Honesty in negotiation

It is often suggested that deceptive behaviour in negotiation is ethical. A number of academic writers have put that view, and several have even suggested that a contrary approach is naÝve. Writers argue either that deceptive behaviour is generally expected or else that such behaviour is necessary to enable us to guard ourselves against exploitation. But in fact participants in the negotiating process differ in what they expect, and we can be careful without being deceptive. That is how we ought to proceed, if we want to treat others as responsible decision-makers. Our obligations in business negotiation are the same as elsewhere. Business is not a distinct game with defined rules, like poker. Neither 'business' nor 'negotiation' are by their nature set apart from other situations. The behaviour which is appropriate in negotiation depends on the circumstances. As in other situations, we have an obligation to pay attention to others to ascertain their actual expectations and intentions, and then act accordingly.     

Restructuring in the British Construction Industry: Implications of Recent Changes in Project Management and Technology

Theoretical and policy treatments of the processes and management of innovation in construction have neglected the complexity of the social practices in construction and the new conflicts between the parties that may arise from the introduction of organizational and technological change. Based on extensive interviews with contractors, consultants, suppliers and developers, this paper shows that new developments in project management and technologies have not eliminated the adversarial relations associated with the traditional contracting system but have created the potential for new conflicts in the construction sector that might affect innovation adversely. These problems may be further exacerbated by the impacts of these changes on skills and employment conditions in the construction industry. It is argued that these new conflicts suggest the need for research and policy initiatives to move beyond stylized generalizations of the industry.     

Valuing Internet Business

Is there a bubble in internet stock prices, has the new economy changed the rules of stock valuation? In this article, the authors argue that the old rules still apply. The only way to test the reasonableness of new economy stock prices is to model the company's ability to generate cash in the future. This analysis also allows the development of a view about the performance that would be needed to justify current valuations. The analysis suggests that many internet valuations are stretched. Investors are focused on growth prospects for the firms, but realistic analysis about future profitability has been neglected in what will be an increasingly competitive world. Further, investors' assumptions that the new economy businesses will not require assets are unrealistic in many cases. Finally, because some new economy stocks are overvalued, there is a risk of misdirection of productive resources.     

Ethical Decision Making in Multinational Organizations: A Culture-Based Model

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between national culture and ethical decision making. Established theories of ethics and moral development are reviewed and a culture-based model of ethical decision making in organizations is derived. Although the body of knowledge in both cross-cultural management and ethics is well documented, researchers have failed to integrate the influence of cultural values into the ethical decision-making paradigm. A conceptual understanding of how managers from different nations make decisions about highly ethical issues will provide business ethics researchers with a sound theoretical foundation upon which future empirical inquiry can be based.     

Virtue: The Missing Ethics Element in Emotional Intelligence

Journal of Business Ethics - The Emotional Competency Inventory (ECI) framework of Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis has gained significant impact in business leadership and management...     

East Asian Scholarly Research: A View from the 94th Floor

This article examines both applied and academic research relating to East Asia published during 1994 in terms of its applied relevance and its contributions to existing theory. In recent years the volume of research related to East Asia has expanded rapidly, and this review looks at the hightlights of that literature. Research from each of the functional business areas is examined, both in terms of its current and future contributions. In addition, special attention is paid to the areas of strategic management and entrepreneurship, which had a large amount of important research published during this period. Finally, there is an overall assessment of the impact of this research.     

Evaluating,Comparing, Monitoring,and Improving Representativeness of Survey Response Through R‐Indicators and Partial R‐Indicators

Non‐response is a common source of error in many surveys. Because surveys often are costly instruments, quality‐cost trade‐offs play a continuing role in the design and analysis of surveys. The advances of telephone, computers, and Internet all had and still have considerable impact on the design of surveys. Recently, a strong focus on methods for survey data collection monitoring and tailoring has emerged as a new paradigm to efficiently reduce non‐response error. Paradata and adaptive survey designs are key words in these new developments. Prerequisites to evaluating, comparing, monitoring, and improving quality of survey response are a conceptual framework for representative survey response, indicators to measure deviations thereof, and indicators to identify subpopulations that need increased effort. In this paper, we present an overview of representativeness indicators or R‐indicators that are fit for these purposes. We give several examples and provide guidelines for their use in practice.     

The Impact of Corporate Social Performance on Financial Risk and Utility: A Longitudinal Analysis

This study focuses on the wealth‐protective effects of socially responsible firm behavior by examining the association between corporate social performance (CSP) and financial risk for an extensive panel data sample of S&P 500 companies between the years 1992 and 2009. In addition, the link between CSP and investor utility is investigated. The main findings are that corporate social responsibility is negatively but weakly related to systematic firm risk and that corporate social irresponsibility is positively and strongly related to financial risk. The fact that both conventional and downside risk measures lead to the same conclusions adds convergent validity to the analysis. However, the risk‐return trade‐off appears to be such that no clear utility gain or loss can be realized by investing in firms characterized by different levels of social and environmental performance. Overall volatility conditions of the financial markets are shown to play a moderating role in the nature and strength of the CSP‐risk relationship.     

Negative equity and wages

We examine the relationship between housing equity and wage earnings using nine waves of the national American Housing Survey from 1985 to 2003. Employing a rich set of time and place controls, a synthetic mortgage instrumental variable strategy, and a first difference estimator we find that people underwater on their mortgage command a significantly lower wage than other homeowners. The finding survives a number of robustness checks for reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity. We also explore other determinants of “house lock” including loss aversion, a low existing mortgage interest rate and property tax assessment caps, but do not find these factors mitigate the effect of negative equity on wages.     

Changing HRM systems in two Russian oil companies: Western hegemony or Russian spetsifika?

We contrast attempts to introduce what were seen as sophisticated Western-style human resource management (HRM) systems into two Russian oil companies – a joint venture with a Western multinational corporation (TNK-BP) and a wholly Russian-owned company (Yukos). The drivers for Western hegemony within the joint venture, heavily influenced by expatriates and the established HRM processes introduced by the Western parent, were counteracted to a significant degree by the Russian spetsifika – the peculiarly Russian way of thinking and doing things. In contrast, developments were absorbed faster in the more authoritarian Russian-owned company. The research adds to the theoretical debate about international knowledge transfer and provides detailed empirical data to support our understanding of the effect of both organizational and cultural context on the knowledge-transfer mechanisms of local and multinational companies. As the analysis is based on the perspective of senior local nationals, we also address a relatively under-researched area in the international HRM literature which mostly relies on empirical data collected from expatriates and those based solely in multinational headquarters.