Ethical Issues in Financial Activities

The financial sector likes to call itself a "service industry". As such, its role is to guarantee the fluidity of transactions which are essential to economic activity by ensuring the best possible use of available capital. If finance is a service activity, it is important to specify what services it renders, to whom, in return for what, and for what purpose. In the absence of such clarification, finance may slide out of control and be left at the mercy of mass enthusiasm or hysteria. This document, which is the result of work by people who hold senior positions in Geneva's financial sector or are external observers of the financial world identifies the issues and suggests some avenues for possible solutions.     

“我们正在寻找中国进口商”

亚洲是我国开展对外经贸合作最主要的对象之一,特别是东盟一巾吲自由贸易区2010年1月1日全面启动以来,中国与亚洲国家经贸合作正变得更广泛而深入。近日,本刊记者集中采访了新加坡、马尔代夫和马来阳砸驻华大使,请他们介绍中国企业在这些国家的发展机会。     

Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media

Traditionally, consumers used the Internet to simply expend content: they read it, they watched it, and they used it to buy products and services. Increasingly, however, consumers are utilizing platforms—such as content sharing sites, blogs, social networking, and wikis—to create, modify, share, and discuss Internet content. This represents the social media phenomenon, which can now significantly impact a firm's reputation, sales, and even survival. Yet, many executives eschew or ignore this form of media because they don’t understand what it is, the various forms it can take, and how to engage with it and learn. In response, we present a framework that defines social media by using seven functional building blocks: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. As different social media activities are defined by the extent to which they focus on some or all of these blocks, we explain the implications that each block can have for how firms should engage with social media. To conclude, we present a number of recommendations regarding how firms should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding, and responding to different social media activities.     

The effects of market orientation on subsidiary performance: Empirical evidence from MNCs in Turkey

Much scholarly work has been devoted to studying the performance implications of market orientation. This study examines the direct and indirect effects of market orientation on financial performance of the subsidiaries of MNCs located in Turkey. The findings indicate that a market orientation affects financial performance of MNC subsidiaries that operate in diverse and complex economic, cultural, and political environments of the Middle East. Moreover, authors demonstrate that the customer-related mechanisms (customer satisfaction and retention) mediate the market orientation–performance relationship. The paper also discusses the theoretical and practical implications of study findings.     

Managing customer experiences in online product communities

Many companies have established online product communities or forums as a vehicle to extend product support services to their customers. Customers' interactions in such online forums with peer customers and vendor representatives resolve their product-related queries as well as inform on their product purchase decisions. Despite the significance of such interactions, there has been limited theoretical attention so far on how companies can manage customer experiences in online product communities. Drawing on theories and concepts from diverse areas including computer-mediated communication, consumer psychology, and online communities, this study proposes a four dimensional construct - Online Community Experience (OCE) - to capture customer experiences in such online product communities, and examines its impact on customer attitudes regarding the product, the company, and the quality of service. Data collected from customers in online product forums offered by four companies is used to test the study hypotheses. Implications for research on online consumer behavior and marketing are discussed.     

The impact of the introduction and use of an informational website on offline customer buying behavior

Do customers increase or decrease their spending in response to the introduction of an informational website? To answer this question, this study considers the effects of the introduction and use of an informational website by a large national retailer on offline customer buying behavior. More specifically, we study a website's effects on the number of shopping trips and the amount spent per category per shopping trip. The model is calibrated through the estimation of a Poisson model (shopping trips) and a type-II tobit model (the amount spent per category per shopping trip), with effect parameters that vary across customers. For the focal retailer, an informational website creates more bad than good news; most website visitors engage in fewer shopping trips and spend less in all product categories. The authors also compare the characteristics of shoppers who exhibit negative website effects with those few shoppers who show positive effects and thus derive key implications for research and practice.     

Candidate gene studies and the quest for the entrepreneurial gene

Candidate gene studies of human behavior are gaining interest in economics and entrepreneurship research. Performing and interpreting these studies is not straightforward because the selection of candidates influences the interpretation of the results. As an example, Nicolaou et al. (Small Bus Econ 36:151?C155, 2011) report a significant association between a common genetic variant in the DRD3 gene and the tendency to be an entrepreneur. We fail to replicate this finding using a much larger, independent dataset. In addition, we discuss the candidate gene approach and give suggestions to avoid the publication of false positives.     

Freeport-McMoRan Copper &; Gold,Inc.: An Innovative Voluntary Code of Conduct to Protect Human Rights,Create Employment Opportunities,and Economic Development of the Indigenous People

Environmental degradation and extractive industry are inextricably linked, and the industry’s adverse impact on air, water, and ground resources has been exacerbated with increased demand for raw materials and their location in some of the more environmentally fragile areas of the world. Historically, companies have managed to control calls for regulation and improved, i.e., more expensive, mining technologies by (a) their importance in economic growth and job creation or (b) through adroit use of their economic power and bargaining leverage against weak national governments, regional and international regulatory bodies. More recently, the industry has had to contend with another set of challenges that involved treatment of indigenous people and their traditional land rights, fair treatment of workers, human rights abuses, and bribery and corruption involving local officials and political leaders. These challenges currently fall outside the traditional areas of regulation and control. Nevertheless, they pose serious threat to the industry’s business practices because of their global scope, threat to company’s reputation, and long-term risks of political instability leading to increasing cost of capital. Industry has responded to these challenges by creating voluntary codes of conduct that would signify their intent to comply with higher standards of conduct, and assuage public opinion that no further action is called for. These codes, however, lack any monitoring mechanism and reporting integrity to assure the public that the industry members are indeed meeting their commitments. Consequently, pressure on the industry continues unabated and with ever increasing calls for mandatory regulation and oversight. This article examines the activities of one mining company, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc., which has taken a radically different approach in responding to these challenges at its mining operations in West Papua, Indonesia. While cooperating with industry-based efforts of voluntary codes of conduct, Freeport also initiated a radically different response through its own voluntary code that would directly focus on issues of human rights, treatment of indigenous people on whose traditional land its mine was located; economic development and job creation and, improvements in health, education, and housing facilities, to name a few. Additionally, the company earmarked large sums of money and involved representatives of the indigenous people in their management and disbursement. The company took an even more radical action when it committed itself to independent external audits of the company’s compliance with the code, and that these findings and company’s responses would be made public without prior censorship by the company. We analyze the nature of corporate culture, vision and risk-taking propensities of its management that would impel the company to embark on a high risk strategy whose outcomes could not be predicted with any degree of certainty before the fact. The parent company also had to confront discontent among the management ranks at the mine site because of cultural differences and management styles of expatriates and local (Indonesian) managers. Finally, we discuss in some detail the extensive and intensive character of a two phase audit conducted by the outside monitors, their findings, and the process by which they were implemented and reported to general public. We also evaluate the strengths and challenges posed by such audits, their importance to the company’s future, and how such projects might be undertaken by other companies.     

Foreign Manufacturing Multinationals and the Transformation of the Chinese Econom,

1 The argument in brief China became the world＇s largest destination for foreign direct investment （FDI）, almost all of which is FDI in manufacturing and assembly, in 2003, before falling back into a...