Testing the bases of ethical decision-making: a study of the New Zealand auditing profession

This paper reports on a survey of auditors in New Zealand which investigates the nature of the moral judgements they make on a series of problems with ethical dimensions. The framework adopted for this purpose is developed from earlier work which identifies a range of ethical principles which may be involved in business ethical decision-making. Auditors responded to a questionnaire which posed, firstly, several questions about the context of their ethical decision-making, and secondly, a series of vignettes elaborating problematical dilemmas which required the selection of one of four possible responses. Data was analysed to determine whether or not it confirmed previous findings in suggesting a predominant ethical orientation for auditors. The results were correlated with demographic variables in order to determine whether or not age, gender, position in firm and size of employee firm were significantly correlated to ethical response. The survey results, on the whole, confirmed the ethical orientation suggested by previous findings, but there were some unexpected results in three out of the ten vignettes examined. Although some correlations were found between the demographic variables and subject responses, the evidence of this survey does not strongly suggest a consistent significant correlation.     

Broadening the Concept of International Entrepreneurship: Internationalisation, Networks and Politics

In this article, the situation where a company internationalises over an extended period without changing operation mode is explored. The focus of the empirical research is the Australian company CSR and its large-scale sugar exporting operations, which developed over a period of about 75 years. Because of the highly politicised nature of the sugar industry in many countries, CSR was called upon to make extensive investments in political networks in order to achieve its global sugar exporting operations. Overall the CSR experience demonstrates that it is possible to stretch the use of a given mode, although this may demand considerable creativity in market, network and policy responses of a kind which illustrate that international entrepreneurship may come in many guises, and may need to be viewed in a broader way.     

Bilateral Bargaining with Externalities

This paper provides an analysis of a non‐cooperative pairwise bargaining game between agents in a network. We establish that there exists an equilibrium that generates a coalitional bargaining division of the reduced surplus that arises as a result of externalities between agents. That is, we provide a non‐cooperative justification for a cooperative division of a non‐cooperative surplus. The resulting division is related to the Myerson‐Shapley value with properties that are particularly useful and tractable in applications. We demonstrate this by examining buyer‐seller networks and vertical foreclosure.     

Women’s investment in career and the household division of labour

This paper examines how partners in a couple share domestic work according to the woman’s investment in career. Investment is measured relatively to other women or to the partner. While previous studies mainly focused on the influence of wages and earnings, we extend them by considering more dimensions describing the intensity of the woman’s attachment to the labour market. We use the 2010 French Time Use survey to estimate a model of household division of labour in dual earner couples. We find that the more women are invested in career, the less domestic work they perform during weekdays, which is partly substituted by their partners but only on weekend days. The sharing of tasks is thus less unequal in those couples. However, women still spend more time than their partners on average performing domestic work, even when the woman outperforms him in career, implying no role reversal in the division of labour.     

The determinants of board size and independence: Evidence from China

China's corporate governance reform offers an interesting context for investigating the determinants of board size and independence. Analysing a large panel dataset from 1999 to 2003, we find that Chinese board size is primarily driven by firm complexity; board independence is mainly driven by regulation. Some governance factors newly introduced in this study also have a significant impact. For example, board independence is negatively associated with the size of supervisory board and state ownership. The findings have important implications and provide new insights into the subject.     

How important is improving food availability for reducing child malnutrition in developing countries?

Do increases in the food supply per person in a country, i.e., national food availability, contribute substantially to reductions in malnutrition among its children? This paper sets out to answer this controversial question using panel data from 63 developing countries over 1970–1996. This paper gives evidence in support of a statistically significant and strong positive impact of national food availability on child nutrition, finding that increased food supplies have resulted in significant reductions in malnutrition since the 1970s despite population increases over the period. However, per‐capita food supplies have a declining marginal impact: their effect is quite strong for countries with very low food availability (e.g., most countries in sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia), but weak or non‐existent for those with high levels (e.g., most countries in the Near East and North Africa). Further, non‐food factors, such as women's education and status and the quality of health environments, are also important determinants of children's nutritional status. Depending on the state of food availability in any particular geographic area and relative costs, these factors may merit greater priority in policies to reduce malnutrition.     

New Insights on US Aggregate and State Level Trade with the China Region

Aggregate trade data with breakdown into related and non‐related party components show that US multinational enterprises use different trading strategies in the China region relative to other countries. US trade with the China region in 2002–2007 is characterized by arm's‐length transactions. State‐level trade data show great variability in state engagement with the region through trade: exports to the region range from 1 to 28 percent of state exports. In addition, compared to exports to other countries, exports to the region are highly concentrated. At the extreme, for some states, 96–98 percent of exports to the region are computer and electronic products. Finally, gravity regressions show that state exports to Hong Kong are positively associated with the relative size of the Hong Kong‐born population in the states. There is no evidence that stricter labor regimes lead to lower state exports.     

Complexities and Controversies in Linking HRM with Organizational Outcomes

Our understanding of the way in which human resource management (HRM) is linked to organizational performance is still limited, despite recent advances that use a quantitative approach to argue for a strong positive relationship between 'High Performance Work Practices' and firm financial performance. These studies are limited by their reliance on a single informant in each organization, and their emphasis on financial performance at the expense of a broader range of outcome variables. This paper contributes to the debate by analysing in detail the human resource policies and practices of one case-study organization over a two-year time period, using a variety of methodologies and drawing on a broad range of informants across the organization. Instead of devising a list of 'best practice' HRM from the literature and testing its impact on performance, we instead invert the question and take a firm that is financially successful and ask what HR policies and practices it uses. We also examine the way in which these policies are enacted. This methodology enables us to show that even successful organizations do not always implement 'best practice' HRM, and that there is frequently a discrepancy between intention and practice. Outcomes at the individual and organizational levels are complex and often contradictory; we question the extent to which is it possible or meaningful to attempt to measure the interrelationship between HRM, at the level of the formal system, and organizational performance, without taking into consideration the role played by the informal organization in the process and implementation of HR policies.     

Managing equal opportunities for women: sorting the friends from the foes

Employees working in Hong Kong were surveyed on their attitudes towards managing equal opportunities for women. Results indicate that gender is a better predictor of attitudes than work identity. Manager/employee work identity has an add‐on moderating effect on some women‐friendly policies but not on others. Out of seven women‐friendly dimensions, women as managers are less receptive of only two: 'training and development' and 'positive equal opportunities'; men as managers, in contrast, are less resistant to 'training and development' and 'flexitime'. The findings suggest that there are three levels of gatekeeping: one, male employees; two, male managers; and three, female managers. We suggest that to help women employees break the glass ceiling, different organisational and societal change programmes are needed to target the different groups of gatekeepers.