Innovative ethics officers as drivers of effective ethics programs: An empirical study in the Netherlands

Ethical misconduct and violations seriously harm individuals and organizations and lead to massive fines or the dismissal of employees and CEOs. Many firms have implemented ethics programs to prevent unethical behavior but these are often ineffective and take a traditional approach. Ethics officers are often responsible for running and developing ethics programs, in collaboration with other departments. They can, therefore, play a key role in improving ethics program effectiveness. We postulate that ethics officers need to adopt a more innovative approach in order to achieve ethical behavior among employees and managers, and that such an innovative approach requires certain personality traits. This study investigates how ethics officers’ personality traits and innovative work behaviors relate to the effectiveness of ethics programs and normative ethical behavior through an online questionnaire conducted among 110 ethics officers in large Dutch organizations. Structural equations modeling showed that innovative work behavior mediated the relationship between ethics officers’ openness to experience and ethics program effectiveness which, in turn, is related to more normative ethical behavior. Future research must examine the (partial) mediation effects, including other characteristics of ethics officers in relation to ethics program effectiveness and ethical behaviors at work, and replicate the study multi‐nationally.     

How important were formalized charity and social spending before the rise of the welfare state? A long‐run analysis of selected western European cases, 1400–1850

Poor relief in the pre‐industrial period is a much‐investigated topic, but we still lack an idea of its quantitative importance and development, especially in a comparative perspective. This article estimates the magnitude of the various kinds of formalized relief for three present‐day countries (Italy, England, and the Netherlands) in the very long run (1400–1850). The results show that in this period a substantial share of GDP, up to 3 per cent, could be spent on formal relief, offering subsistence to up to 8–9 per cent of the population, with a gradual rise over time and the highest figures being reached in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century. The three cases show a steep decline around 1800, a pattern found more generally in Europe. Next, these results are placed in a broader geographical perspective. This highlights the sharp differences within countries—which could be even larger than those between countries—and the high levels reached in the regions bordering the southern shores of the North Sea. In the last section, the results are used to discuss the possible causes underlying these long‐run patterns and geographical differences, including urbanization, wealth, religion, and social‐organizational features.     

Communicating a company's positive impact on society—Can plausible explanations secure authenticity?

Organizations could prosper by delivering products and services that make society a better place. However, they face the challenge of successfully communicating what they contribute to society, especially if their contributions are closely related to their core business activities. The thin line between genuine societal engagement and the pursuit of profitability may feed society's increasing skepticism about the genuineness of organizations' care for societal issues. This study addresses the question of how a for-profit organization can successfully communicate what it intends to contribute to society while still coming across as authentic. If customers can explain the organization's envisaged societal contributions in terms of characteristics of the organization, they can see more clearly how its contributions fit the organization and will perceive the organization as more authentic. Perceived authenticity, in turn, increases customer loyalty and perceived fit enhances stakeholders' attitudes toward the organization's societal engagement.     

Forecasting interest rates with shifting endpoints

We consider forecasting the term structure of interest rates with the assumption that factors driving the yield curve are stationary around a slowly time‐varying mean or ‘shifting endpoint’. The shifting endpoints are captured using either (i) time series methods (exponential smoothing) or (ii) long‐range survey forecasts of either interest rates or inflation and output growth, or (iii) exponentially smoothed realizations of these macro variables. Allowing for shifting endpoints in yield curve factors provides substantial and significant gains in out‐of‐sample predictive accuracy, relative to stationary and random walk benchmarks. Forecast improvements are largest for long‐maturity interest rates and for long‐horizon forecasts. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book reviews

Abstract

This article examines the cultural field of fitness as a network of producers, consumers, products and practices that has developed around the care of the body through physical exercise. Drawing on a thematic text analysis of US exercise manuals, the paper focuses on how the commercial fitness field naturalizes associations between physical exercise and leisure, and between leisure and self‐work. In particular, the analysis examines three themes and their relevance to our broader understanding of leisure in contemporary consumer society: the management of leisure time; the use of leisure for self‐investment strategies; and the promotion of consumption as the framework for leisure and an accompanying notion of pleasure. The fitness field casts light on how leisure more generally is constructed as a sphere of obligations to make productive use of one’s time, to improve one’s body and self, and to do so through the wares of the consumer marketplace. The cultural imaginary of leisure as a time of freedom from work and responsibility is thus recast, in an age of individualization, as a time of freedom to accomplish the work of self‐production.     

Neoliberalization,Housing Institutions and Variegated Gentrification: How the ‘Third Wave’ Broke in Amsterdam

Neil Smith argues that in the last two decades gentrification has become a generalized global urban phenomenon. His theory is at a high level of abstraction, as it links urban gentrification to globalization, financial capitalism and neoliberalization. With these global processes, all cities have experienced ‘third wave’ gentrification. The theory, however, leaves little room for variegations of gentrification, apart from characterizing geographical differences as idiosyncrasies or as minor variations. This downplays the role of intervening mechanisms that impinge upon the pursuit and social outcomes of gentrification. This article aims to amend abstract theory by looking at Amsterdam from a historical institutional perspective. In Amsterdam, gentrification was particularly made possible by a process of neoliberalization within the housing system. However, as institutional change is incremental and based on layering and conversion, many older institutional arrangements remain in place. These arrangements tend to slow gentrification and assuage social consequences. Nevertheless, neoliberal modifications to the housing system have been accelerating the pursuit of gentrification. Current policies will very likely lead to exclusionary displacement.     

Trade in Services and TFP: The Role of Regulation

What determines total factor productivity (TFP) growth in services: is it services trade or services–trade regulation? To respond to this question, we use four indicators of international trade in services since 1990 to 2005, namely foreign direct investment (FDI) inward stock, services imports, domestic sales of foreign affiliates (FATS) and FDI inflows, to examine what type of services trade forms a direct determinant. Subsequently, we analyse what type of sector‐specific regulation has played an inhibiting effect on services TFP growth. Such analysis contrasts with former studies in which mainly factor inputs and economy‐wide regulation are used to explain services TFP. This paper provides evidence that neither trade nor entry barriers are robust determinants to explain cross‐country differences. Instead, regulations on operational procedures affecting the variables costs structure of the firm seem to play a more important role in explaining TFP growth between countries, particularly in combination with information and communication technology (ICT) capital.     

The Hong Kong tourist satisfaction index

This study develops a tourist satisfaction assessment system based on a dual-model framework and demonstrates its general applicability. The first model concerns tourist satisfaction and its key antecedents and consequences. Structural equation modelling is employed to investigate the relationships amongst the constructs in the theoretical framework, and is then used as a basis for the computation of sectoral-level tourist satisfaction indexes. The second model is designed to estimate an aggregate service satisfaction index and an overall destination satisfaction index using a multiple indicator and multiple cause approach. The framework is applied to a large dataset that represents six tourism-related sectors and seven major source markets of inbound tourism to Hong Kong.     

A Walk in Customers' Shoes: How Attentional Bias Modification Affects Ownership of Integrity-violating Social Media Posts

The number of social media posts that expose company integrity violations has increased dramatically. In response, some companies empower employees to respond to customer blogs, which requires employees to recognize the customer's perspective. We show that attentional bias modification can be used to prime employees of two global Fortune 100 companies with a self-sufficiency or empathy bias. The results indicate that narrative transportation, or the extent to which employees mentally enter the world evoked by a customer's story, mediates the effect of attentional bias on two relevant psychological ownership dimensions: acknowledgment of responsibility and willingness to respond. Participants with a self-sufficiency bias neither acknowledge responsibility nor want to respond. However, participants primed with an empathy bias take responsibility for the customer's case and respond to the integrity violation. We find evidence for two boundary conditions of this effect: (1) it strengthens when the employee perceives the customer's financial vulnerability as high and (2) it weakens when the customer is impolite in the blog post.