The Impact of Technological Turbulence on Entrepreneurial Behavior, Social Norms and Ethics: Three Internet-based Cases

We investigate the entrepreneurial opportunities and ethical dilemmas presented by technological turbulence. More specifically we investigate the line between Baumol’s [J. Polit. Econ. 98 (1990) 893] productive (e.g. innovation), unproductive (e.g. rent seeking) and destructive (e.g. criminal) entrepreneurship through three examples of Internet innovation – spam (destructive), music file sharing (unproductive), and Internet pharmacies (potentially productive). The emergence of accessible Internet technologies, under present norms, has created the potential for all three entrepreneurial activities. Because of the propensity for self-serving biases and for bending the rules, the need for creativity in overcoming obstacles and overall liabilities of newness, entrepreneurs are likely to challenge established industrial morals and laws. Unlike new entrants, incumbents must abide by the currently accepted norms, and thus suffer from “liabilities of oldness”. The challenge for new entrants is to change sociopolitical legitimacy, whereas incumbents need to defend the established norms. We discuss competitive and other issues that result from technological turbulence and innovation.     

The Ethical Consumer. Moral Norms and Packaging Choice

This study investigates whether the claim that environmental attitudes are based on moral reasoning is valid with regard to consumer buying attitudes, as it has been shown to be in other domains of consumer behaviour. It is proposed that two conditions make moral reasoning in the buying situation more likely: environmental concern and the absence of other highly involving characteristics. The paper presents a study of a case with these two characteristics: Danish consumers' choice of environment-friendly packaging. With regard to this case, the evidence supports the claim. A majority of Danish consumers have developed personal norms about choosing environment-friendly packaging and the personal norm is a significant predictor of their (self-reported) propensity to choose environment-friendly packaging in the supermarket (whereas perceived costs have a minor influence on the choice). It is recommended that attempts to promote this and similar behaviour focus on strengthening consumers' intrinsic motivation and on facilitating its transformation into behaviour.     

The Impact of Ethical Ideologies,Moral Intensity,and Social Context on Sales-Based Ethical Reasoning

Previous research indicates that ethical ideologies, issue-contingencies, and social context can impact ethical reasoning in different business situations. However, the manner in which these constructs work together to shape different steps of the ethical decision-making process is not always clear. The purpose of this study was to address these issues by exploring the influence of idealism and relativism, perceived moral intensity in a decision-making situation, and social context on the recognition of an ethical issue and ethical intention. Utilizing a sales-based scenario and multiple ethics measures included on a self-report questionnaire, data were collected from a regional sample of business students, most of whom had modest work experience. The results indicated that perceived moral intensity was associated with increased ethical issue recognition and ethical intention. Idealism was also associated with increased ethical issue recognition, and relativism was associated with decreased ethical intention. Social consensus was positively related to ethical issue recognition and intention, while competitive context was inversely related to ethical intention. Finally, ethical issue recognition was associated with increased ethical intention. Idealism, moral intensity, social consensus, and work experience worked together as predictors of ethical issue recognition, whereas recognition of an ethical issue, relativism, moral intensity, social consensus, and competitive context worked together to predict ethical intention.     

Government Public Policy, Regulatory Intervention, and Their Impact on IPO Underpricing: The Case of Malaysian IPOs

This study examines the impact of government initial public offering (IPO) regulation intending on promoting public policy. The study examines the results of the implementation of a Malaysian government policy in 1976, which mandated that at least 30 percent of any new shares on an IPO offer be sold to the indigenous Bumiputera population or to mutual funds owned by them. The study examined the short-run and long-run underpricing of Malaysian IPOs and found that Malaysian IPOs are highly underpriced compared to IPOs in developing countries, creating a market microstructure effect. It also confirmed that the Malaysian government's regulatory intervention in spite of noble public policy intentions appeared to be the significant factor for the emergence of an average first-day underpricing increase of Malaysian IPOs by 61 percent during the period after the regulatory economic policy was instituted. Furthermore, the study found that this high underpricing persists even for the long run, in contrast to the long-run performance of IPOs in the United States.     

保障社会弱势群体权益的公共政策探讨

当前,弱势群体问题已经成为我国构建和谐社会的重要制约因素.政府必须通过公共政策调整,为他们创造一个可持续发展的政策社会环境.政府调整或创新公共政策的重点应该是加快社会管理体制和社会保障体制改革,全面加强对弱势群体的保护,推进旧政策的废止、修改和新政策的制定;摆正人民群众政策主体的位置,使弱势群体既享受政策保障的权利,也承担政策规定的义务,从而提高政府的政策能力,使公共政策真正反映公众意愿和人民大众的根本利益,有效缓解社会压力,避免社会危机.     

Moral and Instrumental Norms in Food Risk Communication

The major normative recommendations in the literature on food risk communication can be summarized in the form of seven practical principles for such communication: (1) Be honest and open. (2) Disclose incentives and conflicts of interest. (3) Take all available relevant knowledge into consideration. (4) When possible, quantify risks. (5) Describe and explain uncertainties. (6) Take all the public’s concerns into account. (7) Take the rights of individuals and groups seriously. We show that each of these proposed principles can be justified both in terms of more fundamental ethical principles and instrumentally in terms of the communicating agent’s self-interest. The mechanisms of this concordance of justifications are discussed. It is argued that the concordance is specific for areas such as food risks in which agents such as companies and public authorities are highly dependent on the public’s trust and confidence. The implications of these findings both for moral philosophy and for practical food risk communication are discussed.     

Circles of Ethics: The Impact of Proximity on Moral Reasoning

We report the results of an experiment designed to determine the effects of psychological proximity—proxied by awareness of pain (empathy) and friendship—on moral reasoning. Our study tests the hypotheses that a moral agent’s emphasis on justice decreases with proximity, while his/her emphasis on care increases. Our study further examines how personality, gender, and managerial status affect the importance of care and justice in moral reasoning. We find support for the main hypotheses. We also find that care should be split into two components, one related to protection (or compassion) and the other to the preservation of relationships. Although gender does not affect moral reasoning directly, we find that it does so indirectly via personality, controlling for age, professional status, and professional background. We do not find a significant effect of managerial status on ethics of justice, but do find that holding a managerial position has a negative impact on ethics of care. Regarding personality, we detect significant positive effects of conscientiousness on ethics of justice and of neuroticism on ethics of care.     

The Impact of EU Norms and Policies on Consumer Protection Enforcement in Serbia

Pursuant to its 2008 Stabilization and Association Agreement governing the process of EU integration, Serbia is obliged to align its consumer protection standards (including those related to enforcement) with those of the EU. This article considers the overall approach to enforcement of consumer law in Serbia, focussing in particular on the extent to which EU enforcement principles have been successfully exported to Serbia and whether the goals of EU consumer policy have been achieved. It argues that the incorporation of EU norms has brought fundamental changes to Serbian enforcement mechanisms at a formal level, such as in relation to mediation processes as well as the introduction of injunctions for the protection of collective consumer interests. In practice, however, the impact of this incorporation is quite limited. A number of factors that restrict the practical effectiveness of the mediation processes and injunctions required by EU law are explored in the article, including weak sanctions, excessive reliance on poorly resourced consumer organizations, absence of a business culture of compliance or a sophisticated and determined consumer protection enforcement culture sufficiently grounded in expertise, as well as an overarching political, legislative, and institutional instability. These factors also undermine the general aim of EU policy to achieve effective consumer protection enforcement in the Serbian context.     

Antitrust Policy: The Impact of Revenue Penalties on Price

The paper examines the impact on a firm’s price when it faces the possibility of an antitrust investigation and associated potential revenue penalty. As well as presenting a general model of antitrust intervention, an illustrative example reflecting the provisions of the 1998 UK Competition Act is offered, the example being developed to explore the implications of the probability of antitrust intervention and punishment increasing non-linearly as a firm’s profit rises.     

The Impact of Moral Reasoning and Retaliation on Whistle-Blowing: New Zealand Evidence

This study examined experimentally the effect of retaliation strength and accounting students’ level of moral reasoning, on their propensity to blow the whistle (PBW) when faced with a serious wrongdoing. Fifty-one senior accounting students enrolled in an auditing course offered by a large New Zealand university participated in the study. Participants responded to three hypothetical whistle-blowing scenarios and completed an instrument that measured moral reasoning (Welton et al., 1994, Accounting Education. International Journal (Toronto, Ont.) 3(1), 35–50) on one of two conditions – i.e., strong or weak retaliation for whistle-blowing. Consistent with the results of Arnold and Ponemon (1991, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 10, 1–15) this study found that the strength of retaliation and participants’ moral reasoning level positively affected their PBW. Unlike results reported in Arnold and Ponemon (1991, Auditing; A Journal of Practice and Theory 10, 1–15) a significant interaction effect of moral reasoning level and retaliation on participants’ PBW was not found. However, results showed that a participant’s gender has a significant effect on the relationship between his or her moral reasoning level and PBW. These results support the need to improve ethical awareness through accounting education and to increase protection for whistle-blowing (Miceli 2004, Journal of Management Inquiry 13, 364–366). Furthermore, many participants found it difficult to take a stand when serious wrongdoing is discovered. Therefore, policymakers must exercise caution when placing heavy reliance on whistle-blowing, especially when whistle-blower protection processes are complex and not easily accessible, and processes to facilitate whistle-blowing may vary substantially between public and private sector organizations (Scholtens, 2003, Review of the operation of the Protected Disclosures Act 2000: Report to the Minister of State Services).     

An Economic Analysis of Licensure and Public Policy: Evidence from the Social Work Case

Occupational licensure is commonly accepted as a means of protecting consumers by ensuring minimum levels of professional competence. This study analyzes the rationale for licensure in terms of consumer information and consumer choice, applying the analysis to the proposal to license social workers in Tennessee. The analysis makes it possible to separate the numerous issues involved in the licensure question, identifying the probable impact of the proposed measures in terms of a clearer identification of consumers' interests. It is shown that the need for licensure is tied to the manner in which services are provided. In the social work case this means that while the positions of social workers would be enhanced, licensure would offer their client-consumers little protection which they do not already enjoy.     

Tweetjacked: The Impact of Social Media on Corporate Greenwash

We theorize that social media will reduce the incidence of corporate greenwash. Drawing on the management literature on decoupling and the economic literature on information disclosure, we characterize specifically where this effect is likely to be most pronounced. We identify important differences between social media and traditional media, and present a theoretical framework for understanding greenwash in which corporate environmental communications may backfire if citizens and activists feel a company is engaging in excessive self-promotion. The framework allows us to draw out a series of propositions regarding the impact of social media on corporate decisions whether to greenwash, and what channels to use for environmental communication. We conclude with a number of suggestions for future research.     

The Social Impact of Tourism on Singapore

The article attempts to study the social consequences of tourism in Singapore by undertaking a sample survey, which involved about 500 households selected from four main tourist areas of the city-state. The results indicate that the Singaporeans largely benefited from overseas visitors. Tourism helped to promote cultural diversity, a sense of cleanliness, and a feeling of pride in Singapore. It also helped improve various infrastructural facilities and quality of services in general. The social costs of tourism were found to be rather minimal.     

基于细化社会核算矩阵的突发公共事件产业影响分析

根据最新的2007年中国投入产出表,再结合其他数据编制的细化社会核算矩阵,可以用来分析突发公共事件的产业总影响和产业间影响。研究发现:劳动密集型产业以及与其他产业具有较高关联度的产业,受突发公共事件冲击的总产出影响较大;而同一突发公共事件冲击所带来的经济影响在不同产业间的分布差异较大。了解这些影响的大小,对于突发公共事件的优化管理具有重要意义。     

Ethics in Finance and Public Policy: The Ibercorp Case

Our research has found that companies which have diverged from traditional management in order to adopt strategies which include ethics, cooperation and a joint vision of management obtain a greater added value. The new challenges of competitiveness require a position of active cooperation between firms and their suppliers, which should be considered as collaborators rather than adversaries. An active cooperation management may well allow the company to improve the quality of its products and its image, speed up delivery to its clients and make its production and trading more agile, thus enhancing the perception the client has of the product. An improved ethical quality in our dealings, generating trust, improving communication and establishing long-term relationships with joint added value, results in higher competitiveness and greater creation of wealth.     

The Impact of Business Education on Moral Judgment Competence: An Empirical Study

Recent highly publicized ethical breaches including those at Enron and WorldCom have focused attention on ethical behavior within the accounting profession. At the heart of the debate is whether ethical attitudes of accountants are to blame. Using a nationally representative sample of accounting practitioners and a multidisciplinary student sample at two Southern United States universities, we compare sample responses to 25 ethically charged vignettes to test whether they differ. Overall, we find no significant difference – even for a specific “accounting tricks” vignette, which resembles the Enron and WorldCom situations. We do find, however, that the practitioners were more accepting of vignettes that involved physical harm (PH) to individuals and those that were legal (but ethically questionable). We postulate that accounting practitioners may apply a legalistic framework to their assessment of the acceptability of each vignette. Focusing on an “accounting tricks” vignette, we also find no significant difference between auditors and institutional practitioners compared to all other types of accountants in the sample. We conclude that ethical attitudes of accounting practitioners do not differ significantly by specialty area. Tisha L. N. Emerson is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Baylor University in Texas. In addition to business ethics, Professor Emerson has published articles in the areas of environmental economics and economic education. She teaches courses in environmental economics, international trade, intermediate microeconomics and microeconomic principles. Stephen J. Conroy is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of San Diego in California. In addition to business ethics, Professor Conroy has published articles in the areas of economic development and demography, economics of education and economics of aging. He teaches courses in managerial economics at both the graduate and undergraduate level, as well as undergraduate courses in urban and regional economic development, intermediate microeconomics and principles of micro- and macroeconomics. Charles W. Stanley is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Baylor University in Texas. In addition to business ethics, Dr. Stanley has published articles in the areas of financial accounting, managerial accounting, auditing, accounting systems, tax, and professional ethics for accountants. He has also authored several on-line continuing education courses for CPAs including one that meets the Texas State Board of Accountancy requirements for continuing education by Texas CPAs. He teaches courses in auditing, ethics, financial accounting and managerial accounting in the MBA program at Baylor.     

The Impact of Social Marketing on Social Engineering in Economic Restructuring

SUMMARY

Social Marketing is a rapidly growing marketing sub-discipline based on the premise that bringing successful commercial marketing technologies to bear on problems of individual and social welfare can generate positive outcomes. This paper gives an overview of recent developments in Social Marketing in a global context and discusses the relationship of these developments to those in commercial, not-for-profit or third sector and public sector marketing, and public relations. The paper then relates the global context back to developments in Australasian and Asian nations, with particular reference to social engineering during economic restructuring.     

The Impact of Public Scrutiny on Corporate Philanthropy

This paper proposes that a corporation’s vulnerability to public scrutiny drives its corporate giving. The hypothesis that companies donate for strategic motives is tested against the alternative that they do so for altruistic reasons. Court cases and news articles were selected as proxies for public scrutiny. Macroeconomic variables were used to gauge the level of public charitable need and test for altruism. Through examining the philanthropic behavior of 40 Fortune 500 companies over 7 years, this paper finds that companies are strategic and altruistic in their giving.Ailian Gan is a graduate of Duke University. She is an Associate at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The views expressed in this paper are the author's own and not those of the Authority.     

The Impact of Customer Characteristics and Moral Philosophies on EthicalJudgments of Salespeople

This study considers customer characteristics as situational influences on a salesperson'sethical judgment formation. Specifically, customer gender, income, and propensity to buy were considered as factors which may bias these judgments. Additionally, the gender of the salesperson and their moral value structure were examined as moderating effects. An experiment using real estate agents reading hypothetical sales scenarios revealed differences across (1) customer gender, (2) customer income, and (3) level of the respondent'sidealism. Significant interactive effects with these factors were also found involving respondent gender and level of idealism. These and previous findings which consider situational effects on ethical decision-making, indicate that a more contingent approach to ethics studies is warranted.