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Ownership governance and performance in Spanish-Moroccan Joint Ventures
Maria Victoria Lopez-Perez; Maria Carmen Perez-Lopez; Lazaro Rodriguez-Ariza
Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Granada
ABSTRACT]]> This paper analyses the impact of ownership on performance by SMEs formed as Spanish-Moroccan international joint ventures (IJVs). In such SMEs, the functions and persons involved at different levels of governance - ownership, board and managers - often overlap. The results obtained from 210 SMEs suggest that owners often exert control by participating in the other mechanisms of governance. Their participation as members of the board has a positive influence on performance and thus the success of the IJV, but when owners form part of the management team (a less frequent situation), the influence on performance is negative and not significant. Participation by owners in the management team is not associated with the IJV's performance.
Keywords: international Joint ventures, SMEs, corporate governance, ownership, performance
1 Introduction
The international joint venture (IJV) is one of the most important means by which companies, including SMEs, expand their activities and exploit opportunities to do business abroad (Morh & Puck, 2005). The foreign firm seeks a local partner who knows the market, the culture, the financial institutions and possible tax advantages and ensures that the resulting IJV is considered a local firm. Thus, the creation of an IJV is a means of achieving entry into a new market. Few studies of IJVs, however, have focused on SMEs, although this is a very common means by which such firms seek access to new markets (Donckels & Lambrecht, 1995; Kirby & Kaiser, 2003), while their circumstances and characteristics are different from those of large firms (Hollenstein, 2005). One such difference is that SMEs are more likely to fail on account of limited resources (Buckley, 1989; Kirby & Kaiser, 2003). Accordingly, it is important to analyse which factors in SMEs constituted as IJVs determine the success or otherwise of this relationship. In this paper, we focus specifically on their organizational structure. An IJV can be eslished as either an equity-based relationship or as a contract between partners (Berra, Piatti & Vitali, 1995; Donckels & Lambrecht, 1995); in the present study, we examine the first of these cases, in which there are at least two partners from different countries. The question of owners' strategies in IJVs is an important issue in studies on international business affairs (Gomes-Casseres, 1989; Hennart, 1991), and may be addressed from diverse theoretical standpoints; here, we consider the transaction cost theory (TCE). SMEs have few shareholders, who are usually closely involved in the day-to-day affairs of the company. This situation makes it unlikely that the classical agency problem of large companies, i.e. conflicts between principal and agent, will occur. Therefore, we examine a broader scenario in which contractual arrangements are established: the TCE. The basic idea of TCE is to recognize that, in a world of positive transaction costs, exchange agreements must be governed and that some forms of governance are better than others (Macher & Richman, 2006). With respect to IJVs, TCE has been applied mainly in examining forms of entry to markets and agreements on capital structure (Brouthers, 2002), but no detailed research has been carried out on the question of governance structure and ownership. From the TCE standpoint, the complexity and composition of governance structure respond to the risks of opportunism and the existence of possible conflicts. The risks of opportunism can lead owners to establish different levels of governance. In the case of SMEs resulting from IJVs, the organizational structure chosen could include the participation of partners in some or all of the firm's governance mechanisms: ownership, board and managers (Rediker & Seth, 1995; Zhara & Pearce, 1989).
From an agency perspective, in respect of ownership, studies have examined, firstly, how factors such as the degree of concentration impact on performance (Demsetz & Villalonga, 2001). Secondly, the existence of a board of directors may align the interests of managers and owners (Adjaoud, Zeghal & Andaleeb, 2007) and its activity may influence company performance (Huse, 2000; Zhara & Pearce, 1989). Thirdly, the characteristics of the management team could explain organizational outcomes (Finkelstein & Hambrick, 1996). In the context of SMEs, another type of governance structure more suitable to this reality might be considered. Owners can control activities and influence company performance by monitoring managers or by participating at different levels of governance.
In many companies, and especially among SMEs, the same people can be found at different levels of governance and their functions often overlap (Huse, 1990). Sometimes companies are managed by their owners, or the latter form part of the board, and then governance functions are unified. The case of owner-directors and owner-managers frequently occurs in SMEs. In the case of IJVs, an additional factor is the interaction among partners, who may not necessarily share the same goals (Schaan & Beamish, 1988) and one or several of them may act opportunistically (Williamson, 1991). The governance structure finally adopted should reflect these aspects.
Control is an important issue in the success of any IJV, and presents specific characteristics in SMEs. The aim of this research is to analyse how the mechanisms of control exerted by the owners of an SME created as an IJV may enhance company performance. To do so, we first considered the different ways in which partners exert control over firms, specifically, through their participation in different mechanisms of governance. The idea is that the model proposed for large companies may not be suitable for SMEs. In the latter case, there are few shareholders and the roles of ownership, board and managers usually overlap. Therefore, what is needed is a model that takes these aspects into account. Secondly, we examine which of these mechanisms of owners' control impact on performance. This question is one of great importance, as the continuity of such an alliance depends on whether the expected outcomes are achieved.]]> In this paper, we study the case of SMEs set up as joint ventures between companies from Spain and Morocco. Various trade agreements exist between these two countries, and Morocco enjoys a strategic location that facilitates access to markets in the Middle East and the rest of Africa (Economic and Commercial Office of Spain in Rabat, 2010). The results of this study could be extended to other IJVs between partners from European and African or Arab countries, or between those with similar characteristics (in cultural or trade agreements or agreements with emerging countries).
The rest of this paper is organised as follows: in the next section we discuss previous research and introduce our hypotheses. Section 3 presents the research methods applied and sections 4 and 5 set out the results achieved and discusses their implications. Our conclusions and the limitations acknowledged are stated in section 6.
2 Literature review and hypotheses
The goal of this study is to analyse how ownership affects company performance, via the different mechanisms of governance. Accordingly, we examine how the concentration of ownership and the participation of owners on the board and in management impact on performance.
2.1 Ownership
The relation between performance and ownership structure has been widely addressed in the literature on corporate governance. Ownership constitutes an important element in the control of IJVs (Hill & Hellriegel, 1994). The risk of opportunistic behaviour on the part of one or more partners (Williamson, 1991) has led to the adoption of diverse control mechanisms. In this respect, the degree of concentration of ownership is a factor in the risk of expropriation of resources (Oviatt & McDougall, 1994); in addition, it reflects partners' capacity to influence managers. The presence of significant shareholders in ownership facilitates the process of controlling day-to-day management; this concentration of power enables owners to limit managers' discretionality and to eliminate inefficiencies arising from their actions (Shleifer & Vishny, 1997).
With respect to the effects of ownership structure on company performance, some empirical studies have concluded that the control exercised by owners tends to improve the quality of management decisions and performance (Shleifer & Vishny, 1997; Wiklund, Davidsson & Delmar, 2003).
Another question that should be taken into account is that of the specific relations arising when an IJV is established. Each partner may have different requirements or objectives, and these may be divergent or in conflict with those of the other partners (Perrini, Rossi & Rovetta, 2008). A high concentration of ownership could enable one partner to control the decision-making process (Blodgett, 1992; Killing, 1983), to appoint managers (Mjöen & Tallman, 1997) and to reduce the scope for opportunistic behaviour on the part of the other partners.
On the other hand, an equally-shared ownership can be an indicator of the degree of collaboration and commitment on the part of each partner (Mjöen & Tallman, 1997). A situation of balance among the partners could increase the level of perceived security and minimise the fear of exploitation or opportunism (Steensma & Lyles, 2000).]]> We hypothesise that there is no relationship between ownership concentration and performance, since both ownership concentration and equally-shared ownership may have a positive effect on performance. The ownership structure depends on the possibility of opportunism, collaboration relationship or cultural differences between partners (Nakamura, 2005). Sometimes a concentration of ownership is necessary for the company to achieve its objectives, and at other times it is not. In every situation, the partners must determine the structure that will optimise their outcomes. Accordingly, we establish the following Hypothesis 1:
Hypothesis 1. In Spanish-Moroccan IJVs, the existence of ownership concentration has no effect on company performance.
2.2 Owner directors
In IJVs between Spanish and Moroccan firms, the existence of a board can be related to the establishment of formal, coercive channels in the organizational structure to control performance (Lopez-Perez, Gomez-Miranda, Rodriguez-Ariza & Benghazi-Akhlaki, 2009). A single partner may be in a weak position against opportunistic action by top managers or other partners, and the board can constitute an effective channel of communication between partners and management (Adjaoud et al., 2007). In IJVs and SMEs, the representation by partners on the board is a reflection of the ownership composition (Huse, 1990; Killing, 1983; Schaan & Beamish, 1988). In the field of IJVs, governance mechanisms provide a means of satisfying the (sometimes conflicting) interests of the partners in the alliance.
The board performs different roles, including advisory, strategic, control and monitoring functions (Raheja, 2005; Zhara & Pearce, 1989); many studies have focused on the control function performed by boards in IJVs (Bjorkman & Lu, 1999; Child & Yan, 1999).
In the context of SMEs, the different governance mechanisms frequently overlap (Brunninge, Nordqvist & Wiklund, 2007; Mustakallio, Autio & Zahra, 2002). In this context, the role of the board and the arrangements between partners are different from those found in large firms. The participation of owners at different levels of governance enables them to defend their own interests and to control opportunism. The agreements between partners can lead owners to be present at different levels of governance. Thus, the participation of owners on the board could enhance performance, by controlling the risks of opportunism and preventing conflicts. It can also provide an effective means of controlling directors' actions (the possible entente between management and board (Carver, 2000)), enabling owners to obtain internal information and hence influence decisions. The advisory role played by owner-directors on behalf of shareholders could also improve the performance of the firm (Walsh & Seward, 1990). When the board is independent of management, it is better able to monitor managers (Shleifer & Vishny, 1997), which can lead to better performance. Finally, the board's possession of direct, detailed information on internal processes may stimulate managers to better perform their tasks (Cowling, 2003; Kim & Sorensen, 1986).
Wagner, Stimpert & Fubara (1998) observed a positive relation between owners' presence on the board and company performance, while many studies have reported the existence of such a positive relation in emerging markets (Klapper & Love, 2004). Furthermore, in SMEs in which board members hold a higher proportion of equity, these boards tend to be more active in developing company objectives (Huse, 1990) and achieving a better performance (Keasey, Short & Watson, 1994).
Within SMEs constituted as IJVs, the existence of owner-directors ensures that partners' interests are defended and the risk of opportunism is reduced. Therefore, the effect on performance is expected to be positive. Accordingly, hypothesis 2 is proposed as follows.
Hypothesis 2. In Spanish-Moroccan IJVs, the presence of owner-directors has a positive effect on company performance.
2.3 Owner managers]]> The characteristics of the management team account for a significant proportion of the outcomes achieved by an organization (Finkelstein & Hambrick, 1996), so its actions can affect the functioning of the IJV (Hambrick, 1994). Company performance is thus a reflection of the characteristics and actions of the firm's executive managers, or top management team (Hambrick & Mason, 1984).
The effect of this management team on performance may be closely related to its position vis-á-vis the partners. In IJVs, the managers' power is influenced by the control structure established by the partners (Geringer & Hebert, 1989), whose expectations sometimes differ (Schaan & Beamish, 1988) and managers have to look for a balance between the priorities and goals of the different partners (Petrovic, Kakabadse & Kakabadse, 2006).
In an IJV, the selection of the managerial team is usually agreed among the partners involved. Ownership can be concentrated in one or two partners, and in this case there exists the risk that any conflicts between them may be translated to the managers who represent their interests. Top managers contribute their experience and knowledge, but, in addition, they usually represent their respective partners (Newman, 1995; Ensley & Pearson, 2005).
In a context of SMEs, owners may act as managers, thus creating an identity between ownership and management, a situation that may or may not improve performance. The personal aims of such owner-managers will be aligned with those of the company, which should have a positive effect upon performance. In this sense, we would expect a positive relation between the presence of owner-managers and company performance. However, if only one of the partners takes responsibility for management decisions, there might more readily be situations of conflict, and there would be a greater possibility of opportunistic behaviour. A management team comprised of owner-managers could have personal interests and non-independence in its actions (Raheja, 2005). The managers would seek to attain their own objectives, which would not necessarily have a positive effect on performance. Several empirical studies have provided insights into the relationship between owner-managers and performance in large companies, but their results are not transferable to the context of SMEs (Huse, 2000) or IJVs.
In the present study, we seek to determine the extent to which the identification of the management team with the ownership enhances company performance. Thus, we propose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3. In Spanish-Moroccan IJVs, the existence of owner managers has a direct and positive effect on company performance.
2.4 Performance
In the literature on the influence of corporate governance mechanisms on company performance, the latter is normally measured using objective variables based on accounting data and market information. The instruments used include return on assets, return on equity, return on sales, Tobin's q or market to book (Dehaene, De Vuyst & Ooghe, 2001; Demsetz & Villalonga, 2001; Villalonga & Amit, 2006). In many countries, including Morocco, financial information on small companies is not normally available, and databases including this information are often non-existent. Consequently, researchers commonly use financial measures based on perception, which is also the case in the field of IJVs (Killing, 1983; Rauch, Wiklund, Lumpkin & Frese, 2009). Furthermore, studies have shown that objective and subjective measures are correlated (Geringer & Hebert, 1991; Glaister & Buckley, 1998). In the present study, we use the degree of satisfaction attained (Covin & Slevin, 1989), a subjective measure. Following the approach adopted by the above authors, we measured performance by the importance and satisfaction expressed by partners about the IJV's sales, sales growth, cash flows, gross and net profit margin, return on sales and return on investment.
3 Data and methods]]> 3.1 Sample selection
This study was designed to analyse IJVs between Spanish and Moroccan companies carrying out their activities in Morocco. Following the methodology adopted in other studies of IJVs (Bjorkman & Lu, 1999; Child & Yan, 1999; Geringer & Hebert, 1991), a structured survey was addressed to the CEOs of companies constituted as equity-based IJVs between Spanish and Moroccan SMEs. In accordance with the information provided by the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Trade, in September 2009 there were 645 SMEs formed as Spanish-Moroccan IJVs. In this study, we used the definition of SMEs proposed by the European Commission, i.e., a company that employs fewer than 250 employees (Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC).
The questionnaire was comprised of 33 questions in which a total of 52 issues were addressed. The questionnaire was presented telephonically during October 2009. We received 231 replies, which represented a response rate of 32.5 percent. Of these, 21 replies were discarded because they were incomplete, incorrectly expressed or else they corresponded to large companies. The final sample was comprised of 210 valid surveys of SMEs, of which 65 percent were small and 35 percent medium-sized; 30 percent were controlled by a board of directors and 70 percent by a single director. The confidence level was established at 95 percent, with a sampling error of 5.6 percent.
3.2 Variables and measures
Dependent variable. The dependent variable used was performance. As stated above, the Covin and Slevin scale (Covin & Slevin, 1989) was employed as a subjective measure of financial performance. We measured financial performance according to perceptions of sales, sales growth, cash flow, gross and net profit margin, return on sales and return on investment, with all data referring to 2009. We thus obtained a weighted average performance index for each firm. The mean score was 11.94; the standard deviation was 3.75, with a range of 3.8 to 24.5 and a Cronbach alpha score of 0.94 was recorded.
In countries such as Morocco, where there is usually no legal obligation to disclose financial information, a subjective variable must be used to measure business success. Prior to our analysis, however, we examined the relationship between subjective and objective measures. The correlations between the objective and subjective variables were calculated for 76 data items, corresponding to the number of firms for which objective measures of financial performance were available (Dess & Robinson, 1984). The results obtained (Table 1) show that the subjective and objective variables used to measure performance do indeed correlate, so the subjective measure can be used to measure performance.
Independent Variables. Ownership is described by means of three variables: one for ownership concentration and two for the presence of ownership in other governance mechanisms. These variables enable us to study the possible correlation between ownership and board, and between ownership and management.
The measure of ownership concentration (BLOCKHOLDER) is calculated using the percentage of shares held by the partners. A categorical variable was constructed, with three possible values: 0 in the case of no blockholders; 1 for balanced holdings among the partners; and 2 for a majority holding by one of the partners.
To describe the shareholdings of the top executives and other board members, two dichotomous variables were used (Linck, Netter & Yang, 2008); the first, DIRECTOR_ OWNER, addresses whether members of the board and their families are owners. This variable takes a value of 0 when board members are not owners (21 percent of the cases) and a value of 1 otherwise (79 percent of the cases). The second variable, MANAGEMENT-OWNER, takes a value of 0 when the CEO, the top management team and their families are not owners (78 percent of the cases), and 0, otherwise (22 percent of the cases).
Control variables. Although in SMEs the board of directors usually exists only on paper, there are companies that have active boards which are strongly engaged in the company's activities. In any case, SMEs normally have small boards of directors (Cowling, 2003). The participation and involvement of the board may be studied in relation to its size, BOARD SIZE, measured by the number of directors (Linck et al., 2008; Markarian, Parbonetti & Previts, 2007), and by BOARD MEETING, measured by the number of board meetings held annually (Sapienza, Manigart & Vermeir, 1996).]]> The size of the top management team can also influence performance. In the context of SMEs, the fact of a small number of executives might promote efficiency, via greater proximity to the owners. On the other hand, the existence of a large number of managers might reflect conflicting interests among partners. In the case of joint ventures, each partner may try to influence management and defend its interests; but the existence of a more powerful partner could decisively influence the size and composition of the management team and alignment (Child & Yan, 1999). Moreover, the size of the top management team provides a measure of the greater or smaller quantity of resources and skills available for decision-making. In companies with small management teams (as may occur in SMEs), it is more difficult to distribute responsibilities and to establish diverse functional areas (Bantel & Jackson, 1989). On the other hand, large management teams may enjoy greater possibilities for problem-solving, owing to the existence of a greater volume of data, more critical judgements in the analytical process, an increased number of possible strategies to achieve solutions and a larger range of perspectives to bring to bear upon a problem (Hoffman & Maier, 1961). However, although large groups present considerable advantages, their size may also bring about problems of coordination and communication, which do not affect small groups (Blau, 1970). TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM was recorded as the number of members of the top management team (Ensley & Pearson, 2005).
Other control variables included were the company size (FIRM SIZE), measured by the number of employees, its maturity (FIRM AGE), determined by the number of years the company has been active, and the industry (INDUSTRY), distinguishing between manufacturing and trading companies.
4 Analysis and results
Table 2 shows the correlations and the descriptive statistics for the variables analysed in this study. There is a negative correlation between performance and board size and the number of board meetings, and a positive relation between performance and firm age, and firm size and the existence of owner-directors. We found a negative correlation between the existence of owner-directors and board size, and also with the number of board meetings. Moreover, the existence of owner-managers is negatively associated with the size of the management team. Finally, the existence of blockholders is negatively associated with the number of board meetings. We found a correlation between firm size and board size, the number of board meetings, the size of the top management team, firm age (maturity) and the industry sector.
Table 3 shows the multiple linear regression analysis results used to test the hypotheses.
Initially, the control variables included were those for industry, and company maturity and size (Model 1), in order to analyse the aspects accounted for by these variables. Of these, only company size was found to be a significant variable. The explanatory capacity of these control variables amounted to 14 percent of the variance. Subsequently, the control variables related to governance, board size, the number of board meetings and top management team size were incorporated (Model 2). The table shows that this set of control variables accounts for 19 percent of the variance. The significant variables were the number of board meetings and company size. The first of these presented an inverse relation, i.e. greater numbers of board meetings were associated with poorer performance, while company size was found to have a positive effect, i.e. large companies tend to achieve better levels of performance. The number of board meetings constitutes an explanatory variable, and board size is not significant. A certain degree of correlation was observed among the variables addressing the activity of corporate governance, which might account for the fact that only the number of board meetings is explanatory in the model. This fact suggests that the number of board meetings is more explanatory of company performance than is the board size. The other variables -industry, company maturity and board size -are not statistically significant.
In the following step (Model 3), the independent variables were introduced in order to test Hypotheses 1, 2 and 3. The inclusion of these variables in the model increases the amount of variance accounted for by the initial model. Examination of the regression coefficients shows that the presence of owners on the board does influence performance, so Hypothesis 2 is confirmed. As we hypothesised, the influence of block holders does not explain performance, and thus Hypothesis 1 is accepted. When ownership and management coincide, the relation with performance is inverse and non-significant. Thus, Hypothesis 3 is rejected. On the other hand, the control variables of maturity and size were found to be significant elements in accounting for company performance. The industry variable is not significant. In relation to the governance control variables, board meeting is a significant variable and presents an inverse relationship with respect to performance. Finally, neither the top management team variable nor that of board size was found to be significant.
5 Discussion]]> In this study, we examine the influence of ownership and its involvement in management on business performance. The context of IJVs between Spanish and Moroccan partners is characterised by the existence of a number of SMEs in which ownership is concentrated in a small number of partners. The owners normally participate in other mechanisms of corporate governance, mainly as members of the board. We must therefore analyse the influence of ownership, both directly and via participation in other governance structures, on performance.
The results of the regression analysis show that company performance is indeed affected by ownership, although its influence is exerted indirectly, through the board. On the one hand, when it comes to ownership, the results show that the relation between a high concentration of ownership and performance is positive, but not significant. Accordingly, Hypothesis 1 is accepted. In the Spanish-Moroccan IJVs analysed in this study, in most cases (66 percent) there was a blockholder. Only in 11 percent of IJVs was ownership shared 50 percent. In this context, it can be appreciated that the ownership structure adopted has no effect on performance. Each firm adopts the most appropriate ownership structure for the objectives of the partners, according to the agreement and the contributions to be made by each partner. Our sample consists of mature and successful firms (average firm age 14). The current ownership structure is suited to the interests of the owners. The owners use different control mechanisms to direct the decisions and also participate in other mechanisms of governance (Hill & Hellriegel, 1994). There is a tendency to opt for a concentrated form of ownership, as in other emerging countries, possibly in order to protect owners from the dangers of expropriation and opportunism (Oviatt & McDougall, 1994). Nevertheless, the form of ownership structure does not affect performance.
When the owners act as members of the board, this affects performance; in other words, the influence of owners on performance is effected through their participation on the board (Cowling, 2003; Sheiler & Vishny, 1986). According to the results obtained from this study, boards of directors are usually relatively small, although this is not indicative of a less active board (Markarian et al., 2007), at least as far as performance goes. The proximity of owners enables them to exercise day-to-day supervision of the firm's activities, to control opportunism and to propose remedial action when necessary. Our study highlights the effectiveness of these actions. This role enables them to obtain internal information and to influence the decision-making process (Walsh & Seward, 1990). Our study reveals that owner-directors act in the same ways as owners do when it comes to achieving their goals (Linck et al., 2008). Indeed, this explanatory variable was found to be the most significant of all those analysed. Thus, the task of these members of the board is to control and supervise the management of the firm. The results also demonstrate the independence of these board members from the top management team, as the latter exert a contrary effect on performance (Carver, 2000), although it is not a significant variable in the model.
In our sample, the proportion of owner-managers was not very high (18 percent) with respect to owner-directors (80 percent). Most of the IJVs sampled maintained a separation between ownership and management. The correlation analyses performed show that the existence of owner-directors was associated with smaller management teams, which could be indicative of a certain proximity to the ownership (Child & Yan, 1999). However, the participation of owners in the management team, though infrequent, is not associated with an improvement in the IJV's performance, which might reflect the existence of conflicts and opportunism on the part of the partner responsible for management activities (Morh & Puck, 2005) who does not act independently (Raheja, 2005). Thus, the manager who is at the same time an owner will seek to attain his/her own goals, and take less account of the performance achieved by the IJV. We found that the actions by owner-managers were not aligned with those of the partners, and the relation, although not significant, was negative, so Hypothesis 3 cannot be accepted. This conclusion could reflect different interests among owner-managers and other partners.
Regarding the impact of board size and the number of board meetings on performance, we found the effect of both parameters to be negative. These variables correlate with performance, but their relationship is not significant in the regression model. SMEs normally have small boards of directors. The activity of the board and its influence, measured via the number of interactions (Sapienza et al., 1996), has a negative effect on company performance. The lack of positive results, or the perception of this, could imply a that more meetings were being held to find solutions. In addition, large boards might be related to the conflicts taking place between partners in the IJV.
In relation to the influence of the size of the top management team on company performance, the results obtained show that this factor is not significant, and it does not seem to affect the performance of IJVs (Finkelstein & Hambrick, 1996; Hambrick & Mason, 1984). Thus a large top management team does not imply positive effects on performance. The coefficient of the top: control may be exercised by owners through other mechanisms of governance; or the coefficient might be negative because efficiency in these firms is related to supervision by the IJV partners, and to the small number of top managers. This effect might also arise from the fact that the aims of top management do not coincide with those of owner-directors and owners; in this case, the power and predominant control of management are exercised by the board. This control mechanism then tends to replace managerial action. When performance is measured via the degree of satisfaction achieved, it is apparent that the parties' interests are disparate. The existence of partners with possibly divergent interests would induce the management team to act in accordance with its own aims and objectives or in favour of one partner over the others. This might explain the negative relation between the size of the top management team and company performance.
Finally, company performance is positively related to its size and age. Thus, in a longer-established firm, the partners have overcome their possible differences and have agreed upon common goals. Firm size is also related positively to performance. Larger companies present greater partner satisfaction, perhaps because they are able to distribute functions and avoid conflicts in this way. Firm size is related to the presence of a larger board, to larger top management teams and to a higher frequency of board meetings. We found an inverse relationship between industry sector and firm size.
6 Conclusions
In SMEs, the role of ownership is very significant, to the extent that owners often intervene directly or through other governance management mechanisms (board and top management team). In IJVs between Spanish and Moroccan companies, the ownership is often highly concentrated, with a strong presence of owners on the board, which facilitates the alignment of goals between owners and managers, thus favouring satisfaction with the outcomes achieved. The two mechanisms of corporate governance coincide in focusing mainly on control of management in order to achieve objectives and produce a positive effect on company performance. SMEs normally have small boards of directors, an organizational structure that has a positive influence on performance. The board size and the number of board meetings might be related to the existence of problems between partners or to the need to resolve conflicts and find solutions.]]> Although studies have been conducted on the effects of ownership on the different mechanisms of governance, they have mainly examined separately the effects on performance of the existence of owner-managers and of owner-directors. Diverse effects on performance have been observed in this respect; potential differences between partners may be transferred to the management team, or management may exploit the partners' weaknesses in order to achieve its own goals. The present study highlights the important role played by owners in SMEs in the case of companies formed as IJVs.
According to the results obtained in this study, it is necessary to make a separation between control and management in order to ensure the satisfactory development of company activity, as these mechanisms have inverse effects on performance. In areas where there is a strong concentration of ownership and a limited number of partners, the control exercised over company activity is a deter-mining factor, and the role of top management then becomes subsidiary and has no significant effect on company performance. This control is more effective when owners are involved as board members. Our results show that the top management team is not aligned to owners. When owners cannot trust management, they develop other mechanisms of governance (for example, via a strong board or direct control) or else they become involved as owner-directors.
Experience and size are related to performance. With greater experience, an organizational culture can accumulate to solve conflicts and to avoid opportunism, thus improving performance. A positive effect on performance is also obtained by greater firm size, enabling it to allocate functions and avoid possible conflict.
The results obtained in this study could be extended to other IJV experiences with similar cultural characteristics, such as those involving European and Arab or African companies.
Let us point out some limitations of the present study. In the first place, the fact that results were obtained by means of questionnaires means that a certain degree of subjectivity was introduced. We attempted to overcome this by using generally-accepted tests to ensure reliability and by using objective performance data, but there is always the possibility of some bias affecting the results. Furthermore, we examined companies that are active in different sectors and with different systems of governance, which enabled us to increase the generalization of our results, but also led to some heterogeneity that would have been avoided by the use of totally uniform samples. It should also be observed that, although the model obtained provides a good account of the variance, the mechanisms of governance and its goals constitute a complex issue for study, and that further examination of various aspects is required, such as the strategic objectives, which might be more representative of the fundamental justification for the IJV. Finally, we have focused on ownership, but there may be many other mechanisms (outsiders, CEO duality) that could provide a more complete explanation of company performance.
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CHILD, J. & YAN, Y. 1999. Investment and control in international joint venture: The case of China. Journal of World Business, 34:3-15. [ Links ]
COVIN, J.G. & SLEVIN, D.P. 1989. Strategic management of small firms in hostile and benign environments. Strategic Management Journal, 10(1):75-87. [ Links ]
COWLING, M. 2003. Productivity and corporate governance in smaller firms. Small Business Economics, 20:335-344. [ Links ]
DEHAENE, A., DE VUYST, V. & OOGHE, H. 2001. Corporate performance and board structure in Belgian companies. Long Range Planning, 34:383-398. [ Links ]
DEMSETZ, H. & VILLALONGA, B. 2001. Ownership structure and corporate performance. Journal of Corporate Finance, 7:209-233. [ Links ]
DESS, G.G. & ROBINSON, R.B. 1984. Measuring organizational performance in the absence of objective measures: The case of the privately-held firm and conglomerate business unit. Strategic Management Journal, 5(3):265-273. [ Links ]
DONCKELS, R. & LAMBRECHT, J. 1995. Joint ventures: No longer a mysterious world for SMEs from developed and developing countries. International Small Business Journal, 13(2):10-26. [ Links ]
ECOMOMIC AND COMMERCIAL OFFICE OF SPAIN IN RABAT. 2010. 52 more frequent questions on investment in Morocco. Available at: http://www.oficinascomerciales.es/icex/cda/controller/pageOfecomes/0,5310,5280449_6239376_5287111_4298112_MA,00.html [accessed 2012-04-15]. [ Links ]
ENSLEY, M.D. & PEARSON, A.W. 2005. An exploratory comparison of the behavioral dynamics of top management teams in family and nonfamily new ventures: Cohesion, conflict, potency, and consensus. Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 29:267-284. [ Links ]
FINKELSTEIN, S. & HAMBRICK, D.C. 1996. Strategic leadership: Top executives and their effects on organizations. West, St Paul, MN. [ Links ]
GERINGER, J.M., HEBERT, S. 1989. Control and performance of international joint ventures. Journal of International Business Studies, 20(2):235-254. [ Links ]
GERINGER, J.M. & HEBERT, L. 1991. Measuring performance of international joint ventures, Journal of International Business Studies, 22(2):249-263. [ Links ]
GLAISTER, K.W. & BUCKLEY, P.J. 1998. Measures of performance in UK international alliances. Organization Studies, 19(1):89-118. [ Links ]
GOMES-CASSERES, B. 1989. Ownership structures of foreign subsidiaries. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 11(1):1-25. [ Links ]
HAMBRICK, D.C. 1994. Top management groups: A conceptual integration and reconsideration of the "team", in Cummings L.L. (ed.) Research in Organizational Behaviour. JAI Press, Greenwich CT:171-213. [ Links ]
HAMBRICK, D.C. & MASON, P.A. 1984. Upper echelons: The organization as a reflection of its top managers, Academy of Management Review, 9:193-206. [ Links ]
HENNART, J.F. 1991. The transaction cost theory of joint ventures: An empirical study of Japanese subsidiaries in the United States. Management Science, 37(4):483-497. [ Links ]
HILL, R.C. & HELLRIEGEL, D. 1994. Critical contingencies in joint venture management: Some lessons from managers. Organization Science, 5(4):594-607. [ Links ]
HOFFMAN, L.R. & MAIER, N.R.F. 1961. Quality and acceptance of problem solutions by members of homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58:27-32. [ Links ]
HOLLENSTEIN, H. 2005. Determinants of international activities: Are SMEs different? Small Business Economics, 24(5):431-450. [ Links ]
HUSE, M. 1990. Board composition in small enterprises, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 2:363- 373. [ Links ]
HUSE, M. 2000. Boards of directors in SMEs: A review and research agenda. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 12(4):271-290. [ Links ]
KEASEY, K., SHORT, H. & WATSON, R. 1994. Director's ownership and the performance of small and medium sized firms in the UK. Small Business Economics, 6(2):225-236. [ Links ]
KILLING, P.J. 1983. Strategies for joint venture success. New York: Praeger. [ Links ]
KIM, W. & SORENSEN, E. 1986. Evidence on the impact of the agency costs of debt on corporate debt policy, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 21(June):131-144. [ Links ]
KIRBY, D.A. & KAISER, S. 2003. Joint ventures as an internationalization strategy for SMEs. Small Business Economics, 21:229-242. [ Links ]
KLAPPER, L.F. & LOVE, I. 2004. Corporate governance, investor protection and performance in emerging markets. Journal of Corporate Finance, 10:703:728. [ Links ]
LINCK, J.S., NETTER, J.M. & YANG, T. 2008. The determinants of board structures, Journal of Financial Economics, 87:308-328. [ Links ]
LOPEZ-PEREZ, M.V., GOMEZ-MIRANDA, M.E., RODRIGUEZ-ARIZA, L. & BENGHAZI-AKHLAKI, H. 2009. Key factors in conflict resolution in strategic alliances between Spanish and Moroccan companies. In Reynolds, J.V. (ed.) Emerging markets: identification, new development and investment. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers. [ Links ]
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MARKARIAN, G., PARBONETTI, A. & PREVITS, G.J. 2007. The convergence of disclosure and governance practices in the world's largest firms. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 15(2):294-310. [ Links ]
MJÖEN, H. & TALLMAN, S. 1997. Control and performance in international joint ventures. Organization Science, 8(3):257-274. [ Links ]
MORH, T. & PUCK, J.F. 2005. Managing functional diversity to improve the performance of international joint ventures, Long Range Planning, 38:163-182. [ Links ]
MUSTAKALLIO, M., AUTIO, E. & ZAHRA, S.A. 2002. Relational and contractual governance in family firms: Effects on strategic decision making. Family Business Review, 15(3):205-222. [ Links ]
NAKAMURA, M. 2005. Joint venture instability learning and the relative bargaining power of the parent firm, International Business Review, 14:465-493. [ Links ]
NEWMAN, W.H. 1995. Stages in cross cultural collaboration. Journal of Asian Business, 11(4):69-74. [ Links ]
OVIATT, B.M. & MCDOUGALL, P.P. 1994. Toward a theory of international new ventures, Journal of International Business Studies, 25(1):45-64. [ Links ]
PERRINI, F., ROSSI, G. & ROVETTA, B. 2008. Does ownership structure affect performance? Evidence from the Italian market. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 16(4):312-325. [ Links ]
PETROVIC, J., KAKABADSE, A. & KAKABADSE, N. 2006. International joint venture (IJC) directors' contribution to board effectiveness: Learning from the literature. Management Decision, 44(3):346-366. [ Links ]
RAHEJA, C. 2005. Determinants of board size and composition: A theory of corporate boards. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 40:283-306. [ Links ]
RAUCH, A., WIKLUND, J., LUMPKIN, G.T. & FRESE, M. 2009. Entrepreneurial orientation and business performance: An assessment of past research and suggestions for the future. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 33(3):761-787. [ Links ]
REDIKER, K.J. & SETH, A. 1995. Board of directors and substitution effects of alternative governance mechanisms. Strategic Management Journal, 16(2):85-99. [ Links ]
SAPIENZA, H.J. & MANIGART, S. & VERMEIR, W. 1996. Venture capitalist governance and value added in four countries. Journal of Business Venturing, 11:439-469. [ Links ]
SCHAAN, J. & BEAMISH, A. 1988. How to control a joint venture even as a minority partner. Journal of General Management, 14(1):4-16. [ Links ]
SHLEIFER, A. & VISHNY, R. 1986. Large shareholders and corporate control. Journal of Political Economy, 94:461-488. [ Links ]
SHLEIFER, A. & VISHNY, R. 1997. A survey of corporate governance. Journal of Finance, 52:737-783. [ Links ]
STEENSMA H.K. & LYLES M.A. 2000. Explaining IJV survival in a transitional economy through social exchange and knowledge-based perspectives. Strategic Management Journal, 21(8):831-851. [ Links ]
VILLALONGA, B. & AMIT, B. 2006. How do family ownership, control and management affect firm value? Journal of Financial Economics, 80:385-417. [ Links ]
WAGNER, J., STIMPERT, J. & FUBARA, E. 1998. Board composition and organizational performance: Two studies of insider/outsider effects. Journal of Management Studies, 35(5):655-677. [ Links ]
WALSH, J. & SEWARD, J. 1990. On the efficiency of internal and external corporate control mechanisms, family firms and venture-capital backed firms. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, 10(1/2):85-105.
WIKLUND, J., DAVIDSSON, P. & DELMAR, F. 2003. What do they think and feel about growth? An expectancy-value approach to small business managers' attitudes toward growth. Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 27(3):247-270.
WILLIAMSON, O.E. 1991. Comparative economic organization: the analysis of discrete structural alternatives. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36(6):269-296.
ZHARA, S.A., PEARCE, J.A. 1989. Board of directors and corporate financial performance: A review and integrative model. Journal of Management, 15:291-334.
Accepted: March 2013]]>


text:
Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, will announce his running mate Monday as he attempts to move beyond controversies that have plagued his campaign for governor, including allegations that he routinely pressed his security detail to drive unsafely.
As Gansler was planning to introduce Prince George's County Del. Jolene Ivey as his choice for lieutenant governor, his campaign was scrambling to put out a political brush fire caused by reports that the attorney general routinely told his state police drivers to speed, run red lights and use lights and sirens on the way to appointments.
The Washington Post reported Sunday that members of Gansler's security detail had informed superiors that Gansler was a difficult passenger whose demands put troopers and the public at risk. The article quoted Lt. Charles Ardolini, head of the executive protection unit, as saying Gansler's "extremely irresponsible behavior is non-stop and occurs on a daily basis."
The Gansler campaign issued a statement disputing the assertions and alleging that the Post account was "based on information generated by supporters" of Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, Gansler's chief rival in the contest for the Democratic nomination for governor.
"We believe it's politically motivated," said Gansler campaign spokesman Bob Wheelock, who labeled the allegations "tear-down politics."
Wheelock said he could not prove the Brown campaign was the source of the report. But he pointed to the "timing of it" — coming just weeks after Gansler's announcement of his candidacy and the day before his planned announcement of a running mate to counter Brown's selection of Howard County Executive Ken Ulman.
The choice of Ivey represents a risk for Gansler, a Montgomery County resident, because he did not choose a partner from the Baltimore metropolitan area.
Donald F. Norris, chairman of the public policy department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said the combination of the driving allegations, an all-Washington-area ticket and an earlier controversy involving the attorney general's comments about the role of race in the campaign suggest Gansler's effort is "knee deep in quicksand."
While Wheelock played down or disputed the specific allegations in the Post article, he described a sometimes-demanding passenger obsessed with punctuality.
"We will acknowledge that Doug can be a backseat driver," Wheelock said. "If you're stuck in traffic, he will say 'Why didn't you go this way?' … It can get annoying. It can get frustrating perhaps."
Gansler issued a statement in which he acknowledged that "a few of the 18 troopers" who have protected him since he took office in 2007 "felt my backseat driving made them uncomfortable," for which he apologized.
Wheelock also put a reporter in touch with a former member of Gansler's security detail who described the attorney general as "always very respectful" and said Gansler never asked the trooper to violate traffic laws. In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, the trooper, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, described the allegations as "silly."
Wheelock acknowledged that Gansler had clashed with Ardolini and that the attorney general had sought to make changes in his security detail because he was "frustrated" that two or three of the troopers did not seem to know their way around the region. He said Gansler was not upset that troopers were driving too slowly but questioned their choice of routes when they ran into traffic backups.
Wheelock said Gansler was given some new drivers and there is now no trouble with that relationship. The spokesman declined to make Gansler available for an interview. A state police spokesman did not return a call seeking a comment.
The driving controversy is the second in recent months in which the Gansler campaign has pointed fingers at Brown and his backers to explain the disclosure of embarrassing information. In August, Gansler alleged that backers of the lieutenant governor had committed a felony by releasing an audio recording of Gansler telling supporters in a closed-doors meeting that Brown's campaign was based primarily on the proposition that he would be the first African-American governor of Maryland.
The comments raised eyebrows among Maryland Democrats and led to a demand from Brown that Gansler apologize to the voters. Gansler refused.
Justin Schall, campaign manager for Brown, denied planting the story. "This is an issue between the attorney general and the state police and we have no comment beyond that," Schall said.
Herbert C. Smith, a political science professor at McDaniel College in Westminster, said the conduct attributed to Gansler is "carrying executive privilege way over the line."
Wheelock said the problems between Gansler and some members of his state police detail may have begun with an incident on Interstate 97 between Baltimore and Annapolis in which both Gov. Martin O'Malley and the attorney general became stuck in traffic because of an accident ahead. Wheelock acknowledged that Gansler's driver used his lights and siren to bypass the backup, driving on the shoulder, while O'Malley remained in the backup. Wheelock said he believed that incident led the governor to complain to state police officials, setting in motion an internal inquiry that prompted Ardolini to write a December 2011 memo in which he passed on troopers' reports of Gansler's alleged demands.
Dori Henry, a spokeswoman for O'Malley, confirmed that such an incident on I-97 had prompted the governor to complain to the state police. Henry said that when the governor made the complaint about a state vehicle passing traffic on the shoulder, he did not know who was in the car.
O'Malley is a strong supporter of Brown's campaign for governor.
Like O'Malley did, Gansler is turning to a Prince George's County delegate for his ticket mate. The 52-year-old Ivey is a two-term delegate who is married to Glenn Ivey, a former Prince George's state's attorney and chairman of the Public Service Commission.
Ivey, a dynamic and personable lawmaker, brings diversity to the Gansler ticket as an African-American woman. Prince George's County is the state's second-largest, after Montgomery.
The selection of a woman running mate could strike a contrast with Brown's choice, Ulman. It also could help Gansler stave off a challenge from Montgomery County Del. Heather R. Mizeur, who is vying with him for the votes of Democrats who want a change from the O'Malley-Brown years.
But Norris said the choice of a Washington-area running mate is not a sign of strength for Gansler. "Apparently, Gansler tried and tried and tried to find an African-American running mate from Baltimore and couldn't," Norris said. "Now he's thumbing his nose at central Maryland."
At least one Baltimore Democrat who has not endorsed a candidate, Sen. Verna Jones-Rodwell, said the choice made it more likely she would choose Brown. She said Baltimore was not ready for a ticket in which neither member came from the Baltimore metro area.
Among the Baltimore-area elected officials who had been mentioned as possible Gansler running mates were Del. Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. and city Comptroller Joan Pratt.
Norris said Gansler's reported treatment of his security detail could hurt him. "It's going to annoy people. ... This is certainly not going to do him and his effort to be elected governor any good whatsoever."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Cosco Lite Solutions 225 lb. Aluminum Folding Two Step Stool(11-628-ABK4)
Browse all deals at ACE Hardware
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* This offer may contain time-sensitive information and offers. Please check with ACE Hardware to confirm actual price & availability.
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ACE Hardware
3026 West Pine Street
Arkadelphia, AR 71923


text:
5 Tips For Becoming A Thrifting Pro!
I don't know about you, but I LOVE finding amazing deals from secondhand stores ― there is nothing better! I especially love having shopping trips to Plato's Closet because every time I go they always have different pieces and new opportunities to score some deals!
I've done my fair share of thrifting and I've come up with a few tips, tricks and secrets of how to find the best deals and get the most bang for your buck! Let's get into it!
Tip #1 - Master the "Scan"
Looking through racks and racks of clothing can be daunting if you don't know what to look for. If you know what kind of fabric, texture or color you're looking for, scan the racks as you go to spot the pieces you are interested in or what catches your eye. Practice makes perfect to master the art of "the thrifting scan" ;)
Tip #2 - Like it or Love it?
Going to secondhand stores is perfect for finding unique pieces, but it also means there aren't replicates of every piece in each size. If you don't 100% love the piece and don't think you will genuinely wear it on a weekly basis, save your money. Sometimes I'll find great unique pieces but they don't fit my body type or aren't the right size, even if it might be a great steal, it isn't worth the change and space in your closet.
Tip #3 - Watch For Discount Days
Depending on the Plato's Closet location that is nearest to you, they will probably have an email newsletter or an Instagram page that you can follow to stay notified about their sales! Keep your eye out for any special events or holiday deals! The Plato's Closet nearest to me has an awesome active Instagram page and they post pieces for sale all the time which is super helpful!
Tip #4 - Always Inspect The Pieces First
The #1 rule to thrifting is to always check the clothing pieces for stains, rips or any other defects to your clothing pieces. Sometimes the staff might miss small details so it's always good to go through a quick scan of your items!
Tip #5 - Sell Before You Buy!
Wanting to have a little extra spending money on new clothes? Bring in some of your clothes you don't wear anymore or that don't fit and sell them to Plato's Closet! They take gently used clothes, shoes and accessories and the extra spending money doesn't hurt either!
I hope you found this helpful and are ready to begin your journey of becoming a thrifting pro ;)
Thanks for reading!
Blog By: Taiya Maddison | @taiyamaddison


text:
The safest way for city residents to celebrate around the Fourth of July may be to get out of Dodge.
Asked about New York's recent spike in shooting deaths, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday responded by offering statistics showing that the increase has actually been taking place for several years now.
"The last four years have been the four safest in city history, but the week when the Fourth of July falls has been bloody every single year," Bloomberg rep Stu Loeser told The Post.
"We've brought crime down lower and lower, but it's important to note that after there were 18 homicides in the Fourth of July week in 2011, 18 in 2010, and 11 in 2009, each year ended up at or near historic murder lows."
His comments came after a week that saw 16 killings in 18 incidents.
Three victims were in Saturday's Queens bloodbath involving a drug thug armed with an AK-47 knockoff.
James Bussereth, 33, of Queens was targeted because he ripped off a drug dealer for nearly $1 million, law-enforcement sources said.
Jason Wood, 27, and Odane Linton, 29, of Brooklyn were also killed in the Springfield Gardens attack.
A fourth man, Jeremy Brann, 35, from Kentucky, was wounded in the 5 a.m. ambush as the men sat in a double-parked SUV on 144th Avenue.
Sources said two gunmen — one armed with the semiautomatic assault rifle, likely an SKS, and the other with a 9mm — squeezed off a total of 63 rounds.
Such SKS rifles "come from all the states [illegal] handguns come from, wherever the gun laws are lenient,'' one source said.
Investigators were checking whether a second assault rifle was used.
The killings appear to be linked to the earlier slaying of Keith Taylor, who, along with Bussereth, was involved in the drug rip-off, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
Taylor, 39, was killed on June 22 in Queens.
Meanwhile, the weekend of violence continued with at least four more men and a 3-year-old boy wounded in separate shootings.
There were 672 shootings through July 1 this year, compared with 606 at the same point last year.
From July 2 through 10 p.m. yesterday, there were another 59 shootings — with a total of 72 victims.
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton and Kevin Sheehan


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Lip Creamy lip pencil BrickLip Creamy Brick Lip pencil created to form, fill, or create beautiful lines on the lips. A creamy texture that is perfect for lining up your lips or filling them. A wide range of beautiful colors to suit our Lip-Stay Matte Lipstick
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text:
House passes bills to tighten the Cyprus Investment Programme
Contemporary 2 Bedroom Apartment in a New Complex in Agios Athanasios Limassol
Price upon request
Add to a comparison list
Add to a favorite list
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Add to a favorite list
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- Property ID: 311
- Status: Sale
- Property type: Apartment
- Address: Limassol
- Number of bedrooms: 2
- Number of bathrooms: 1
- Floor: 2 floor of 3 total
- Total covered area: 130 m²
- Total area: 130 m²
- Parking: 1
Spacious 2 bedroom apartment in a new residential development, consisting of 6 villas and a block of 8 apartments, within a quiet neighbourhood in Agios Athanasios area of Limassol.
The project is conveniently located close to the main road arteries which lead to the city and the buzzing seafront. Each residence provides modern design and high-quality specifications for a luxury and comfortable living.
The block of apartments consists of 3 floors with 8 two and three bedroom apartments.
Specifications of the apartment:
- 2 bedrooms
- Bathroom
- Open plan kitchen and living area
- Covered veranda 38 m²
- Covered parking for 1 car
- Separate storage on the ground floor
- Solar panels for water heating
- Water pressure system
- Air conditioning system
- Provisions for electrical heating.
Price is subject to VAT.
Delivery date: end of 2019.


text:
Every now and then, a design comes long that truly divides opinion. Here's one of them.
Exhibited at the stand of Italian design manufacturer Plank at this year's Milan Salone del Mobile, Konstantin Grcic's new 'Avus' club chair managed to cause a bit of a stir. The leather-upholstered seat speaks of hotel lounge bars and tall drinks. The base, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Made of ABS, it consists of a twin-sheet moulded shell, reinforced with a polyurethane foam core, which, through its styling, shouts about its latest-technology credentials. It's no accident, therefore, that the formal language of the chair's base is reminiscent of things automotive.


text:
The Gamepedia and Fandom account systems have now been merged. If your username is incorrect, you have accounts on both platforms that weren't merged, or you have trouble signing in, please submit a support ticket.
Mods/The Aether/Dungeon Rewards
< Mods | The Aether(Redirected from Mods/The Aether/Hammer of Notch)
|The contents of this page are not supported by Mojang Studios or the Minecraft Wiki.
|Found in
|Invisibility cloak
|The Invisibility cloak is a cape that may be worn to make the player invisible to mobs. However, attacking or using items will briefly lift the cloak, and mobs will see and track the player as normal.
|Silver dungeon
|Agility cape
|Allows you walk over 1 block high ledges without jumping, and is useful for early players who don't yet have a moa.
|Bronze dungeon
|Swet cape
|An aesthetic cape with a picture of a swet on it.
|Bronze dungeon
|Found in
|Sentry boots
|Prevents you from being pushed around by gusts from zephyrs.
|Neptune armor
|A full set of this armor will allow the player to swim faster & not drown underwater.
|Bronze Silver and gold dungeon
|Phoenix armor
|The description of the armor from the Book of Lore says that the armor prevents lava and fire damage and is weak to water but that it has a secret. (That secret is; when you have it equipped in the normal world and it rains, or if you submerge yourself in water, it changes into obsidian armor)
|Gold dungeon
|Obsidian armor
|A "cooled" version of Phoenix Armor that provides incredible protection but will slow you down.
|Gold dungeon
|Found in
|Valkyrie lance
|The Valkyrie Lance is a strong weapon with extended reach. It allows you to target up to 10 blocks ahead and deals 5.5 damage but, perhaps due to a bug, you can only hit enemies at normal range.
|Bronze dungeon
|Vampire blade
|The Vampire Blade is as strong as a Diamond Sword and heals the user when they strike an enemy.
|Gold dungeon
|Phoenix bow
|The Phoenix Bow fires flaming arrows when used.
|Bronze dungeon
|Cloud staff
|Can summon 2 mini-zephyrs that shoot ice balls at anything you attack.
|Gold dungeon
|Lightning knives
|Can be thrown at enemies. Lightning will strike what ever they hit. Can be stacked to 16, but can be found in dungeons in stacks higher than 16.
|Bronze dungeon
|Candy sword
|This novelty sword cannot be crafted.
|Dungeon chests/presents
Elemental Swords[edit]
|Found in
|Flaming sword
|A strong sword that sets the enemy ablaze when striked.
|Bronze dungeon
|Lightning sword
|A strong sword that strikes lightning on those you hit. Charges creepers! You have been warned!
|Silver dungeon
|Holy sword
|A sword that does more damage to undead enemies.
|Silver dungeon
|Found in
|Golden feather
|The Golden Feather is an accessory that allows the player to float slowly when falling. This also prevents fall damage for the player.
|Silver dungeon
|Hammer of Notch
|A strong hammer with a special ability that sends a projectile that pushes any NPC it comes in contact with, and damaging them as well. It deals 4.5 damage by melee and 2.5 by projectile. It has a total of 251 uses.
|All Dungeons
|Found in
|Shield of repulsion
|When equipped, all projectiles will bounce off you while you are standing still at the slight cost of visibility.
|All Dungeons
Misc / Not Catagoried[edit]
|Found in
|Gummie swets (gold & blue)
|Stackable source of food that heals the player.
|All Dungeons
|Regeneration Stone
|The Regeneration Stone is an accessory that heals the user over time.
|Silver dungeon
|Iron bubble
|The Iron Bubble is an accessory that prevents drowning underwater.
|Gold dungeon
|Life shard
|A very rare item that adds an extra heart to the maximum health of the player.
|Gold dungeon
|Pig slayer
|An infinite use weapon that 1-hits pigs and pigmen.
|Gold dungeon
|Sun altar
|Gives you to control over the sun in the Aether realm.
|Gold dungeon
|Raw Materials
|Dungeon Rewards


text:
Poet Marie Howe On 'What The Living Do' After Loss
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, editor of the website TV Worth Watching, sitting in for Terry Gross. April is National Poetry Month, and we're going to celebrate the occasion by listening back to some of our favorite poetry interviews. Let's start with Terry's interview with Marie Howe, who is now the poet laureate of New York state. This was first broadcast in 2011.
A couple of weeks ago, our book interview producer, Sam Bregger(ph), showed me the new Penguin anthology of 20th-century American poetry. He told me it includes one of his favorite poems, by a poet I'd never heard of, named Marie Howe.
So I read it and agreed this is really good. Sam went on to tell me that Howe had been one of his teachers at Tufts, and although he didn't know her well, he spoke very highly of her. So I read a couple of her books and was particularly moved by how she wrote about the deaths of her mother and of her younger brother.
Here's how her writing was described by the late Stanley Kunitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former poet laureate who was also Howe's teacher and friend: Her long, deep-breathing lines address mysteries of flesh and spirit in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred.
Marie Howe, welcome to FRESH AIR. And I thought the best way to start would be with the poem that's anthologized in the new Penguin anthology, and it's about having a new comprehension of life and of being alive after your brother died. He died of AIDS-related causes in 1989. Do I have that right?
MARIE HOWE: Yes, I think I was '89. I was just wondering, Terry, this morning, is it '88 or '89. But I think it was '89.
GROSS: So would you read that poem for us?
HOWE: Sure. The poem is a letter, actually, written to John that I started to write when I was struggling with writing poems all day, and I decided to just quit that and write John a letter, "What the Living Do."
(Reading) Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
(Reading) It's winter again. The sky's a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through the open living room windows because the heat's on too high in here, and I can't turn it off. For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking, I've been thinking: This is what the living do.
(Readgin) And yesterday, hurrying along those wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve, I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning. What you finally gave up.
(Reading) We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss - we want more and more and then more of it. But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless. I am living, I remember you.
GROSS: That's Marie Howe, reading her poem "What the Living Do." That's such a beautiful poem. So I get the sense from this poem that your brother's death gave you just like a new comprehension of what it means to be alive.
HOWE: Well, yes, eventually.
GROSS: Right, yeah
HOWE: As we all know, first, you know, you just think, you know, John - I come from a very large family, Terry. There were nine children in my family, and I love all my brothers and sisters, and we were close growing up. But John and I were very close, and he was, I don't know, a kind of - he was my editor and spiritual teacher.
And John, I talked to John, I don't know, five times a week on the phone. We wrote letters back and forth. We were in a constant conversation. You know, we were 11 years apart, but - he was much younger than me, but when he died, it was a terrible loss to all of us.
So first it's that. You know, as you know, as everybody knows, you think my life has changed, so really I don't know how to live it anymore. And then, you know, you find a way.
GROSS: You called him your spiritual advisor, and you said that he used to say pain - I think it was in one of your poems, pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. That sounds so wise and yet so impossible. For me, suffering always feels, like, completely out of my control.
GROSS: You know, I can't make it stop.
HOWE: Well, it's an AA thing, too. You know, John was in AA. He got sober at 23. But when someone's lying there, and they're 90 pounds, and they're blind in one eye, and they have neuropathy, and they can't walk, and they say pain is inevitable, and suffering is a choice, then it's quite a different matter.
Johnny said this right until the last day he died. He looked up at me and said: This is not a tragedy, Marie. I am a happy man. You know, actually after that, he said when I'm asked if I could love, I can answer yes.
GROSS: Do you think he really believed that, or was he saying that for your sake, that he was a happy man?
HOWE: He wouldn't - I think he really believed it. He shone. He was luminous. You know, I think that he wouldn't say something like that for my sake. We were too honest with each other.
GROSS: There's another poem I want you to read, and this is a poem about you're your childhood. It's called "The Boy." And why don't you, before you read it, introduce it for us.
HOWE: Well, when I got writing - when I started to write about my brother John, I began thinking about gender. John was a gay man, living and dying at a time when this was still a fraught issue in our culture.
GROSS: And probably in your family, which is Catholic.
HOWE: Not so much in my family by that time, no. I mean, there was a few bumps but not much, actually. My mother - my father had died, and my mother - and all of us just adored John. We just wanted him to be healthy, you know. So it wasn't that big of a deal, oddly. We were Catholic lefties, Terry. That's an important distinction.
HOWE: We were the left Catholics. We had the guitar masses at home and went into the ghettos and painted people's houses whether they liked it or not, you know.
HOWE: And we, you know, we marched on Washington. We were the Dan Berrigan Catholics. But this boy, I want to make clear at this moment in time, is not my brother John. It's another brother. I have four brothers and four sisters. And this was an older brother, the only person older than me in our family. Shall I read it?
GROSS: Yes, please.
HOWE: "The Boy." (Reading) My older brother is walking down the sidewalk into the suburban summer night, white T-shirt, blue jeans, to the field at the end of the street. Hangers Hideout, the boys called it, an undeveloped plot, a pit overgrown with weeds, some old furniture thrown down there and some metal hangers clinking in the trees like wind chimes.
(Reading) He's running away from home because our father wants to cut his hair. And in two more days our father will convince me to go to him - you know where he is - and talk to him: No reprisals. He promised. A small parade of kids in feet pajamas will accompany me, their voices like the first peepers in spring.
(Reading) And my brother will walk ahead of us home, and my father will shave his head bald, and my brother will not speak to anyone the next month, not a word, not pass the milk, nothing.
(Reading) What happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk down a sidewalk without looking back. I was the girl. What happened taught me to follow him, whoever he was, calling and calling his name.
GROSS: So even though it was a lefty family as you describe it, you feel like the girls and the boys in your family were brought up differently?
HOWE: Oh sure. Oh my gosh, yes, in that way, yes. We served the boys dinner, we cleared their plates. You know, I think the boys had two jobs: empty the garbage and shovel the walks. It was a very gendered world back in the '50s when I was growing up.
GROSS: So there's another poem I want you to read calling "Practicing," and this is about, like, very early glimmers of sexuality and what that's like.
HOWE: Yeah, this poem took me 20 years to write.
GROSS: Really? Why'd it take so long?
HOWE: Well, I couldn't find the form. You know, I tried and tried and tried to write about this, and also it was, you know, a little - kind of embarrassing, a little scary. And finally one day I realized, oh, it's a poem of praise. It's a praise song, you know. And then it found its shape. "Practicing."
(Reading) I want to write a love poem for the girls I kissed in seventh grade, a song for what we did on the floor in the basement of somebody's parents' house, a hymn for what we didn't say but thought: That feels good or I like that, when we learned how to open each other's mouths, how to move our tongues to make somebody moan.
(Reading) We called it practicing, and one was the boy, and we paired off - maybe six or eight girls - and turned out the lights and kissed and kissed until we were stoned on kisses and lifted our nightgowns or let the straps drop, and now you be the boy.
(Reading) Concrete floor, sleeping bag or couch, playroom, game room, train room, laundry. Linda's basement was like a boat with booths and portholes instead of windows. Gloria's father had a bar downstairs with stools that spun, plush carpeting.
(Reading) We kissed each other's throats, and we left marks, and never spoke of it upstairs, outdoors, in daylight, not once. We did it, and it was practicing, and we grew up and hardly mentioned who the first kiss really was - a girl like us, still sticky with moisturizer we had shared in the bathroom.
(Reading) I want to write a song for that thick silence in the dark, and the first pure thrill of unreluctant desire, just before we made ourselves stop.
GROSS: I think that's such a beautiful poem, and reading it I kept thinking: Is this a poem about a girl who is gay and, you know, practicing, in quotes, is a way of being intimate with other girls? Or is this about a girl who's really practicing for the kind of heterosexual desire that she can't really - you know, heterosexual relationship that she can't really have yet because she's in seventh grade.
HOWE: Yeah, well, I think every single one of those girls, all of us grew up to marry.
GROSS: Was that - I just realized that's such an intimate question to ask.
HOWE: No, it's okay. I mean, I think it's - there's a lot of fluidity in sexuality that we don't acknowledge, and especially in those ages. You know, perhaps, perhaps always, there's a kind of fluidity that this book is also aware of. My brother John had girlfriends all through high school and college, you know. I don't know that one has to always decide.
But certainly this practicing was practicing, but it also becomes something, you know, in itself, which was kind of thrilling and freaky, you know. I have to tell you one thing: This came out in a magazine, and I went home to my hometown for Christmas, and I went over to see one of my dear old friends, a grown woman with grown sons, and the magazine was on her coffee table, and we never mentioned the poem.
GROSS: Do you think she was uncomfortable about it?
HOWE: Apparently we both were. I didn't mention it either.
GROSS: Was she one of the girls in the poem?
HOWE: Yes.
GROSS: Oh, I see.
HOWE: Now we were, you know, we were 45, you know.
GROSS: Right. Well, you know, you're in such a swoon in the poem, and you say you tried to write it for 20 years, and you were able to write it when you realized it was a song of praise. What shape was the poem taking before you realized it was a song of praise?
HOWE: I think I was trying to tell a narrative or trying to tell a story or trying to explain something. I don't know. I couldn't, you know, every poem holds the unspeakable inside it, the unsayable, you know, not unspeakable as in taboo but the unsayable, the thing that you can't really say because it's too complicated, it's too complex for us.
BIANCULLI: Poet Marie Howe, speaking to Terry Gross in 2011. More after a break; this is FRESH AIR.
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2011 interview with Marie Howe, the poet laureate of New York state.
GROSS: We started with a poem about your brother's death and carrying on with life after that. There's a poem about your mother dying that I'd like you to read, and it's called "My Mother's Body."
HOWE: Yeah.
GROSS: Introduce it for us before you read it.
HOWE: My mother gave birth to nine of us, and she had two miscarriages, so she was pregnant 11 times. And as we've said earlier, many of us daughters have trouble separating from our mothers, especially if our mothers merge with us, and the oldest girl of a big family often has that syndrome going on. So for me, when my mother was dying, after she died I was thinking a lot about her actual body and her and me, her and I, she and I, her and me, the two of us, so...
GROSS: And the poem kind of alternates between her and you, between her body and yours.
HOWE: Yeah. Or that it's actually her - a lot of her body, but it's thinking about her body when I was in it.
GROSS: Right. When she was carrying you.
HOWE: Yeah, when she was carrying me, when she was carrying me and then also when she - my mother was very sick the last few years of her life - going to dialysis three times a week, very, very uncomfortable. And to think of her as a young woman of 24 carrying me and then as an older woman, really her body was just wrecked and it's part of what was happening here as well.
GROSS: "My Mother's Body." (Reading) Bless my mother's body, the first song of her beating heart and her breathing; her voice, which I could dimly hear, grew louder. From inside her body I heard almost every word she said. Within that girl I drove to the store and back, her feet pressing pedals of the blue car, her voice, first gate to the cold sunny mornings, rain, moonlight, snowfall, dogs.
HOWE: (Reading) Her kidneys failed, the womb where I once lived is gone. Her young astonished body pushed me down that long corridor, and my body hurt her, I know that - 24 years old. I'm old enough to be that girl's mother, to smooth her hair, to look into her exultant frightened eyes, her bed sheets stained with chocolate, her heart in constant failure.
(Reading) It's a girl, someone must have said. She must have kissed me with her mouth, first grief, first air, and soon I was drinking her, first food, I was eating my mother slumped in her wheelchair, one of my brothers pushing it, across the snowy lawn, her eyes fixed, her face averted. Bless this body she made, my long legs, her long arms and fingers, our voice in my throat speaking to you know.
GROSS: Had you always thought about, like, you know, the pain of childbirth that your mother probably had delivering you, or about your just like physical connection to her - the fact that she carried you. I mean did you think about that a lot until she was dying?
HOWE: No, I never thought of it until she was dying. I never thought of it. She was pregnant all the time. She was always pregnant with some other baby.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
HOWE: And never - I never imagined myself as her baby. She was always pregnant. She was always standing in our backyard by that swimming pool with a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other, in a bathing suit pregnant, talking to her other sisters, all pregnant, all with lipstick on, all with bathing suits on, and then she would turn to the pool and yell, you know, one more time and you're out to one of the kids and then turn back to her sisters.
HOWE: She was just sort of, you know, a glamorous pregnant woman.
HOWE: There were so many mothers. You know, Terry, I'm sure you have many, many mothers, and your mother too, so many mothers. But no, I hadn't thought about it really until later. And then, you know, the fullness of time. I mean time and eternity are a constant - so many poems occur at the intersection of time and eternity and the fullness of time.
GROSS: Marie Howe, I want to thank you so much for talking with us and for reading some of your poems.
HOWE: Terry, it's been a great pleasure to talk with you.
BIANCULLI: Marie Howe, speaking to Terry Gross in 2011. Marie Howe is the poet laureate of New York state. The title poem from Howe's collection, "What the Living Do," is in the Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry. Marie Howe teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence, NYU and Columbia University. She'll be appearing at the MTA Poetry In Motion Spring Fest, held tomorrow at Grand Central Station in New York. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
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This was published 7 years ago
IT's a man's world
The stats are cringe-worthy and the men's club persists, but there is good news for women in technology, argues Sandy Plunkett.
Entrepreneurship, many claim, is the platform of the new women's movement and Australian women technology entrepreneurs and their advocate groups have started the new year poised for action.
Springboard Enterprises Australia, a female-focused venture catalyst launches its first Accelerator program this week in Sydney with the group's US founder Kay Koplovitz; NICTA is kicking off its Techfest event in Canberra with a breakfast panel discussion on women; and in Adelaide, the ANZ Innovyz START Program, a three-month intensive start-up accelerator program started by Dr Jana Matthews has already begun its second year program.
Springboard Enterprises and the Innovyz START programs are modelled on successful US initiatives. Springboard has raised $US5.6 billion for about 500 companies since 2000, with 10 IPOs. The ANZ Innovyze program is modelled on TechStars, which has fostered some of the world's most successful start-ups. Dr Matthews' program selects ventures started by both men and women, but she is a strong advocate for female-led start-ups and goes out of her way to find them.
These initiatives are as sorely needed in Australia as elsewhere. But they have myriad cultural hurdles to jump and economic minefields to navigate. Throughout 50 years of successive waves of tech innovation and the VC-driven entrepreneurship it has fostered, women are still woefully under-represented in the ranks of founders, financiers, coders and engineers.
The stats are cringe-worthy: Women own anywhere between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of small businesses. But when it comes to creating high-tech startups, they're still in the single digits. Less than 10 per cent of venture-backed companies in the US have female founders, even co-founders. Women make up a third of the tech workforce but represent less than 7 per cent of VC partners and less than 15 per cent of angel investors. The statistics are worse in Australia, where tech venture generally is still unsophisticated in comparison with other hubs in the US, Germany, Israel and India.
These inequities are acknowledged and talked about in international tech industry and policy arenas, but there has been little concerted action to address them. Why? For starters, they haven't needed to.
The tech revolution was created by engineers and computer scientists who built products largely for IT departments of large corporations also staffed by men. The "money" side of tech – venture capital – was also populated with men who were successful in former iterations of the tech revolution. Hence, blokes built products for blokes to sell to blokes who bought them: a closed loop of the boys club.
Many of the woman-focused groups are betting on the changing nature of the technology landscape: the maturing of the internet and the shift to consumer-focused applications and businesses. It is in this and next generations of consumer tech that women claim their skills, business savvy will rise. The trend has started with fashion, photo-sharing and social media-based startups, but the hope is it won't end there.
There is opportunity in this structural shift. But in the intensely competitive world of tech start-ups, where an estimated three quarters of venture backed companies did not return investors' capital (according to a recent Harvard Business School Study of 2000 start-ups that received an average of $US1 million in funding from 2004 to 2010) female entrepreneurs have other stylistic and cultural issues to overcome.
Research shows women are less "investment ready" than men, are more risk-averse and less likely to go for the "big ask" for capital.
Importantly too, they lack the robust business and mentoring networks long exploited by men.
Female entrepreneurs also have the challenges of still being the primary carers of children, which makes them more time constrained than men when starting businesses with global scale.
And the tech boys' club is even tighter in Australia, dominated by mostly white males that come from large multinational corporations and consultancies. The investor pool for tech in Australia is also as unsophisticated as it is undiversified.
In the US for example, there are many tech-savvy men and women who have made money from tech and so become angel investors. They have what's called tech "domain expertise".
In Australia we have many well-intentioned angel guilds. But the significant majority of angel money comes from men who made their money everywhere but on tech. So it is a constant struggle for tech entrepreneurs of either gender to get funded.
Success trumps bias, venture capitalists say, and incremental success builds exponentially, so the theory goes. But it will be a long haul. To really help themselves and their own ventures, women must build strong integrated and diversified domestic and international networks and mentor systems and pursue a pragmatic and focused agenda that helps the whole tech start-up ecosystem here.
The key to that agenda must be eliminating the complex treatment of stock options for tech start-ups. This is the single biggest impediment to starting a tech company in Australia. It's an election year. Lobby for changes to those punitive taxation rules and then we may all have a better chance of success.
Sandy Plunkett has more than 20 years experience in the Australian and international technology sector as a commentator, venture capitalist, start-up professional and digital economy consultant. She recently returned from 15 years in the US, from working at venture capital firm, Allen & Buckeridge and a Sillicon Valley start-up.
More on employee stock option plans (ESOP)


text: Tesh's highly successful and varied career path includes a 10-year run as anchor on Entertainment Tonight, six hit public television specials, including his landmark Live At Red Rocks in 1994, a string of #1 radio hits, his popular nationally syndicated radio show "Intelligence For Your Life" in which he has 8.2 million listeners, and a high profile advertising and marketing company. His musical accolades since releasing his debut album Tour De France in 1988 include seven million units in total sales; a Keyboard Magazine Award; a 2003 Grammy nomination for "Best Pop Instrumental Album" for his double CD The Power of Love; and gold certification for his Live At Red Rocks album. The impetus for "Intelligence for Your Life" was Tesh's wife, actress Connie Sellecca, whose nightstand was covered with issues of Oprah's Magazine, "O". "We wanted to create a show for people like her, who don't have time to read all that, but are interested in being better in everything they do," he says. "There is so much information out there, but not enough information about how to find it, and where to go with it. The idea was to create a business where we could be curators who pick and choose the information that we think our audience would like to hear about. If you couldn't get to those magazines, we, along with the researchers we hired, could do it for you.


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THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web
Thank you so much for all the responses to the DBA Blunders post! As I mentioned, however, that question was asked on behalf of a friend of mine. Now I have a question of my own.
I am currently training a group of new junior DBAs. One of them has already started assisting with some client operations, but is still closely supervised.
For those of you that are SQL Server DBAs:
What did you wish you knew BEFORE your first day on the job?
(I'm particularly looking for what you consider to be gaps in your education, but anything that answers the question is fine!)
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For me, I wish I'd had better knowledge about operational tasks done via T-SQL, i.e. DBCC commands, sp_who2, sp_lock, sp_adduser, etc. I was introduced to SQL Server via Enterprise Manager (7.0), and it took a very long time for me to learn/realize how much more flexible I could be with good knowledge of basic T-SQL commands to manage SQL Server.
I second that, not using EM to add a column was a big step forward instead of watching the hourglass spin.
I wish I knew how big of a pain some of the odd ball MS databases were. Biztalk, Sharepoint etc. They are going to end up on your SQL servers sooner or later.
I thought I was fairly proficient in T-SQL (thinking in terms of sets, not using CURSORs, etc.), but when the manager at my first DBA job demonstrated an aggregation using SELECT SUM(CASE WHEN foo >= value THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) ... my eyes grew wide with astonishment. Truly a "Eureka!" moment for me.
For me it was a lot of the default behaviours of the engine and EM - in particular backup/recovery. For instance, that "backup location" box that makes it looks like you're backing up to a specific file rather than striping the backup amongst all the files. A lot of things like that, which it seems like you don't learn until you get burned.
And I echo other thoughts - a quicker path to the TSQL behind the GUI commands. I love that SQL 2005 has the "Script" button on 98% of all screens...I point newbies to that immediately - never execute it in the GUI, use the GUI to create the script, then save the script. Quicker learner curve for TSQL manipulation of the instance...
1. Know that changing schema using SSMS or Enterprise Manager isn't always the most efficient way.
2. Knowing that I can get the script used by SSMS/EM before it's actually executed.
3. Know that the best way to learn about much of the internals of managing databases is to run a profiler while doing things in SSMS/EM.
4. Have someone tell me there is a way to undo mistakes if I just BEGIN TRAN .... ROLLBACK before I actually do something (The new SSMS toolpack makes this the default in every new query window opened...)
5. Maybe have a workflow for troubleshooting, like the checklists pilots have in the cockpit. As wel all know, when in emergency, our brains don't work as good as we'd like them to. This is a nice start:
Apart from technical stuff, I'd say you need to learn things that help you keep to the DBA equivalent of the hypocratic oath - isn't that 'do no harm'? I guess examples would be why you don't want to 'select * from huge_table', what's likely to cause log files to blow out, and, from personal experience, not to run scripts with implicit transactions set to on when you don't understand what that really means. When I've had to interview candidates for DBA roles, I'm generally looking for someone who knows the pitfalls and is unlikely to do anything stupid.
The other big thing for me when I started as a DBA was that, if I didn't know if something was the right thing to do, I either looked it up or asked someone else what they thought. I've since mentored a junior DBA and the main thing I wanted him to learn was not to be afraid to say 'no' when people asked for changes on the database servers, and, if in doubt, to run it by someone else.
Disaster recovery drills are also a great idea - as a junior sys admin, I had to write DR documentation for a few different systems, and you learn a heap from doing that. Has the added bonus that you gain a lot of confidence.
Oh and, if you are going to use EM (or SSMS), to never EVER click OK to close a dialog if you didn't mean to change a setting.
I wish I had known a lot more about replication. The other DBAs had gotten a bad taste for it, but then, there were some fundamental flaws in the way they implemented it. Had I known replication better then, some of our processes likely would have been changed to use it and be more efficient than the methods which were chosen.
This is an interesting post. Having been a developer that worked with databases for the past 10 years I now find myself in the role as the DBA. I wish I knew more about things to look for to ensure my databases are running as efficiently as possible. Fortunatley I haven't inherited databases with millions of rows but some day I hope they will grow into that :).
Just like Zack Jones I also had been a developer before I was working as a DBA (I am still a developer in my spare time). I would send every developer for a year to work as a DBA just to see what their programs are doing, what environment they must to integrate in etc. Many times can I hear complaints like this: "My program is working perfectly in my test environment, why are you unable to set up your environment just like that?" Then after some investiagtion it comes out that in the test environment there is no planned security (they user the "Everyone - Full Control" security "model", which is not possible in a production environment and then the investigation begins: which specific permissions does the program need?
And, I would somehow teach the developers to give up some of their pride and ask (and co-operate with) the DBA about certain things including (but not restricted to) query tuning, data access methods and so on. Often these are not concerned during the development phase and later the developers are resentful when they are told what should be done instead of what they have done in their programs.
I myself have also learned a lot during being in a DBA position so since then I can create more efficient programs.