Exclusions and the Demand for Property Insurance

The paper examines property insurance contracts in which consumers choose the upper limit on coverage. Exclusions are of two types, and both reduce the demand for insurance of the included perils. A practical implication is that an insurer can raise the demand for fire insurance by offering an earthquake rider, and profit from the rider even when the premia are ceded in such a way that the rider does not raise profit directly. The results do not require assumptions about correlations between included and excluded losses, which is interesting because correlations are decisive in most of the other literature on background risk.     

Considering the Business in Business Ethics: An Exploratory Study of the Influence of Organizational Size and Structure on Individual Ethical Predispositions

This paper explores the relationship between organizational size, structure and the strength of organization members' ethical predispositions. It is hypothesized that individuals in smaller, more flexible, organic organizations will display stronger ethical predispositions. Survey results from 209 individuals across eleven organizations indicate that contrary to expectations, larger, more rigid, mechanistic structures were associated with higher levels of ethical formalism and utilitarianism. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Developing an integrated conceptual framework to understand biodiversity conflicts

Although biodiversity-related conflicts are generally embedded into an ecological, economic and social context, reported studies often focus on only one of these aspects. The practical facilitation of such conflicts typically adopts an equally restricted view. The developing field of biodiversity conflict management is thus fragmented and, due to its generally insular case study approach, lacks theoretical underpinning.     

The role of Great Barrier Reef tourism operators in addressing climate change through strategic communication and direct action

The projected decline in reef health worldwide will have huge repercussions on millions of stakeholders depending upon coral reefs. Urgent action is needed to sustain coral reefs into the future. Tourism operators are recognised as stewards of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a World Heritage Site, and are taking action on climate change, through their business practices and by engaging guests with interpretation and targeted messages. Yet little is known about how tourism operators along the GBR perceive climate change, or what actions they believe are most effective to address climate change impacts on the GBR. We describe a set of semi-structured interviews with 19 tourism operators in the Whitsundays and Cairns, the most popular tourism destinations along the GBR. Using a thematic analysis to code and report patterns within the data, we show tourism operators recognise the threat of climate change and strongly support increased action to address it. Most respondents are hesitant to engage their guests about climate change despite acknowledging an interest, expertise, and responsibility to do so. Understanding the barriers preventing tourism operators from addressing climate change is an important step towards helping them, and the tourists visiting the region, take action to protect the GBR.     

Defining and delivering ‘sustainable’ agriculture in the UK after Brexit: interdisciplinary lessons from experiences of agricultural reform

Defining and achieving sustainability in the context of complex, multi-scale, and constantly changing agricultural systems is a challenge for research and policy. In UK agriculture, the European Union and its Common Agricultural Policy has been a key source of funding for and approaches to sustainability in the agriculture and rural development sectors. The decision to leave the European Union represents a significant moment in UK agriculture and rural development policy, and both an opportunity and responsibility for the UK government to set out and commit towards achieving sustainability goals for the sector. In this study, a combination of ethnographic case study research, focusing on the case of upland farmers in the Yorkshire Dales, policy analysis and national agricultural sector data is referred to in describing experiences of agricultural policy reform over recent decades. From these experiences, lessons for the design and delivery of future agriculture and rural development are drawn out. It is argued that the integrated assessment of multiple sources of knowledge can provide a means to critically reflecting on evidence about sustainability in complex systems, better understanding trade-offs, and creating a more complete and inclusive knowledge base from which to define sustainable agriculture.     

Privacy in Doubt: An Empirical Investigation of Canadians' Knowledge of Corporate Data Collection and Usage Practices

We investigate Canadians' level of awareness of the ways in which businesses collect and use their data via existing and emerging technologies, including facial and voice recognition, mobile location tracking and the Internet of Things. In a survey of 1,005 Canadians, we found that many respondents are ill informed about how their data are being collected and used. Such low awareness of data practices is partially explained by the shortcomings of the “privacy notice.” We suggest further research into alternative methods of informing Canadians about corporate data practices and of enhancing individuals' control of private data in today's increasingly connected and mobile world. Copyright © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Double Movement Ten Years After the Fall of Lehman Brothers

Ten years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the sharpest moments of panic within the global—and particularly the United States banking system—a somewhat strange dynamic has appeared. While the principal agents behind the crisis have collapsed their own institutions, the markets that they dominated, and even provoked what has been called the third crisis of economic theory, their political power has not waned. This theme has been well addressed by some academics such as Philip Mirowski (2013 Mirowski Phillip. 2013. Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Crisis. London: Verso Books. [Google Scholar]), while it has flummoxed others. In this article, we will argue that Karl Polanyi’s theory of the “double movement” offers a coherent framework that is able to account for the history of the last ten years. Polanyi argues that different groups and members of society seek protection from the market, and that this search for protection has been the driving force between historical change. Polanyi does not ignore class; rather, he argues that different social classes can protect themselves in more or less effective ways. We argue that during the last ten years, the interests of globalized financial capital have been able to protect themselves with utmost effectiveness, while all other classes have been trammeled, often not even recognizing how or why actions are taken against the general interest.     

Self-Construal and Unethical Behavior

We suggest that understanding unethical behavior in organizations involves understanding how people view themselves and their relationships with others, a concept known as self-construal. Across multiple studies, employing both field and laboratory settings, we examine the impact of three dimensions of self-construal (independent, relational, and collective) on unethical behavior. Our results show that higher levels of relational self-construal relate negatively to unethical behavior. We also find that differences in levels of relational self for men and women mediate gender differences in unethical behavior. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

The Choice of Debt Source by UK Firms

We examine the choice of borrowing source among public debt, syndicated bank loans, bilateral bank loans and non‐bank private debt. Using a sample of 400 non‐financial firms over the period 2000–2012, we find strong support for the reputational theory of borrowing source. Larger firms are more likely to borrow in public debt markets. Bank dependent firms are less likely to borrow in public debt markets and choose between bank and non‐bank private debt based on maturity, collateral available to lenders and other firm characteristics. These results are consistent with the role of borrower reputation being the primary determinant of borrowing source for UK listed firms.