Putting Service Quality into Gear and

How can a service business foster service quality? This article focuses on five important elements of a service quality programme: quality care; customer care; front-line care; communication care and leadership care. Most companies who use these five efforts towards the same goal get results, improved sales through improved customer service encounters and customer satisfaction.     

Putting ethics and economic rationality together: an Aristotelian and philosophical approach

The gap between economic rationality, as embedded in utility maximization, and ethical rationality, identified with a set of rules that prescribe the right course of action, has been a challenging issue for economists, philosophers, and business ethicists. Despite the difference and the noncompetition between a scientific economic approach of economics and business ethics, and a behavioral and philosophical one, we highlight the importance of the Aristotelian concept of prudence or phronesis applied to business activity. Phronesis allows for a conceptualization of rationality that can be simultaneously applied to economics and ethics. It also allows conceiving the intrinsically ethical nature of economic rationality. This relationship requires an appropriate education and the intervention of the state.     

Integrating ethics into the business school curriculum

A project on teaching business ethics at The Wharton School concluded that ethics should be directly incorporated into key MBA courses and taught by the core business faculty. The project team, comprised of students, ethics faculty and functional business faculty, designed a model program for integrating ethics. The project was funded by the Exxon Education Foundation.The program originates with a general introduction designed to familiarize students with literature and concepts pertaining to professional and business ethics and corporate social responsibility. This may be accomplished through orientation sessions, readings, packages, short classes and lectures.The key segment of the plan is to have ethics modules developed and systematically integrated throughout key business courses. In the project experiment, sample modules were developed for courses in introductory marketing, introductory management, corporate finance and business policy.The modules are designed to respond to the concerns of functional business faculty that they cannot be sufficiently authoritative in teaching ethics and that inserting coverage of ethics will displace critically important topics in their already crowded courses. On the other hand, the functional instructors found that, once encouraged, students were very willing to discuss ethical issues and that their sophistication increased throughout the course. Thomas W. Dunfee is the Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Author of numerous textbooks (Random House, Prentice-Hall, John Wiley), he teaches courses on business ethics and commercial law. He has published numerous articles in law reviews and business periodicals and has consulted to many corporations, government agencies and law firms. Currently President-Elect of the American Business Law Association, he is a former editor-in-chief of the American Business Law Journal. Diana C. Robertson is a Senior Fellow in Business Ethics in the Department of Legal Studies at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her publications in business ethics include Corporate Restructuring and Employee Interests: The Tin Parachute, The Ethics of Organizational Transformation: Mergers, Takeovers and Corporate Restructuring, Quorum Books, 1988, Why Superimposing Ethics on the Corporation Won't Work, Corporate University Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, July 1988, 18–23, and Work-Related Ethical Attitudes: Impact on Business Profitability with Thomas W. Dunfee, Business and Professional Ethics Journal, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Winter 1984), 25–40.     

Integrating business ethics into an undergraduate curriculum

The paper describes the approach by which ethics are integrated into the undergraduate curriculum at Northern Illinois University's College of Business. Literature is reviewed to identify conceptual frameworks for, and issues associated with, the teaching of business ethics. From the review, a set of guidelines for teaching ethics is developed and proposed. The objectives and strategies implemented for teaching ethics is discussed. Foundation and follow-up coursework, measurement issues and ancillary programs are also discussed.Dr. Bishop teaches in the Management Department of Northern Illinois University's College of Business. He teaches managerial principles, human resource management and strategic management. His research interests have focused on applied human resource issues and managerial ethics, including the professional ethics of human resource managers.     

投放CCTV-1黄金剧场的N个理由

理由一：观众喜爱电视剧电视剧是全国电视媒体播出和收看的重中之重，省级卫视、地面频道的电视剧占收视比重超过50%（据CTR）。中央电视台电视剧的收视比重也占到了25．8％（据CSM），是观众收看最多的节目类型。电视剧成为企业广告传播不可或缺的资源。     

惩罚性损害赔偿制度引入侵权责任法之合理性分析

在私法公法化的背景下,民事立法者在建构市场交易机制时,有时也会考虑到自治条件的不足,从而引进国家行政管制甚或刑事制裁,以加速自治条件的完善。对于我国《侵权责任法》中要不要引入惩罚性赔偿之规定学界一直存在较大争议,因为此种主张违背民事责任补偿性赔偿的基本定位而被贴上“民法刑法化”的标签。以“民刑责任关系”来审视惩罚性赔偿的立法取舍,惩罚性赔偿的存在和发展是《侵权责任法》在民法社会化思潮冲击下的功能修正。是公私法日渐交融趋势下的立法回应,无论在“民刑责任关系”的协调方面,还是社会的现实基础方面,都具有正当性依据。     

入世与外资政策的战略调整

千呼万唤,世贸组织(WTO)似乎终于到了中国门前.加入WTO,不但会推进我国对外贸易的发展,也会推动外商投资更上层楼.实际上,无论是从WTO的基本原则、协议要求,还是此次我国就加入WTO所做承诺来看,对我国吸收外商投资都会产生直接而深刻的影响.……     

外资入股中资银行大势

一个不争的事实是,眼下几乎每一个国内银行的领导者都在忙于同一件事情:和外资银行谈判参股事宜……深发展"传闻"宁信其有传闻让深发展在7月里的A股市场出尽了风头,显然成为龙头的它,一次又一次带动金融股在缺乏题材的二级市场掀起波澜。 7月30日,深发     

Socially Responsible Investment and Fiduciary Duty: Putting the Freshfields Report into Perspective

A critical issue for the future growth and impact of socially responsible investment (SRI) is whether institutional investors are legally permitted to engage in it – in particular whether it is compatible with the fiduciary duties of trustees. An ambitious report from the United Nations Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), commonly referred to as the ‘Freshfields report’, has recently given rise to considerable optimism on this issue among proponents of SRI. The present article puts the arguments of the Freshfields report into some further both empirical and critical perspective, however, and suggests that its findings do not call for very much optimism. The general argument is that while the understanding of fiduciary duty outlined by the Freshfields report seems to allow institutional investors to at least sometimes take some social or environmental considerations into account, the support it gives for SRI is notably contingent and, furthermore, it rules out exactly the kind of SRI which proponents of social responsibility and environmental sustainability should hold in highest regard – proactive cases and socially effective investment strategies. If SRI is to become an important force for corporate social responsibility through its adoption by institutional investors, then, it is suggested that legal reform is needed.     

Importance of and approaches to incorporating ethics into the accounting classroom

Accounting educators are being called on to provide a greater emphasis on ethics education. This paper examines three important issues concerning ethics education in accounting. First, the question of whether ethics can indeed be taught is examined. Next, several innovative approaches are presented which have been used by accounting educators to integrate ethics into the classroom. Finally, results of a survey of students concerning their perspectives of ethical issues in accounting education, the accounting profession, and society at large are presented and discussed. Survey results reveal that students consider a lack of ethics damaging to the accounting profession and society. Results also indicate that accounting students are seeking ethical and moral direction.David S. Kerr is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Accounting at Texas A&M University. Dr. Kerr's research interests include ethics and behavioral decision making in accounting, group judgment/decision making, and audit planning.L. Murphy Smith, is a Price Waterhouse Teaching Excellence Professor of Accounting at Texas A&M University. His major research interests are information systems, auditing, and international issues.     

Place,space, and foreign direct investment into peripheral cities

Perspectives drawn from the economic geography literature are increasingly used to generate insights into locational issues in international business. In this paper, we seek to integrate these literatures further by investigating the locational determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) into peripheral cities within an emerging economy. Peripheral cities in emerging economies are attracting a growing proportion of global FDI flows, but the international business literature lacks a framework for understanding subnational determinants of FDI, particularly into non-core locations. We draw on the core-periphery model to build and test theory on how spatial interdependencies between subnational locations impact on the distribution of FDI inflows into a large and heterogeneous country China. Our results show that whilst peripheral cities tend to have a negative effect on FDI, this effect is positively moderated by proximity to core cities. The results highlight the importance of considering interactions between place and space when investigating locational issues in international business.     

Canadian trade unionism and wage parity for women: Putting the principle into practice

This article examines the conceptual impact of equal pay legislation on Canadian trade unionism. Ambiguous, largely voluntary, legislation poses major challenges to unions negotiating wage parity for their members. Furthermore, the movement finds itself caught between conflicting responsibilities as champion of the underpaid and protector of traditional interests. The authors examine this challenge within the context of the historic development, and fundamental principles of trade unionism. They conclude that many of the conflicts discussed arise directly from established union practices and must, therefore, be resolved by the movement and other affected parties together.     

Theological ethics and business ethics

Philosophers have constituted business ethics as a field by providing a systematic overview that interrelates its problems and concepts and that supplies the basis for building on attained results. Is there a properly theological task in business ethics? The religious/theological literature on business ethics falls into four classes: (1) the application of religious morality to business practices; (2) the use of encyclical teachings about capitalism; (3) the interpretation of business relations in agapa-istic terms; and (4) the critique of business from a liberation theological point of view. Theologians have not adequately addressed the questions of whether there are particular theological tasks in the field as they define it, and whether, if they define it, the theological definition is different from the philosophical.     

Teaching ethics without ethics to teach

Changes in American society have brought both increased concern for solving practical problems and decreased concern for whether foundational ethical theory can be, or needs to be, understood when solving them. A systematic study of newly established institutes of applied ethics reveals that the directors of all of them claim that ethical theory, or knowledge of the ultimate bases for moral appeals inherent in human nature, is not necessary for proposing solutions. Quotations from claims of directors of five prominent institutes are cited as evidence for the thesis that teaching applied ethics without teaching theoretical foundations of ethics is the main line policy today.     

Is there any ethics in business ethics

It is argued, against Richard T. De George, that while clarification of concepts, implications, and presuppositions in business ethics largely relies on a neutral territory of reason, determination of what moral intuitions are correct depends on non-neutral ethical theories. The latter posit ethics in business to varying degrees. Thus while the Kantian and utilitarian ethical theories are, for De George, proper (philosophical) approaches to business ethics, they are as reliant on affirming and encouraging moral sentiments outside parameters of pure reason as theological approaches. And hence if theological approaches can make no unique contribution by virtue of relying on more than reason or experience alone, then philosophical approaches can make no distinctive contribution either. Either both are viable or neither are. Oscillation between the mutually dependent notions of business ethics and ethics in business obfuscates what the field of business ethics is and renders De George's position inadequate.Robert Trundle, Jr., received his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado, and is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northern Kentucky University where he teaches Business Ethics. He has worked at such companies as Stearns-Roger and Rogerson-Hiller Corporation where he was a member of the Hazardous Materials Safety Committee.