Detecting Linguistic Traces of Destructive Narcissism At-a-Distance in a CEO’s Letter to Shareholders

Destructive narcissism is recognized increasingly as a serious impairment to good corporate leadership and ethical conduct. The Chief Executive Officer’s letter to shareholders (an important formal corporate communications medium) has potential to provide linguistic traces of destructive narcissism and insight to aspects of corporate leadership and the ambient ethical culture of a company. We demonstrate this potential through selective analyses of the letters of the Chief Executive Officers of Enron, Starbucks, and General Motors.     

Exploring the expectations of transport professionals concerning the future automobility system: Visions,challenges, and transitions

A mixture of potentially significant changes in technology, commercial structures, and social practices is currently entering the automobility system. These changes have the potential to combine together and lead to a substantial shift in the manner in which society fuels, owns, and makes use of its cars. This paper reports a research project that made use of focus groups to examine the narratives of British transport professionals concerning forthcoming developments in the automobility system. Specific attention was given to what the expectations for future change in automobility are, if these changes will likely lead to a transition toward a more sustainable system and the manner in which a transition of this nature could be facilitated. The oral testimony offered during the focus groups has been assessed qualitatively using thematic analysis. The results suggest that there is a commonly held view that the automobility system is entering a stage of flux, which may lead to considerable changes in system configuration. However, the attainment of a sustainable transition for the system will likely be inhibited by a series of institutional, societal, and physical barriers, which may restrict system developments.     

Cost-effectiveness of rivaroxaban compared with enoxaparin plus a vitamin K antagonist for the treatment of venous thromboembolism

Background:

Venous thromboembolism (VTE), comprised of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), is commonly treated with a low-molecular-weight heparin such as enoxaparin plus a vitamin K antagonist (VKA) to prevent recurrence. Administration of enoxaparin?+?VKA is hampered by complexities of laboratory monitoring and frequent dose adjustments. Rivaroxaban, an orally administered anticoagulant, has been compared with enoxaparin?+?VKA in the EINSTEIN trials. The objective was to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of rivaroxaban compared with enoxaparin?+?VKA as anticoagulation treatment for acute, symptomatic, objectively-confirmed DVT or PE.

Methods:

A Markov model was built to evaluate the costs, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios associated with rivaroxaban compared to enoxaparin?+?VKA in adult patients treated for acute DVT or PE. All patients entered the model in the ‘on-treatment’ state upon commencement of oral rivaroxaban or enoxaparin?+?VKA for 3, 6, or 12 months. Transition probabilities were obtained from the EINSTEIN trials during treatment and published literature after treatment. A 3-month cycle length, US payer perspective ($2012), 5-year time horizon and a 3% annual discount rate were used.

Results:

Treatment with rivaroxaban cost $2,448 per-patient less and was associated with 0.0058 more QALYs compared with enoxaparin?+?VKA, making it a dominant economic strategy. Upon one-way sensitivity analysis, the model’s results were sensitive to the reduction in index VTE hospitalization length-of-stay associated with rivaroxaban compared with enoxaparin?+?VKA. At a willingness-to-pay threshold of $50,000/QALY, probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed rivaroxaban to be cost-effective compared with enoxaparin?+?VKA approximately 76% of the time.

Limitations:

The model did not account for the benefits associated with an oral and minimally invasive administration of rivaroxaban. ‘Real-world’ applicability is limited because data from the EINSTEIN trials were used in the model. Also, resource utilization and costs were based on the US healthcare system.

Conclusion:

Rivaroxaban is a cost-effective option for anticoagulation treatment of acute VTE patients.     

The Emergence,Variation, and Evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Public Sphere, 1980–2004: The Exposure of Firms to Public Debate

This study examined the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a public issue over 25 years using a content analysis of two national news- papers and seven regional, geographically-dispersed newspapers in the U.S. The present study adopted a comprehensive definition encompassing all four CSR dimensions: economic, ethical, legal, and philanthropic. This study examined newspaper editorials, letters to the editor, op-ed columns, news analyses, and guest columns for three aspects: media attention, media prominence, and media valence. Results showed an increase in the number of opinion pieces covering CSR issues over the 25-year period. The prominence of each of the four CSR dimensions varied over time. Each of the four CSR dimensions had its moment of media prominence when it was more important than the other dimensions. The most prevalent valence of the opinion pieces was negative; the volume of negative pieces increased over the 25 years, whereas the number of opinions with positive, neutral, and mixed tones showed little change over time. The study concludes by tracing the implications of the role of the news media for business ethics research.     

The incremental time costs of children: An analysis of children's impact on adult time use in Australia

Abstract

Raising children takes both time and money. Scholars have sought convincing ways to capture the costs of children, but even when these estimates include indirect costs, such as mothers' foregone earnings, they fall short of the true time costs involved. This paper uses data from the 1997 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey to study how the allocation of time differs across households with varying numbers and ages of children and how households with children differ from those without children. It also examines the intra household division of time resources, showing how childcare, related unpaid work, and the total market and non-market workloads compare for a couple in the same household. It includes secondary activity in an analysis of total parental time commitments to give a more accurate picture of the time cost of children than is possible on the basis of analyzing “primary” activities alone.     

Student imaginings,cognitive dissonance and critical thinking

In this paper, we urge accounting educators to encourage imaginings and critical thinking in students. We reflect on the results of an assignment in which French accounting students were encouraged to assess the collapse of Enron. The submitted assignments attest to the originality and richness of non-conformist stories reported by some students. However, they also revealed strong instances of cognitive dissonance that we contend was fostered by the contradictions some students detected between the rhetoric and the reality of capitalism; and by the perpetuation of socially bereft capitalist values in accounting curricula. The assignment manifested student discontent with the current pervading economic system and its moral and ethical precepts. We identify the ways by which students responded to their cognitive dissonance. We propose some pedagogic and curriculum initiatives to improve accounting education. These initiatives call for stronger efforts to connect accounting topics with the social world in order to demystify the alleged naturalness of the capitalist system; for students to be encouraged to imagine other cultures and discourses; and for students to challenge any prevailing ideology.     

Trends in Undergraduate Economics Degrees: A 1993–94 Update

An examination of George Stigler's teaching career clarifies the requirements for an effective teacher of graduate economics and especially sheds light on the nature of the supervision of doctoral candidates. The heterogeneous composition of graduate students in aggregate means that quite distinct approaches can prove to be equally successful.     

Writing the differences: Poststructural ist pluralism,retextualization, and the construction of reflexive ethnographic narratives in consumption and market research

Representing social realities in a narrative form is central to the interpretive processes by which market‐oriented ethnographies are constructed. In recent years, the process of textualization has shifted from a taken‐for‐granted aspect of the ethnographic enterprise to a central focus of ethnographers’ reflexive considerations. This shift reflects the realization that textualization poses dilemmas of representation that can not be resolved through additional fieldwork or other methodological procedures. This paper addresses these workbench problems by devising an alternative narrative formretextualization‐based on a poststructuralist version of critical pluralistic analysis. We first discuss how non‐realist genres of ethnographic writing have emerged in response to a heightened sensitivity toward ideological positions embedded in research narratives. We then discuss how the use of retextualization can facilitate the development of reflexivity in consumption research by destabilizing the representational authority of the ethnographic text through expressions of divergence, dissensus, and contested interpretations.     

Entry Solicitation and Deterrence in R&D Competition with Spillovers

The purpose of this note is to examine incumbent behaviour and patterns of entry under R&D competition with spillovers. We find that, in addition to blockading, deterring and accommodating entry, the incumbent may also solicit entry. Entry solicitation occurs when the incumbent strategically alters its R&D commitment in order to take advantage of the spillover generated by the entrant's subsequent R&D investment. Although our results are placed in the context of R&D with spillovers, they are applicable to a wider class of models involving positive externalities, particularly network externalities.
JEL Classification Numbers: L12, O31.