Negotiating Technology Implementation: An Empirical Investigation of a Website Introduction

Negotiated implementation is suggested as a cogent approach to meeting user and implementer needs, and thus, to increasing technology implementation. Negotiated implementation is expected to have its effect through three wellknown dimensions: ease of use, usefulness, and commitment. The efficacy of negotiated implementation is tested in the context of a universitybased field study of World Wide Web site use. Empirical support is found for the negotiated implementation approach. Implications and future research related to both theory and application are provided.     

Wisdom Paradigms for the Enhancement of Ethical and Profitable Business Practices

Many organizations continually search for new business models and ways to conduct business ethically, yet profitably. Kirk Cheyfitz (2003) proclaims that organizations should not waste time trying to create new business models because the rules of commerce never change. Instead of searching for new business models, organizations can improve business practices by looking at different paradigms or mental models for seeing how to build practices that lead to long-term success. The employment elements of wisdom as paradigms for developing sound structures and practices that will encourage management behaviors that are ethical and lead to profitability. First, a theory of wisdom is developed. Then, the elements of wisdom are applied to the design of a general business structure and to refocusing some basic business practices.     

On Creating and Claiming Value in Negotiations

This paper presents a negotiation model that includes value creation. It shows that creative negotiation efforts tend to intensify toward the deadline, and that the deadline is determined endogenously by the tension between two motives, creating more value and claiming from existing value. When the parties can present misleading offers in order to claim rather than create value, the outcome in early negotiation rounds may display an impasse where any proposal is rejected without inspection, while negotiation activities such as value creation through sincere offers and inspection of clauses intensify toward the deadline.     

General causal models in business ethics: An essay on colliding research traditions

The construction of causal models for research in business ethics has become fashionable in recent years. This paper explores four recent proposals, comparing and contrasting their views. The primary purpose of this paper is to expose several confusions inherent in such models and to account for these errors in terms of a failure to distinguish between models as theories and models as representing a research tradition. We conclude with a brief set of recommendations for linking two major research traditions in business ethics: empiricism and ethical theory.F. Neil Brady is Professor of Management at San Diego State University. He is the author ofEthical Managing: Rules and Results (Macmillan, 1990) and numerous articles on business ethics. His research focuses on the application of ethical theory to business decision making.Mary Jo Hatch is an Associate Professor at San Diego State University and visiting Associate Professor at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. Her research interests include the link between business ethics and organizational culture, and humor in management teams. She has published articles on organizational culture and the behavioral and symbolic aspects of organizations as physical structures.     

A study of Hong Kong Businessmen's perceptions of the role “Guanxi” in the People's Republic of China

Guanxi is perceived as a major determinant for successful business in China. This research paper investigates the importance of Guanxi from the Hong Kong Businessmen's viewpoint. It confirms previous findings in this area and adds on new dimensions. Therefore, practitioners and academics may further refine their knowledge in this subject.Leung, T. K. P. is an Assistant Professor of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He specializes in industrial marketing and marketing in China. His current research interests include issues in Guanxi, networking in China, and Chinese negotiation. He has published in referred journals related to the PRC market.Wong, Y. H. is an Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He teaches courses in sales management and international marketing. His current research focuses on issues of relationship marketing and Guanxi model. His recent publications include articles in preferred journal and books.Wong, Syson was a lecturer of Hong Kong Polytechnic University and is now a business consultant. She specializes in quantitative methods and China business. Her current consultancy works include a big project in China.     

Student Ethical Perceptions and Ethical Action Propensities: An Analysis of Situation Familiarity

Recently McCuddy and Peery (1996) have suggested that business students may not respond the same way to unfamiliar business ethical dilemmas as they would to more familiar academic ethical dilemmas. The purpose of this study was to present the same students with both unfamiliar business dilemmas as well as possibly more familiar academic dilemmas in order to examine this issue.Findings of the study revealed that students did not exhibit different perceptions of the unethical actions performed in the academic and accounting/business ethical vignettes. However, the students indicated that both they and their peers would be more likely to act unethically to resolve the dilemmas in the accounting/business cases than in the academic cases. This finding is troubling in that it suggests that students either feel less compelled to act ethically in business, or that they perceive that ethical standards in the business world are generally low when compared to their current educational environment. In addition, the students in the study maintained the same halo effect (i.e., the difference between an individual's perception of their likelihood of performing an unethical action compared to their perception of their peers' likelihood to perform the same unethical action) across the two types of ethical dilemma.     

Business Ethics and changes in society

The business world is not a separate universe of economic values and goals distinct from society, but an aspect of the behaviour of society as a whole. Ethics cannot be a cosmetic applied to established practice in the business world, a mere restraint on the unsocial or criminal behaviour of managers or a pragmatic response to consumer pressure. The author argues for a Total Ethics concept analogous to Zero Defects concepts in operations management. This ethic should form the foundation of the organisation's mission and permeate its statements of business objectives. If the ethic is to serve the common good of all who have an interest in the business, then all the stakeholders, not just those with a financial interest, must contribute to the business objectives and exercise some control.The author is External Affairs Director of Traidcraft Plc, a publicly owned £⁵ million turnover company in the north-east of England, committed to promoting just trade with poor producers in developing countries. Before joining Traidcraft in 1985, the author worked for six years with the Intermediate Technology Development Group involving extensive travel to developing countries advising on appropriate technology and village industry development. He has a Master's Degree in Business Administration and has studied philosophy and theology.     

Collectively negotiated agreements: Proposed reforms in France

This report deals with proposed reforms in France relating to negotiations between suppliers' and consumers' organizations. The author of the report was himself chairman of the French Commission de Refonte (Commission for Reform of Consumer Law).The proposed legal reforms have not yet received the requisite political assent, and indeed reaction thereto seems quite mixed. The draft law foresees two types of agreement between consumers' and suppliers' organizations: ordinary agreements and extended agreements, according to the degree of strict applicability.The ambit of the two types of agreement is identified in this report: ordinary agreements shall apply to all signatory consumer and trade associations. Extended agreements may, upon ministerial order, be declared nationally applicable to all associations involved.The proposed reforms reflect a considerable strengthening in the consumer bargaining role, even although it is not yet clear whether the proposals will be adopted. The reform should also have an effect on class actions brought by consumers.

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Kollektiv ausgehandelte Vereinbarungen: französische Reformvorschläge

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag berichtet von einem Vorschlag der französchen Commission de refonte (Kommission zur Erneuerung des Rechts), deren Vorsitz der Autor innehat, auf dem Wege über kollektiv ausgehandelte Vereinbarungen zwischen Unternehmen und Verbraucherorganisationen eine Verbesserung der Konsumentenstellung zu erreichen. Der Gesetzentwurf, der noch ncht die Billigung politischer Gremien erfahren hat, will lediglich einen rechtlichen Rahmen für solche Vereinbarungen abgeben, ohne den Grundsatz der Freiwilligkeit zu beschränken. Je nach Umfang der Verbindlichkeit unterscheidet der Entwurf zwischen zwei Typen von Vereinbarungen: normale und erweiterte Vereinbarungen. Normale Vereinbarungen werden zwschen repräsentativen Verbraucherorganisationen und Unternehmen bzw. Verbänden ausgehandelt. Sie gelten verbindlich für alle Verbandsmitglieder und kommen allen betroffenen Verbrauchern zugute. Sie können auf nationaler, aber auch auf regionaler oder lokaler Ebene abgeschlossen werden. Nationale Vereinbarungen können durch Dekret des Verbraucherministeriums unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen für allgemeinverbindlich erklärt werden. Sie binden dann alle Unternehmen einer Branche. Eine Reihe von Verfahrensvorschriften will sowohl die Flexibilität als auch die Effektivität des vorgeschlagenen Regelungsinstrumentariums sicherstellen.

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Jean Calais-Auloy is Professor of Law at the University of Montpellier, Faculté de Droit, F—34000 Montpellier, France. He is Chairman of the Commission for Reform of Consumer Law.     

Fallback Bargaining

Under fallback bargaining, bargainers begin by indicating their preference rankings over alternatives. They then fall back, in lockstep, to less and less preferred alternatives – starting with first choices, then adding second choices, and so on – until an alternative is found on which all bargainers agree. This common agreement, which becomes the outcome of the procedure, may be different if a decision rule other than unanimity is used. The outcome is always Pareto-optimal but need not be unique; if unanimity is used, it is at least middling in everybody's ranking. Fallback bargaining may not select a Condorcet alternative, or even the first choice of a majority of bargainers. However, it does maximize bargainers' minimum satisfaction. When bargainers are allowed to indicate impasse in their rankings – below which they would not descend because they prefer no agreement to any lower-level alternative – then impasse itself may become the outcome, foreclosing any agreement. The vulnerability of fallback bargaining to manipulation is analyzed in terms of both best responses and Nash equilibria. Although a bargainer can sometimes achieve a preferred outcome through an untruthful announcement, the risk of a mutually worst outcome in a Chicken-type game may well deter the bargainers from attempting to be exploitative, especially when information is incomplete. Fallback bargaining seems useful as a practicable procedure if a set of reasonable alternatives can be generated. It leapfrogs the give-and-take of conventional bargaining, which often bogs down in details, by finding a suitable settlement through the simultaneous consideration of all alternatives.     

Teaching Business Ethics: Theory and Practice

Business ethics teaching can be improved when ethicists integrate the ethical theories they apply to business with the organizational design of the course. By utilizing three techniques – implementing a Total Quality Management-style survey and review, nominating and electing class virtues, and telling personal stories of moral action – classes can be organized to operate by the social contract, rights, stakeholder, and virtue theories that dominate business ethics literature. Classes then become laboratories for the practical articulation and application of the theories as well as providing real examples of the theories in action. This methodology produces benefits for the particular class and for the development and refinement of the theories themselves.This paper describes each of the three pedagogical techniques; and then explicitly relates them to these leading business ethics theories to demonstrate how the integration can lead to a community seeking and discovering moral truth in the classroom.     

Re-evaluating the Realist Conception of War as a Business Metaphor

The state of war is a popular metaphor employed by many business writers seeking to explain the imperatives of strategic decision-making. It is a metaphor which draws on a realist characterisation of war as a Hobbesian state of nature devoid of a moral dimension. However, the work of Walzer (1977) has demonstrated that rules of war, established over generations and across cultural divides, play a significant role in the conduct of warfare. Through identifying and analysing rules of war in parallel with ethical dilemmas in business life, such as whistleblowing, it is possible to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the war metaphor in place of simplified, state of nature realism. This alternative version of the war metaphor is a useful means of introducing students to Aristotlean virtues as well as challenging their preconceptions about the nature of business activity.     

Questioning the Domain of the Business Ethics Curriculum

This paper reassesses the domain of the business ethics curriculum and, drawing on recent shifts in the business environment, maps out some suggestions for extending the core ground of the discipline. It starts by assessing the key elements of the dominant English- language business ethics textbooks and identifying the domain as reflected by those publications as where the law ends and beyond the legal minimum. Based on this, the paper identifies potential gaps and new areas for the discipline by drawing on four main aspects. First, it argues that the domain of business ethics requires extensions dependent on the particular geographic region where the subject is taught. A second factor for broadening the scope is the impact of recent scandals, which arguably direct the focus of ethical inquiry towards the nature of the business systems in which individuals and corporations operate. Third, the impact of globalization and its result on growing corporate involvement in regulatory processes is discussed. Fourth and finally, business ethics reaches beyond the traditional constituencies of economic stakeholders as new actors from civil society enter the stage of ethical decision making in business. We conclude by suggesting that a reconsideration of the domain of business ethics, especially in Europe, is timely, but that to do so represents a major challenge to business ethics educators.     

关系在中国商务谈判中的作用

在北京、温州和邯郸三个城市几十家企业里,组织了102组商务模拟谈判数据,并对数据进行量化分析,探索了中国式的“关系”在中国商务谈判中的作用。数据结果显示关系在中国商务谈判过程中,有时发挥正的作用,有时产生负的作用,在某些环节不发生作用,根据数据分析结果,给出了相关的现实操作启示。     

The Montreal Taxonomy for Electronic Negotiations

Research in the domain of electronic negotiations is a rather new and very interdisciplinary field, which gains more and more attention due to the industry hype and momentum regarding electronic commerce and electronic markets. Negotiations in a narrow sense (not taking into account simple forms such as hit and take) have been identified as an advantageous coordination mechanism for the interaction of buyers and sellers in electronic markets that transcend the selling of commodities or uniform goods. Hence, support for negotiations may become a critical success factor for electronic markets, especially regarding the recent failures of many industrial ventures. This paper presents the Montreal Taxonomy, which allows not only for the exact characterisation and comparison of a broad variety of electronic negotiation designs and systems, ranging from auctions to bilateral bargaining tables, but could also lead towards a more structured approach for the design of electronic negotiations.     

Justice: The root of american business ideology and ethics

Although there are many conceptions of Justice, these different perceptions can provide many interesting insights into a business person's ethical standards as well as that person's decision-making processes. Using the Bishops' Pastoral Letter on the U.S. Economy as the basis for asking questions about justice, twenty-four business executives were interviewed about their conception of justice. An analysis of these interviews reveals that this group of businesspeople operated under very different conceptions of Justice at the Macroenvironmental and Microenvironmental levels. This result has some interesting implications not only for those scholars concerned with business ethics but for everyone who has a stake in business education.Men are called good, chiefly on account of their Justice. Cicero, 56 B.C. Ideology is applied philosophy. Lodge, 1986 Richard McGowan, S. J. is an Assistant Professor of Operations and Strategic Management at Boston College. His research focus involves examining both the rationale behind business and public policy decisions as well as determining the effectiveness of these policy measures. Some of his recent publications include Deciphering the Japanese Import Quota, Policy Studies Journal (1988) and Public Policy Measures and Cigarette Sales: An ARIMA Intervention Analysis Study JAI Social Issues Management Volume (1989).     

Fair markets

The paper challenges a minimalist strategy in business ethics that maintains if it's legal, it's moral. In hard cases, judges decide legal issues by appealing to moral ideals. Investigation shows that the bedrock concept is fairness. Often judges define fairness in terms of non-coerciveness or equality of bargaining power. The prudent manager must look beyond the legal department to the ethical notion of fairness. Moreover, if the courts were to consistently appeal to non-coerciveness and equality of bargaining power, some practices now considered morally acceptable would be neither moral nor legal. Norman E. Bowie is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for the Study of Values at the University of Delaware. He is the author of numerous articles on business ethics and social and political philosophy and of Business Ethics, Making Ethical Decisions (ed.), The Tradition of Philosophy (co-ed.), and Ethical Theory and Business (co-ed.).     

The economics of open source software for a competitive firm

Large quantities of software, ranging from operating systems to web servers to games, are now available as open source software or free software. In many cases, this software is backed by large profit seeking corporations such as IBM. Traditional economic analysis is used to identify the costs and benefits to firms of using open source rather than proprietary solutions, particularly in the case of the firm releasing code to the world when not obliged to do so. Examples of large companies backing open source are examined in light of the profit motive. Additionally, open source is also analyzed as a quasi-public good.     

Reasons To Be Ethical: Self-Interest and Ethical Business

This paper examines the self-interested reasons that businesses can have for ethical behaviour. It distinguishes between economic and non-economic reasons and, among the latter, notes those connected with the self-esteem of managers. It offers a detailed typology of prudential reasons for ethical behaviour, laying particular stress on those to do with avoiding punishment by society for wrongdoing and, more particularly still, stresses the role of campaigning pressure groups within that particular category of reasons. It goes on to suggest that because of their occupation of the moral high ground, campaigning groups are well placed to damage the self-esteem of managers and that this is why those groups seem able to exert an influence that goes beyond their somewhat limited capacity to inflict economic damage upon businesses. The paper concludes with the suggestion that we may be witnessing a virtuous spiral whereby rising public expectations of morality in business lead to ever increasing moral commitments by business that then cause those expectations to rise still further.     

Business ethics,Corporate Good Citizenship and the Corporate Social Policy Process: A view from the United States

Within the American context, the term Corporate Good Citizenship, a rather vague and somewhat dated notion, bears little relationship to the concept of Business Ethics. Whereas the latter refers to systematic reflection on the moral significance of the institutions, policies and behavior of business actors in the normal course of their business operations, the former is a subset of the broader notion of Corporate Social Responsibility and denotes, generally, discretionary, possibly altruistic, non-business relationships between business organizations and diverse community stakeholders. A newer concept, the Corporate Social Policy Process, which focuses on the institutionalization within business organizations of processes facilitating individual and organizational reflection and choice regarding the moral significance of personal and organizational action together with a consideration of the likely consequences of such action, provides analytical linkages between Business Ethics and Corporate Good Citizenship which can be useful to business scholars and operating managers alike. Specific aspects of Corporate Good Citizenship, including corporate community involvements, are examined and particular attention is paid to current trends in corporate donations, including an increasing emphasis on strategic philanthropy which explicitly mixes practical and benevolent motives in company giving policies and practices.Edwin M. Epstein is Professor of Business Administration at the University of California at Berkeley. A former chair of the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management, he has lectured and published extensively in the field of Business and Public Policy with a particular emphasis on the Social Role of the Corporation in the United States and other Advanced Industrial Societies.Bryan W. Husted, Esq., a doctoral student in the Business and Public Policy Program at the Berkeley Business School, University of California at Berkeley, rendered useful research assistance and Mary Ann Huisman for the Program in Business and Social Policy, Center For Research in Management, Berkeley Business School, University of California at Berkeley, provided helpful technical services which I gratefully acknowledge.     

Real Wages,Business Cycles and New Production Patterns

In contrast with most conventional business cycle models, empirical data show no clear correlation between real wage movements and output and employment. This paper presents a model, largely based on concepts presented by Joseph Schumpeter,in which economic growth and the business cycle are triggered by endogenous real shocks to technology. It suggests that the speed and magnitude by which technological shocks spread throughout the economy determine whether the resulting changes in real wages will be pro-or counter-cyclical.