The development of a benchmarking tool for monitoring progress towards sustainable transportation in New Zealand

Creating and maintaining a safe and sustainable transport system is a common challenge for road authorities around the world. The New Zealand government has taken this challenge one step further by incorporating it into country’s legislation. As a consequence all road land transport authorities are committed to implementing initiatives to respond to both the challenge and the legislation. A benchmarking process for the transport sector is one of these initiatives on a national level. Benchmarking is a well known and utilised technology for the measuring of performance for infrastructure, for example within the water provision sector in England. This paper presents the development of a national benchmarking process for the transport sector of New Zealand. This development is part of a strategy to encourage road land transport authorities to improve the performance of transport in achieving sustainability and environmental targets. The development involved a literature review, proof of concept and the full implementation stage. A total of nine key performance indicators were developed to indicate the status of transport sector performance. The project and its outcomes are considered to be of benefit to road land transport authorities across the world who wish to develop a benchmark process of their own.     

Corporate Culture

This study tests the relationship between the Peters and Waterman cultural criteria of customer closeness and corporate values and the scales of marketing effectiveness as developed by Kotler. Analysis of data collected from 54 mid-American companies suggests a positive association. Marketing effective companies appear to have distinguishing cultural profiles when compared with marketing ineffective companies.     

Measuring the value of community

This paper presents a method for obtaining quantitative measures of the value of a community environment in terms of the change in income which would equalize utility across locations. It is applied in a longitudinal study of factory workers. The evaluations of community are presented both as changes in weekly wage income and as the present discounted value of the changes over the subject's future work life. The evaluations are substantially greater than the tangible costs of migration (e.g., moving expenses). Results are examined by race, sex, age, income, and homeownership. Analysis of the end-period data on the actual migration trends of the sample support the reliability of the measures.     

Privatization, Land Reform, and Property Rights: the Mexican Experience

This paper is concernedwith rural property rights in Mexico. Consideration of this issuewas occasioned by the liberal program of reform adopted in 1992by the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, which providesfor a gradual privatization of the Mexican ejidos, a form ofcommunally administered property. The present contribution examinesto what extent this reform project is theoretically founded andwhich practical problems it encounters in implementation. Thegenesis and structure of rural property rights in Mexico is outlined.The problems associated with implementing the reform projectare discussed for an empirical case example in the Soconuscoregion (Chiapas) in Mexico. Finally, a number of consequencesare drawn.     

Cultural Crossvergence and Social Desirability Bias: Ethical Evaluations by Chinese and Canadian Business Students

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there are cross-cultural differences between Chinese and Canadian business students with respect to their assessment of the ethicality of various business behaviors. Using a sample of 147 business students, the results indicate cultural crossvergence; the Chinese (72 students) and Canadians (75 students) exhibit different ethical attitudes toward questionable business practices at the individual level but not at the corporate level. A social desirability bias (a tendency to deny socially unacceptable actions and to admit to socially desirable ones) is also found to be a cross-cultural phenomenon, with the Canadians demonstrating a greater bias than the Chinese. Finally, this bias causes respondents to increase their assessment of the un-ethicality of questionable business activities.