Managing equal opportunities for women: sorting the friends from the foes

Employees working in Hong Kong were surveyed on their attitudes towards managing equal opportunities for women. Results indicate that gender is a better predictor of attitudes than work identity. Manager/employee work identity has an add‐on moderating effect on some women‐friendly policies but not on others. Out of seven women‐friendly dimensions, women as managers are less receptive of only two: 'training and development' and 'positive equal opportunities'; men as managers, in contrast, are less resistant to 'training and development' and 'flexitime'. The findings suggest that there are three levels of gatekeeping: one, male employees; two, male managers; and three, female managers. We suggest that to help women employees break the glass ceiling, different organisational and societal change programmes are needed to target the different groups of gatekeepers.     

Intra-firm Branch Competition for a Monopolist

This paper studies the effect of intra-firm branch competition in a monopoly setting. It demonstrates that intra-firm branch competition has a significant impact on the firm's market decisions, and consequently on the market outcome. The paper has identified the sufficient conditions under which a branch-competitive monopoly is superior to a pure monopoly from the consumer's viewpoint in that the former supplies more quantity and higher quality at the same price.     

The Choice of Exchange Rate Regime and the Volatility of Exchange Rates after the Asian Crisis: A Counterfactual Analysis

The objective of this paper is to carry out a counterfactual analysis of the impact of alternative exchange rate regimes on the volatility of the nominal effective exchange rate (NEER) and the bilateral rate against the US dollar for nine East Asian countries after the Asian financial crisis. Our hypothetical regimes include a unilateral basket peg (UBP), a common basket peg (CBP) and a hard peg against the dollar. We find that a UBP would minimise effective exchange rate volatility for all countries and provides the highest regime gains compared to actual. Although the gains for a CBP are always less than those for a UBP, the absolute differences between the two regimes appear to be small. In terms of the bilateral relationship against the dollar, the gains from a UBP or CBP could be quite significant for the non‐dollar peggers since a fall in effective instability would be accompanied by a fall in bilateral instability.     

Food price increases and net food importing countries: lessons from the recent past

Recent increases in food and other commodity prices have highlighted concerns that many poor countries are net food importers and higher food prices would worsen their trade balances. In this article, we analyze the changes in food trade balances associated with the 32% increase in food prices from 2000/2001 to 2004/2005. We find a small deterioration in food trade balances of low‐income countries and an improvement in middle‐income countries. The deterioration is most severe for countries in conflict and small island states, so attention should be placed first on these countries and on a few very‐low‐income countries that are also vulnerable. Because low‐income countries as a group had much lower agricultural GDP growth rates than middle‐income countries, the answers to food vulnerability in low‐income countries should probably be addressed within the context of incentives for agricultural production.     

Investigating the limits of competitive intelligence gathering: is mystery shopping ethical?

In this article we take further the debate on the ethics of competitive intelligence gathering, which until now has been very limited. Drawing on empirical research from a mobile telephone company in the United Kingdom, we present the case that while mystery shopping is not the worst activity in which an organization might be involved, it is basically unethical. Mystery shopping involves deception and the obtaining of competitive information under false pretences. Common arguments are that 'everyone is doing it' and that the information is in the public domain. Neither of these points convincingly justifies the requirement for an employer to ask an employee to lie and deceive others on behalf of the company. The use of students and those in low power positions in the organization is a further concern.     

Mesenteric actinomycosis

We report a case of abdominal actinomycosis demonstrated on computed tomography (CT) as an isolated mesenteric mass with radiating linear and nodular densities. The lesion mimicked a mesenteric tumor with desmoplastic reaction. The clinical and radiological features of this uncommon entity are reviewed.     

Does shareholder approval requirement of equity compensation plans matter?

This paper studies the impact of the 2003 SEC Regulation requiring shareholder approval of all equity-based executive compensation plans on executive compensation policies and practices at S&P 500 firms. Following the 2003 Regulation, firms with shareholder approved equity plans in place or those with strong performance, while not those with non-approved plans or weak performance, increase their equity compensation proposal submission activity. The quality of equity compensation proposals improves in the after-regulation period, and shareholders exhibit greater scrutiny and monitoring of executive compensation through increased voting rights. We find a decline in the equity pay component while an increase in the cash component of total executive compensation after the 2003 Regulation and also provide evidence that the 2003 Regulation contributes to this change in compensation structure.     

Behavioral biases of mutual fund investors

We examine the effect of behavioral biases on the mutual fund choices of a large sample of US discount brokerage investors using new measures of attention to news, tax awareness, and fund-level familiarity bias, in addition to behavioral and demographic characteristics of earlier studies. Behaviorally biased investors typically make poor decisions about fund style and expenses, trading frequency, and timing, resulting in poor performance. Furthermore, trend chasing appears related to behavioral biases, rather than to rationally inferring managerial skill from past performance. Factor analysis suggests that biased investors often conform to stereotypes that can be characterized as Gambler, Smart, Overconfident, Narrow Framer, and Mature.     

Scheduling deteriorating jobs with CON/SLK due date assignment on a single machine

This paper considers the problem of scheduling deteriorating jobs and due date assignment on a single machine. The actual processing time of a job is a linear increasing function of its starting time. The problem is to determine the optimal due dates and the processing sequence simultaneously to minimize costs for earliness, due date assignment and weighted number of tardy jobs. We present polynomial-time algorithms to solve the problem in the case of two popular due date assignment methods: CON and SLK.     

Levels of computer self-efficacy, computer use and earnings in China

Levels of self-efficacy in computer use were found to be positively related to computer use at work among a sample of workers in Shanghai. The simultaneous estimation of computer use and earnings indicated that an earnings premium for computer use accrues only to females, not to males.