting system-budgetary participation and budgetary emphasis have been intensively discussed in previous management accounting studies. Although previous literature suggested that budgetary participation and budgetary emphasis have positive effects on mangers¡¦ effectiveness, they provided inconsistent and piecemeal evidence. This study attempts to investigate the influences of budgetary participation and emphasis on managerial effectiveness and on slack and to propose a comprehensive model in order to clarify the relationships of intervening variables among budgetary participation and emphasis on managerial effectiveness and slack. This study employs social-cognitive theory (SCT) (Bandura, 1977) and affective events theory (AET) (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) to investigate the relationships between budgetary participation, budgetary emphasis, managerial effectiveness and budgetary slack. According to social cognitive theory, this study suggests that budgetary participation and emphasis enhance managers¡¦ self-efficacy, and then improves managerial performance and job satisfaction. According to AET, this study suggests that budgetary participation implies positive affective events which effectively influence managers¡¦ attitudes-trust in superior and organizational commitment, in turn improve their performance and satisfaction. However, budgetary emphasis is implied as a negative affective event, which may influence managers¡¦ attitudes. In other words, self-efficacy, trust in superior and organizational commitment play critical intervening roles among the relationships budgetary participation, budgetary emphasis, managerial performance, job satisfaction and budgetary slack. In addition, the relationships between the intervening variables and between outcome variables are also explored. Finally, this study proposes a comprehensive budgetary participation¡¦s ¡¥cognitive-attitude-effectiveness¡¦ model. Eighteen hypotheses are proposed. Structural equation modeling was used to test the theoretical models with the 164 responses which were randomly drawn from the listing company in Taiwan Stock Exchange. The results validate the following relationships: 1.Budgetary participation and budgetary emphasis have indirect effects on managerial performance and job satisfaction through self-efficacy. 2.Budgetary participation has indirect effects on managerial performance and job satisfaction through affective attitudes-trust in superior and organizational commitment. 3.Budgetary participation enhances self-efficacy and then improving managers¡¦ attitudes. 4.Budgetary emphasis directly influences budgetary slack. 5.Managers¡¦ trust in superior enhances their organizational commitment. 6.Managers¡¦ job satisfaction improves their performance. Although the relationship between trust in superior and managerial performance is not supported in the comprehensive model, the mediating roles of self-efficacy, trust and organizational commitment are validated. In other words, the cognitive and attitudinal effects of budgetary participation are supported in this study. However, this study suggests a positive path from budgetary slack toward job satisfyaction, which implies that proper slack may result in higher managers¡¦ job satisfaction. This study provides suggestions for future researches and management implications for practical business managements.

Most previous studies emphasized on the single consequence with respect to the effect of budgetary emphasis on budgetary slack or other dysfunctional behaviors, however, the relationships among these dysfunctional behaviors are seldom investigated. In order to understand the relationships among those dysfunctional behaviors, this study attempted to explore a structure model of past performance, perceived environment uncertainty, consideration leadership style, budgetary emphasis and three dysfunctional behaviors including budgetary slack, job-related tension and managerial short-term orientation. The empirical data was randomly drawn from 175 manufacturing managers in Taiwan Security Exchange. The empirical evidence of this research revealed as follows: 1. Managers have no incentive to create budgetary slack in a business which does not evaluate manager¡¦s performance with budgetary goal achievement. There is a significant positive relationship between past performance and budgetary slack, but the direct effect does not exist. The effect of past performance on budgetary slack is indirectly through budgetary emphasis. Similarly, perceived environment uncertainty and consideration leadership style affecting budgetary slack isn¡¦t directly but indirectly by budgetary emphasis. 2. Between budgetary slack and managerial short-term orientation, budgetary slack and job-related tension may exist a spillover effect. While reducing the propensity to build budgetary slack might induce managerial short-term orientation and job-related tension. 3. Weather no matter budget achievement evaluates performance, past performance directly influences the job-related tension. The manager whose performance is poor could have the higher job-related tension. 4. In different industry, the factor that influencing the organization to practice the budget control system is also different. In traditional industry, past performance is the important factor that affecting organization to implement the budget control system and induce the dysfunction behaviors, but perceived environment uncertainty is the important factor in the electronic information industry.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the perceived decision-relevant information (PDRI) as an intervening variable between two kinds of management accounting systems - broad scope and aggregation (broad scope MAS/aggregation MAS) and managerial performance. This study also examines the impact of strategy types (differentiation and low cost strategies) on the relationships between broad scope MAS/aggregation MAS and PDRI, and between PDRI and managerial performance. For testing the 18 hypotheses, this study mainly employs the path analysis, and adopts a questionnaire survey sampling from plant managers and their subordinate in Taiwan¡¦s electronic companies listed in Taiwan Stock Exchange Market. Deriving from the 112 effective matched responses, the study reveals the following results: 1. Both the relationships between broad scope MAS and managerial performance, and between aggregation MAS and managerial performance are positive. 2. There is a full mediating effect of PDRI between broad scope MAS and managerial performance. In which, the relationship between broad scope MAS and PDRI is positive, and the relationship between PDRI and managerial performance is also positive. 3. There is a partial mediating effect of PDRI between aggregation MAS and managerial performance. In which, the relationships between aggregation MAS and PDRI, and PDRI and managerial performance are positive. 4. When companies tend to adopt a differentiation strategy, there is a full mediating effect of PDRI between broad scope MAS and managerial performance. In which, the relationship between broad scope MAS and PDRI is positive, and the relationship between PDRI and managerial performance is also positive. Besides, when companies tend to adopt a differentiation strategy, the full mediating effect is more pronounced than that of the overall sample companies. 5. When companies tend to adopt a low cost strategy, there is not a mediating effect of PDRI between broad scope MAS and managerial performance. In which, there isn¡¦t a relationship between broad scope MAS and PDRI, but, the relationship between PDRI and managerial performance is still positive. 6. Comparing with the low cost strategy, when companies tend to adopt a differentiation strategy, under the broad scope MAS as antecedent variable, the positive relationship between broad scope MAS and PDRI is stronger, but, the positive relationship between PDRI and managerial performance is not stronger. 7. When companies tend to adopt a differentiation strategy, there is a full mediating effect of PDRI between aggregation MAS and managerial performance. In which, the relationship between aggregation MAS and PDRI is positive, and the relationship between PDRI and managerial performance is also positive. 8. When companies tend to adopt a low cost strategy, there is also a full mediating effect of PDRI between aggregation MAS and managerial performance. In which, the relationship between aggregation MAS and PDRI is positive, and the relationship between PDRI and managerial performance is also positive. 9. Comparing with the low cost strategy, when companies tend to adopt a differentiation strategy, under the aggregation MAS as antecedent variable, the positive relationship between aggregation MAS and PDRI is not stronger, and the positive relationship between PDRI and managerial performance is not stronger either. 10. Strategy type is not associated with two kinds of MAS. That is, no matter differentiation strategy or low cost strategy that company tends to adopt, both strategies can not impact the level of using broad scope MAS or aggregation MAS by managers. From above results, this study provides important management implications, and presents contributions for academy in researches and suggestions for business in practice. Finally, the research limitations and possibly future researches are presented.

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p><strong>Problem</strong>: The problem of this thesis involves the controversy that the implementation of poison pills generates. The conflict amongst various stakeholders that are affected directly or indirectly by the implementation of the poison pill also contributes significantly to the problem of this thesis.</p><p><strong>Purpose</strong>: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and compare the benefits of the poison pill adoption on shareholder and management interests. We also seek to evaluate arguments for and against pill adoption, and determine if these arguments are valid in view of facts established from our study.</p><p><strong>Conclusions</strong>: Our study in this thesis has brought us to five conclusions about the poison pill policy in fulfillment of the purpose. We state in our conclusion that arguments for and against the poison pill can both be validated depending on the case, we also state that a general conclusion cannot be drawn as to the negative or positive effect of the poison pill on stakeholders. We proceed to argue that the pill is a very effective fighting toll in the current business world and state that more should be done to regulate pill implementation. We finish up our conclusion by identifying what appears to be an inverse relationship between management and shareholders benefits from the implementation of the pill.</p><p><strong> Originality</strong>: The uniqueness of our study resides in the theoretical framework that is developed from two prevailing hypotheses in the academic research of the poison pill. The previous studies either take on the management entrenchment hypothesis (MEH) or the shareholder interest hypothesis (SIH). However, we have combined the elements of both hypotheses and jointly revealed the advantages and disadvantages of the pill adoption for both management and shareholders via our original management shareholder benefits comparison matrix.</p>