Not Only Gender: More on Debating Markets

The paper by Gudeman and Gudeman on the nature of computer-mediated-communication (CMC) is a valuable contribution. This comment argues that they neglected one important aspect affecting CMC, namely ideology, and suggests that the ''Debating Markets'' exchange had long-term negative impacts on Femecon.     

Did Hayek have a monetary theory of business cycles?

Joseph Schumpeter, a careful reader of Hayek, categorized Hayek??s theory of economic cycles as non-monetary. Almost every other source, including Hayek himself, categorized the theory as monetary. The issue turns on the concept of causality being used. The question of what causality concept to apply to complex phenomena has substantive implications for economic theory. A simple concept of causality, appropriate to the study of some physical phenomena, will mislead when applied to complex phenomena. We provide examples of errors in analysis that follow from the wrong choice of a causal paradigm.     

INDIVIDUAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS ON SUPPLY CHAIN INVENTORY MANAGEMENT: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF INFORMATION AVAILABILITY AND PROCEDURAL RATIONALITY

Some strategies for mitigating ordering inefficiencies in supply chains advise sharing information among decision‐makers. However, there has been little consideration of how individual perceptions intervene in the use of available information in decision‐making processes. This article reports the results of an experiment in which participants were instructed to minimize inventory holding and backlog costs for their supply chains as a whole. The analysis suggests that additional information affects supply chain inventory management costs only when rational decision‐making processes are followed. Decreased costs are observed when rational decision‐making is applied with backlog information. In contrast, increased costs are observed when consumer demand information is available.     

The Ethics of Life Insurance Settlements: Investing in the Lives of Unrelated Individuals

Life insurance settlements, or life settlements, are life insurance policies owned by investor-beneficiaries on the lives of unrelated individuals. With life settlements, investors make substantial payments to the insured individuals upon purchasing such policies, pay any remaining premiums, and collect the death benefits upon the demise of the insured individuals. Transactions involving life settlements seem poised to become a major source of profits for investment banks, comparable in dollar amount to subprime mortgages. With life settlements, the insured individuals suffer no immediate harm, and the sale of a policy an individual owns is permissible under current law. Nevertheless, moral questions can be posed about the social values expressed by these practices, the effect of these practices on the virtue of charity, and the overall loss of social utility that will result from life settlements. We consider life settlements from utilitarian and libertarian perspectives, and then consider the effects of life settlements on social values and on individual character. On balance, we favor legislative changes in insurance and tax laws to discourage life settlements, and argue that certain forms of life settlements should be banned outright.     

More than just national cultural distance: Testing new distance scales on FDI in Slovakia

Over the past decade, numerous calls have been made within the international business literature for a broader conceptualization and measurement of non-geographic forms distance amongst countries. One promising response to this call has been a set of psychic distance stimuli scales put forward by Dow, D., & Karunaratna, A. (2006). Developing a multidimensional instrument to measure psychic distance stimuli. Journal of International Business Studies, 37(5), 575–577. However, to date, these new scales have only been tested in one very limited setting – predicting bi-lateral trade flows. This paper extends the generalizability of the Dow and Karunaratna scales by testing their criterion-related validity with respect to three specific foreign direct investment (FDI) issues: predicting market selection, entry mode choice and performance. The results indicate that the Dow and Karunaratna scales are significantly stronger predictors of market selection and FDI performance than the traditional Kogut and Singh index; and that researchers should go beyond using national cultural distance as their sole measure of distance amongst countries. The results for predicting entry mode choice are more ambiguous; however, the authors argue that the ambiguity may reflect the inadequacies of the classic TCE-based approach to predicting entry mode, rather than shortcomings in the measurement of the distance construct.     

The NAFTA and the Environment: Trade,diplomacy, and limited protection

This article reviews the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its provisions on environmental protection. It describes how NAFTA followed from previous international environmental and trade arrangements. NAFTA's environmental provision adopts the position that economic growth will promote environmental protection and that enforcement is best accomplished through diplomatic means rather than through trade sanctions. The major importance of NAFTA's treatment of the environment is the precedent it sets to include environmental issues into future trade treaties.     

Conceptualizing and operationalizing nodal tourism functions

This paper reviews conceptualizations of nodal functions and presents a methodology for identifying and measuring the tourism functions of specific places with reference to place competitiveness. The methodology, which combines measures of length of stay and purpose of visit, is illustrated by a survey-based comparative analysis of ferry passengers traveling between two tourist nodes in New Zealand: Wellington and Picton. The results show distinctive differences between the two places in terms of their multiple functions expressed as origins, gateways, stopovers and destinations. Opportunities for modifying functions appear to be greatest amongst international travelers.     

Generation Y’s Ethical Ideology and Its Potential Workplace Implications

Generation Y is a cohort of the population larger than the baby boom generation. Consisting of approximately 80 million people born between 1981 and 2000, Generation Y is the most recent cohort to enter the workforce. Workplaces are being redefined and organizations are being pressed to adapt as this new wave of workers is infused into business environments. One critical aspect of this phenomenon not receiving sufficient research attention is the impact of Gen Y ethical beliefs and ethical conduct in workplace contexts. It is widely accepted that distinct generational experiences shape ethical ideologies and ethical ideologies in turn affect the way people function in the workplace. Thus, Gen Y’s unique cohort experiences are likely to shape their ethical ideologies and consequent workplace judgments and actions. In this article, we examine Gen Y’s ethical ideology and study its impact on workplace functioning regarding leadership style, teamwork, and judgments about ethical violations. Our analyses indicate that Gen Y’ers tend toward situationalism (high idealism and high relativism), and their socially connected orientation produces more lenient judgments of collaborative vs. unilateral ethical violations. However, Gen Y’ers do exhibit individual variation. Relativist Gen Y’ers are more tolerant of ethical violations, whereas, Gen Y Idealists are less tolerant of ethical violations. High Idealists also show stronger teamwork and leadership characteristics. In addition, Gen Y’ers possessing servant leader traits exhibit incrementally better teamwork, and greater perceived unacceptability of ethical violations. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings for managing ethical climates and conduct.     

Anonymity in Computer-Mediated Communication: More Contrarian Ideas with Less Influence

Anonymity is thought to be an important means for ensuring a free exchange of ideas by encouraging the expression of minority viewpoints. However, we suggest that anonymity’s reduction in awareness of others potentially affects the expression and interpretation of comments that are made during a discussion. In particular, anonymity will increase the likelihood that comments will be made that are contrary to the majority opinion while at the same time decreasing the effect that those contrary arguments have on other group member’s opinions. This paper reports experimental results showing that anonymity led to more overall participation in discussions of ethical scenarios. However, equality of member participation did not differ between anonymous and member-identified groups, and anonymous groups had significantly higher awareness-related comments. This leads to the conclusion that additional participation in anonymous groups accommodates reduced awareness rather than reflecting the increased participation of normally reticent group members. In addition, anonymity led to more arguments in support of questionable behavior, suggesting that the freeing effects of anonymity apply to the social desirability of arguments. Finally, there was less change in opinion under conditions of anonymity than when comments were identified, suggesting that anonymous arguments have less influence on opinions than identified comments.     

Building the high-flex/high-value HR team

In many companies, the human resources function is considered necessary, but minimally important. Douglas Ready strongly disagrees and argues that a shoddy HR function will keep the rest of the company from high achievement. It's time to develop the people who are in charge of developing everyone else.