Ethics from the top: top management and ethical business

Codes of ethics and conduct typically demand the highest standard of ethical behaviour from every single employee. This implies a democratic or lobbyist understanding of ethics in business. The contrasting view would argue that business ethics is an elitist undertaking that can only be instigated from the top, by managing directors or owner managers. This article looks at three types of ethical businesses, three types of approaches to ethical problem-solving, and three possible incentives for ethical business to see which of the above is more convincing. It will be argued that the impulse for value-driven business has to come from the top. Only top management and owner managers have the opportunity to foster major change in business practice.     

International Capital Mobility in the Presence of Unemployment Insurance

The paper develops a general–equilibrium model with layoff unemployment to examine the effect of different unemployment insurance policies on international capital mobility. Conditions are derived under which capital will flow to the high–benefit country. Incentives for international capital movements are unaffected by how the burden of financing unemployment benefits is distributed between workers and firms. It is shown that capital outflows might have positive welfare effects for workers. This contrasts with results from standard models of international factor movements.     

Digitalisierung im Gesundheitswesen — zwischen Datenschutz und moderner Medizinversorgung

The digital transformation of the healthcare branch is important and unstoppable. The enormous possibility of digitalisation to redesign and enhance processes has been shown in other branches. Digital technologies offer the similarly large potential to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare services. However, in terms of digitalisation, the German health system lags behind other European countries. But given a lack of available evidence, the effects of the digitalisation of the healthcare system cannot be reliably evaluated. Digital access to patient data necessitates constructive error cultures in organisations in order to limit defensive medicine. And digital access to health information necessitates individual competence in searching and using this information for participatory decision-making. As with all technological progress, information security is very important in order to gain citizens’ confidence in a digital healthcare system. Thus, it is necessary to simultaneously pursue both enhanced privacy standards and state-of-the-art medical technology.     

Transportation rates and plant location in oligopolistic competition with sequential entry

This paper examines the impact of quantity-discounted transportation rates on location patterns of oligopolistic competition with sequential entry. When transportation rates are constant, Hwang and Mai (1990) show that the entrant locates at the same point as the existing firms if the production function exhibits constant returns to scale. The entrant will locate farther away from (closer to) the market than the existing firms do if the production function exhibits increasing (decreasing) returns to scale. This paper shows that Hwang and Mai's results need not hold when transportation rates are a function of quantity shipped and distance traveled.     

Social Security Policy and International Labor and Capital Mobility

This paper studies the connection between social security policy and international factor movements within a two-country overlapping-generations model with production. Incentives for factor movements emerge because one country relies on private savings while the other country operates a social security system. The pattern of migration depends on the steady-state capital–labor ratios compared with the Golden Rule capital–labor ratios. Incentives to migrate do not vanish in the long run and one country might empty out. Capital always moves to the social-security country. Without compensation neither labor nor capital mobility represents a Pareto improvement for the economy.     

Process management practices: organizational (dis-)similarities

Organizational processes have been manifested as resources which are difficult to imitate. Not least because goods and services are offered worldwide on comparable levels, processes are nowadays sources of competitive advantage. Manufacturers recognized process management's benefits early on. Meanwhile service providers adopt related practices with slight adaptations as well and even potentials for small and flexible firms have been revealed. From a present-day perspective, the question arises whether manufacturers and large firms are still more process oriented than their entrepreneurial counterparts. The results of a survey-based comparison show that this situation continues to hold with fewer differences between manufacturers and service providers. However, it became clear that the process culture – one of six investigated factors – is independent from a firm's industry affiliation and size. The evidence demonstrates that service providers progress on their journey to process management, which is taking an increasingly decisive role in the management of service operations.     

Consensus Among Economists—An Update

In this article, the authors explore consensus among economists on specific propositions based on a fall 2011 survey of American Economic Association members. Results are based on 568 responses and provide evidence of changes in opinion over time by including propositions from earlier studies in 2000 (Fuller and Geide-Stevenson 2003) and 1992 (Alston, Kearl, and Vaughan 1992). Propositions focus on microeconomics, macroeconomics, distributional and international topics, as well as pedagogy. Results indicate a movement toward an overall higher level of consensus, mainly because of a drop in the incidence of no consensus. Especially in the area of distributional propositions, economists display an increased concern with income inequality and potential effects on growth. In the area of macroeconomics, current opinions are more similar to those of the 1992 survey than the 2000 survey.