Regulating for corporate human rights abuses: The emergence of corporate reporting on the ILO's human rights standards within the global garment manufacturing and retail industry

Despite the ubiquitous nature of the discourse on human rights there is currently little research on the emergence of disclosure by multinational corporations on their human rights obligations or the regulatory dynamic that may lie behind this trend. In an attempt to begin to explore the extent to which, if any, the language of human rights has entered the discourse of corporate accountability, this paper investigates the adoption of the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) human rights standards by major multinational garment retail companies that source products from developing countries, as disclosed through their reporting media. The paper has three objectives. Firstly, to empirically explore the extent to which a group of multinational garment retailers invoke the language of human rights when disclosing their corporate responsibilities. The paper reviews corporate reporting media including social responsibility codes of conduct, annual reports and stand-alone social responsibility reports released by 18 major global clothing and retail companies during a period from 1990 to 2007. We find that the number of companies adopting and disclosing on the ILO's workplace human rights standards has significantly increased since 1998 – the year in which the ILO's standards were endorsed and accepted by the global community (ILO, 1998). Secondly, drawing on a combination of Responsive Regulation theory and neo-institutional theory, we tentatively seek to understand the regulatory space that may have influenced these large corporations to adopt the language of human rights obligations. In particular, we study the role that International Governmental Organisation's (IGO) such as ILO may have played in these disclosures. Finally, we provide some critical reflections on the power and potential within the corporate adoption of the language of human rights.     

The long run relationship between openness and government size: evidence from bounds test

The bounds test is applied to determine the existence of a level relationship between government size, openness, terms of trade volatility, and external risk using time series data from Australia, Canada, England, Norway, Sweden, and the USA. Bounds test results show that the existence of a long run relationship in the USA and Canada, but not in any of the other countries. Long run parameters are estimated using both autoregressive distributed lag and FM-OLS procedures. Results vary from country to country, with some evidence that government size is significantly affected by openness and terms of trade volatility. However, contrary to argument and evidence developed using cross-section data, empirical evidence presented in this paper show that the size of the government has not changed to mitigate the effect of increased income risks associated with greater openness.     

Nexus Between Cultural Dissonance,Management Accounting Systems,and Managerial Effectiveness: Evidence from an Asian Developing Country

This article examines the links between corporate cultural dissonance, the management accounting system (MAS) information adequacy gap, and managerial effectiveness of the financial sector in Bangladesh. Data were collected from a random sample of 146 bank managers and were analyzed using correlation matrices. The findings suggest that the level of managerial effectiveness can be improved by decentralizing the management accounting practices through maintaining minimal authoritative power distance, improving the system for gathering and sharing information, and enhancing transparency in information flow. These findings, which have important implications for the effective performance management of banks, are highlighted in the article.     

Some Empirical Evidence of Chinese Accounting System and Business Management Practices from an Ethical Perspective

China is moving from a centralized to a market economy to bring about efficiency in its economy and to form a business partnership with the West. With its reform adopting an open-door policy, there may be a need to assure its partners in the western world that appropriate steps would be taken to develop and foster a business culture with which the western countries and the Chinese businesses can work. The present study attempted to find whether there has been a change in business ethical culture, accounting system and practice in the Chinese business between 1978 and the present, and the degree of similarity in the Chinese ethics and guidelines compared to Western ethics and guidelines. The result of the study has been analyzed from an institutional perspective to explore institutional change. The result showed that there is general growing support of Chinese management toward change in business ethical culture and practice. It was observed that there was not much similarity in the documents used for ethical guidance and control with those of the West. The findings of the paper are expected to be relevant to international investors and executives interested in investing or working in China.     

Devaluation, Asymmetric Money Demand, and Investment in a Small Open Economy

This paper investigates the relationship between inflation and investment when cash is required to purchase some consumption goods in a small open economy while others are purchased with foreign currency or on credit. Devaluation acts as a differential tax on the good that must be purchased with domestic money and lowers the return to the factor used intensively in this sector. If this sector is relatively labor intensive, the steady-state capital stock will increase in response to higher inflation. Nonneutrality of inflation exists even though money is only held for consumption purposes.     

Applying economic methodology to the war on terrorism

The application of economic methodology to the problem of terrorism is discussed. Theoretical and empirical results are discussed with particular focus on the September 11 attack and the retaliatory response by the United States. Economists have relied on the rational agent model to derive testable hypotheses regarding the behavior of terrorists. The rational agent model postulates that terrorists respond to incentives, including media publicity, and the model predicts that when the net marginal benefit from one type of terrorist activity is diminished, terrorists will substitute into alternative modes of terrorism. Empirical results demonstrating that such substitutions indeed occur are discussed. Therefore, policy designed to reduce a particular form of terrorism, such as increased airport security to prevent airplane hijackings, may simply result in terrorists choosing alternative modes of terrorism. Empirical evidence demonstrating that terrorism is cyclical in nature is also discussed. Evidence on substitution and cycles suggests that following temporary reduction in terrorist activity after retaliation against terrorists and their infrastructure, terrorists are able to successfully regroup and attack using alternative means. Therefore, the current US focus on fighting terrorism on all fronts and over the long haul is the correct approach.     

What have We Learnt from the Convergence Debate?

This paper surveys the convergence literature. It begins by laying out different definitions of convergence and by showing the link between the convergence issue and the growth theory debate. The paper then follows the convergence research conducted along four different approaches, namely the cross‐section, panel, time‐series, and distribution approaches. The paper shows the association of these methodological approaches with various definitions of convergence and highlights the connections among the convergence results. It shows that, despite some impressions to the contrary, there is considerable agreement among the results. Although the convergence research might not have solved the growth debate entirely, it has helped both the neoclassical and the new growth theories to adapt and evolve. The research on convergence has established new stylized facts regarding cross‐country growth regularities. It has brought to fore the existence of large technological and institutional differences across countries and has given rise to new methodologies for quantifying and analyzing these differences. This is providing a new information base for analysis of technological and institutional diffusion and for further development of growth theory in general.     

Productivity Dynamics in a Large Sample of Countries: A Panel Study

Recent research shows that productivity differences are more important than differences in accumulation rates in explaining per capita income differences across countries. So far static differences in productivity have been mainly computed and analyzed in large samples of countries. This paper extends the research by focusing on productivity dynamics . It uses the panel approach to compute productivity indices for a large sample of countries for two time periods, namely an initial period of 1960–75 and a subsequent period of 1975–90. This allows computation of ordinal and cardinal changes in productivity between the two periods. The results show considerable variation in productivity dynamics across countries. The task ahead is to find out what accounts for the observed dynamics.     

Brazil's twin deficits: An empirical examination

This paper examines empirically the causal relationship between budget deficits and trade deficits for Brazil from 1973:1Q through 1991:4Q. This relationship is investigated in the context of Granger's test of causality. The final prediction error criterion, as outlined by Hsiao [1981], is applied in determining the appropriate lag length of the two variables. Empirical results suggested the presence of bilateral causality between trade deficits and budget deficits.