Does the international financial system discriminate against developing countries?

The last 15 years have seen broad operational changes in the international system, accompanied since the beginning of the 1980s by a change in economic philosophy in a number of important industrial countries. Professor Bird examines the effects of various features of the post-Bretton Woods era on developing countries and proposes some reforms for the future.     

The benefits of special drawing rights for less developed countries

Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) have existed for almost 10 years. This paper examines the implications of the SDR facility for LDCs. First, it is shown that the distribution formula for SDRs may be inappropriate. Second, the paper documents the way in which LDCs have used their allocated SDRs. Third, an attempt is made to estimate approximately the value of the benefits derived by LDCs from the SDR scheme. It is shown that the scheme could have been modified to yield further benefits for LDCs.     

Performance implications of active management of institutional mutual funds

We use information on institutional US mutual funds to examine the performance implications of the decisions they make when actively implementing their investment processes. Our findings show that the success of active fund managers' stock selection decisions is influenced both by the aggressiveness with which they implement their processes and also the style tilts incorporated into their active positions. Our findings provide useful insights into both where one might best look when choosing an active manager and also suggest possible profitable investment strategies.     

Fairness in International Trade and Investment: North American Perspectives

In this article, we examine an important but relatively under-researched form of corporate social responsibility, namely, employer support for employee voluntary activity. Using Canadian data, we examine two questions. First, we analyze the impacts of employer support on the total number of hours volunteered and on the voluntary activities which are undertaken. Second, we examine how employer support is distributed between male and female employees. Our results indicate that employer support is associated with a greater amount of volunteer activity by both men and women employees and in a wide range of voluntary activities. However, we also find that women are less likely to receive employer support than men and are less likely to receive support in the form of flexible work hours and time-off. These results are puzzling given that women typically face more binding time constraints than men. We conclude the paper by discussing how employer policies might be changed to address this finding.     

A typology of international human resource management in Japanese multinational corporations: Organizational implications

This article outlines a typology of approaches to the design of international human resource management (HRM) systems in multinational corporations based on a ten-year study of Japanese affiliates in the United States, Europe, and Asia. After outlining four different approaches based on the dimensions of parent company imprint, problem attribution, and diffusion of HRM innovations, the article discusses the implications for organizations in the areas of flexibility, organizational learning, integration and coordination, and cost. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Banks,Financial Liberalisation and Financial Crises in Emerging Markets

The East Asian financial crisis has raised a series of important issues. Amongst them is the question of the role of the banking sector and financial liberalisation in contributing to financial crises. How do weaknesses in the domestic banking sector, when combined with both domestic and international financial liberalisation, engender currency crises? What is lacking in the literature is a simple conceptual framework within which these connections can be conceptualised and drawn out and in which the role of banks is explicitly discussed. This paper seeks to provide just such a framework. Within it, international financial liberalisation can be seen as fuelling a boom in domestic credit, which leads to acute balance sheet problems for domestic banks, and exposes the country concerned to a currency crisis in the event of a sudden reversal of capital inflows, which banking weaknesses may itself trigger.     

How Do Managers Make Teleological Evaluations in Ethical Dilemmas? Testing Part of and Extending the Hunt-Vitell Model

A study involving purchasing managers was conducted to test specific Hunt-Vitell theoretical propositions concerning the determinants of managers' teleological evaluations. We extended the Hunt-Vitell model by developing a new integrative construct, namely the desirability of consequences to self versus others. We hypothesized that desirability of consequences affects teleological evaluations in that the more desirable the consequences of a particular action, the more likely managers evaluate that action positively. The results of the present study provided support for this hypothesis. Furthermore, we extended the Hunt-Vitell model by developing a new integrative construct, namely the desirability of consequences of self versus others. We hypothesized that cognitive moral development moderates the relationship between the desirability of consequences of self versus others and teleological evaluation. The results failed to support this hypothesis. We explained the lack of support in terms of the level of aggregation of the data, the possibility of the confounding effect of respondents' sensitivity to ethical issues, and the possibility that deontological evaluations confounded the respondents' teleological judgments. Future research and managerial implications of the findings were also discussed.