Managing Channel Profits: The Role of Managerial Incentives

The existing literature has examined how manufacturers can enhance profits by employing specific channel structures and channel coordination mechanisms. In this paper, we examine the implications of strategically designed managerial incentives for channel performance in a duopoly. We first analyze how equilibrium outcomes (especially manufacturer profits) are altered when the manufacturers provide their channel managers with strategically designed incentives. Following that, we examine how optimal channel structure decisions are altered when manufacturers provide their managers with strategic incentives, i.e., we examine how strategic incentives moderate optimal channel structure decisions. In contrast with the existing literature, we find that an asymmetric channel structure with one manufacturer employing a profit-maximizing retailer and the other integrated manufacturer providing strategic incentives for the channel manager in charge of pricing, is an equilibrium outcome under certain conditions. We then compare how the implications of strategic incentives differ from those of channel structure decisions and channel coordination initiatives, and discuss when and why strategic incentives yield superior outcomes from the manufacturer’s perspective. Our results shed light on the sparsely researched role of managerial incentives in the channel context.     

The Nature of Managerial Work in Small Growth-Orientated Businesses

In this study we explore the daily managerial behaviour of managers of small growth-orientated businesses and contrast it to previous research of managers in large organisations. We also investigate if one background characteristic, the owner–managers functional experience, is related to daily managerial activity. More specifically, we seek to strengthen the ‘managerial work’ tradition through a replication of Mintzberg’s work (The Nature of Managerial Work, New York: Harper and Row 1973) and an extension of the ‘managerial work’ tradition to another contingency, that of small growth- oriented businesses. The study is based on direct observations of ten CEOs of small growth-orientated businesses. The research provides evidence that organisational size is an important determinant of the nature of managerial work. However, in exploring the variability that may occur in managerial work within a given size context, we failed to establish a relationship between the owner–manager’s functional experiences and daily functional work orientation. The article concludes by speculating why the nature of managerial work in small growth-orientated businesses may provide a template for management in larger (more bureaucratic) organisations.     

Understanding Managerial Work Values in Turkey

The objective of this study was to explore certain managerial work values in Turkey. A total of 1023 managers from six Turkey regions participated in the study and filled out the questionnaires. Findings were analyzed using regression and anova analyses. A total of three managerial work value factors emerged, which was supported by the current value literature. It was found that there was a relationship between work values and organizational size. The lower the organizational size, the higher the proper values are held. However, organizational tenure, the number of subordinates a manager is responsible, and the educational level of a manager had no significant effect on holding work values. The proper values outnumbered the improper values significantly. The three most held work values were integrity, doing work with care and discipline, and achievement. The three least held values were cliquishness, laziness, and hypocrisy.     

The Role of Trust in Creating Effective Alliances: A Managerial Perspective

The popularity of alliances in business has exploded over the past few years along with an increasing interest in the role of trust in economic transactions. This paper details the nature of alliances and the crucial role played by trust in creating and managing alliances. Evidence of the emergence of trust are further given within the context of alliances established by small and medium-sized Swiss enterprises where both planning and mutual trust constitute essential ingredients.     

In Search of Virtue: The Role of Virtues, Values and Character Strengths in Ethical Decision Making

We present a comprehensive model that integrates virtues, values, character strengths and ethical decision making (EDM). We describe how a largely consequentialist ethical framework has dominated most EDM scholarship to date. We suggest that reintroducing a virtue ethical perspective to existing EDM theories can help to illustrate deficiencies in existing decision-making models, and suggest that character strengths and motivational values can serve as natural bridges that link a virtue framework to EDM in organizations. In conjunction with the more fully formulated extant research on situational determinants, we present and discuss our model that introduces a virtue based orientation to EDM.     

The Moderating Role of Context in Determining Unethical Managerial Behavior: A Case Survey

Prior negative performance and wrongdoing are difficult for applicants to overcome during their job search. The result has often been that they resort to lies and deception in order to obtain employment. The present study examines “stealing thunder” as a trust repair tactic that might be useful for overcoming prior indiscretions when it is used by applicants during the selection interview process. Stealing thunder refers to the self-disclosure of negative information that preempts allegations of wrongdoing by third parties such as hiring managers. Data were collected (n = 184) using a scenario-based 2 (accept responsibility; blame others) X 2 (low, high likelihood of discovery) experimental design in which perceptions of integrity, trust, and employability were measured. Results indicated that a stealing thunder strategy that involved accepting responsibility under a low likelihood of transgression discovery led to higher ratings of trust than blaming others when discovery of wrongdoing was imminent. The stealing thunder strategy was somewhat more effective than when a traditional, post-allegation apology was used. But stealing thunder did not lead to higher levels of an overall willingness to hire the applicant.     

A Cross-Cultural Study of Managerial Work Values in Singapore

ABSTRACT

The paper presents the findings of a research conducted on work values of expatriate and local managers in Singapore. The sample included about 600 expatriate and local managers of 30 American, Canadian, British, Swedish, and Korean companies operating in Singapore. The selected companies represented 13 industries. The managers were identified on the basis of their ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Hofstede's Value Survey Module was used as the major data collection instrument. The findings revealed some significant differences between the managers of the Western and the Eastern (Oriental) cultures regarding their work values, preferred management styles, and their perception of existing managerial practices. The findings also largely substantiate the “crossvergence” argument of managerial work values.     

The Role of Employer Unions in Hegemonic Struggle,Interest Representation and Promotion of Managerial Perspectives in Turkey

This article explores power and hegemony in the context of industrial relations in Turkey. Analysis of interest, articulation and representation is built around three strands: a Gramscian reading of hegemony, periodization through the political economy of industrial relations and the communicative action staged by the prominent employer union. Starting with the 1970s, continuities and shifts in discourse are identified. The rise and fall of different voices (i.e. insiders and outsiders) in texts point towards a search for a full blown hegemony in the 1990s with a new set of challenges confronted and resolved through new legislation passed in 2003.     

Multinational Tax Avoidance: Virtue Ethics and the Role of Accountants

The techniques that some large multinational corporations use to reduce their tax liability have come under increasing public scrutiny in recent years, alongside governmental investigations and international commitments aimed at curbing opportunities for tax avoidance. Although discussion of tax avoidance activities, and their regulatory responses, is often conducted with reference to moral concepts (such as ‘fairness’), philosophical analysis of the ethics of multinational tax avoidance remains limited. In particular, the virtue ethics tradition that emphasises the agent (and his/her character) and the performance of specific roles has not been considered in detail. This paper examines how the contemporary virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre can be applied to the issue of multinational tax avoidance, and considers the role that accountants play in these activities. It argues, firstly, that MacIntyre’s approach provides a more useful philosophical analysis of the issue (when compared to utilitarian and deontological approaches for example) and, secondly, that the main parties involved (MNC accountants and regulators) are likely to agree with the main tenets of this approach. The paper also contributes by reconceptualising, using MacIntyre’s scheme, the issue of tax avoidance in relation to Donald Cressey’s ‘fraud triangle’.     

Examining the Role of Brand Equity in Business Markets: A Model,Research Propositions,and Managerial Implications

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a model of brand equity for business markets. It is argued that the potential benefits of branding and brand equity development have been neglected in business markets and that a general model and stream of relevant empirical research could be useful to managers in business markets depending on the situational nature of their market and competitive structure. The model adapts and extends existing brand equity literature to reflect the unique aspects involved in a business-to-business marketing context. The model developed considers marketing strategies as antecedents, two different classes of moderator variables, brand equity as a perception by the buyer or the market, a series of consequences of brand equity perceptions, and perceived risk as a moderator of the brand equity-consequences relationship. Propositions have been defined and discussed to help facilitate research and provide guidelines for industrial marketing managers.     

Role Conflict,Mindfulness, and Organizational Ethics in an Education-Based Healthcare Institution

Role conflict occurs when a job possesses inconsistent expectations incongruent with individual beliefs, a situation that precipitates considerable frustration and other negative work outcomes. Increasing interest in processes that reduce role conflict is, therefore, witnessed. With the help of information collected from a large sample of individuals employed at an education-based healthcare institution, this study identified several factors that might decrease role conflict, namely mindfulness and organizational ethics. In particular, the results indicated that mindfulness was associated with decreased role conflict, and that perceived ethical values and a shared ethics code were associated with decreased role conflict and increased mindfulness. Despite the study’s limitations, these findings imply that companies might better manage role conflict through the development of mindfulness and organizational ethics.     

Organisational Virtue,Moral Attentiveness,and the Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility in Business: The Case of UK HR Practitioners

Examination of the application of virtue ethics to business has only recently started to grapple with the measurement of virtue frameworks in a practical context. This paper furthers this agenda by measuring the impact of virtue at the level of the organisation and examining the extent to which organisational virtue (OV) impacts on moral attentiveness (MA) and the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility in creating organisational effectiveness (PRESOR). It is argued that people who operate in more virtuous organisational contexts will be expected to be more attentive to ethical issues and in turn perceive a greater role for ethics and social responsibility in business. Analysis of results based on a sample of 137 HR professionals shows that where people report that their organisation provides meaningful work, they are more likely to display reflective MA and the belief that ethics and social responsibility are compatible with business objectives, suggesting that organisations who are interested in promoting an ethical culture should focus on their work structures and practices. More generally, OV is shown to have a more complex relationship with PRESOR than hypothesised pointing towards a more nuanced view of OV. The paper examines the implications of the results for organisations and research.     

The Development of a Virtue Ethics Scale

Drawing on conceptual works by Murphy (1999) and Solomon (1999), we develop a virtue ethics scale. Other ethics scales, which are grounded in deontological and teleological principles, may be used to classify people according to their beliefs about (1) the criteria they use to make ethical decisions, or (2) the ethicality of those decisions. We suggest augmenting these scales with our virtue ethics scale, which may be used to classify people according to their beliefs about the virtuous qualities of businesspeople.     

The Natural Link Between Virtue Ethics and Political Virtue: The Morality of the Market

Against the idea that market economy is something greedy and immoral, we will set out the idea that market economy based on firms has a very positive moral content: the possibility of excellence of human action. Firms based on people acting together, sharing the culture of the organization, toward virtue-based ethics, create and distribute most of the economy’s wealth, innovate, trade and raise living standards. We will present a criterion which states that social coordination improves if the process of creation of individual possibilities of action, which is carried out in the social institutions—in our case, the firm—is extended. There is a retention of possibilities that is formed in the institutions and transmitted culturally. In that moment entrepreneurship emerges, the creative tension that expands, maintains, or diminishes the possibilities of action. Hence, the firm is the institution that carries out a very important practice: fostering new possibilities of individual action. In this paper, we will adopt the point of the view of the acting person. The reality we observe is personal action within its cultural and institutional dimensions. A theory of personal action in societal institutions bridges the way from virtue-based ethics toward ethics of institutions.     

Vocational Virtue Ethics: Prospects for a Virtue Ethic Approach to Business

In this essay, I explore the prospects for a virtue ethic approach to business. First, I delineate two fundamental criteria that I believe must be met for any such approach to be viable: viz., the virtues must be exercised for the sake of the good of one’s life as a unitary whole (contra role-morality approaches) and for the common good of the communities of which one is a part as well as the individual good of their members (contra egoist approaches). Second, I argue that these two criteria can be met only if we are able to reconceive and transform the nature of work within contemporary business organizations. In particular, what is needed, I argue, is a retrieval of something like the older ideal of work as a “vocation”, or “calling”, whereby work can be viewed as a specific aspect of a more general calling to pursue, through the practice of the virtues, “the good life” both for ourselves and for others. Lastly, I consider some important challenges to this “vocational virtue ethic” approach to work within contemporary business organizations and offer a few suggestions for how they might be met.     

Managerial Work and Lying: A Conceptual Framework and an Explorative Case Study

In the last few years there has been a lot of fuzzy talk, scientific discourses and comments of business life about the values, ethics and social responsibility of companies. Companies are expected to have also some other tasks besides that of gaining profit. A part of the tasks which management has, except for thinking of the benefits of their own organization, are things which work for the well-being of the whole society. Issues like this are, among others, working for employment, taking care of the environment, and promoting consumer security.While making decisions of their own action in the company, the management often has to face ethical solutions. The benefit of the company may be different from that of other business stakeholders. In this case, the manager has to decide for which part he should act, for the company or for the stakeholders. The ethical problems in deciding may appear also inside the company. In our study, we are very interested in the decision-making processes which are connected with the honesty of the manager and his/her being honest with the stakeholders both inside and outside the company.In our research, we have tried to create a framework which helps us to find out in what kind of situations a manager faces the problem whether he/she should tell the truth to the stakeholders or not. We have also studied the means which the managers use in their potential dishonesty. Further, we have tried to find out how the managers see themselves in situations where they cannot tell the truth or have to cover it.     

Managerial Life Without a Wife: Family Structure and Managerial Career Success

The model of the successful manager was based on the 1950's family. Thus career demands assumed the presence of a spouse at home to handle family responsibilities. This study seeks to determine whether women and men in alternate family structures will be able to succeed in managerial careers. Data were analyzed from two MBA alumni cohorts: one older cohort with three waves of data collected over a thirteen-year period and a second younger cohort with data collected in the most recent wave. A typology of family structure was utilized to categorize the managers into one of twelve family structures based on marital status, parental status, and spousal employment status. The post-traditional family where both parents are employed was found to be most prevalent for both men and women. A small percent of the MBAs were in the traditional family where the father is employed and the mother is not employed. Family structure in early career appears to be stable over the thirteen-year study period. Analyses reveal that for men, those in traditional families are most rewarded in their careers in terms of income and salary progression. Women had no family structure that achieved career success comparable to traditional family men. Despite increased acknowledgement of the varied family structures of managers and the adoption of family friendly policies by companies, rewards are not distributed equally. This has implications for managers, organizations, and society.