Forecasting and mediation: Colorado and the clean air act

This paper presents an analysis of discussions designed to resolve technical differences, a process known as data mediation, between originators of divergent forecasts. Differing forecasts of future urban air quality by several agencies led to debate over revisions to the 1977 Clean Air Act proposed during the 97th Congress. Researchers for General Motors, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of Colorado disagreed over the ability of Denver, Colorado ever to attain the health standards for carbon monoxide if automobile emission for high altitude were relaxed. Data mediation led to resolution of some differences. The search for disconfirming evidence was a key element of the successful data mediation. In examining the process of that mediation, it was found that the search for disconfirming evidence requires: (1) balance of scientific expertise and credibility; (2) explicitness of assumptions; and (3) segmenting and bounding of the problem.     

Cautious optimism at the World Food Council

How does the World Food Council assess the changes that have taken place on the food scene since its establishment nine years ago? What is the outlook for structural reform in the agricultural and food sectors? What are their thoughts on the new hunger lobby, and on the growing movement which questions the value of much official aid? How does the Council see the prospects for the next decade? Robin Sharp went to Rome to find out.     

A comment on ‘A Multidimensional Scale for Measuring Business Ethics: A Purification and Refinement’

This comment is offered in response to Hansen's A Multidimensional Scale for Measuring Business Ethics: A Purification and Refinement. Five issues arising from Hansen's purification and refinement efforts are addressed. These include the issues of parsimony, predictive validity, collinearity, reliability, and what we see as a confusion between normative and positive theory.Dr. R. Eric Reidenbach is Professor of Marketing, and Director of the Center for Business Development and Research at The University of Southern Mississippi. He has written extensively on business and marketing ethics.Dr. Donald P. Robin, Professor of Business Ethics and Professor of Marketing, is coauthor with R. Eric Reidenbach of two recent books on business ethics with Prentice-Hall. He is a frequent lecturer on business ethics and is the author of several articles on the subject.     

Does lower-stage ethical reasoning emerge in more familiar contexts?

Four real-life dilemma cases collected from Hong Kong managers were included, along with two other cases previously used by Weber (1991), in an instrument designed to assess ethical reasoning capacity. This was completed by 86 part-time post-graduate students, all of whom were managers with at least four years working experience. Respondents' measured ethical reasoning capacity appeared to be at least as high as comparable samples in the U.S.A. The mean ethical reasoning stage varied between cases. Contrary to expectations, the unfamiliarityper se of a case did not affect ethical reasoning which instead tended toward higher measured stages when issues of public hazard or environmental pollution were introduced, and toward lower measured stages where personal or family finances were at stake. Two methodological points were made signalling the need for caution in research of this kind. First, because of reservations about the adequacy of the standard Kohlbergian model of ethical reasoning development, a scoring guide based on a revised Kohlbergian model of ethical reasoning was used to analyze the replies, rendering comparisons with other samples inexact. Second, the possible phenomenon of quasi Stage Five reasoning renders problematic the identification of true Stage Five ethical reasoning.Robin Snell directs the M.B.A. at the City University of Hong Kong, where he is University Senior Lecturer. He has editedManagement Learning and has published articles inPersonnel Review on experiential learning, moral dilemmas and management development. His book,Developing Skills for Ethical Management, synthesizes these interests.     

Images of the Virtuous Employee in China's Transitional Economy

We examine contemporary images of employee virtue and managers' perceptions of actual employee conduct in Wuhan, Beijing and Xi'an, drawing on document analysis and structured interviews with 112 respondents in ten case study companies. The image promulgation strategies of the one joint venture enterprise and the two private enterprises in our sample entailed active avowal of tradition linked employee virtue, drawing on a mixture of Communist and Confucian moral imagery. In contrast, most of the seven state-owned or predominantly state invested enterprises had abandoned or marginalized traditional Communist imagery, none promoted Confucian imagery, and two emphasized alternative images of one-sided servility toward the customer. We infer, from managers' accounts, that the abandonment of tradition linked images by the state-owned sector was a tacit acknowledgment of prior covenant violation, and that outside the state-owned sector, tradition linked moral propaganda contributed to moral atmosphere only when part of a consistent high-commitment HRM strategy. In drawing out implications for theory and further research, we note the different socio-political contexts of organizations in China and the West, discuss the relationship between bonds or covenants and psychological contracts, and compare tradition linked employee virtues with dimensions of organizational citizenship.     

On the Validity of the Random Lottery Incentive System

The random lottery incentive system is widely used in experimental economics to motivate subjects. This paper investigates its validity. It reports three experiments which compare responses given to decision tasks which are embedded in random lottery designs with responses in single choice designs in which each subject faces just one task for real. The experiments were designed to detect cross-task contamination effects in the random lottery treatment. No significant differences between treatments, and no significant contamination effects, were found. Over the three experiments, observed differences between the treatments are adequately explained as sampling variation.     

Strategic planning and strategic management in Australian organisations

Many planning and organisational aspects of 48 Australian organisations were examined. The empirical information tends to suggest that the process of adopting the strategic management concept is well advanced in some Australian organisations. Irrespective of size and ownership status, some organisations have already adopted strategic planning, and the process of evolution is continuing towards the final stage of strategic management. The increasing environmental volatility and growing international exposure of organisations in Australia and elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region will increase the pressure to implement international management systems, including strategic management.     

Value-added tax options for India

The pressures of aggregate revenue, the requirement of a reduced role for customs duties for the liberalization of the economy, and the complexity and strains of the current system together point clearly toward the desirability of tax reform in India. Since domestic indirect taxes provide the major source of revenue, they deserve special attention. This paper argues that India would benefit from moving toward a system of value-added taxation (VAT) and focuses on the way in which a VAT (or VATs) can be best introduced into India given the country's federal structure. Three different options are distinguished: a central VAT, dual VAT, and states' VAT. We argue that the first is politically infeasible, that the second represents the best way forward in the short term, and that the third deserves consideration as a long-run option. Special attention is paid to the problems that would arise under either a states' or a dual VAT with regard to taxing interstate trade.     

Time Series Analysis of Deregulatory Dynamics and Technical Efficiency: The Case of the U.S. Airline Industry

As markets worldwide become less regulated, it becomes increasingly possible and timely to establish the presence of an empirical relationship between technical efficiency and market forces compelling agents to economize. This article, taking an innovative approach to test the hypothesis that competitive pressure enhances efficiency, constructs a methodology to examine time series of technical efficiency indices for cointegration and convergence. A panel of U.S. airlines, observed quarterly between 1970 and 1990, is used as a case study. Cointegration results are suggestive of long-run relationships between carriers; furthermore, convergence tests document less dispersion in firm performance over time.