The Cosmopolitical Corporation

Moral issues have been included in the studies of consumer misbehavior research, but little is known about the joint moderating effect of moral intensity and moral judgment on the consumer’s use intention of pirated software. This study aims to understand the consumer’s use intention of pirated software in Taiwan based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) proposed by Ajzen (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179, 1991). In addition, moral intensity and moral judgment are adopted as a joint moderator to examine their combined influence on the proposed research framework. The results obtained from this Taiwan case reveal that the antecedent constructs proposed in the TPB model–an individual’s attitude and subjective norms toward using pirated software, and perceived behavioral control to use pirated software–indeed have positive impacts on the consumer’s use intention of pirated software. In addition, the joint moderating effect of moral intensity and moral judgment is manifested in the consumer’s use intention of pirated software. The results of this study not only could substantiate the results of consumer misbehavior research, but also could provide some managerial suggestions for Taiwanese government authorities concerned and the related software industries devoted to fighting pirated software.     

Schmerzen erkennen

Schmerzeinsch?tzung im Alter und bei Demenz - Menschen mit Demenz k?nnen h?ufig keine Selbstauskunft über ihr Schmerzerleben geben. Sie sind darauf angewiesen, dass die Schmerzen von anderen erkannt werden. Welche pflegerischen Instrumente erleichtern die Fremdeinsch?tzung von Schmerzen?     

Strategy Development: Conceptual Framework on Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its action-oriented offspring Corporate Citizenship (CC) currently trigger an intensifying debate on ethics, role and behavior of companies within civil society. For companies, CSR raises the question of what may be the “good reason(s)” for acting responsible towards its members, customers or society. In order to answer this question, we face the debate on CSR and its strategic engagement drivers on the levels of corporate culture, social innovation, and civil society. In this article, we provide a conceptual framework based on the analytic distinction of legitimation and sensemaking. The conceptual framework developed in this article can serve as a basis to develop a company’s CSR strategy. It provides measures and instruments to make complex CSR processes more visible and manageable.     

Cash balance pension plans: A case of standard-setting inadequacy

Accounting for and ownership of U.S. private employee pensions has long been a controversial and politically contested terrain. The uniqueness in the U.S. of using employers as the principal provider of pensions makes the reporting of pensions more problematic since the corporate employers providing pensions are not strictly accountable to only the pensioners. Over the last quarter century there has been a marked swing in power toward management and away from employees making it possible for increasing numbers of U.S. companies to switch from conventional defined benefit plans to cash balance plans. This paper provides a “case” study of how accounting standard-setters framed the pension reporting problem vis-à-vis how they frame the “reporting problem” in general. Utilizing various sources of commentary about the phenomenon of cash-balance conversions, we triangulate on the pension problem to demonstrate how current FASB disclosure rules fail to satisfy the condition of neutrality and how those rules have facilitated the shifting of economic risk from shareholders to employees.     

Ethical selving in cultural contexts: fairtrade consumption as an everyday ethical practice in the UK and Germany

Fairtrade consumers, by enacting their political and moral concerns through consumer choice, are at the same time constructing themselves as ethical selves. I will argue that they can only do so by drawing on cultural contexts. While fairtrade is instituted in supranational organizations and acts on a global level, there are still differences on a national level. On the basis of an Anglo‐German study, this paper seeks to map out the cultural contextualization of fairtrade consumption on both a supranational and a national level. The paper identifies the framing role of global consumer culture and an implicit ethics of equitability inscribed in capitalist practices of exchange and specifies how these play out differently in Germany and the UK. In both cases, there are strong references to sovereign consumer choice, and expectations of equitability in commodity exchange have been found. But while, in the British case, there is more emphasis on individual choice and taste, German fairtrade consumers seem to follow more what they perceive as an authoritative discourse. And, while British respondents envisaged the relation to be achieved with producers along the lines of a business relationship, German respondents conceptualized it more as a paternalistic employment relation between fairtrade organizations and producers. Differences will be explained in terms of distinctive consumer cultures, national moral economies and colonialist histories. I will argue that the two national settings not only offer different opportunities and challenges in terms of market success but also pose distinct ethical questions for fairtrade marketers.     

Sovereign wealth funds: National security risks in a global free trade environment

The proliferation of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) has resulted in an unstable political, legal, and regulatory environment for this form of foreign direct investment (FDI). This article explains SWF growth over the last half‐century; discusses issues surrounding SWF “transparency” and host‐country national security risk; reviews the legal and regulatory structures governing FDI in major national economies; examines proposed regulatory approaches to structure the FDI environment; and concludes with a discussion of SWF regulatory policy recommendations addressing corporate governance principles, national security restrictions on equity investment, and investment reciprocity, and suggests recommendations for executives considering engaging an SWF investment partner. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Consumer arbitrage in cross‐border e‐commerce

In today’s internet markets consumers can search for, find and compare prices worldwide. Online, information circulates faster than offline and arbitrage opportunities such as the ones arising from currency shocks are easily unveiled. In this paper, we estimate for the first‐time exchange rate elasticities for cross‐border e‐commerce transactions. Exploiting a new high‐frequency database on international transactions of parcels, we find that a 1% appreciation of the domestic currency increases e‐commerce imports by 0.7%. Comparing the result with traditional estimates in offline markets, this implies a 50% exchange rate pass‐through online.     

Effect of the ban on short selling on market prices and volatility

We examine the effects of the short‐selling ban, imposed by Australian regulators in the wake of the global financial crisis, on the trading of financial stocks. Our findings argue against commonly stated reasons for imposing short‐sale bans. We find no evidence that short‐sale restrictions provide support for stock prices or that they reduce volatility. Moreover, stocks subject to the short‐selling ban suffered a severe degradation in market quality. Controlling for the adverse effects of the financial crisis on markets, we show that short‐selling restrictions increase intraday volatility, reduce trading activity and increase bid–ask spreads.     

Tree farms: Driving forces and regional patterns in the global expansion of forest plantations

People have planted trees in rural places with increasing frequency during the past two decades, but the circumstances in which they plant and the social forces inducing them to plant remain unclear. While forests that produce wood for industrial uses comprise an increasing number of the plantations, most of the growth has occurred in Asia where plantations that produce wood for local consumption remain important. Explanations for these trends take economic, political, and human ecological forms. Growth in urban and global markets for forest products, coupled with rural to urban migration, may spur the conversion of fields into tree farms. Government programs also stimulate tree planting. These programs occur frequently in nations with high population densities. Quantitative, cross-national analyses suggest that these forces combine in regionally distinctive ways to promote the expansion of forest plantations. In Africa and Asia plantations have expanded most rapidly in nations with densely populated rural districts, rural to urban migration, and government policies that promote tree planting. In the Americas and Oceania plantations have expanded rapidly in countries with relatively stable rural populations, low densities, and extensive tracts of land in pasture. If, as anticipated, the growing concern with global warming spurs further expansion in forest plantations in an effort to sequester carbon, questions about their social and ecological effects should become more pressing.     

Minimum nurse staffing ratios for nursing homes

The authors explored minimum nurse staffing ratios for nursing homes using production function simulations. Minimum levels of registered nurse hours per resident day were 0.31, 1.83, and 3.3 at 50%, 75%, and 90% levels of quality respectively. These results suggest that efficiency-oriented minimum nurse staffing points exist, and could be used to inform policymakers and nursing home administrators on better resource allocation and health care delivery.