Female Representation on Corporate Boards in Europe: The Interplay of Organizational Social Consciousness and Institutions

Journal of Business Ethics - We examine the role of alignment between organizational social consciousness and the informal and formal institutions of a country in increasing female representation...     

Report on Business Ethics in North America

Although many challenges remain, business ethics is flourishing in North America. Prominent organizations give annual business ethics awards, investments in socially screened mutual funds are increasing, ethics officers and corporate ombudspersons are more common and more influential, and new ideas are being tested in practice. On the academic side, two major journals specializing in business ethics are well-established and other major journals often include articles on business ethics and new organizations emphasizing ethics have been initiated. Within business schools, the number of endowed chairs is growing and the ethics curriculum is expanding. Canada is a major player in the business ethics discipline while business ethics in Mexico is just beginning to emerge as a focus of interest in both the business and academic communities.     

Bank Monitoring and Environmental Risk

Abstract:  Loan announcement effects for 152 Canadian companies are examined to investigate the efficiency of monitoring by banks facing lender environmental liability. Market reaction to the announcement of bank debt to 'environmental' firms is more positive and significant than for 'non-environmental' firms and, for firms in industries with a higher likelihood of experiencing spill events, is more positive and significant, reinforcing earlier results that establish a relationship between specific loan/borrower characteristics and announcement period excess returns and providing further evidence on the 'uniqueness' of bank loans by demonstrating the superior ability of banks to monitor corporate borrowers exposed to environmental liability.     

A consumer education programme based on the Transtheoretical Model of Change

MONEY 2000? is a successful consumer education programme that was implemented by Cooperative Extension personnel in over two dozen states of the USA between 1996 and 2002. One of the unique features of this programme is that it was based on the Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM), a framework that has been widely used to study health‐related behaviour changes such as smoking cessation. This paper first describes how the MONEY 2000? programme was developed around major constructs contained within the TTM. Findings are reported from a survey conducted with participants in the first two states that delivered the programme. The findings suggest that several change processes used by MONEY 2000? participants are associated with specific stages of change. In addition, there may be differences in behavioural changes between participants who increased their savings and those who reduced their debts.     

Fertility,Taxation and Family Policy*

Historically, there is clear evidence of an inverse relationship between female labour supply and fertility. However, the relationship across countries is now positive. Countries like Germany and Italy, with the lowest fertility, also have the lowest female participation rates. This paper analyses the extent to which this can be explained by public policy, in particular taxation and the system of child support. The results suggest that countries which have individual rather than joint taxation, and which support families through child care facilities rather than child payments, are likely to have both higher female labour supply and higher fertility.     

Initial Public Offerings: CFO Perceptions

We examine four issues pertaining to initial public offerings (IPOs) using a survey of 438 chief financial officers (CFOs). First, why do firms go public? Second, is CFO sentiment stationary across bear and bull markets? Third, what concerns CFOs about going public? Fourth, do CFO perceptions correlate with returns? Results support funding for growth and liquidity as the primary reasons for IPOs. CFO sentiment is generally stationary in pre‐ and post‐bubble years. Managers are concerned with the direct costs of going public, such as underwriting fees, as well as indirect costs. We find a negative relation between a focus on immediate growth and long‐term abnormal returns.     

Cognitive competence of older consumers

Older adult memory performance declines with age. However, memory for newly learned material is only one measure of cognitive competence. This article reviews research that measured older adult cognitive performance using tasks that tap crystallized abilities, everyday problem solving, and those that used older expert subjects. The results indicate that many cognitive functions remain stable from middle age onward. This suggests that cognitive decline is not an inevitable result of aging per se. This implies that antecedents of cognitive decline, such as health, should be used as a segmentation variable for the older adult market. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.