Matched analysis of parent’s and children’s attitudes and practices towards motor vehicle and bicycle safety: an important information gap

The purpose of this study was to compare parents’ and children’s attitudes and habits towards use of bicycle helmets and car seat belts. We hypothesized that parental perception of their children’s safety practices did not reflect actual behavior and further, that parental practices, rather than their beliefs about a particular safety practice, have a greater affect on their child’s risk-taking behavior. The study population consisted of children in grades four and five and their parents/guardians. Participation in the cross-sectional study was voluntary and confidential anonymous questionnaires were used. In separate and independent surveys, children and parents were questioned in parallel about their knowledge, habits and attitudes toward bicycle helmet use and car safety practices. In the study, 731 students participated with 329 matched child-parent pairs. Ninety-five percent of the children own bicycles and 88% have helmets. Seventy percent of parents report their child always wears a helmet, while only 51% of children report always wearing one (p < 0.05). One-fifth of the children never wear a helmet, whereas parents think only 4% of their children never use one (p < 0.05). Parents report their children wear seat belts 92% of the time while 30% of children report not wearing one. Thirty-eight percent of children ride bicycles with their parents and wear their helmets more often than those who do not ride with their parents (p < 0.05). Parents who always wear a seat belt are more likely to have children who sit in the back seat and wear a seat belt (p < 0.05). Parents’ perceptions of their children’s safety practices may not be accurate and their actions do affect their children’s. Injury prevention programs that target both parents and children may have a greater impact on reducing risk-taking behaviors than working with each group in isolation.     

Advertising and Steiner’s Dual Stage Model: Our Assessment

Between 1967 and 1979, we produced a number of studies that explored different facets of the economics of advertising. This work culminated in our 1974 book entitled Advertising and Market Power. Our leading hypothesis was that heavy advertising expenditures often but not always had anti‐competitive effects. And our primary empirical evidence in support of this hypothesis was that industries with heavy advertising expenditures also reported higher profit rates, which we interpreted as indicating that higher prices followed when manufacturers can effectively spend large amounts on advertising. Since that time, Robert Steiner has developed a model of firm behaviour for consumer goods industries. He finds that distribution margins are generally higher where manufacturer prices are lower. Furthermore, heavy manufacturer advertising is likely to depress distribution margins for heavily advertised products. While our earlier work implicitly assumed that distribution margins are generally the same regardless of the volume of advertising, Steiner’s results raise doubt on this assumption. Steiner’s model must therefore be acknowledged when interpreting our earlier findings.     

Children’s media socialisation: parental concerns and mediation in Iran

Children’s media socialisation, parental concerns, and mediation styles have been studied mainly in the US and Europe. The present research aims to extend media socialisation theory by investigating children’s media behaviour and parental concerns and mediation styles in Iran, and then to compare the findings with the research based on parents in Western countries. Based on in-depth interviews with parents from Iran, we put forth propositions and a media socialisation model. We find that parental concerns and behaviour are influenced by their cultural practices and expectations, government regulations, and media dominant in the local region.     

Women’s Leadership and Firm Performance: Family Versus Nonfamily Firms

We evaluate the relationship between the appointment of women to CEO or Chair positions and firm performance, and shed light on the differences between family and nonfamily firms. By using a propensity score matching approach on a sample of 394 French firms over the period 2001–2010, we find major discordances between women’s leadership style and family business expectations relative to firm performance, as measured by return on assets and Tobin’s q. Notably, our results support the conjecture that family firms, which are more conducive to transformational leadership, offer women a more appropriate climate for exercising the function of Chair than that of CEO. In contrast, women CEOs perform better in nonfamily firms. Our findings move away from the predominant focus on barriers and stereotypes images about the female leadership and support the contingency theory of leadership, which states that the effectiveness of a leadership style depends on the organization and culture in which leaders operate, and on task-related positions     

Maybe It’s Right,Maybe It’s Wrong: Structural and Social Determinants of Deception in Negotiation

Context shapes negotiators’ actions, including their willingness to act unethically. Focusing on negotiators use of deception, we used a simulated two-party negotiation to test how three contextual variables—regulatory focus, power, and trustworthiness—interacted to shift negotiators’ ethical thresholds. We demonstrated that these three variables interact to either inhibit or activate deception, providing support for an interactionist model of ethical decision-making. Three patterns emerged from our analyses. First, low power inhibited and high power activated deception. Second, promotion-focused negotiators favored sins of omission, whereas prevention-focused negotiators favored sins of commission. Third, low cognition-based trust influenced deception when negotiators experience fit between power and regulatory focus, whereas affect-based trust influenced deception when negotiators experience misfit between these structural context variables. We conclude that regulatory focus primes different moral templates: promotion-focused negotiators’ decision to deceive is determined by moral pragmatism, whereas prevention-focused negotiators’ decision to deceive is determined by opportunism. Because each combination of power and regulatory focus was tied to a specific subcomponent of trust, we further conclude that negotiators engage in motivated information search to determine whether they should deceive their opponents.     

‘Fatwa Repositioning’: The Hidden Struggle for Shari’a Compliance Within Islamic Financial Institutions

Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) have recently witnessed remarkable growth driven by their holistic business model. The key differentiator of IFIs is their Shari’a-based business proposition which often requires some financial sacrifices, e.g. being ethical, responsible and philanthropic. It also requires them to refrain from investments in tobacco, alcohol, pornography or earning interest. For IFIs’ sponsors and managers, however, the key motivational factor for entering the Islamic financial market is not the achievement of Shari’a objectives through the holistic business model, but rather the urge to tap this highly profitable market where customers are inclined to pay a premium for Shari’a compliance. In order for IFIs to be accepted by the market, their financial instruments need to be approved by Shari’a scholars, known for their integrity and expertise in Shari’a. One can therefore expect potential tensions between IFIs’ managers and Shari’a scholars. The purpose of this research is to probe the hidden struggle between managers and Shari’a scholars in pursuit of their respective objectives. The study investigates this phenomenon using grounded theory as a methodological framework based on data collected from three IFIs from two countries. The findings reveal that Shari’a scholars and managers of IFIs have divergent objectives, which creates incongruence of objectives at the strategic level. The findings illustrate the tension and latent struggle for Shari’a compliance, which has been termed as ‘Fatwa Repositioning’ resulting in four possible consequences: deep, reasonable, minimum and superficial Shari’a compliance. Fatwa Repositioning is the core category of this study, which exhibits how managers and Shari’a scholars struggle to position the Shari’a compliance of their institutions so as to best serve their respective objectives. Interestingly, Shari’a scholars are seemingly not always in control of what they are supposed to be controlling, i.e. Shari’a compliance.     

Organizational Misbehavior and Management Control in China’s Public Hospitals: Doctors’ Red Packets

This paper investigates Chinese doctors’ informal payment, known as red packets, with reference to the debate on organizational misbehavior, fiddles and control. It aims to examine the internal and external factors that have contributed to the emergence of red packets in health services and the strategies of hospital management in dealing with informal payment. Analysis on the data collected from two hospitals shows that doctors’ misbehavior is influenced by health services’ funding mechanism, payment systems and corruption. More importantly, the study demonstrates the rationality of employee fiddles and management responses. Findings indicate that doctors are mainly responsible for this fiddling, unethical and illegal activity because of the financial gains acquired from patient bribery. However, doctor misbehavior remains under management’s latent control as long as hospital income generation and reputation are not severely threatened. The study contributes to the analysis of informal payment in the field of organizational studies and employment relations, with a fresh perspective offered to extend our understanding of red packets in the context of healthcare marketization reform.     

Gibrat’s law and the learning process

This paper discusses the speed of convergence of small firms in the context of Gibrat’s law for manufacturing and service industries. We analyze unbalanced panel data from 139,922 firms belonging to the Spanish manufacturing and service industries between 1994 and 2002. The results show that small firms grow faster than large firms. The evidence supports the proposition that market structure affects the capacity of firms to grow. In particular, small firms in service industries do not grow as quickly as small firms in manufacturing industries. This is mainly due to the lower medium efficient size (MES) in the service industries diminishing the incentives to grow and the positive effect of MES on the speed of convergence.     

Do Ethics Matter? Tax Compliance and Morality

In this article we argue that puzzle of tax compliance can be explained, at least in part, by recognizing the typically neglected role of ethics in individual behavior; that is, individuals do not always behave as the selfish, rational, self-interested individuals portrayed in the standard neoclassical paradigm, but rather are often motivated by many other factors that have as their main foundation some aspects of “ethics.” We argue that it is not possible to understand fully an individual’s compliance decisions without considering in some form these ethical dimensions. Specifically, we argue here that there is much direct and indirect evidence that ethics differ across individuals and that these differences matter in significant ways for their compliance decisions. We then put this in the larger context of the inability of the standard neoclassical paradigm to explain compliance of at least some individuals, and we suggest several possible avenues by which theory can be expanded to incorporate ethics. We conclude by arguing that a full house of compliance strategies is needed to combat tax evasion, strategies that include the traditional “enforcement” paradigm suggested by and consistent with neoclassical theory, a less traditional “service” paradigm that recognizes the important role of a “kinder and gentler” tax administration in encouraging compliance, and, importantly, a new “trust” paradigm that is built on the foundation of ethics, in which the tax administration must recognize that it can erode the ethics of taxpayers by its own decisions.     

Corporate Social Responsibility and Multi-Stakeholder Governance: Pluralism,Feminist Perspectives and Women’s NGOs

The corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature has increasingly explored relationships between civil society and social movements, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and corporations, as well as the role of NGOs in multi-stakeholder governance processes. This paper addresses the challenge of including a plurality of civil society voices and perspectives in business–NGO relations, and in CSR as a process of governance. The paper contributes to CSR scholarship by bringing insights from feminist literature to bear on CSR as a process of governance, and engaging with leaders of women’s NGOs, a group of actors rarely included in CSR research. The issues raised inform contributions to the CSR literature relating to the role of women’s NGOs with regard to the gender equality practices and impacts of corporations, and with respect to defining the meaning and practice of CSR. The paper frames marginalized NGOs as important actors which can contribute to pluralism, inclusion and legitimacy in CSR as a process of governance. It identifies several key barriers to the participation of women’s NGOs in CSR, and concludes by making suggestions for future research, as well as practice.     

Ethics in Nanotechnology: What’s Being Done? What’s Missing?

Nanotechnology shows great promise in a variety of applications with attractive economic and societal benefits. However, societal issues associated with nanotechnology are still a concern to the general public. While numerous technological advancements in nanotechnology have been achieved over the past decade, research into the broader societal issues of nanotechnology is still in its early phases. Based on the data from the Web of Science database, we applied the main path analysis, cluster analysis and text mining tools to explore the main research fronts and hierarchical structure of these societal issues. We found that the research studies fell into four categories: “General Toxicity and EHS (Environment, Health and Safety),” “Medicine and Cytotoxicity,” “Assessment and Regulation,” and “Environment and Ecotoxicity.” These research studies have disclosed much information about the potential effect of nanotechnology on public health and the environment. Relatively speaking, the studies on the assessment, regulation, preventive solutions, and environmental protection are just emerging. This finding indicates that an abundance of effort should be conducted on these emerging themes to maximize the benefits of nanotechnology while minimizing its potential harm. The implications for various parties in this domain are also presented.     

The Relationship Between Competition and Incumbent’s Innovation

A static model is developed to analyse the incumbent’s innovation strategy under monopoly and duopoly. A number of potential objectives for the incumbent are modelled here, including the maximization of revenue, profit, and welfare (which are common among the network industries). Its marginal cost depends upon investment in new technologies and processes. The incumbent chooses its price and its level of investment in innovation. The incumbent’s elasticity of demand under both market structures and the incumbent’s market share under duopoly determine which market structure creates more incentives to innovate. For certain values of these variables, duopoly provides more incentives to innovate than monopoly. As expected, the incentives to innovate increase when the incumbent places greater weight on social welfare.     

From restricted to complex exchange and beyond: social marketing’s change agenda

ABSTRACT

The forward thinking body of social marketing knowledge, rooted in commercial marketing tools, suffers from two potentially interlinked crisis of identity. First, there is the question of behavioural change to address difficult social problems. This embraces the development of co-ordinated multi-domain approaches for large scale social transformation. Second, there is the concept of exchange, the defining characteristic of social marketing yet problematic and the least researched of its benchmark criteria. Recognising the centrality of exchange, we address the broadening social marketing discourse, suggesting a focus beyond restricted to complex exchanges. This paper presents the insights from the application of Interactive Management, a system-based methodology, embracing a systemic change and a complex exchange agenda. Our case study finds the contexts for restricted and complex exchanges through barriers as well as structural and influence maps. Understanding complex exchanges closes the gap between the theoretical and practical debates surrounding contemporary social marketing and the role and function of exchange theory.     

Culture’s effects on corporate sustainability practices: A multi-domain and multi-level view

With a triple-bottom-line lens on sustainability, this study examines the effects of culture on companies’ economic, social, and environmental sustainability practices. Drawing on institutional theory and project GLOBE, we delineate cultural practices dimensions that consistently predict sustainability practices related to each of the three domains. Based on a sample of 1924 companies in 36 countries and nine cultural clusters, we find that future orientation, gender egalitarianism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance practices positively, and performance orientation practices negatively, predict corporate sustainability practices. Further, our findings suggest that these effects might vary according to the country vis-à-vis cluster level of analysis.     

Voluntary disclosure of internal control and auditor’s attestation: evidence from China

We examine what determines a firm’s decision to disclose a self-assessment report on its internal control (IC) system and to further attain an auditor’s attestation on the report, using a sample of firms from the Shanghai Stock Exchange during the period 2006–2010. We hypothesize and find supporting evidence that the likelihood of having voluntary disclosure of IC self-assessment with an auditor’s attestation is positively related to future equity refinancing, mutual-fund shareholding, and whether the firm is controlled by the government, especially the central government. Our study also takes the identification problem into consideration, as our sample includes firms with IC weaknesses/deficiencies. Our study not only makes an incremental contribution to the literature, but also has practical implications, especially for regulators and investors in China.     

Language ability and entrepreneurship education: Necessary skills for Europe’s start-ups?

Language ability and entrepreneurial education are seen as essential resources for start-ups operating in intensified landscapes of internationalisation and globalisation. Deemed as the necessary skills for corporate effectiveness vis-à-vis rivals, this paper responds to calls for increased understandings of cultural components as vital to entrepreneurship and the product of institutional forces. Thus, it explores (a) the impact language ability has on start-up expansion; (b) the perceptions of international relations as based on language ability as a tool for cross-cultural communication; and (c) the role of educational context from the entrepreneurs’ perspective. Based on interviews from European online start-ups across three discrete contexts—Finland, Portugal and Sweden—it concludes that contextual trends regarding language and education are founded upon the cultural-cognitive and normative pillars of institutionalisation. Further, by combining actor-context perspectives, it poses that language ability and education are resources borne from the domestic environment which positively moderate the start-up’s international success. Nevertheless, the notion of learnt entrepreneurship remains contested. Taken together, this study contributes by offering deeper insight into the role of context on entrepreneurial tendencies by combining resource and institutional perspectives.     

Opportunity Identification and Pursuit: Does an Entrepreneur’s Human Capital Matter?

Extending human capital approaches to entrepreneurship, an entrepreneur’s “inputs” relating to their general (i.e. education and work experience) and entrepreneurship-specific human capital profile (i.e. business ownership experience, managerial capabilities, entrepreneurial capabilities and technical capabilities) are presumed to be related to entrepreneurial “outputs” in the form of business opportunity identification and pursuit. Valid and reliable independent variables were gathered from a stratified random sample of 588 owners of private firms. Ordered logit analysis was used to test several theoretically derived hypotheses. With regard to the number of business opportunities identified and pursued, entrepreneurship-specific rather than general human capital variables “explained” more of the variance. Entrepreneurs reporting higher information search intensity identified significantly more business opportunities, but they did not pursue markedly more or less opportunities. The use of publications as a source of information was positively associated with the probability of identifying more opportunities, while information emanating from personal, professional and business networks was not. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.