Retail change: effects on employees' job demands and home life

Causes and effects of occupational stress have received research attention for several decades, with increasing focus during the 1990s as organizations and individual workers attempt to adapt to economic change. Stress arising from either the work or home domain can have a variety of outcomes in the workplace, and similarly can impact in many ways on relationships and activities at home. This paper reports the first phase of a research study to identify the impact on work and home life of changes in retailing, a sector of the economy which has experienced significant change over the past few years. A qualitative methodology was adopted, using group discussions to allow staff to identify the specific changes in retailing most important for themselves, and then to explore how these changes related to satisfactions and dissatisfactions at work, and their impact on general aspects of home life. The results suggest that the 'spillover' relationship between work and home stress seems to be the most useful in describing the impact of change. This suggests that additional role demands at work brought about by change have an impact on relationships and social life outside work. However, some individuals described instances of 'compensation' between work and home, and independence between the two domains. This suggests that the issue of stress in the home/work interface is complex, and that the demands in each domain may be positively or negatively related depending on characteristics of the demands themselves, or may vary according to individual characteristics of the people in the study.     

Transaction Costs of Environmental Policies and Returns to Scale: The Case of Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plans

Comprehensive nutrient management plans are being promoted to reduce excess nutrient applications on livestock farms to improve water quality. Development of these plans has been shown to exhibit increasing returns to scale but these costs did not include farmer time. Data from a farmer survey are used to characterize the magnitude and determinants of the transaction costs of comprehensive nutrient management plan development in the Midwest. The analyses confirm that the time spent by farmers exhibits increasing returns to scale. Ignoring the hours spent by farmers on plan development underestimates time requirements by approximately 10%.     

The home field advantage: Implications for the pricing of tickets to professional team sporting events

Existing empirical estimates of the elasticity of demand for tickets to professional team sporting events are consistently inelastic, throwing into question the assumption of profit-maximizing behavior on the part of team management. We provide a new theory of team sport ticket pricing, based on the home field advantage, which implies that the elasticity of demand relevant for profit maximization is more elastic than the traditional ceteris paribus elasticity measure. Thus, the inelastic traditional point estimates are not necessarily inconsistent with team profit maximization.     

The Incremental Predictive Information Associated with Using Theoretical New Keynesian DSGE Models vs. Simple Linear Econometric Models*

In this paper we construct output gap and inflation predictions using a variety of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) sticky price models. Predictive density accuracy tests related to the test discussed in Corradi and Swanson [Journal of Econometrics (2005a), forthcoming] as well as predictive accuracy tests due to Diebold and Mariano [Journal of Business and Economic Statistics (1995) , Vol. 13, pp. 253–263]; and West [Econometrica (1996) , Vol. 64, pp. 1067–1084] are used to compare the alternative models. A number of simple time‐series prediction models (such as autoregressive and vector autoregressive (VAR) models) are additionally used as strawman models. Given that DSGE model restrictions are routinely nested within VAR models, the addition of our strawman models allows us to indirectly assess the usefulness of imposing theoretical restrictions implied by DSGE models on unrestricted econometric models. With respect to predictive density evaluation, our results suggest that the standard sticky price model discussed in Calvo [Journal of Monetary Economics (1983), Vol. XII, pp. 383–398] is not outperformed by the same model augmented either with information or indexation, when used to predict the output gap. On the other hand, there are clear gains to using the more recent models when predicting inflation. Results based on mean square forecast error analysis are less clear‐cut, although the standard sticky price model fares best at our longest forecast horizon of 3 years, it performs relatively poorly at shorter horizons. When the strawman time‐series models are added to the picture, we find that the DSGE models still fare very well, often outperforming our forecast competitions, suggesting that theoretical macroeconomic restrictions yield useful additional information for forming macroeconomic forecasts.     

Investigating the limits of competitive intelligence gathering: is mystery shopping ethical?

In this article we take further the debate on the ethics of competitive intelligence gathering, which until now has been very limited. Drawing on empirical research from a mobile telephone company in the United Kingdom, we present the case that while mystery shopping is not the worst activity in which an organization might be involved, it is basically unethical. Mystery shopping involves deception and the obtaining of competitive information under false pretences. Common arguments are that 'everyone is doing it' and that the information is in the public domain. Neither of these points convincingly justifies the requirement for an employer to ask an employee to lie and deceive others on behalf of the company. The use of students and those in low power positions in the organization is a further concern.     

Monetary Policy Rules with Model and Data Uncertainty

In this paper we examine the prevalence of data, specification, and parameter uncertainty in the formation of simple rules that mimic monetary policymaking decisions. Our approach is to build real-time data sets and simulate a real-time policy-setting environment in which we assume that policy is captured by movements in the actual federal funds rate, and then to assess what sorts of policy rule models and what sorts of data best explain what the Federal Reserve actually did. This approach allows us not only to track the performance of alternative rules over time (hence facilitating a type of model selection among competing rules), but also to more generally assess the importance of the data revision process in the formation of macroeconomic time series models. From the perspective of real-time data, our results suggest that the use of data that are erroneous, in the sense that they were not available at the time decisions could have been made based on forecasts from the rules, can lead to the selection of quantitatively different models. From the perspective of finding a rule that best approximates what the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) has actually done (and hence from the perspective of finding a rule that best approximates what the Fed will do in the future), we find that (i) our version of “calibration” is better than naïve estimation, although both are dominated by an approach to rule formation based on the use of adaptive least-squares learning; (ii) rules based on data that are not seasonally adjusted are more reliable than those based on seasonally adjusted data; and (iii) rules based solely on preliminary data do not minimize mean square forecast error risk. In particular, early releases of data can be noisy, and for this reason it is useful to also use data that have been revised when making decisions using policy rules.     

Purchasing professionals in state government: How ethical are they?

A survey of purchasing professionals in the Arizona state government was conducted to determine how familiar the buyers were with the Arizona laws regarding ethical conduct, what ethical standards they followed in purchasing, and what types of ethical dilemmas they faced in their work. The findings indicate that no serious ethical problems exist among the respondents. Employees in the centralized purchasing office seemed to act somewhat more ethically than buyers in peripheral offices, however. Laura B. Forker is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Purchasing, Transportation, and Operations at Arizona State University. She has published in the Journal of Purchasing and Materials Management and Comparative Economic Studies.     

On Effective Interdisciplinary Alliances in European Business Ethics Research: Discussion and Illustration

Cooperation in business ethics research is important across disciplines, to help strengthen the base of a field which is still new in Europe. A study on recruitment interviewing in Germany, U.K. and the Netherlands is used to demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary business ethics research, particularly across cultures.     

Flexicurity and job satisfaction in Europe: The importance of perceived and actual job stability for well-being at work

In this paper we study the effect of a micro-level measure of flexicurity on workers' job satisfaction. To this end, using micro-data from the Eurobarometer survey, we disaggregate the sample of workers into different groups according not only to their employment contract (i.e. permanent or temporary), but also to their perceived job security, and we evaluate differences in job satisfaction between these groups. After the potential endogeneity of job type has been controlled for, the results show that what matters for job satisfaction is not just the type of contract, but mainly the perceived job security, which may be independent of the type of contract.The combination “temporary but secure job” seems preferable to the combination “permanent but insecure job”, indicating that the length of the contract may be less important if the worker perceives that s/he is not at risk of becoming unemployed. Our main conclusions are robust to the use of alternative definitions of workers' types and they generally hold within different welfare regimes and also for different aspects of job satisfaction, mainly those more related to job security.     

The art of tourism-driven development: economic and artistic well-being of artists in three Balinese communities

One route from coastal to inland Bali traverses three communities with different types of art, from mass-produced art for beachside tourists in Sanur, through the village of Mas, home to mask and wood carving workshops, to several high-end galleries and renowned museums in Ubud, known for painting. This comparative case study, based on our interviews with artists, museum directors, collectors, community activists and leaders, arts entrepreneurs, and civil servants, focuses on the economic and artistic well-being of artists in three communities. This well-being approach overcomes a preoccupation with ‘authenticity’ characteristic of older scholarship on tourism and the arts in Southeast Asia. We conclude that the impact of tourism-driven development on artists' well-being varies tremendously even within one region in Bali and that ‘slow’, purposeful arts tourism and forward-looking, hybrid approaches offer the most artistic and economic benefits to local artists. Examples, both positive and negative, provide lessons or strategies for other communities that have distinctive artistic heritages and increasing numbers of tourists.