Corporate Ethical Values and Altruism: The Mediating Role of Career Satisfaction

This study explores the ability of career satisfaction to mediate the relationship between corporate ethical values and altruism. Using a sample of individuals employed in a four-campus, regional health science center, it was determined that individual career satisfaction fully mediated the positive relationship between perceptions of corporate ethical values and self-reported altruism. The findings imply that companies dedicating attention to positive corporate ethical values can enhance employee attitudes and altruistic behaviors, especially when individuals experience a high degree of career satisfaction.     

Financing municipal BOOTs in South Africa: The lenders' perspective

South Africa's first build‐own‐operate‐transfer (BOOT) project for municipal services was signed in late December 1998 by the city of Durban and a private project company associated with French conglomerate Vivendi. The project will treat waste water for sale to industrial customers who would otherwise use more expensive potable water in their manufacturing processes. The project structure, with its multiple contracts and supporting agreements, guarantees and complex shareholding relationships, represents a sophisticated analytical challenge for lenders, whose financing will ultimately be at risk in the deal. Development finance institutions, such as the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), must review such projects in even greater detail because of their mandate to promote sustainable infrastructure development in the region. This article presents the DBSA ‘s analytical perspective on the Durban BOOT project in an effort to capture the complex, innovative and strongly developmental character of what, for South Africa, is a ground‐breaking public‐private partnership project.     

Measuring Selection Incentives in Managed Care: Evidence From the Massachusetts State Employee Insurance Program

Capitation gives insurers incentive to manipulate their offerings to attract the healthy and deter the sick. We calculate the incentives for such service-specific quality distortions using managed care medical and pharmacy spending data for fiscal years 2001 and 2002 from the Massachusetts State Employee Insurance Program. Services most vulnerable to stinting are cardiac care, diabetes care, and mental health and substance abuse services. Empirically, the financial temptation to distort service quality increases nonlinearly with supply-side cost sharing. Our empirical results highlight how selection incentives work at cross-purposes with efforts to reward excellent chronic disease management. Initiatives coupling pay-for-performance with risk adjustment and mixed payment hold promise for aligning incentives with quality improvement.     

Strategic individual assessment: Issues in providing reliable descriptions

Individual assessment involves one psychologist making an assessment of an individual for personnel-related purposes. Individual assessment practice is reviewed, and research on reliability is presented. A study examining the comparability of conclusions reached by consumers is presented. Eighty-six students and thirty-eight managers read nine narrative assessment reports (three of each of three job candidates) and attempted to determine which reports described the same candidate. None of the subjects could correctly group the nine reports; a sizeable proportion did no better than chance in grouping the reports. Implications for assessors and consumers of individual assessments are discussed.     

Do borrowers know their mortgage terms?

We assess whether borrowers know their mortgage terms by comparing the distributions of these variables in the household-reported Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to the distributions in lender-reported data. We also examine the characteristics of SCF respondents who report not knowing these contract terms. Although most borrowers seem to know basic mortgage terms, borrowers with adjustable-rate mortgages appear likely to underestimate or to not know how much their interest rates could change. Borrowers who could experience large payment changes if interest rates rose are more likely to report not knowing these contract terms. Difficulties with gathering and processing information appear to be a factor in borrowers' lack of knowledge.     

A Trinomial Logit Analysis of Household Composition

This article analyzes the effects on the marriage and household composition decisions of characteristics of the householder and of the place of residence. High housing costs reduced the probability of living alone. For female householders, increases in income decreased the probability of living alone rather than with unrelated individuals; the reverse was true for male householders. An increase in income decreased the probability of marriage for female householders over twenty-three years of age and increased the probability of marriage for male householders. Non-white householders over forty were less likely to be married than white householders over forty.     

Cross-border restaurant price and exchange rate interactions

Purchasing power parity suggests that international price ratios for identical goods should approximate nominal exchange rates for the currencies in which the prices are denominated. Deviations of the price ratios from exchange rates can occur for a number of reasons and mixed evidence has been recorded for how long those deviations last. Empirical evidence for international restaurant prices in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico confirms that menu item price ratios are strongly correlated with the peso/dollar exchange rate. An earlier exploratory study of eight individual products also indicated that half-life deviations in this market are very short. This study utilizes additional data from a larger and more extensive sample to examine if the prior results are confirmed.     

Political consequences of ethical investing: The case of South Africa

This paper discusses the economic impact and political consequences of ethical investing, with particular attention to the case of South Africa. The origins of ethical investing are examined, along with the institutions and strategies by which ethical investing operates today. Of immediate relevance to managers is a recent judicial decision upholding Baltimore's divestment ordinance. The discussion concludes with an assessment of the likely consequences of ethical investing for U.S. multinationals in Southern Africa. Dr. Paul is an Associate Professor of Management at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She took her Ph.D. from Emory University in 1974. She has published and presented widely on the subject of Business Ethics and Business and Public Policy. Her current research interest in business and South Africa has taken her to South Africa on a Fulbright Fellowship. Dr. Paul has also been named a Radcliffe Peace Fellow for 1987–88. She has just edited Business Environment and Business Ethics: The Social, Moral, and Political Dimensions of Management (1987) for Ballinger Press.Mr. Aquila has been a full time Lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology since 1984. He took his M.B.A. degree from New York University in 1980 and is just finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester in American History. Mr. Aquila was awarded the David Parker Memorial Prize in History from the University of Rochester in 1986.     

Perceptions of Power Within a Membership-based Seniors' Community Center

As opportunities for citizenship diminish in everyday life amid increasing consumption and privatization, there is a growing realization of the importance of participation and citizen power, particularly for older adults. Gaventa's (1980) Gaventa, J. (1980). Power and powerlessness: Quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. [Google Scholar] concepts of visible, invisible, and hidden power and Arnstein's ladder of citizen power (1969) framed this study, which used participatory methods, including creation and facilitation of a members' group at a small seniors' center, to address the question: What are the factors that undermine or cultivate citizen power at a small community center for seniors? The data were organized under three power-related themes: powerlessness, reluctance to claim power, and claiming power. Findings suggest that negative social constructions associated with aging act as instruments of invisible power. Further, community center membership, to be considered meaningful, should be imbued with visible power, so that seniors can be involved in decision making and leadership.