Business Groups and Corporate Social Responsibility

We present an analysis of over 400 comments about complying with tax obligations extracted from online discussion forums for freelancers. While the topics investigated by much of the literature on taxpayer behaviour are theory driven, we aimed to explore the universe of online discussions about tax in order to extract those topics that are most relevant to taxpayers. The forum discussions were subjected to a qualitative thematic analysis, and we present a model of the ‘universe’ of tax as reflected in taxpayer discussions. The model comprises several main actors (tax laws, tax authority, tax practitioners, and the taxpayer’s social network) and describes the multiple ways in which they relate to taxpayers’ behaviour. We also conduct a more focused analysis to show that the majority of taxpayers seem unconcerned with many of the variables that have been the focus of tax behaviour research (e.g. audits, penalties, etc.), and that most people are motivated to be compliant and are more concerned with how to comply than whether to comply. Moreover, we discuss how these ‘real-world’ tax discussions question common assumptions in the study of tax behaviour and how they inform our understanding of business ethics more generally.     

A Study Towards Improving Web-Based Collaboration Through Availability of Group Awareness Information

Group awareness can be broadly defined as consciousness and information of various aspects of the group and its members. It also refers to information received by members of a group about the other group members, about mutually employed objects, and about current group processes, in order to efficiently carry out certain tasks. The group awareness information presented in this paper is designed to capture group member activities and their behaviors in web-based collaborative work. It consists of activity, availability, and commitment/disposition information. The first two parameters appear as a visual display representing cumulative data and changes accordingly when the group begins working together. The last parameter is captured during group work and is summarized at the end of the group work task. This paper reports on the results of a study in a controlled experiment that examined group performance on a given task in a web-based group decision support system with and without group awareness information. In particular, the study examined how group awareness information impacts the quality of the work effort and a given task, group decision making by members in the same group and different groups, the communications among group members during the completion of an online collaborative authoring task, the cohesiveness among group members, and the commitment/disposition of engagement of each member of the work group.     

Team Spirit: The Influence of Psychological Collectivism on the Usage of E-Collaboration Tools

The use of information technologies in virtual teams has become common, but little is known about how psychological factors may affect future usage decisions in this context. Our study focuses on psychological collectivism, which is an individual-level form of collectivism (an individual trait capturing people’s “team spirit” or psychological attachments to groups) and investigates how this trait affects team members’ rational decision making processes. Partial Least Squares analysis applied to data collected from 120 team members suggest that psychological collectivism influences both team-referenced perceptions (confidence in one’s team’s capability) and system-referenced perceptions (the perceived usefulness of the e-collaboration tool), and these factors together affect future usage intentions.     

Status demotion in hierarchical loyalty programs: effects of payment source

Hierarchical loyalty programs are being operated currently by many firms to improve customer relationships. While past work has demonstrated the negative effects of status demotion in such programs, research on how these effects may vary across different customer group based on payment source is almost nonexistent. This paper examines the moderating role of payment source (‘own money’ versus ‘others money’) on the effects of status demotion on customer attitudes and behavior in hierarchical loyalty programs. Analysis of data collected from members of airline loyalty programs show that the negative effects of status demotion on customer attitudes, loyalty intentions, and share-of-wallet are stronger for demoted ‘own money’ customers than for demoted ‘others money’ customers. The study provides a deeper insight about the effects of status demotion and points out that firms could possibly be endangering the loyalty of many potentially valuable customers, in particular among the ‘own money’ customer group.     

Using current consumer issues to involve students in research

The value of involving students in research has been well documented. By including students in research, active and independent learning opportunities are provided, the importance of inquiry and investigation is emphasized, and connections between course material and the discipline become evident. Relevant opportunities for involving students in research projects can sometimes be elusive. Faculty time constraints limit the number of projects that can be undertaken and the number of students involved. Furthermore, many students become intimidated when told that they are required to carry out a research project. The purpose of this study was to use current consumer issues to involve undergraduate students in a relevant research project. The research project was implemented in class settings with teams of students. Faculty selected contemporary consumer issues based upon perceived student interest and experiences as consumers. By using issues of high relevance and familiarity to students and using the team approach within a course that faculty members were already assigned to teach, the issues of time constraint for the faculty members and increased levels of comfort for students were addressed. Prior to undertaking the project, students were instructed in appropriate research methods. Research methods utilized included student development of survey instruments, collection and recording of data, interpretation of data and presentation of results. Students became familiar with various research practices. By working as team members, the students’ comfort level for being involved in research increased; however, other common group challenges arose. Relevant, contemporary consumer issues carry high relevance and interest for student groups, helping generate enthusiasm for the research process. The focus on involving students in research continues to be emphasized. By using research topics related to student's experiences as consumers, students are more readily engaged in undertaking research projects. Through these relevant research projects, students’ consumer decision making is positively impacted.     

The Struggles of the Interculturalists: Professional Ethical Identity and Early Stages of Codes of Ethics Development

Ethicalisation processes that partake in the construction of a firm or a professional group’s ethical identity are often described as a relatively linear combination of several components, such as policies (starting with the development of a code of ethics), corporate practices, and leadership. Our study of a professional community dealing with the topics related to cultural diversity indicates a more reciprocal relationship between ethical identity and ethicalisation processes. We argue that a tangible form of ethical identity can pre-date the ethicalisation process of a professional group, and additionally, can impact this process at the start. We highlight that, despite the absence of official ethical statements in the community, a form of ethical professional identity is already present among the interculturalists of the international organisation Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research. Using critical discourse analysis, we identify the proclaimed humanist ethos in the discourses that interculturalists co-produce and diffuse during conferences, on on-line discussion forums, and in the mission of their professional organisations. This study contributes to the literature on ethical identity development by showing how a pre-existing form of ethical identity can influence the early stage of the development of a code of ethics. In addition, we indicate that, similar to organisational identity construction, ethical identity construction uses self-other identity talks, thus, defining an ethical other (or less ethical other) in its development.     

The Effect of a Quantitative Decision Aid – Analytic Hierarchy Process – on Group Polarization

The objective of this paper is to examine group polarization in subjects who have access to a quantitative decision aid, comparing to subjects who do not. Group polarization indicates the opinion of a group involved in a decision process will tend to be more extreme in the direction of the norm than the initial opinions of its members. Most of previous studies were focused on the theoretical explanation of this effect. Two theories are generally proposed to explain it: social comparison (SC) and persuasive arguments (PA). As we know, no study has been worked on how it can be dealt with. In this study, we use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a quantitative decision aid in a group process to examine the changes of this effect. Two hundred and forty undergraduate students participated in this study. Results show that persuasive argument was significantly reduced by the use of AHP, while no significant effect was found in group polarization and social comparison. The implications of the findings are further discussed.     

HEURISTICS,THE NON‐MAXIMIZING FIRM AND EFFICIENT ALLOCATION

It has been suggested that the theory of the firm can be modified and improved by shifting to a (non‐maximizing) heuristic approach that is able to explain how relatively efficient outcomes can be brought about by the use of ‘fast and frugal’ decision rules. The paper argues, however, that certain heuristic mechanisms, which may have great appeal to entrepreneurs in practice, tend to lead firms to worse solutions than those that could be achieved in a neoinstitutional system with the use of other methods. Moreover, competition cannot be relied upon to eliminate such misallocation, and may even serve to promote the problem.     

“In pursuit of the real deal”: A longitudinal study of VC decision making

This paper investigates actual Venture Capital (VC) decision making as it occurs over time in its natural decision environment. Our qualitative analysis is based on a comprehensive, longitudinal data set comprising 11 years of archival data from a European-based VC firm. During this time, the VC managed two funds, reviewed a total of 3631 deals, and made 35 investments. By adopting this research methodology, we can overcome several limitations of post-hoc methods and experiments commonly used in this research stream, and also have the opportunity to tackle some fundamental, yet hitherto elusive research topics. For example, our findings reveal how the importance of decision-making criteria varies between different stages of the evaluation process. They also show how VC portfolio composition and VC management time serve as important, yet to-date largely neglected decision-making criteria. Implications for research and practice are outlined.     

A Comparison of Full Profile and Hierarchical Information Integration Conjoint Methods to Modeling Group Preferences

This paper presents a comparative test of full profile (FP), original hierarchical information integration (HII-O), and integrated hierarchical information integration (HII-I) conjoint methods for modeling group preferences. It is hypothesized that in settings where groups need to decide about complex multi-attribute alternatives, HII-O will predict holdout profiles better than FP, and that HII-I will perform better than HII-O. The predictive ability of the three methods is tested for the case of housing preferences of housing co-ops, which are groups consisting of three to five people who jointly own a house. The results confirm that HII-I outperforms the other two methods and further suggest that FP and HII-O perform equally well. In addition, two variations of HII-I are developed. One of these provides independent estimates of the relative influence of group members on the decision outcomes, however at the expense of requiring larger designs. The two HII-I variations are also tested and found to be equivalent in predictive ability.     

Democracy across Gender Diversity and Ethnicity of Middle Eastern SMEs: How Does Performance Differ?

This paper examines the relationship between boards of directors' demographic diversity and firms' financial performance. In particular, we highlight how women and ethnic minorities can affect Middle Eastern SMEs' financial performance. Using an unbalanced panel of 1,855 firm‐year observations of 371 boards of directors from nine Middle Eastern countries, our results support the positive impact of women and ethnic minority group members on Middle Eastern firms' performance. However, our evidence implies that when Western ethnic minority members increase, firms' performances tend to decrease, because these board members are appointed for regional and international board reputation legitimacy, personal business agendas, and links to the external corporate environment.     

Founder centrality effects on the Mexican family firm’s top management group: firm culture,strategic vision and goals,and firm performance

Using social networks, we examined the founder’s influence on key strategic behaviors in Mexican family business. First, we drew on a sample of 42 Mexican family businesses and 201 managers to show how founder centrality affects the top management group (TMG) members’ cohesiveness. TMG members’ cohesiveness was examined in terms of the firm’s culture, its strategic vision, and strategic goals. Second, we examined how founder centrality and top management member group cohesiveness are related to performance in terms of financial, social and family-oriented objectives. Significant relationships were found between a founder’s centrality and the TMGs strategic behavior. Further, significant results connect different aspects of the founder’s centrality and the TMGs strategic behavior to financial, social and family-oriented objectives.     

Reporting Self-Made Errors: The Impact of Organizational Error-Management Climate and Error Type

We study how an organization’s error-management climate affects organizational members’ beliefs about other members’ willingness to report errors that they discover when chance of error detection by superiors and others is extremely low. An error-management climate, as a component of the organizational climate, is said to be “high” when errors are accepted as part of everyday life as long as they are learned from and not repeated. Alternatively, the error-management climate is said to be an “error averse” climate when discovery of errors invokes the laying of blame on those admitting to or found committing errors. We examine the effects of this error-management climate in a professional services environment where uncorrected errors may have severe consequences and discovery of work errors is crucial for organizational success. We find that error-management climate affects organizational members’ beliefs about what other members will report about discovered self-made errors, with a high error-management (versus error averse) climate leading to greater reporting willingness. We also find a significant interaction with a key contextual variable, error type (conceptual or calculation), that suggests the effect is more significant for conceptual errors than calculation errors. Our findings suggest that an organization’s error-management climate is an important factor in promoting ethical behavior of employees, especially junior employees, carrying out routine tasks whose failure to report errors discovered incidental to those tasks may have severe implications for their organizations.     

Decisional Power in Group Decision Making: A Note on the Allocation of Group Members' Weights in the Multiplicative AHP and SMART

Many complex decisions are made in a group environment, where the decision is made jointly by a committee or group structure. The individual group members are often not equally qualified to contribute equitably to the decision process, or may have different saliences (desires) to influence the decision. A quantitative knowledge of the players' decisional power is useful for better understanding of the group decision process, and could even be used in weighted voting within the group structure. We adapt the REMBRANDT suite of decision models (multiplicative AHP and SMART) to measure decisional power in groups, and we generalise this to cater for the case where power itself is deemed to be multidimensional in nature, and the case of uncertain subjective judgements of power amongst group members.     

A Study on Aggregation of TOPSIS Ideal Solutions for Group Decision-Making

The technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) has become a popular multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique, since it has a comprehensible theoretical structure and is able to provide an exact model for decision making. For the use of TOPSIS in group decisions, the common approaches in aggregating individual decision makers’ judgments are the geometric and the arithmetic mean methods, although these are too intuitive and do not consider either preference levels or preference priorities among alternatives for individual decision makers. In this paper, a TOPSIS group decision aggregation model is proposed in which the construction consists of three stages: (1) The weight differences are calculated first as the degrees of preferences among different alternatives for each decision maker; (2) The alternative priorities are then derived, and the highest one can be denoted as the degree to which a decision maker wants his most favorite alternative to be chosen; (3) The group ideal solutions approach in TOPSIS is used for the aggregation of similarities obtained from different decision makers. A comparative analysis is performed, and the proposed aggregation model seems to be more satisfactory than the traditional aggregation model for solving compromise-oriented decision problems.     

Developing a Normatively Grounded Research Agenda for Fair Trade: Examining the Case of Canada

This paper examines two issues related to research of certified fair trade goods. The first is the question of how agendas for fair trade research should be developed. The second issue is the existence of major gaps in the fair trade literature, including the study of the particular features of fair trade practice in individual northern countries. In taking up the first of these issues, the paper proposes that normative analysis should provide the basis for developing research agendas. Such an approach is important to ensure that the necessary types of questions to make normative judgments and policy decisions are posed and that biases that tend to favor mainstreaming practices in the generation of knowledge are minimized. The paper addresses the second research issue by examining the development of research agendas at the level of individual countries, using Canada as a case.     

A Framework for Adopting Collaboration 2.0 Tools for Virtual Group Decision Making

Decision making in virtual teams is gaining momentum due to globalization, mobility of employees, and the need for collective and rapid decision making by members who are in different locations. These factors resulted in a proliferation of virtual team software support tools for decision making, the latest of which is social software (also known as collaboration 2.0), which includes tools such as wikis, blogs, microblogs, discussion forums, and social networking platforms. This paper describes the potential use of collaboration 2.0 software for improving the process and the specific tasks in virtual group decision making. The paper proposes a framework for exploring the fitness between social software and the major activities in the group decision making process and how such tools can be successfully adopted. Specifically, we use a fit-viability model to help assessing whether social software fit a decision task and what organizational factors are important for such tools to be effective. Representative research issues related to the use of such tools are also presented.     

Aggregation and Disaggregation of Preferences for Collective Decision-Making

Group decisions are of longstanding interest to researchers from a wide spectrum of disciplines. Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) can play a vital role in situations where multiple persons are involved, each having their own private perceptions of the context and the decision problem to be tackled. In such an environment the conflict between the members of the planning group is not an unusual situation. Multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA) methods may be a useful tool in coping with such interpersonal conflicts where the aim is to achieve consensus between the group members. This paper combines two well-known multicriteria methods, based on the notion of aggregation of preferences, in order to construct a consensus seeking methodology for collective decision-making.     

Influence Allocation Methods in Group Decision Support Systems

Influence allocation processes are voting and opinion aggregating methods that allow members to distribute some or all of their decision making influence to others in the group in order to exploit not only the group's knowledge of the alternatives, but its knowledge of itself. Only with the common use of group decision support systems (GDSS) has their use become practical. In this paper we reconsider SPAN, an influence allocation process introduced by MacKinnon (1966a). Experimental comparison shows SPAN to be significantly better at selecting a correct option from a set of options than two common voting methods. An alternative influence allocation process that we call RCON (Rational Consensus), is based on a weighting method proposed by DeGroot (1974) and has been explicated as a normative standard for combining opinion by Lehrer and Wagner (1981). The judgmental inputs to SPAN would appear to be logically related to those for RCON. Submitting the SPAN inputs from the experiment, transformed in this logical way, to the RCON process results in somewhat better performance than with SPAN. However, evidence indicated that the two methods are conceptually and psychologically sufficiently different that an experimental comparison is needed between them.