Managers' perceptions of ethical codes: dialectics and dynamics

Codes of ethics and conduct have become common in UK organisations. This paper explores how such codes are understood and responded to by those whom the codes seek to influence. The study is an interpretative one, based on interview material, in which a dialectical pattern is seen in employees' reactions to codes. Initial contradictions are found in codes of ethics (which claim to give employees space in which to exercise their integrity, but simultaneously are seen as impugning employees' moral status) and in codes of conduct (which require a loyal adherence to rules that interferes with wider loyalties). These tensions create perceptions of a two-tier system in organisations in which core employees are subject to codes of ethics that are loosely applied, but non-core staff are subject to codes of conduct that are strictly applied. However, even core staff are aware of a dialectical contradiction in their position. They believe that loyalty to the organisation is the price they pay for being allowed freedom of integrity by their organisations, but that the price they have to pay for showing integrity may be breaking faith with their organisations. This chiasmus of integrity and loyalty represents a difficulty for the project of improving standards of corporate citizenship. The use of this trope and other rhetorical figures to exemplify processes of understanding and interpretation in organisations is discussed.     

I Heart Logistics—Just Don’t Ask Me to Pay For It: Online Shopper Behavior in Response to a Delivery Carrier Upgrade and Subsequent Shipping Charge Increase

The provision of outstanding delivery service is increasingly critical for retailers engaged in e-commerce. As a result, many are interested in switching from their existing carrier to one that is more highly capable in order to better serve their customers. In making this switch, the retailer faces a dilemma: Better carriers cost more, so they will either have to accept a reduction in profit or increase the shipping charge to their customers. While research shows that shoppers recognize certain carriers as superior—and both theory and empirical evidence suggest that people are willing to accept certain cost-justified increases to what they are charged in a transaction—studies also show that online shoppers loathe shipping charges. Thus, what is an e-retailer to do? Through a series of vignette experiments, we examine the question of how online shoppers respond to a shipping charge increase when the retailer switches to a more highly perceived delivery carrier. Our findings show that shoppers are not particularly accepting of the switch, and while they are not likely to complain, resulting purchase intentions are notably low. Alternative strategies for implementing the carrier switch are also explored.     

Intimacy,rites of passage and social support: symbolic meaning from lifetime shopping experiences

In this study expectations and prediction errors are introduced in the context of retail price setting. A new model and a new data set are used to examine whether prediction errors influence retail price setting, whether prediction errors cause only limited price changes to maintain price stability and whether there are differences in influences according to whether prediction errors are positive or negative. The model is an extended version of a full costs pricing model and the averaged data are for a large number of shop types in German retailing for a long series of successive years.     

Venture Capital Investors, Capital Markets, Valuation and Information: US, Europe and Asia

This paper uses a large multi-country sample of venture capital firms to compare the approaches to investee valuation and sources of information used by venture capital investors in English, French and German legal systems as well as geographical regions. Different legal systems are significantly associated with the valuation mechanism used. In particular, compared to English-based Common Law systems, VC firms operating in a Germanic legal system are significantly more likely to use DCF based measures and significantly less likely to use PE comparators. This latter result is also the case for VC firms operating in a French legal system who are also significantly more likely to adopt historic cost valuation methods. VC firms in Europe and Asia are significantly less likely than US VC firms to make use of liquidation value methods but significantly more likely to use PE comparators. European firms are significantly less likely to adopt DCF methods compared to US VC firms. VC firms operating under a Germanic legal system are less likely to utilise information from the financial press but significantly more likely to use interviews with entrepreneurs. VC firms operating under a French legal system are more likely to utilise interviews with company personnel as well as sales and marketing information. VC firms in Europe and Asia are significantly more likely than US VC firms to use financial press. VC firms in Asia are significantly less likely to make use of interviews with entrepreneurs or business plan data. VC firms in Europe are significantly more likely to utilise sales and marketing information.     

Are companies for sale? The Japanese say "iie" (no)

Mergers and acquisitions are a major fact of corporate life in Britain and the US: not so in Japan. The reason is a very different approach to human resource management. Businesses, to the British, are something to be bought and sold like commodities. To the Japanese they are places for people to work together. As a result hostile takeovers are virtually unknown in Japan. Mergers and acquisitions are however, used when internal expansion is found to be inefficient, in particular to diversify into new areas of business. The threat of hostile takeover—the so-called "market for corporate control"—is often regarded as an important spur to corporate efficiency in Britain and the US. The Japanese management system provides incentives of a different nature. Thus the Japanese emphasise a long term view of companies' growth. They value internal expansion through innovation and capital investment. And they undertake extensive training as part of a long term company worker relationship.     

Is it the Kids or the Schedule?: The Incremental Effect of Families and Flexible Scheduling on Perceived Career Success

Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are widely offered in public accounting as a tool to retain valued professional staff. Previous research has shown that participants in FWAs are perceived to be less likely to succeed in their careers in public accounting than individuals in public accounting who do not participate in FWAs (Cohen and Single, 2001). Research has also documented an increasing backlash against family–friendly policies in the workplace as placing unfair burdens on individuals without children. Building directly on a previous study in this journal (Cohen and Single, 2001), this study addresses the issue of whether the documented perceptions toward FWA participants are the result of electing to take part in the FWA or the result of bias against employees with children. The research questions are addressed in a 3 × 2 experimental setting in which we manipulate FWA participation, along with family status and gender of a hypothetical manager in a public accounting firm. Our findings indicate that FWA participants are viewed as less likely to advance and as less committed than individuals without children or individuals who had children but who were not taking part in a FWA. Male FWA participants are viewed as less likely to succeed than female FWA participants. This effect appears to arise from a perception that FWA participants are willing to make sacrifices in their careers to accommodate family needs and thus may not be as committed to making the sacrifices perceived as necessary to meet the rigorous demands of the public accounting environment. This raises the ethical question of what could be done to change the culture in public accounting to foster a substantive support system for individuals who want to balance a family and a career.     

The application of probit,logit, and tobit in marketing: A review

Recent work on the analysis of qualitative dependent variables having considerable potential in marketing research are reviewed and illustrated. In particular, three related models, probit, logit, and tobit, are discussed in a nontechnical manner. In the last few years, there has been a resurgence of interest among biologists, economists, and other social scientists in developing and generalizing these three models. Yet, despite their apparent utility in marketing research, there have been only one or two rather limited applications to date. The object of this review is to enable researchers to evaluate these models and to relate them to their existing statistical procedures. The models are defined and related to the multivariate methods commonly used in marketing research. Second, the theoretical problems associated with using regression analysis and similar procedures on qualitative data are noted and the assumptions needed to resolve such problems are presented. Third, marketing applications are reviewed and an illustration of a general form of the probit model is evaluated and compared.     

Responding to Agenda 21: purchase and waste behaviour and the introduction of weight-based billing – a case study

In many societies unsustainable consumption patterns are currently being recognized as a critical problem receiving increasing public attention. Communities in many parts of the world are responding to United Nations Agenda 21 by attempting to increase public awareness about the necessity of increasing recycling, by increasing fees and taxes on products that are harmful to the environment, by introducing re-use systems, and by changing legislation. These are just a few examples of the kinds of measures that are being employed in an attempt to move towards an ecocyclic society. This article reports a case study from a Swedish municipality, Varberg, and the focus is on the relationship between household routines related to purchases of everyday commodities and waste management. In 1994, Varberg introduced a weight-based billing system for household waste and at the same time a green shopping campaign was launched by the authorities. The article reports findings from a study of 39 households, located in two different areas, a town area with rented apartments and a suburban area with owner occupied, one-family houses. Data have been obtained through interviews and weighing of household waste. Results show that there are important differences between these areas with respect to awareness of the information launched in the campaign, knowledge of the goals of the campaign and in the manners in which dwellers felt affected by the message conveyed. Households in the suburban area, for instance, had a better knowledge of green labels and what they stand for. There are also clear differences in concrete actions that can be taken by those living in the two areas. In the area with rented apartments, weight-based billing for the individual household is not possible, nor is composting a viable alternative. For the suburban families living in their own houses, there are a broad set of measures that could be taken to modify purchase behaviours and waste management towards more environmentally friendly alternatives.     

Business Dynamics and Efficiency in Industries and Regions: The Case of Spain

High rates of firm births and deaths are a pervasive phenomenon across industries and territories. Most studies have related the great turbulence at the fringe of practically all manufacturing industries to positive effects on the long-run performance of industries. According to these views business turbulence, although it has a relatively small incidence on net entry, leads to allocative improvement and stimulates innovation. The existing set of empirical studies does not reach clear conclusions, however, and many questions are still open. Our contribution analyses the relationship between business dynamics in manufacturing and the growth of total factor productivity in industries and regions. After a review of current literature on entry and exit it is argued that most models are tailored to suit the processes observed in industries and regions that are near the technological frontier, and we propose an approach that could be more representative of middle range economies such as Spain. According to this approach new firms are seen more as users of innovations than producers of innovations. We adopt a model based on a vintage capital framework in which new entrants embody the edge technologies available and exiting businesses are supposed to represent the most marginal obsolete plants. Both industries and regions are represented by a Hall's type production function which controls for imperfect competition and economies of scale. The results show that both entry and exit rates contribute positively to the growth of total factor productivity in industries and in regions.     

Gender differences in entrepreneurial propensity: Evidence from matrilineal and patriarchal societies

We examine whether men and women in patriarchal and matrilineal societies differ in their propensity to engage in entrepreneurship. We conduct two studies. Study 1 involves face-to-face interviews to identify individuals who are in the process of starting a new business. We find that men in patriarchal societies are more likely than women to initiate action to start a new business. This result, however, is reversed in matrilineal societies, where women are more likely than men to do so. The results of causal mediation tests suggest that entrepreneurial self-efficacy and fear of business failure explain the gender gap in both societies. Study 2 involves a controlled experiment in the lab that captures individuals' willingness to invest in the creation of a new venture. The results of the experiments are consistent with the survey data: men in patriarchal societies and women in matrilineal societies invest more in new venture creation in a simulated environment. We therefore rule out the simplistic view that women are inherently less likely to enter into entrepreneurship due to innate differences across genders. Rather, gender differences in entrepreneurial propensity are outcome of socialization.     

Happiness as a predictor of service quality and commitment for utilitarian and hedonic services

In services research, little attention has been devoted to long‐term intrinsic personality traits. Long‐term personality traits predict short‐term affective states and thus understanding them is important from a service standpoint. Further, identifying long‐term personality traits facilitates the targeting of customers who are predisposed to evaluate services in a positive manner. This study focuses on one long‐term affective trait, happiness, and examines its impact on service evaluation and commitment, as it has been shown that the level of happiness affects whether people perceive life events, both great and small, in a positive or negative manner. Three studies were conducted to research the issue. The first study shows that customers who are happier evaluate service quality in utilitarian services in a more positive manner than do customers who are less happy. The second study shows that for hedonic services, involvement serves as an antecedent to perceived service quality; happier customers are also more involved in hedonic services, and thus perceive service quality in a more positive manner. Study 3 examines the link between happiness and commitment and shows that customers who are happier are also more prone to be committed to hedonic services. These results contribute to the marketing literature by showing that customers are predisposed to evaluate service quality in line with their level of happiness in the case of both utilitarian and hedonic services. Thus, marketing scholars and practitioners ought to recognize that service quality and commitment are partially predetermined by the personality of the customer and that some customers are more difficult to please than others. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Homeownership among Young Americans: A Look at Student Loan Debt and Behavioral Factors

This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997) to examine the factors that impact homeownership among young adults, with an emphasis on student loan debt. Three key findings arise from the research. First, life cycle and demographic characteristics, such as marital status, education, and income, continue to be strong predictors of homeownership. Married households with a college degree and children are among the most likely to own a home. Second, young adults with student loan debt are no more or less likely to own a home than someone without debt after controlling for a number of factors; however, students who have already paid off their loans are more likely to own a home. Finally, respondents who express a willingness to take risks in finances are more likely to own a home while those who are more conscientious are less likely to own a home.     

MODEL‐INDEPENDENT NO‐ARBITRAGE CONDITIONS ON AMERICAN PUT OPTIONS

We consider the pricing of American put options in a model‐independent setting: that is, we do not assume that asset prices behave according to a given model, but aim to draw conclusions that hold in any model. We incorporate market information by supposing that the prices of European options are known. In this setting, we are able to provide conditions on the American put prices which are necessary for the absence of arbitrage. Moreover, if we further assume that there are finitely many European and American options traded, then we are able to show that these conditions are also sufficient. To show sufficiency, we construct a model under which both American and European options are correctly priced at all strikes simultaneously. In particular, we need to carefully consider the optimal stopping strategy in the construction of our process.     

Towards Enforceable Bans on Illicit Businesses: From Moral Relativism to Human Rights

Many scholars and activists favor banning illicit businesses, especially given that such businesses constitute a large part of the global economy. But these businesses are commonly operated as if they are subject only to the ethical norms their management chooses to recognize, and as a result they sometimes harm innocent people. This can happen in part because there are no effective legal constraints on illicit businesses, and in part because it seems theoretically impossible to dispose definitively of arguments that support moral relativism. Progress is being made, however, towards a “second best” arrangement consisting of widespread institutional agreements regarding ethical norms. This development might eventually enable us to transcend moral relativism in some respects. Indeed, although some business ethicists who examine illicit business practices accept moral relativism, others attempt to surmount it. The latters’ endeavor, I show, is cross-cultural in nature in that it involves businesses that are deemed illicit in at least one but not every culture. I then recall some traditional solutions and their limits: ideological teachings are culture-specific, hence both temporally and spatially limited; legal constraints, though potentially helpful, are too diverse hence often narrow in reach. Especially problematic are defense industry businesses, which are inherently transcultural and, though uniquely harmful, are not effectively banned in any culture. Harm to quality of life (QoL) can, however, be measured. So I recommend institutional support for international human rights tied to QoL data as a workable way to counter moral relativism regarding illicit businesses.     

Rethinking UK small employers' skills policies and the role of workplace learning

Small business employers in the UK are widely perceived as adopting a reactive, ad hoc approach to employee skill formation. Employer reliance on workplace learning is often treated, explicitly or implicitly, as evidence of such an approach. Small employers' approaches to skill creation are investigated using data from two employer samples. Three main conclusions challenging these arguments are presented. First, small employers' skills policies are highly diverse: strategic, tactical and restrictive policies are distinguished. Second, employers perceive particular benefits in enabling workplace learning; simplistic views that a reliance on workplace learning necessarily constitutes an inferior last resort for those employers unable to provide access to external training are rejected. Third, enabling workplace learning is important to strategic employers, as well as to those attaching a lower value to skills. For some employers, the workplace is the primary source of new knowledge and skills because they are unavailable elsewhere. The prevalence, diversity and significance of workplace learning in small businesses require a reappraisal of UK small employers' skills policies. The implications for research, practice and policy are discussed.     

Are Men Always Picked Over Women? The Effects of Employment Equity Directives on Selection Decisions

This study replicates and extends previous work by Oppenheimer and Wiesner [1990, Sex discrimination: Who is hired and do employment equity statements make a difference? Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, Personnel and Human Resources Division], and examined the effects of minority qualifications on hiring decisions, the effects of employment equity directives when minority candidates are less qualified and the effects of different types and strengths of employment equity directives on hiring decisions. The results indicate that when employment equity is in place, people are increasingly more likely to hire underrepresented group members, to the extent that they are more qualified. Men appear to be treated in a positively biased manner, and are more likely to be hired when they are less qualified. Women are less likely to be hired when they are under-qualified, and in the absence of employment equity directives or when there is a suggestion that women are underrepresented. Moreover, when␣employment equity directives are strengthened, there appears to be a subtle backlash for women but not for men. Eddy S. Ng is an assistant professor at Trent University. He was on faculty at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in 2006–2007. Willi H. Wiesner is an associate professor at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University.