Surveillance in Employment: The Case of Teleworking

This paper looks at various ways teleworking can be linked to surveillance in employment, making recommendations about how telework can be made more acceptable. Technological methods can allow managers to monitor the actions of teleworkers as closely as they could monitor "on site" workers, and in more detail than the same managers could traditionally. Such technological methods of surveillance or monitoring have been associated with low employee morale. For an employer to ensure health and safety may require inspections of the teleworkplace. When the teleworkplace is in the home, there may be an invasion of privacy associated with such inspections, that could be perceived and resented as surveillance. A problem of telework is that teleworkers may feel isolated. Methods to counter this could be associated with further forms of surveillance, and fear of such surveillance may inhibit them from reaching their potential as methods to counter isolation. The idea that teleworking may also allow communications to be intercepted by third parties is also looked at. Some, but not all, of the issues considered are applicable, to some extent, in non-teleworked employment situations. The overall conclusion of the paper is that the potential exists for surveillance to be associated with telework. Fears of such surveillance may turn actors against telework. However, much can be done to reduce such fears.     

Academy of Marketing Conference 2006 "Marketing Excellence"

Within business to business relationships it is not uncommon for some of the parties to be perceived as exercising power over others. A question that therefore needs to be addressed is why some parties appear to be willing to accept subservient roles. This paper will consider the possibility that an apparently subservient role may be acceptable to a party for two reasons. First, the party may not perceive their situation as being inequitable. Second, the party may believe that, at least in the short-term, there is no realistic alternative other than to accept a subservient role.     

Six Kleptocratic Continua

This article suggests that criminality in leaders might best be understood by ethicists as a matter of degree. Leaders may take without legitimate claim a variety of tangible or intangible goods including ideas and personal health. The extent to which any such act should be disfavoured is subject to debate. Moreover, both theft and control may be understood as continuous phenomena. Kleptocratic regimes within workplace or family may foster in people a habit of accepting similar treatment from economic and political leaders at all levels. Forms of governance may be arranged on a continuum from those that serve to those that exploit their subjects. Responses to kleptocratic regimes range from acceptance through unconscious and conscious resistance to violent revolt.     

To be or not to be in monetary union: A synthesis

Monetary union can benefit countries suffering from policy credibility problems if it eliminates the inflation bias and also allows for more efficient management of certain shocks. But it also carries costs as some stabilization may be feasible even in the absence of credibility, and this may be more than what an individual country can hope for in a monetary union. In this paper, we combine the stabilization and credibility branches of the currency union literature and construct a simple welfare criterion that can be used to evaluate alternative monetary arrangements. We produce examples where monetary union may be welfare improving even for low-modest levels of inflation bias (2-3%) as long as business cycles are not too a-synchronized across countries.     

It Is Time to Reexamine the Role of Stock Markets in Developing Economies

Although the many perceived benefits of a stock market may have led to their rapid formation and development aspirations across economies, emerging findings that stock markets may not be as useful as previously thought, even a detraction in the case of some developing economies, raises the question of how practical stock markets may be in different situations. In light of the foregoing and using Fiji as an example, this study argues that it is indeed time to reexamine the role of stock markets in developing economies with a view to restructuring the financial system for improved efficiency and effectiveness.     

Theoretical Applicability vs. Environmental Straitjacket:

This article is concerned with the application of the marketing audit, a commercially derived marketing tool, to a public sector non-profit organization. The paper reviews the literature extensively before turning to research findings derived from interviews with internal and external publics in the organizational environment. While findings indicate that a marketing audit would indeed be useful in underpinning marketing orientation, possibly as a prelude to marketing planning, they also show that organizational constraints may militate against adoption of marketing orientation. The article concludes by suggesting that marketing itself, as a generic paradigm, may not be an appropriate mechanism for organizations like ERS (Employment Rehabilitation Service). Rather ERS, and its private sector counterparts, may require the development of an entirely new discipline which may be more applicable than marketing.     

Advertising competition and industry channel structure

The introduction of independent retailers has long been recognized as a buffer that alleviates the price competition between channels. In this paper, we argue that this effect may be counter-balanced if the manufacturers compete along dimensions that differ from prices (such as advertising). We find that delegating to retailers may intensify other non-price competition between the manufacturers and therefore make the manufacturers worse off. Our analysis shows that the “retailer buffer” may be a two-edged sword and thus suggests that channel structure may critically depend on the specific dimensions along which the manufacturers compete with each other.     

Structuring On-the-job Training: Report of a Multiple Case Study

Structured on-the-job training (OJT) has gained the attention of the business world as well as of researchers. The project discussed in this article contains a series of case studies of on-the-job training programmes in seven Dutch firms. Several dimensions are found to be useful in discriminating between types of OJT activities and between ways of structuring OJT. Trainee activities are either of a preparatory nature or a real work character. Assignments may be focussed on skill application, individualised study, or experiential learning. Jobs may be broken down to a greater or lesser extent and supervisors may have either a directive or a coaching role.     

Informal firms in developing countries: entrepreneurial stepping stone or consolation prize?

The potential dynamic benefits of a firm having the option to adopt informal status are analysed. Informality may be a stepping stone, without which formality may never be achieved. This result is obtained for a broad range of realistic parameter values, suggesting a potential dynamic case for government support of informal firms. Informality may alternatively play a converse role as a consolation prize, with a firm only entering an industry (formally) because it recognizes that if profitability is disappointing, it can switch to informality. However, this result is obtained for a range of parameter values so narrow as to be of no practical significance.     

Arbeiten 4.0 — Folgen der Digitalisierung für die Arbeitswelt

Digitalisation will not only lead to the disappearance of jobs, the creation of new jobs and changing skill requirements in many existing jobs. It also leads to fundamental challenges for existing qualification systems as well as labour law and labour relations. New digital technologies pervasively change the content and organisation of work. They may have an impact on the actual weekly working time hours and the adoption of self-managed working time systems. The consequences, however, may differ for each worker. Accordingly, economic and policy conclusions cannot be derived for the labour market as a whole. Workers‘qualifications need not only to be adapted to changing occupational tasks. Work intensification and increasing communication flows have to be addressed as well. Furthermore, adequate human resources policies can foster the proper use of new flexible work arrangements. Crowdworking as a specific form of flexible work, however, has to be primarily integrated in existing labour legislation. That is one opinion, another author considers the forecasts doomsday prophecies that call for political action or amending the regulative framework. And he suggests that the characteristics of the digital transformation of work may mainly be firm-specific. In a social-scientific perspective there is no deterministic relationship between technology and work but the development of work has to be regarded as a strategic and political design project.     

The strategic and operational roles of human resources an emerging model

Human-resources management may be most effective when decisions are made as close as possible to the point where the decision will be implemented.     

Whistle Blowers: Saints of Secular Culture

Neither the corporate view of whistle blowers as tattle-tales and traitors, nor the more sympathethic understanding of them as tragic heroes battling corrupt or abused systems captures what is at stake in whistle blowing at its most distinctive. The courage, determination and sacrifice of the most ardent whistle blowers suggests that they only begin to be appreciated when they are seen as the saints of secular culture. Although some whistle blowers may be attempting to deflect attention from their own deficiencies and others may be disgruntled employees, the most serious instances involve a level of moral sensitivity that approaches religious proportions that are baffling for a culture that has dispensed with sainthood.     

PRICING DERIVATIVES ON MULTISCALE DIFFUSIONS: AN EIGENFUNCTION EXPANSION APPROACH

Using tools from spectral analysis, singular and regular perturbation theory, we develop a systematic method for analytically computing the approximate price of a large class of derivative‐assets. The payoff of the derivative‐assets may be path‐dependent. In addition, the process underlying the derivatives may exhibit killing (i.e., jump to default) as well as combined local/nonlocal stochastic volatility. The nonlocal component of volatility may be multiscale, in the sense that it may be driven by one fast‐varying and one slow‐varying factor. The flexibility of our modeling framework is contrasted by the simplicity of our method. We reduce the derivative pricing problem to that of solving a single eigenvalue equation. Once the eigenvalue equation is solved, the approximate price of a derivative can be calculated formulaically. To illustrate our method, we calculate the approximate price of three derivative‐assets: a vanilla option on a defaultable stock, a path‐dependent option on a nondefaultable stock, and a bond in a short‐rate model.     

Russia's true business performance: Inviting to international business?

Russia may be twice as inviting to international businesses as has been previously thought, because its gross domestic product (GDP) and its consumer demand may be twice as large as has been reported in the official Russian statistics of Goskomstat. This is because as much as 90 percent of the business activity of Russian companies, especially small private-sector companies, is never reported to Goskomstat and therefore never included in Russia 's data about GDP and per capita income (PCI). This vibrant and growing economy, unearthed in this study by carefully structured qualitative research tools, implies solid, but dangerous and compromising, opportunities for international business.     

The effect of product visibility upon the relationship between price and quality

Previous studies have suggested that the relationship between price and quality for certain types of consumer goods often is not positive. Investigators have hypothesized that the experience of value, or the relationship between quality and price, may be less relevant for product categories in which a consumer's self-worth may be elevated through the act of purchase. Brands within such product categories would appear to be particularly susceptible to image building strategies involving the use of premium pricing to infer high quality. This study examined the relationship between price and objective quality from 1961 through 1978 for 878 brands of 54 products within three broad product categories of toilet articles, cosmetics, and clothing. Generally, the relationship for products within these categories was weak which suggests that marketing managers of some brands may well be basing prices on intangible as well as tangible values.     

Explicit Donations and Inferred Endorsements

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, while not necessarily intended to constitute an endorsement of the brand by the participating nonprofit organization, may nonetheless be perceived by consumers as such. Our experimental findings of two common types of CSR initiatives (licensing associations and cause-related marketing) suggest that not only can the method of presentation of CSR initiatives in advertising result in perceptions of nonprofit endorsement, but also may be entirely confused with explicit seals of approval. Heightened processing motivation either fails to correct the misperception of nonprofit endorsement or may even enhance its perception as a result of the presentation of the CSR initiative in an advertisement. Level of fit between the nonprofit and for-profit brand may also result in increased perception of endorsement. Given the positive effects of third-party endorsements, our results suggest that some CSR initiatives may result in consumer inferences that are inaccurate but desirable for the company, even while these inferences have potentially negative consequences for the nonprofit.     

Radio Station Managers' Perceptions of Organizational Effectiveness

The organizational effectiveness menu was used as a questionnaire with a sample of 26 radio station general managers. Each respondent was asked to rate the important of 60 effectiveness criteria and to choose the most important category. The results indicate that radio station general managers perceive the personnel and service/production categories as important in assessing organizational effectiveness, but that some also view selected financial criteria as important. Those managers whose stations have high Arbitron ratings and are larger in size (number of employees), place greater emphasis on profitability and less emphasis on personnel. The conclusion is that the larger radio stations may be overemphasizing short-term financial matters and neglecting criteria which may ensure adaptability and long-term survival, while smaller stations may be neglecting financial criteria which could limit their short-term survival.     

The Ethics of International Transfer Pricing

This paper addresses the conflicting environmental interests of a firm and the community, an important stakeholder. The short-term profit maximization objective of a firm may stand in contrast with what the community wants – a "safe and clean environment". This paper argues that the information regarding the environmental impact of a firm's products, processes, and waste may be asymmetrically distributed between the firm and the community. The resultant information asymmetry may influence the probability of a firm acting opportunistically, and ultimately, a firm's ethical behavior. The paper identifies information asymmetry between a firm and community, as well as that within the community. The perceived information asymmetry across various community segments may perhaps be a determinant of environmental discrimination. The paper further contends that information asymmetry may diminish in the long run. Finally it examines the implications of information asymmetry for firms and government policy.     

Environmental Ethics and Information Asymmetry among Organizational Stakeholders

This paper addresses the conflicting environmental interests of a firm and the community, an important stakeholder. The short-term profit maximization objective of a firm may stand in contrast with what the community wants – a "safe and clean environment". This paper argues that the information regarding the environmental impact of a firm's products, processes, and waste may be asymmetrically distributed between the firm and the community. The resultant information asymmetry may influence the probability of a firm acting opportunistically, and ultimately, a firm's ethical behavior. The paper identifies information asymmetry between a firm and community, as well as that within the community. The perceived information asymmetry across various community segments may perhaps be a determinant of environmental discrimination. The paper further contends that information asymmetry may diminish in the long run. Finally it examines the implications of information asymmetry for firms and government policy.