We use eSports data to construct an empirical model to measure the effect of diversity on team performance. Different kinds of diversities are considered, diversity of culture, diversity of language and diversity of skill. Our main results are that cultural diversity is beneficial for team performance: the absence of diversity reduces performance by 30%. However, language and experience diversity negatively affect results. Taking the difference in the results into account, we conclude that firms should not thoughtlessly maximize team diversity: different kinds of diversity have different integration and communication costs.

Research question: This paper investigates how football sponsorship influences the financial performance of sponsors. We suggest a new instrumental variable (IV) to avoid endogeneity. Research methods: We use an IV regression framework combined with a fixed effects model. The number of tweets containing both team and sponsor names are collected to use as the IV. Results and findings: We analyze top European leagues. Our results show that football sponsorship is more charity than commercial investment. The analysis of determinants of becoming a sponsor and sponsorship amount shows that companies owned by individuals are more likely to become a sponsor. Implications: Shareholders should be aware of sponsorship deals, and senior management should analyze the financial assumptions of such projects carefully.

Purpose: This study suggests an alternative to confirmatory content analysis (CA) and empirically demonstrates that explorative CA enables new insights into the mechanism of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure. In so doing, this research contributes to both methodological and empirical advancements in IC disclosure research.Design/methodology/approach: Employing the assumptions of positive accounting theory and taking book value of intangible assets as a reference, our research design utilizes well-established text-mining (TM) tools based on a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression. We assume that the degree of cohesion between officially disclosed and evaluated intangible assets on balance sheets and those contextually delivered in narrative form may affect how IC is ultimately disclosed in annual reports.Findings: Our main finding is in line with the results and criticism of previous studies. We show that companies do not extensively disclose IC in their annual reports. However, some narrative forms for IC disclosure are identified and confirmed by several robustness checks.Research limitations/implications: First, the findings provide internal validity only for large US enterprises. These firms have similar, well-structured reporting requirements. This analysis might be enriched by an examination and a comparison of different institutional contexts, such as emerging countries. Second, following previous studies, annual reports serve as the source of data. Consequently, the findings are relevant only for mandatory and voluntary disclosure of IC, mitigating the relevance of this study for contexts of involuntary disclosure.Originality/value: This study makes two contributions. First, we add to the empirical literature by offering one more piece of evidence on whether and, if so, the extent to which companies disclose IC in their annual reports. Second, we provide further examination of confirmatory CA by proposing a number of statistically validated codes and tokens that are indicators of IC communication by companies.

Purpose: – Investments in intellectual capital (IC) are often linked to competitive advantages that improve economic profit and increase the value of a company. However, this effect is reciprocal: companies that generate higher cash flow can invest more in IC. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a dynamic relationship between IC components and economic profit, with a special emphasis on industry specific effects in pharmaceutical, retail, steel, telecommunications, and service sectors. Design/methodology/approach: – Panel vector autoregression was used to deal with the mutual influence of IC components, the lag effect, and heterogeneity. The data were taken from Compustat database and covers the period from 2001 to 2010. Findings: – The paper proves that there is interaction between investments in the IC components and company performance. However, there are sectoral differences: there is a positive impact of economic profit on human capital in retail; in the steel industry a mutual influence is revealed. Moreover, interaction between different IC components is detected in telecommunication and steel industries. Originality/value: – This is the first study to present clear evidence of the effects of performance on IC investment decisions. The time lag in the effects of IC investments was estimated and compared for different industries. On the methodological side, the paper presents a rather simple method capable of yielding results consistent with other studies and yet rich enough to be applied to an analysis of sectoral differences in dynamic IC investment decisions.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of efficiency of corporate universities. An efficiency is defined in relative terms: as having relatively better performance in comparison to other companies. Different indicators of performance were employed in order to analyze short-term and long-term efficiency. A comparative analysis of European companies and emerging Russian companies is performed in order to understand if there are country differences in the efficiency of corporate universities. Design/methodology/approach: To avoid potential omitted variable bias, fixed effect within estimator is employed. This estimator enables controlling for a firm-specific time-constant effect which conditions company’s performance and is responsible for other individual traits. The rest of the characteristics are controlled with a proxy, which are traditional for corporate finance studies. Findings: There are contradictory results for the efficiency of a corporate university; for the European companies, a corporate university brings positive effect for the short-term performance, nevertheless, as the authors have found that it destructs value in long term. A company with a corporate university has 70 percent less market value added than an average company. There is a negative short-term synergy while the long-term synergy is positive. The results for the Russian sample are very consistent: corporate universities have negative or neutral effect on the performance. Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature about strategic management and human resources management. It addresses the issue on efficiency of corporate universities in companies considering this as one of the key strategic investment in human resource policy. It appears that the corporate university is not a panacea for all companies to develop their human development policy.