Does One Bad Apple(Juice) Spoil the Bunch? Implicit Attitudes Toward One Product Transfer to Other Products by the Same Brand

If people like a product, they will automatically like another product from the same brand even if they do not know anything about it (demonstrated in Study 1). In one sense, this may be a reasonable inference—brands that have one good product may be likely to have other good products. But what if people learn that the second product is actually not good? Explicitly, people act as expected—the second product is disliked based on its negative features. Implicitly, however, people's positive attitude toward the first product still influences their liking of the second (Study 2). This attitude transfer effect (Ranganath & Nosek, 2008) shows that people are able to avoid using the qualities of one product to judge another explicitly. But, implicitly, once an attitude is formed toward a brand's product, other products by that brand will inherit some of the original evaluation regardless of their unique qualities.     

Is there a labor shortage?

Business Economics - A panel discusses ongoing and prospective developments in the US labor market. Michael Horrigan points out that job losses in the COVID recession were heavily concentrated...     

Re-thinking ‘Spheres of Responsibility’: Business Responsibility for Indirect Harm

This article considers two prominent, competing approaches to defining the scope of business responsibility for human rights. The first approach advocates extension of business responsibility beyond the boundaries of the enterprise to encompass broader ‘spheres of influence’. The second approach advocates a business ‘responsibility to respect’ human rights (but not a ‘positive’ duty to protect, promote or fulfil rights). Building on a critical evaluation of these competing accounts of business responsibility, this article outlines a modified account, referred to as a framework of ‘spheres of responsibility’. On such an account, business responsibility for human rights outcomes is conceptualised not only in relation to direct ‘harms’ imposed by business, but also in relation to corporate influence over broader relationships and institutions that shape and constrain the substantive realisation of human rights.     

Managing workplace bullying experiences in nursing: the impact of the work environment

To progress our understanding of good practice in the management of workplace bullying, the authors explored the influence of work environment factors on bullying intervention. Analysis of focus group data from public hospitals in New Zealand revealed factors at multiple levels in the work environment system that influenced intervention. Many of these factors have previously been identified as antecedents to bullying, suggesting that the work environment hypothesis can also be applied to the management of workplace bullying experiences.     

Ontology-based e-assessment for accounting: Outcomes of a pilot study and future prospects

This article reports on a pilot of a novel ontology-based e-assessment system in accounting that draws on the potential of emerging semantic technologies to produce an online assessment environment capable of marking students’ free-text answers to questions of a conceptual nature. It does this by matching their response with a “concept map” or “ontology” of domain knowledge expressed by subject specialists. The system used, OeLe, allows not only for marking, but also for feedback to individual students and teachers about student strengths and weaknesses, as well as to whole cohorts, thus providing both a formative and a summative assessment function. This article reports on the results of a “proof of concept” trial of OeLe, in which the system was implemented and evaluated outside its original development environment (an online course in education being used instead in an undergraduate course in financial accounting. It describes the potential affordances and demands of implementing ontology-based assessment in accounting, together with suggestions of what needs to be done if such approaches are to be more widely implemented.     

The Changing Roles of Industry and Country Effects in the Global Equity Markets

Abstract

This paper examines the roles of country and industry effects on international equity returns using a comprehensive database covering 50 industry groups and 34 countries over the period 1992 to 2001. The study focuses on the evolving process of those effects over time and on geographical differences. The main results are as follows: although the country effects still dominate the industry effects in the full sample period, there has been a major upward shift in industry effects since 1999. The degree of this shift varies across regions and is prominent in Europe and North America, while in Asia Pacific and Latin America, country effects still dominate. The increasing industry effects are not found to be confined to the Technology, Media and Telecommunications sectors and thus are not considered a temporary phenomenon. The above developments have implications for international portfolio diversification.     

Corporate social responsibility and gender equality: women as stakeholders and the European Union sustainability strategy

This paper examines how progress on gender equality in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) might contribute to broader EU gender and sustainability objectives. It focuses on corporations and citizenship, and on company stakeholder relations (SR) in particular. While the literature on SR has previously engaged with scholarship on feminist ethics, and in particular the 'ethics of care', this paper draws upon the feminist citizenship and feminist ethics literature, and upon gender mainstreaming strategy to suggest a more comprehensive approach to gender equality within SR. The aim is to extend our understanding of CSR as a potential policy instrument to advance gender equality.     

Ex-dividend Day Pricing in New Zealand

Controversy continues over the question of tax clientele effects in the pricing of shares that pay dividends. The empirical results remain inconclusive, with variations in testing methods and sample formation the probable causes of much of the variation in outcomes. This study focuses on testing for the presence of a tax clientele effect consistent with prior tests for the same effect using a sample from a particular tax regime period in New Zealand in which companies could pay either or both taxable and non-taxable dividends. The results are generally consistent with the presence of a tax clientele effect in the New Zealand market for the time period, while providing essentially no support for the short term trading hypothesis.
JEL classification: G10; G15