Exploring the ethical behavior of managers: A comparative study of four countries

Donaldson and Dunfee's (1994) social contracts theory of economic ethics was subjected to empirical scrutiny to determine whether it can explain differences in behavior between cultures. Data collected utilizing a series of vignettes developed by Fritzsche and Becker (1984) were examined for differences in indicated ethical behavior among American, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese managers. Rationale for the behavior was classified according to hyper and community norms which were supported or violated. The results suggest that the three East Asian countries do not neatly cluster together in relation to the U.S. in terms of their patterns of ethical behavior. Nonetheless, when we examined the specific rationale for the decisions provided by the managers, the effects of Asian cultural characteristics became more notable. We also found that the social contracts theory provided a much needed bridge between ethical universalists and relativists. The specific reasons underlying their decisions are discussed in the light of cultural and social differences.This research project was partially supported by a research grant from the School of Business and Management, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.     

Differences in consumer loyalty and willingness to pay for service attributes across digital channels: A study of the Japanese digital content market

In this paper, the impact that the Internet access device has on consumer loyalty behaviors relative to Internet content was explored. To do so, a mixed logit demand function for mobile and PC subscribers to digital content was estimated and consumers’ willingness to pay for attributes related to specific content providers and their levels of service quality were measured. It was found that significant differences in loyalty and willingness to pay for service quality factors existed between mobile and PC Internet content subscribers, suggesting that while content may be developed as device independent, consumers interact differently with similar Internet content accessed through different devices. Specifically, the willingness to pay for more robust and more frequently updated content was on average higher in the mobile segment than in the PC segment. In addition, the overall switching costs consumers attributed to specific content providers via the mobile channel were far higher than through the PC channel. These results suggest that more robust content management systems must be developed to accommodate for such differences in consumer behavior.     

Redistribution Policies under Capital Market Imperfection

We establish the existence and stability of the long‐run wealth distribution in a credit constrained economy by applying the monotonicity condition developed by H. Hopenhayn and E. Prescott. There should emerge an egalitarian society in which all families experience upward and downward mobility, although a society of persistent inequality may occur in which rich entrepreneurs and poor lenders remain immobile between classes. The speed of transition from the latter to the former is shown to depend on the design of redistribution policies. Simulation results show that this occurs more rapidly when the government favours relatively rich lenders. JEL Classification Numbers: D31, G33, O12.