Accounting students and cheating: A comparative study for Australia,South Africa and the UK

This paper reports the results of a study of accounting students in three countries who self-reported on their propensity to engage in cheating behaviour when presented with specific rewards, risks and penalties. The professed behaviour examined is indicative of the ethical values held by persons aspiring to the accounting profession and is relevant to the design of their educational experiences. Empirical results show marked differences across the three countries, in the ethical propensities of respondents. In all cases, there is cause for concern, that professed unethical behaviour in the university environment might be replicated in the workplace.     

International insolvency law in the Netherlands: The pre-draft of title 10

In November 2007, in the Netherlands, the Insolvency Law Committee published a pre-draft for a new Insolvency Act, to replace its present Bankruptcy Act of 1896. One of the most interesting renewals the Committee has presented is Title 10, which contains provisions concerning “International Insolvency Law”, containing 35 articles, divided over five chapters. In this Article the English translation of the draft for Title 10 is presented, preceded by an introduction of these provisions. The Dutch Minister of Justice has introduce a consultation period which is open until September 15, 2008. Any comments to improve the present pre-draft are welcome: info@bobwessels.nl. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

UK Trade Performance and the Role of Product Quality, Innovation and Hysteresis: Some Preliminary Results

This paper seeks to explain the apparent contradiction in the UK's manufacturing trade performance over the past two decades: on the one hand, the early 1980s witnessed a substantial contraction in manufacturing employment along with a considerable surge in imports and decline in UK exports; on the other hand, UK trade performance, particularly exports, seems to have improved in the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s. The paper shows that the substantial, but temporary , appreciation of sterling in the early 1980s caused permanent damage to both the UK's trade performance and industrial base; and that the UK's relative investment performance, via its hypothesised impact on product quality, helps to explain the subsequent improvement in UK trade performance since the mid‐1980s.     

Monetary Cooperation in Europe and the Problem of Differential Productivity Growth: an argument for a ‘two-speed’ Europe

Cointegration analysis of a productivity-modified purchasing power parity relation supports the hypothesis that—in the long run—the nominal exchange rate adjusts to accommodate different national rates of productivity growth in the traded goods sector. Accordingly, in the long run, an absence of exchange rate flexibility combined with productivity growth differentials is likely to generate an intractable adjustment problem. Because Germany and France display a similar evolution of productivity, this analysis supports their participation in monetary union, whereas a markedly different pattern of productivity growth in the UK constitutes an argument against membership. In passing, we find empirical support for Michael Porter's hypothesis that continuous devaluation can reduce the rate of productivity growth. This also has implications for UK membership.     

Reviews

Social Europe. European Commission 1996: SOCIAL EUROPE: PROGRESS REPORT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MEDIUM-SOCIAL ACTION PROGRAMME 1995-97 (Supplement 4/96).

SOCIAL EUROPE: WORK AND CHILDCARE -A GUIDE TO GOOD PRACTICE (Supplement 5/96). Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

Spatial planning. Healey, P., Khakee, A., Motte, A. and Needham, B. (eds) 1997: MAKING STRATEGIC SPATIAL PLANS: INNOVATION IN EUROPE. Basingstoke: Taylor and Francis, £14.95 paper.

Competing cities. Jensen-Butler, C., Shachar, A. and Weesep, J. (eds) 1997: EUROPEAN CITIES IN COMPETITION. Aldershot: Avebury, £55.00 cased.

Evaluating the City Challenge. Robinson, F. 1997: THE CITY CHALLENGE EXPERIENCE. Newcastle: Newcastle City Challenge West End Partnership Ltd, £15.00 paper.     

Developing post-normal technologies for sustainability

The last two decades have seen the development of an array of techniques and practices aimed at promoting sustainability. For many, results have been disappointing. There are charges that supposedly new organisational approaches remain embedded in managerialist, functionalist and anti-dialogic frameworks that are a significant part of the problem. Similarly the technocratic scientization of public policy is viewed as ill-equipped to deal with the social, economic and ecological issues currently facing neo-liberal societies. In this paper we seek to interpret these frustrations and identify pathways that move beyond this. Specifically, we argue that the gap between sustainability rhetoric and sustainability practices can be reconceptualised through the practice of science as post-normal and through developing the notion of post-normal sustainability technologies (PNSTs). The exponents of post-normal science show why stakeholder engagement in sustainability (and other scientific) issues is critical for the legitimacy and quality of decisions and the admission of complexity in decision-making and accountability processes. Building on this now well-established foundation we seek to characterise, and give examples of, PNSTs as tools for achieving this participation; wherein stakeholders assume expertise and interact with those possessing more traditional forms of expertise in order to co-produce knowledge about sustainability. Recognition of ideological and value diversity is also central to the post-normal sustainability agenda and with PNSTs, the values-based nature of the issues involved is articulated in a way that seeks to bring politics openly into the picture. To this end we identify processes that are emerging in the literature and in practice that will enable PNSTs. These include extended peer communities and multi-actor heuristics, agonistic processes and new characterisations of citizenship that support moves to sustainability. In so doing, we believe that PNSTs offer “clumsy solutions” for “wicked problems” that can be engaged with in both the research and practice arenas as significant contributions to addressing urgent needs.     

Local air pollution and global climate change: A combined cost-benefit analysis

This article presents the findings of a combined cost-benefit analysis of local air pollution and global climate change, two subjects that are usually studied separately. Yet these distinct environmental problems are closely related, since they are both driven by the nature of present energy production and consumption patterns. Our study demonstrates the mutual relevance of, and interaction between, policies designed to address these two environmental challenges individually. Given the many dimensions air pollution control and climate change management have in common, it is surprising that they have only little been analyzed in combination so far. We attempt to cover at least part of the existing gap in the literature by assessing how costs and benefits of technologies and strategies that jointly tackle these two environmental problems can best be balanced. By using specific technological options that cut down local air pollution, e.g. related to particulate emissions, one may concurrently reduce CO₂ emissions and thus contribute to diminishing global climate change. Inversely, some of the long-term climate change strategies simultaneously improve the quality of air in the short run. We have extended the well-established MERGE model by including emissions of particulate matter, and show that integrated environmental policies generate net global welfare benefits. We also demonstrate that the discounted benefits of local air pollution reduction significantly outweigh those of global climate change mitigation, at least by a factor of 2, but in most cases of our sensitivity analysis much more. Still, we do not argue to only restrict energy policy today to what should be our first priority, local air pollution control, and wait with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, we propose to design policies that simultaneously address these issues, as their combination creates an additional climate change bonus. As such, climate change mitigation proves an ancillary benefit of air pollution reduction, rather than the other way around.     

Friends with benefits: Behavioral and fMRI studies on the effect of friendship reminders on self-control for compulsive and non-compulsive buyers

Does the real or imagined presence of friends invariantly drive consumers to engage in disinhibited behavior, and give in to the “urge to splurge” in the face of consumption temptations? Or might there be situations in which being with friends or even merely thinking of friends or the friendships we have with them can actually improve self-control?In five studies, using a unique combination of controlled experiments examining overt consumer behavior and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we propose and show that the extent to which consumers identify a goal conflict between giving in to buying temptations on the one hand and the perceived consequences for maintaining satisfactory relationships with close friends on the other is a critical mediator of whether friendship reminders decrease or increase self-control. We further show that such a goal conflict is most likely for consumers with a chronic, compulsive tendency for uncontrolled, disinhibited acquisition and consumption—for consumers classified as compulsive buyers. For their non-compulsive counterparts, in contrast, acts of acquisition and consumption, even incidental disinhibited ones, are perceived to be less problematic in light of their friendships and hence do not induce a goal conflict to the same extent. Our findings provide insights into social influences on self-control and identify the concept of friendship reminders as a way to reduce a common type of dysfunctional consumer behavior. In addition to enhancing consumer well-being, reducing compulsive buying will substantially reduce handling costs for organizations. Hence, the findings are of academic, societal and managerial relevance.