A study of the effect of age and gender upon student business ethics

The present survey was voluntarily and anonymously completed by 2,196 students enrolled in business courses at the University of Southern Mississippi. The intent of the survey was to determine whether or not age or gender played a role in a person's perception of proper ethical conduct.The findings suggests that gender is a significant factor in the determination of ethical conduct and that females are more ethical than males in their perception of business ethical situations.Students were divided into groups according to age as follows: under 21 years, 22–30 years, 31–40 years, and 40 plus years. The results of this survey also suggest that age is a determining factor in making ethical decisions. The statistics suggest that those students falling in the 40 plus years age group were the most ethical, followed in order by the 31–40 group, the 22–30 group and those of 21 years of age and under.Durwood Ruegger is currently an Associate Professor of Finance and General Business at the University of Southern Mississippi. Prior to joining the University, he was a practicing attorney and former municipal judge. His publications have appeared in theJournal of Health and Human Resources Administration, Labor Law Journal, Business Insights, andThe Practical Real Estate Lawyer.Ernest W. King is an Assistant Professor of Finance and General Business at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is a member of the Florida and Washington, D.C. Bars. His publications have appeared inBusiness Insights, Nursing Administration Quarterly, and theCPCU Journal.     

The effects of an advertising retrieval cue on young children's memory and brand evaluations

Young children's memory for television advertising is important in order for children to recognize brands in stores and/or to recall the brand name in making a purchase request. Two experiments showed that the use of visual advertising retrieval cue (a green frog as the brand character) improved memory performance and brand evaluations. Study 1 (n = 40) showed promise in the cue's assistance in children's recalling the brand name (cued recall) from the ad memory trace. Study 2 (n = 40) contained multiple exposures to the ad, which resulted in greater free recall and in support for the cue's assistance in better access of the brand name from the ad memory trace (cued recall). Affected ad memory resulted in more favorable brand evaluations and intent to request the brand's purchase. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Head-heart disparity among future managers: Implications for ethical conduct

An examination of the ethical perceptions of business students using Macobby's head/heart traits and a comparison to earlier studies of managers, accountants, and business students is made. The data were collected at three universities that are similar in size, enrollment and degree programs within the College of Business. Results indicate that present day business students are no less ethically inclined than are their business counterparts in previous eras. In general head traits dominated over heart traits, an indication that business schools continued to do a good job emphasizing and developing analytical skills but a poor job of developing the qualities of the heart that are generally associated with ethical behavior. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Restraining Unions' industrial action: A new consumer right

This paper discusses the revolutionary new right introduced by the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993 for consumers to seek a court order to halt unlawful industrial action which disrupts the supply of goods or services, regardless of whether they have any enforceable right to the goods or services in question. Even more unusually, public funding is available to conduct these proceedings irrespective of the applicant's means where the industrial action is organised by a trade union. The paper analyses the nature of the right, locates it within the broader framework of remedies for the non-provision or inadequate provision of goods or services, and assesses the wider implications of the right for consumer policy.     

Models for which the MLE and the conditional MLE coincide

The MLE, CMLE and MMLE coincide in a linear regression model with fixed individual effects. In this case, there is no incidental parameters problem and the MLE is consistent. The equivalence of these estimators is important because CMLE=MLE implies both the consistency of the MLE and the efficiency of the CMLE. In general, we cannot expect to find a CMLE or MMLE, since there may be no fixed-dimension sufficient statistic for the effects, nor an appropriate transformation of the data whose distribution does not depend on the effects. However, we show that the MLE, CMLE and MMLE do coincide in systems of seemingly unrelated regressions and in systems of simultaneous equations. We establish this result for systems in which (exogenous) variables in addition to (or other than) the intercept may have coefficients which vary over individuals, provided that the set of such variables is the same in every equation.The financial support of the National Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.     

DISCOUNT RATES AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Empirical studies provide compelling evidence that economic agents do not adopt the complete range of energy-efficient technologies that are cost-effective under prevailing prices and market conditions. Analysts commonly attribute this anomaly to the use of high discount rates in energy-related decisions-an interpretation that is difficult to reconcile with standard models of rational choice. This paper recasts the controversy from the perspective of economic theory and finds that market failures related to asymmetric information, bounded rationality, and transaction costs are major contributors to the so-called "efficiency gap."     

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT AND THE INTERPRETATION OF STRATEGIC ISSUES: A NOTE ON CEOS’ INTERPRETATIONS OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT*

This paper explores the relationship between organizational context and the interpretation of strategic issues by examining the hypothesis that CEOs' interpretations of foreign investment in the USA are influenced by the organizational context in which they are embedded. Three aspects of organizational context - the global business experience of the firm; the firm's level of organizational inertia (as represented by firm age and size); and the resources available for responding - are examined as predictors of CEOs' perceptions of foreign investment as a threat or an opportunity. Analysis of data from 320 organizations, controlled by industry, shows that global business experience, firm size, and perceived capability are significant predictors of the perception of threat and opportunity. the discussion addresses the implications of these findings for future research on issue interpretation and organizational context.     

Economists and Data

This paper is concerned with one central question: the choice between theories, and the role played by data in that choice. It deals with the uses economists may make of data and the importance of understanding the institutional basis that gives rise to the data - an area in which labour economists have traditionally been particularly strong - and with the relevance of assumptions. It deals with the ultimate need to choose between competing theories (despite the role of conventionalism) on the basis of data rather than retreating into a comfortable 'methodological pluralism'. It considers the role of test replication, with reference to the practice in natural science (and its role there in checking scientific fraud) and concludes that, despite extensive technical problems of testing, economists have to accept a data check if the rhetoric of mathematical technicality is not to overwhelm the need to explain. Parallels are drawn with experience in physics (and the implications of the development of Chaos and Catastrophe for a naively predictionist view are noted), medicine and history (of which, it is argued, modern economists are far too neglectful).     

Racial differences in the feminization of poverty

The feminization of poverty refers to female householders and their children becoming an increasing percentage of the poor population. After examining effects of race on poverty of female-headed households from 1959 to 1989, this study investigates statistical relationships among female poverty, economic and labor market conditions, and transfer payments (specifically AFDC) by means of the Granger causality test over the period from 1966 to 1988. This study reinforces the plausible assumption that policies which would lower the unemployment rate of females and would increase real economic growth could be expected to reduce the number of poor female households.     

Retail pricing: Does channel length matter?

The number of intermediary levels between a manufacturer and the final market in a distribution channel varies from industry to industry. In some cases, none are used (i.e. the distribution function is vertically integrated), while several middleman levels are used in other cases (e.g. the use of a wholesaler, a jobber, and a retailer in the distribution of meat). In this paper we examine the effect of competition on the profit-maximizing length of the distribution channel. We find that the optimal number of middleman levels increases with the substitutability of products in the market, but that there are institutional limits on the maximum number of levels in a channel. The analysis also suggests that differences in the objectives of channel members (e.g. the maximization of total channel profit versus the maximization of each member's individual profit) affect optimal channel length: a goal of total channel profit maximization produces a channel at least as long as one of individual (non-co-operative) member profit maximization. The work thus complements existing research focusing on intra-channel (e.g. cost-based) explanations of channel length, using a framework similar to those investigating competitive incentives for vertical integration in distribution.