‘Consumer Ethics: The Role of Acculturation in U.S. Immigrant Populations’

This study examines the role of acculturation in shaping consumers’ views of ethics. Specifically, it examines the relationships between the desire to keep one’s original culture, the desire to adopt the host culture, and the four dimensions of the Muncy and Vitell (Journal of Business Research Ethics 24(4), 297, 1992) consumer ethics scale. Using two separate immigrant populations – one of former Middle-Eastern residents now living in the U.S. and the other of Asian immigrants in the U.S. – results indicate that those who want to keep their original culture are less tolerant of unethical consumer activities, while those who are more willing to adopt the host culture are more tolerant of these same consumer activities. Furthermore, the immigrants in both studies who are more tolerant of unethical consumer activities are those who are generally somewhat younger and with less formal education. The relationship between gender and consumer ethics was not significant.     

Trade shocks,product mix adjustment and productivity growth in Italian manufacturing

In this paper, we use firm-level data on the universe of Italian manufacturing multi-product exporters to test whether demand shocks in export markets lead multi-product exporters to increase their productivity. The main mechanism behind the documented productivity gains is the reallocation of resources across products within firms (American Economic Review, 104, 2014 and 495; National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series No. 22433, 2016). Intuitively, the increased demand stemming from foreign markets will induce firms to adjust their product mix by moving inputs from low to high productive/profitable uses. We find that these productivity gains are significant and can explain between 1/10 and 1/2 of aggregate productivity growth in the manufacturing sector.     

The ethical issue of international bribery: A study of attitudes among U.S. business professionals

Restrictions upon international bribery by U.S. business firms, as incorporated in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, have been controversial since this legislation was passed in 1977. Despite many attempts to repeal or change the law, it remains as originally enacted.This article reports on a survey of U.S. business professionals concerning international bribery. Response to our survey reveals a divided business community in terms of their opinions on the ethics of international payments prohibited by the present law.In addition to a lack of consensus about the morality of payments, the survey also reveals a diversity in the viewpoints of respondents. Moralism, pragmatism, cultural relativism, and legalism are four distinct underlying assumptions apparent in the attitudes of U.S. business professionals on the issue of questionable international payments. Justin G. Longenecker is an Emeritus Chavanne Professor of Christian Ethics in Business at Baylor University. He has written several articles and he is the co-author of two books: Small Business Management (1987) and Management (1984). Joseph A. McKinney is Professor of Economics and Co-Director of Master of International Management Program at Baylor University. His articles have been published in journals such as Atlantic Economic Journal and Columbia Journal of World Business. Carlos W. Moore is an Edwin W. Streetman Professor of Marketing at Baylor University. He is the co-author of Small Business Management (Cincinnati, South-Western Publishing Company, 1987).     

The Business of Business is the Human Person: Lessons from the Catholic Social Tradition

I describe an ethic for business administration based on the social tradition of the Catholic Church. I find that much current thinking about business falters for its conceit of truth. Abstractions such as the shareholder-value model contain truth – namely, that business is an economic enterprise to manage for the wealth of its owners. But, as in all abstractions, this truth comes at the expense of falsehood – namely, that persons are assets to deploy on behalf of owners. This last is “wrong” in both senses of the word – it is factually wrong in that persons are far more than business assets, they are supernatural beings, children of God; and it is morally wrong in that it is an injustice to treat them as the former when they are the latter. I draw upon the social tradition of the Catholic Church to recognize that the business of business is not business, but is instead the human person. Following Church teachings, I describe a person-centered ethic of business based upon eight social principles that both correct and enlarge the shareholder-centered ethic of much current business thinking. I discuss implications of this person-centered ethic for business administration.     

Impoverished consumers,Catholic social teaching,and distributive justice

Consistent with the goals of the special issue of Journal of Business Research, this paper examines the 1986 pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops titled, Economic Justice for All, and its impact on marketing practice for the last 25 years. The brief literature review places this text within the larger context of Catholic Social Teaching and marketing practice, teasing out four testable propositions for examining social and distributive justice. The evidence presented from a variety of secondary sources reveals a lack of sustained progress to meet the goals inherent in the bishops' appeal. To advance their arguments, modifications to the ways marketers are educated, incentivized, and reviewed are posited, with a final secular way of considering these principles.     

成为世界第一大经济体？

各种预测表明,中国什么时候成为世界第一大经济体只是时间问题。关键是,这对中国企业意味着什么？中国是一个大国吗？这是一个非常简单而有趣的问题。关注规模总量的人倾向于中国是一个大国,而侧重人均指标的人会提出,     

Outward Foreign Direct Investment,Interindustry Networks,and U.S. Trade Politics

This article investigates how outward foreign direct investment by U.S. multinational corporations influences industry lobbying for trade protection in the United States, focusing on interindustry structure of goods sales networks between upstream and downstream sectors and also on the multinationals’ input procurement patterns. If foreign affiliates of U.S. multinationals switch input sources from U.S. to host-country suppliers, U.S. suppliers should receive a negative demand shock, ceteris paribus. An empirical test finds that those U.S. upstream sectors that are highly dependent upon U.S. multinationals for goods sales tend to lobby more as the multinationals’ overseas production and sales increase.     

Personal characteristics in college students' evaluations of business ethics and corporate social responsibility

A survey of 138 college students reveals an undergraduate major has a greater influence on corporate social responsibility than business ethics. Business students are no less ethical than nonbusiness students. Females are more ethical and socially responsible than males. Age is negatively related to one's Machiavellian orientation and positively related to negative attitudes about corporate efforts at social responsibility. The results suggest a greater need to focus busines ethics instruction based on student characteristics. Peter Arlow is Professor of Management at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, U.S.A., where he teaches M.B.A. and undergraduate management courses. He has previously published in the Academy of Management Review, Business Horizons, International Journal of Management, Long-Range Planning, Journal of Business Ethics, Akron Business and Economic Review, and other Journals.     

When Do Local Firms Benefit from Inward Foreign Direct Investment? A Longitudinal Study of China's Manufacturing Sector Covering 1998–2007

Using comprehensive panel data on manufacturing firms in China during the 1998–2007 period, this study examines whether and when recipient local firms benefit from foreign direct investment (FDI). Local firms’ productivity improvements by the presence of foreign entrants are estimated, and according to the results, the relationship between FDI and local firms’ productivity shows an inverted U‐shaped pattern, with productivity increasing up to a certain point beyond which a higher level of FDI reduces local firms’ productivity. More importantly, the U‐shaped pattern is found for FDI from both non‐HMT foreign firms and overseas Chinese HMT (Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) firms. In addition, the U‐shaped pattern varies across subnational regions such that the threshold at which an increase in FDI reduces productivity is lower for indigenous firms in coastal regions. This suggests that in China, local firms in inland and rural regions are the top beneficiaries of spillover effects. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

If only consumers knew: How sampling impacts wine innovation diffusion in the U.S. foodservice industry

A survey (n = 151) explored consumers’ experiences with wine-on-tap, a current trend in the U.S. foodservice industry. Wine consumers’ innovativeness (R² = .49) was explained by wine involvement, opinion leadership, and usage of information sources. Those who recently tried wine-on-tap (n = 43) were significantly more innovative (innovators) than those who never tried it (noninnovators). Furthermore, noninnovators expected to pay significantly less for a glass of wine-on-tap when compared with wine poured from a bottle. Contrary to expectations, the driving force for noninnovative behavior is lack of availability and awareness as opposed to a lack of interest in wine-on-tap.     

ROBOTS,RIFs, and rights

The increasing use of technological advances in business operations very often leads to the displacement of the employee whose skills become obsolete in light of such advances. There is no doubt that the interests of both company and employee are significantly affected by the implementation of laborsaving devices. Given that those interests are pursued in an environment which is usually, if not essentially, competitive, then there arises the serious question of what rights should be accorded the employee and the company in the event that the employee is likely to be displaced by technological innovation. I argue that, given the constraints of a competitive environment, certain rights might be justified through a very limited application of the highly morally intuitive principles of utility, respect for persons, fairness, and the honoring of contracts. Alcott S. Arthur is Lecturer in Philosophy at Howard University, Washington, D.C. His most important publication is his doctoral dissertation: The Problem of Providing Adequate Grounds for Political Obligation,published by Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan (1981).     

Ethical principles of Catholic social teaching behind the United States bishops' letter on the economy

This article analyzes six ethical principles at work in the Pastoral Letter of the Roman Catholic Bishops on the United States economy. The first three principles derive from the Thomistic tradition with its attempt to avoid the extremes of collectivism and individualism. Human beings are by nature social and called to live in political society. The principle of subsidiarity guides the role of the state. Distributive and social justice furnish the criteria for a just distribution of human goods. The fourth ethical principle which is a later development in the Catholic tradition recognizes human rights including economic rights. In keeping with recent emphases in Catholic teaching the fifth principle insists that the goods of creation exist to serve all and stresses the social aspect of property. The sixth principle enunciates a preferential option for the poor and has come to the fore in the light of recent liberation theology. Charles E. Curran is Ordinary Professor of Moral Theology at The Catholic University of America and for the 1987–88 academic year Rachel Rebecca Kaneb Visiting Professor of Catholic Studies at Cornell University. He is a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and of the Society for Christian Ethics. His two most recent books are Faithful Dissent (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1986) and Toward an American Catholic Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987).     

Drug prohibition: A legal and economic analysis

This paper argues the case for the legalization of addictive drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. It maintains that there are no market failures which could justify a banning of these substances, and that, as in the earlier historical case of prohibition of alcohol, our present drug policy has increased crime, decreased respect for legitimate law, and created great social upheaval.A member of the faculty of the Economics Department of the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, Dr. Walter Block is Adjunct Scholar at the Fraser, Cato, and Mises Institutes. His professional affiliations include the American Economic Association, and Western Economic Association, the British Columbia Association of Professional Economists, the Canadian Economic Association, the Canadian Association for Business Economics and the American Law and Economics Association. He has previously taught at Stony Brook (S.U.N.Y.), Baruch (C.U.N.Y.) and Rutgers Universities, and has worked in various research capacities for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Tax Foundation,The Financial Post, Western Report, andBusiness Week. Dr. Block has published numerous popular and scholarly articles on economics and writes a syndricated column forSterling newspapers. An economic commentator on national television and radio, he lectures widely on public policy issues to university students, service, professional and religious organizations.Nothing in this article should be taken as an indication that the author favours the use of the drugs discussed herein. Actually the very opposite is the case. While he opposes prohibition, he advocates all non-coercive methods — arguments, counselling, advertising, etc. — which lead to decreased or zero usage of these pernicious and immoral materials and substances.     

Book Review

Kindleberger, Charles P., The International Economic Order: Essays on Financial Crisis and International Public Goods, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988, xi + 235 pages.

Root, Franklin R., International Trade and Investment (6th ed.), Cincinnati, OH: South-Western Publishing Co., 1990, viii + 696 pages.

Krugman, Paul, Rethinking International Trade, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990, viii + 282 pages.

Schmiegelow, Michele, and Henrik Schmiegelow, Strategic Pragmatism: Japanese Lessons in the Use of Economic Theory, New York: Praeger, 1989, 212 pages.

Lynn, Leonard H., and Timothy J. McKeown, Organizing Business: Trade Associations in America and Japan, Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1988, xviii +191 pages.

Patterson, Seymour, The Microeconomics of Trade, Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1989, vii + 223 pages.

Whalley, John, The Uruguay Round and Beyond—Final Report from the Ford Foundation Project on Developing Countries and the Global Trading System, Ann Arbor: MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1989, xi + 211 pages.

Baumol, William J., Edward N. Wolff, and Sue Anne Batey Blackman, Productivity and American Leadership: The Long View, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989, x + 395 pages.

Carter, Barry E., International Economic Sanctions: Improving the Haphazard U.S. Legal Regime, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988, xiv + 290 pages.

Dornbusch, Rudiger, The Road to Economic Recovery: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on International Debt, Background Paper, New York: Priority Press, 1989, vi + 123 pages.

Edwards, Sebastian, Real Exchange Rates, Devaluation and Adjustment, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989, xi + 371 pages.     

Firm heterogeneity and location choice of Taiwanese multinationals

This paper examines the extent to which production location decisions of Taiwanese multinationals reflect underlying patterns of firm productivity. In our theoretical model, heterogeneous firms in a middle-income country decide on the optimal production locations for serving three geographically separate markets: domestic, foreign high-income and foreign low-income. The model shows that the equilibrium decision of a firm depends on the fixed investment costs of establishing foreign subsidiaries, production costs, transportation costs, market size and its own productivity level.Using firm-level data in 2000, Taiwanese electronics firms are divided into four different categories: non-FDI, investors in China only, investors in the U.S. only, investors in both China and the U.S. We use a multinomial logit model to link firms' location choices with their productivity, controlling for country, industry and other firm characteristics. Our empirical results are consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model. We show that more productive firms engage in outward FDI, with the most productive ones investing in both China and the U.S. We also provide evidence indicating that Taiwanese multinationals investing only in the U.S. are more productive than those investing exclusively in China due to smaller fixed investment costs in China relative to the U.S.     

The effect of published reports of unethical conduct on stock prices

This study adds to the empirical evidence supporting a significant connection between ethics and profitability by examining the connection between published reports of unethical behaviour by publicly traded U.S. and multinational firms and the performance of their stock. Using reports of unethical behaviour published in the Wall Street Journal from 1989 to 1993, the analysis shows that the actual stock performance for those companies was lower than the expected market adjusted returns. Unethical conduct by firms which is discovered and publicized does impact on the shareholders by lowering the value of their stock for an appreciable period of time. Whatever their views on whether ethical behaviour is profitable, managers should be able to see a definite connection between unethical behaviour and the worth of their firm's stock. Stockholders, the press and regulators should find this information important in pressing for greater corporate and managerial accountability. Dr. Spuma M. Rao is Associate Professor of Finance, College of Business Administration, University of Southwestern Louisiana. His publications appear in such journals as Global Finance, American Business Review, Financial and Strategic Decision Making, Business and Economic Review, The Appraisal. J. Brooke Hamilton III is Assistant Professor in the Department of Management, University of Southwestern Louisiana. He was head of the Philosophy Department at Tuskegee Institute, spent 14 years in industry and returned to academe after completing his M.B.A. His work appears in the Journal of Business Ethics, Southeastern Journal of Legal Studies in business, and the proceeding of the Southern and Southwestern Marketing Associations.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Heather D. Gibson, Economic Transformation, Democratization and Integration into the European Union: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective Stephen L. Parente and Edward C. Prescott, Barriers to Riches Anne O. Krueger (ed.), The WTO as an International Organization V. Tanzi, K.‐Y. Chu and S. Gupta (eds), Economic Policy and Equity     

Technological risk and small probabilities

Many scientists, businessmen, and government regulators believe that the criteria for acceptable societal risk are too stringent. Those who subscribe to this belief often accept the view which I call the probability-threshold position. Proponents of this stance maintain that society ought to ignore very small risks, i.e., those causing an average annual probability of fatality of less than 10^–6.After examining the three major views in the risk-evaluation debate, viz., the probability-threshold position, the zero-risk position, and the weighted-risk position, I focus on the arguments for the first of these views, since it is the position which currently undergirds most public policy (especially in the U.S.) regarding acceptable risk. After analyzing Arrow's argument from decision theory, Comar's and Gibson's argument from ontology, and Starr's and Whipple's argument from epistemology, I conclude that these defenses of the probability-threshold position err in a variety of ways. Most commonly, they fail because they tacitly accept the assumption that magnitude of probability, alone, provides a sufficient condition for judging the acceptability of a given risk. In the light of these errors, I suggest that it might be more desirable for risk assessors, decision theorists, and policymakers to weight various risk-cost-benefit parameters according to alternative ethical criteria, rather than to evaluate risks solely in terms of mathematical considerations. Kristin Shrader-Frechette is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida. Previously she was Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has held an NSF Scholar's Award in History and Philosophy of Science, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and an NSF Fellowship. She is the author of four books: Nuclear Power & Public Policy; Environmental Ethics; Science Policy, Ethics and Economic Methodology and Risk Analysis & Scientific Method. She also has published about 50 articles on philosophy of physics, philosophy of economics, and technology assessment and public policy.     

Corporate institutionalization of ethics in the United States and Great Britain

This paper compares the results of large-scale U.S. and U.K. surveys designed to identify managers' major ethical concerns and to investigate how firms are formulating and communicating ethics policies responsive to these concerns.Our findings indicate some important differences between U.S. and U.K. firms in perceptions of what are important ethical issues, in the means used to communicate ethics policies, and in the issues addressed in ethics policies and employee training. U.K. companies tend to be more likely to communicate ethics policies through senior executives, whereas U.S. companies tend to rely more on their Human Resources and Legal Departments. U.S. firms consider most ethical issues to be more important than do their U.K. counterparts, and are especially concerned with employee behavior which may harm the firm. In contrast, the issues which U.K. managers consider more important tend to be concerned with external corporate stakeholders rather than employees.Diana C. Robertson is an Assistant Professor in the Legal Studies Department of The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Robertson has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at The London Business School and she has received The University of Pennsylvania Provost's Award for Distinguished Teaching. Her research interests include the impact of corporate policy and strategy on employees' ethical behavior, and the diffusion of ethical practices among corporations. Dr. Robertson has published articles in theSloan Management Review, theJournal of Business Ethics, andOrganization Science.Bodo B. Schlegelmilch holds the British Rail Chair of Marketing. Dr. Schlegelmilch was formerly a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Lecturer in Marketing and International Business at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include international and strategic marketing. Dr. Schlegelmilch has published articles in theJournal of International Business, theEuropean Journal of Marketing, andIndustrial Marketing Management.