There is relevance in the classroom: Analysis of present methods of teaching business ethics

In 1988 the Journal of Business Ethics published a paper by David Mathison entitled Business Ethics Cases and Decision Models: A Call for Relevancy in the Classroom. Mathison argued that the present methods of teaching business ethics may be inappropriate for MBA students. He believes that faculty are teaching at one decision-making level and that students are and will be functioning on another (lower) level. The purpose of this paper is to respond to Mathison's arguments and offer support for the present methods and materials used to teach Master level ethics classes. The support includes suggested class discussion ideas and assignments.Victoria K. Strong is a graduate student at Bentley College. She returned to school to pursue a Master of Science in Accountancy after working in the engineering profession for 12 years. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1984. Her business experience includes positions as Mechanical Design Engineer and Unit Supervisor of an engineering development laboratory. Alan N. Hoffman is an Associate Professor of Management at Bentley College. He received his DBA from Indiana University. Dr. Hoffman's writing has been published in the Academy of Management Journal and Human Relations.The authors would like to thank Carolyn Colt and the entire spring 1988 MG520-class for their valuable contributions.     

Vying for time. Work and family

Time--there is never enough of it. There are never enough hours in the day to do everything at work and at home. Today's employees, forced to choose between work obligations and family responsibilities, often feel frazzled and guilty. Some employers recognize these conflicts and are finding ways to lighten the work/family load. They are offering a sophisticated combination of dependent-care options, flexible work hours and family-related benefits tailored to meet the needs of the employees within their specific industries. HRMagazine looks at leaders in six major industries--manufacturing, health, communications/technology, financial management, government and retail. No one can give employees that 25-hour day that everyone feels they need to juggle all their work and family obligations. But these industry leaders have provided a nurturing environment where employees can successfully balance those obligations.     

Common pool resources and contextual factors: Evolution of a fishermen's cooperative in Calcutta

The CPR school has successfully rebutted Hardin's pessimistic Tragedy of the Commons model. However, in recent years, critics have focussed on the inward orientation and lack of contextual analysis characterising the writings of the CPR school.Oakerson [A Model for the analysis of common property problems. Working Paper R86-13. Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, 1986] and Ostrom [Governing the Commons. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990] have detailed the list of variables that have to be studied to understand the mechanics of collective action. However, these factors are internal to the community. Recent critics' point out that the actions of individual agents are also influenced by the alternatives embedded outside the system. These variables are collectively labelled contextual factors.In our paper, we have analysed the case of a fishermen's cooperative in the Calcutta Metropolitan District to show how the historic and economic context shapes targets of resource users and affects the feasibility of alternative courses to achieve the target by determining opportunity and transaction costs of actions. This indicates the importance of contextual factors in explaining the formation and evolution of the resource regime.     

Threshold models for trended time series

This paper presents the theoretical development of a new threshold autoregressive model based on trended time series. The theoretical arguments underlying the model are outlined and a nonlinear economic model is used to derive the specification of the empirical econometric model. Estimation and testing issues are considered and analysed. Additionally we apply the model to the empirical investigation of U.S. GDP.This paper is the result of work carried out for the author's Ph.D. thesis. I would like to thank Hashem Pesaran for his help, encouragement and insights during the preparation of this paper. I also thank Gary Koop and Sean Holly for helpful comments. Financial assistance from the Economic and Social Research Council is gratefully acknowledged.     

A theory of persistent income inequality

This paper explores the dynamics of income inequality by studying the evolution of human capital investment and neighborhood choice for a population of families. Parents affect the conditional probability distribution of their children's income through the choice of a neighborhood in which to live. Neighborhood location affects children both through local public finance of education as well as through sociological effects. These forces combine to create incentives for wealthier families to segregate themselves into economically homogeneous neighborhoods. Economic stratification combines with strong neighborhoodwide feedback effects to transmit economic status across generations, leading to persistent income inequality.     

Punishment,counterpunishment and sanction enforcement in a social dilemma experiment

We present the results of an experiment that explores the sanctioning behavior of individuals who experience a social dilemma. In the game we study, players choose contribution levels to a public good and subsequently have multiple opportunities to reduce the earnings of the other members of the group. The treatments vary in terms of individuals’ opportunities to (a) avenge sanctions that have been directed toward themselves, and (b) punish others’ sanctioning behavior with respect to third parties. We find that individuals do avenge sanctions they have received, and this serves to decrease contribution levels. They also punish those who fail to sanction third parties, but the resulting increase in contributions is smaller than the decrease the avenging of sanctions induces. When there are five rounds of unrestricted sanctioning, contributions and welfare are significantly lower than when only one round of sanctioning opportunities exists, and welfare is lower than at a benchmark of zero cooperation. We thank James Andreoni, participants in seminars at Emory University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney, Deakin University, the 2004 North American Regional Meetings of the ESA in Tucson, Arizona, USA, the 2004 IMEBE Meetings in Cordoba, Spain, and the 2005 SAET meetings in Vigo, Spain, for constructive and helpful comments. We thank Elven Priour for programming and organization of the sessions. Instructions for the experiment are available from the authors.     

How Proper Is Sequential Equilibrium?

A strategy profile of a normal form game is proper if and only if it is quasi-perfect in every extensive form (with that normal form). Thus, properness requires optimality along a sequence of supporting trembles, while sequentiality only requires optimality in the limit. A decision-theoretic implementation of sequential rationality, strategic independence respecting equilibrium (SIRE), is defined and compared to proper equilibrium, using lexicographic probability systems. Finally, we give tremble-based characterizations, which do not involve structural features of the game, of the rankings of strategies that underlie proper equilibrium and SIRE.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C70, C72.     

Cost Heterogeneity and the Potential Savings from Market-Based Policies

Policy makers and analysts are often faced with situations where it is unclear whether market-based instruments hold real promise of reducing costs, relative to conventional uniform standards. We develop analytic expressions that can be employed with modest amounts of information to estimate the potential cost savings associated with market-based policies, with an application to the environmental policy realm. These simple formulae can identify instruments that merit more detailed investigation. We illustrate the use of these results with an application to nitrogen oxides control by electric utilities in the United States.