Safety and Ethics in the Global Workplace: Asymmetries in Culture and Infrastructure

This study described and analysed the circumstances surrounding a fatal car accident involving personnel of a multinational corporation in a developing country. For some companies, road accidents are the leading cause of work-related fatalities in developing countries. This reality highlights the ethical dilemmas encountered in a global workplace. Questions as to how a company addresses safety concerns outside the standard work environment, the ethics of operating in a risky environment and the requirements for international consistency in compensation standards for loss of life were addressed. The authors argued that multinational companies should localize health and safety practices to address the important asymmetries between different regions of the world regarding social, cultural and infrastructural issues. Furthermore, the authors analysed the leadership role that should be played by multinational companies to help and support national governments to reduce traffic fatalities in developing countries. From this perspective, the article represents a contribution for the body of knowledge dealing with the business–society relations. The authors used an action research approach to address these issues, both in response to the particular incident and to contribute to the body of research in this field.     

Revisiting the IMC construct

This paper re-examines a definition of integrated marketing communications (IMC) previously published in this journal, and proposes a revision to that original definition. It reviews topics of research studies conducted on IMC since its inception to the present, and establishes that the theoretical foundations and definitional issues of IMC continue to be an important area of research for most academics. This paper introduces the four pillars of IMC as an offshoot of the proposed revised definition, and discusses each pillar in detail. The paper concludes by illustrating the interplay between the pillars and levels of IMC.     

Recalls and the Remediation of Hazardous or Defective Consumer Products: The Experiences of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

There have been many analyses of the nation's safety, health, and environmental programs, but relatively few studies of consumer protection programs. The present study attempts to add to the literature in this area by examining, through early 1982, the recall programs for hazardous or defective consumer products of two federal agencies: the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The analysis focuses on an evaluation of existing recall methods and their success in repairing hazardous products or in removing them from the marketplace. A review of several indicators of “success” suggests that a large gap exists between the set of all such hazardous products and the subset identified as hazardous and effectively acted upon by the two agencies. Some suggestions for closing this gap are noted and discussed.     

Safety Culture: A Catalyst for Sustainable Development

The present paper investigates the potential benefits of a strong safety culture (SC). Specifically, we build on the organizational support theory to explore the direct and indirect effects of SC on firm performance. Partial least squares method is used to analyze the data collected from a survey among 251 Canadian plants. The results show that SC is associated with several performance indicators all linked to sustainable development (i.e., environmental, financial, and safety performance). Importantly, our findings also suggest that the relationships between SC and environmental/safety performance are mediated by the actual level of implemented environmental/safety practices within plants. We conclude the paper by highlighting the study’s limitations and contributions as well as theoretical and managerial implications.     

Advancing the country image construct

In today's globalized markets a favorable country-of-origin image (CoI) has a considerable impact on consumers' evaluation of products originating from different countries and therefore influences their subsequent buying decisions. The current paper seeks to extend our conceptual understanding of the nature and functioning of the CoI construct. The aim is threefold, namely to provide a succinct state-of-the-art picture of country image research in international marketing, to contribute to a better measurement of the country image construct, and, finally, to develop an agenda for future research.     

Towards a Meta Ethics of Culture – Halfway to a Theory of Metanorms

This article deals with cross-cultural ethics. It discusses the grid-group model and is ethical implications. We try to show how cross-cultural ethics remain possible under this paradigm of ethical relativism. We discuss the theory of discourse and apply it to intercultural communication. Finally we offer some rules for (an ethical) intercultural discourse, which also may be interpreted as metanorms for cross-cultural interaction.     

Workplace isolation: Exploring the construct and its measurement

Virtual offices are a growing trend in today's work environment and are expected to influence marketing roles dramatically, especially selling. These conditions may lead to perceptions of isolation, both socially and organizationally. Workplace isolation is a twodimensional construct that represents individuals' perceptions of isolation from others at work and includes perceived isolation from both colleagues and from the company's support network. This article reports the results of a four‐sample study to develop and validate a selfreport scale for measuring the two facets of workplace isolation. The scale's usefulness for future research and management applications are discussed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

文化与财务文化

文化是人类特有的社会现象,又是人类长期创造、积累形成的历史积淀物。财务文化是以人们的职业活动作为文化的划分标准,从而形成具有财务职业内容和职业特点的一种文化形态。它是财务活动得以进行的基本条件。财务文化是由财务人员在财务职业工作的长期实践中,倡导、培育、积累、创造出来的。     

粮食安全背景下的生态安全和食品安全

随着农业的不断发展,粮食的供给能力大幅度地提升,有效地推动了人民生活水平的提高。但理性地审视粮食供求的紧张平衡可发现,粮食安全并未摆脱威胁,只是农业在短期内,把粮食的安全转向食品和生态安全。因此,若只是从微观视角的监管等方面避开粮食安全的威胁,对食品安全事故也很难解释。     

基于企业安全文化管理(AHP)港口企业安全文化模糊综合评价

随着现代管理科学转向以人为本的管理趋势时,企业安全文化管理已经被列为一个重要方面。所以对于安全事故频发的港口企业来说,必须建立一套有效合理且科学的评价指标体系。基于这个体系,作者将使用基于层次分析法的模糊综合评价工具来找出影响港口企业安全文化的关键性指标和因素,以期合理利用港口企业有限的资源来完善港口安全文化的建设。其次,安全文化的评价和实施模式的选择是连接安全文化理论和安全管理实践的桥梁,为港口安全文化的系统分析和综合评价提供了一套实用的定量方法和企业制定相关安全操作规范、条例和规章制度等提供科学的依据。     

新广州站旅客流量及交通组织研究

广州是南中国重要的经济贸易中心,广州铁路站为全国3大铁路运输枢纽之一。基于各种原因,上世纪60年代规划设计的广州站和80年代不断改建的广州火车东站已无法满足客流量对铁路运输的需求,本世纪初,相关部门提出建设新广州站。本文为新广州站旅客流量研究的部分成果。本项调研本     

Reconstructing the corporate social responsibility construct in Utlish

The charged debate on the 'C-S-R-ization' of organizational practices seems to have produced two opposing and seemingly incompatible explanations for why organizations should engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR): one, the normative rationale based on an appeal to ethics; and the other, the instrumental rationale, based on an appeal to business pragmatism. This paper argues that a missing link in this debate is the failure to recognize that the normative and instrumental approaches to corporate social responsibility are underpinned by substantively, differentiating, relative logics of emotional rationalism on the one hand, and instrumental rationalism on the other. The paper makes a case that for CSR as a management practice to be practicable and actionable within a sustainable business agenda, it will need to be stripped of its current normative undertone and reconstructed in the instrumentally, pragmatic ( utlish ) language of business. Otherwise, the whole concept of CSR may continue to dwell in the realm of abstract theorizing without yielding many beneficial and practicable outcomes. The paper concludes that such an approach that situates CSR within a pragmatic business lingua, rather than a non-business lingua, will help in legitimizing CSR as a 'neutral' management practice.     

饭店文化建设的误区及其解决思路

进入21世纪以来,饭店业的竞争已逐步从产品、技术的竞争转移到人才、文化的竞争。然而,在管理实践中对饭店文化的涵义、饭店文化建设等方面却存在着认识和实践上的误区。饭店业应坚持以人为本,加强员工培训,培养优良的企业精神,创建独具特色的饭店文化;建立共同愿景,进行理念渗透,培养优良的企业精神;建立良好的文化宣传渠道,创建有中国特色的饭店文化。     

Verifying alternative measures of the service-quality construct: consistencies and contradictions

Abstract

Since the role of service quality for organisational survival and success is of outmost importance, its measurement is still receiving increased attention. SERVQUAL and its alternative measures, namely, SERVPERF, weighted SERVQUAL, and weighted SERVPERF, are the most widespread in the service-quality literature. Yet, research has not concluded regarding the relative superiority of any of these measures. The present study compares all four alternatives within the auto-repair industry in Greece. Based on data from 1043 customers, overall results are in line with previous studies, confirming the multidimensionality of the service-quality construct and the five-factor SERVPERF pattern. In disagreement with previous studies, findings show that the importance-weighted SERVPERF scale provides the greatest diagnostic information. Furthermore, significant variation was found in the predictive validity of the measures.     

现代流通与节约型社会的构建

构建节约型社会是中国在新时期下一项具有全局性和战略性的重大决策．不仅关系到我国社会今后的可持续发展．也将对我国的经济安全和国家安全产生深远的影响。因此．如何建设节约型社会成为当前迫切需要解决的问题。     

反感性广告的知觉建构和购买意向研究

广告的反感性会影响消费者的品牌购买意向,面对明显性暗示的反感性广告,消费者的知觉建构是多维度的,消极的知觉建构可以降低产品购买意向,积极的知觉建构可以增强产品购买意向。     

Unpacking the uncertainty construct: Implications for entrepreneurial action

Uncertainty is central to entrepreneurship; however robust and generalizable findings that explain the conditions in which uncertainty may impede [or promote] entrepreneurial action remain elusive. We operationalize uncertainty as a multi-dimensional construct composed of state, effect, and response types of uncertainty (Milliken, 1987) to investigate the relationship between uncertainty and entrepreneurial action. We decompose more than 2800 exploitation decision policies nested within a sample of new product decision-makers working in entrepreneurial software firms. We focus on the primary decision-maker's willingness to exploit a given opportunity in the face of varying combinations and manifestations of uncertainty and find that the type of uncertainty experienced influences the willingness to engage in entrepreneurial action differently. Further, we find that differences in how each type of uncertainty is manifested in the environment, the scale of exploitation (i.e. large vs. small), and the entrepreneur's expertise serve to moderate the relationship between uncertainty and action in counter-intuitive ways. We discuss the implications for both theory and practice.     

构架个人信用评价体系

自1998年10月,由建设银行推出汽车消费贷款业务以来,消费信贷业务发展迅猛,住房信贷、上学信贷、大件消费品的信贷业务也很快浮出水面,成为一种消费新时尚.然而,接受"消费明天"这种观念并付诸实施的人甚少,又因被绝大多数人弃之不用,或被银行拒之门外,使个人消费信贷发展到现阶段很难突破.其原因何在呢?概由个人信用程度过低,社会对个人信用完整的评价体系没有建立所致.因此,为了规避风险,银行把个人信贷的门槛儿抬得过高.