Ethical issues confronting travel agents

This article provides an overview of current and prospective ethical issues facing commercial (as opposed to leisure) travel agents. Industry wide ethical issues include conflicting pressures from suppliers and clients, competency requirements for agents and misleading advertising and sales claims (vaporware in industry jargon). Issues with travel suppliers include calculation and payment of commissions, fare loopholes, frequent flyer plans and the use and abuse of benefits directed to individual employees. Issues with corporate clients of travel agents include hidden preferred carriers or suppliers, client pressure to use fare loopholes and hidden relationships with corporate travel consultants. Future issues include protecting client privacy, free riding, and divergent international business practices. Thomas W. Dunfee is the Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His current research interests focus on social contract theory and business ethics and on developing ethical standards for business transactions. He has published articles in the Business Ethics Quarterly,the Journal of Business Ethics,the Business and Professional Ethics Journal,and the Journal of Social Philosophyin addition to a variety of business and legal journals. He has consulted to a number of corporate clients and to several trade associations.Bruce M. Black is founder and president of McCord Travel Management. Since founding the company in 1980, he has led its growth to one of the 30 largest travel management firms in the United States, with annual sales of more than $100 million. Black is one of the inaugural members of the University of Illinois at Chicago Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame and is on the board of the International Theatre Festival of Chicago. He is also active in the exploration of a variety of industry related issues on behalf of the Super Regional Group of agencies.     

A discrete characterization of Slutsky symmetry

Summary A smooth demand function is generated by utility maximization if and only if its Slutsky matrix is symmetric and negative semidefinite. Slutsky symmetry is equivalent to absence of smooth revealed preference cycles, cf. Hurwicz and Richter (Econometrica 1979). To observe such a cycle would require a continuum of data. We characterize Slutsky symmetry by means of discrete antisymmetric revealed preference cycles consisting of either three or four observations.The first author's research was supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9401355, and the second author's by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 303, and by a SUNY Faculty Research award.     

Convergence of a branching type recursion with non-stationary immigration

The asymptotic distribution of a branching type recursion with non-stationary immigration is investigated. The recursion is given by , where (X _l ) is a random sequence, (L _n ⁻¹⁽¹⁾ ) are iid copies ofL _n−1,K is a random number andK, (L _n ⁻¹⁽¹⁾ ), {(X _l ),Y _n } are independent. This recursion has been studied intensively in the literature in the case thatX _l ≥0,K is nonrandom andY _n =0 ∀n. Cramer, Rüschendorf (1996b) treat the above recursion without immigration with starting conditionL ₀=1, and easy to handle cases of the recursion with stationary immigration (i.e. the distribution ofY _n does not depend on the timen). In this paper a general limit theorem will be deduced under natural conditions including square-integrability of the involved random variables. The treatment of the recursion is based on a contraction method. The conditions of the limit theorem are built upon the knowledge of the first two moments ofL _n . In case of stationary immigration a detailed analysis of the first two moments ofL _n leads one to consider 15 different cases. These cases are illustrated graphically and provide a straight forward means to check the conditions and to determine the operator whose unique fixed point is the limit distribution of the normalizedL _n .     

Ethics in business education: Working toward a meaningful reciprocity

This paper outlines and argues against some criticisms of business ethics education. It maintains that these criticisms have been put forward due to a misunderstanding of the nature of business and/or ethics. Business ethics seeks a meaningful reciprocity among economic, social and moral concerns. This demands that business organizations autonomously develop ethical goals from within, which in turn demands a reciprocity between ethical theory and practical experience. Working toward such a reciprocity, the ultimate goal of business ethics education is a moral business point of view through which one can live with integrity and fulfillment.To everyone who proposes to have a good career, moral philosophy is indispensible. Cicero, De Officiis, 44BC W. Michael Hoffman is Chair and Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Director at the Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College, Waltham, MA. He has received the following Grants: Council for Philosophical Studies, NEH Fellow, NDEA Fellow, Matchette. His most important publications are: Kant's Theory of Freedom: A Metaphysical Inquiry (UPA, 1979); Proceedings of the National Conferences on Business Ethics, 5 volumes (1977–1984); Business Ethics (McGraw-Hill, 1984) and articles in Journal of Business Ethics, Idealistic Studies, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Journal of Thought, The Journal for Critical Analysis, and The Southern Journal of Philosophy.Paper presented at the 16th Conference on Value Inquiry, entitled: Ethics and the Market Place: An Exercise in Bridge-Building or On the Slopes of the Interface.     

Is capitalism still viable?

This essay is an attempt to clarify the meaning of capitalism and to argue that this form of economic pattern will survive in the U.S. in the twentieth century. Capitalism should not be viewed as an abstraction which implies a religion, an ideology, a form of government, or a moral philosophy, but rather the private ownership of capital. Marx was wrong when he predicted the speedy decay of the capitalistic system in the West and when he claimed that a competitive system will lead to servitude and poverty for the masses; on the contrary, the American economic system is a grand success. Part of this success resulted from natural resources; part from America's being one of the largest free-trade areas; and part from the economic system, so-called capitalism, by which we have governed ourselves. The outcome is a greater measure of freedom, prosperity, leisure, and industrial sophistication. These achievements are hardly paralleled by any of the advanced countries of the world. Russell Kirk is a Distinguished Scholar of The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. He is the author of twenty-three books and of several hundred essays. His books include The Conservative Mind; The Roots of American Order; and, recently, Decadence and Renewal in the Higher Learning.This article was originally published in The Hillsdale Review. Copyright © 1982 by Hillsdale Review Inc.     

THE PLACE OF MANAGERS IN INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

The discussion of industrial democracy in Britain has exploded in the last few years, but the result has been to write an agenda which has still to be worked through, not to reveal a consensus which can be written into action at once.     

Project Management Characteristics and New Product Survival

We develop a conceptual model of new product development (NPD) based on seminal and review articles in order to answer the question, “What project management characteristics will foster the development of new products that are more likely to survive in the marketplace?” Our model adopts Ruekert and Walker's theoretical framework of situational dimensions, structural/process dimensions, and outcome dimensions as an underlying structure. We conceptualize their situational dimensions more narrowly as project management dimensions, allowing us to examine more specifically how project management practices affect the NPD process. In our model, project management dimensions include project manager style, project manager skills, and senior management support. Structural/process dimensions include cross‐functional integration and planning proficiency. Outcome dimensions include process proficiency and new product survival. Our empirical analysis finds support for 20 hypotheses, a reversal of one hypothesis, and nonsignificant results for one hypothesis. These results show that projects are best led by managers with strong technical, marketing, and management skills, using a participative style and enjoying early and continuous support from senior management. These project management dimensions promote cross‐functional integration and planning, which are important to process proficiency and new product survival. Our study suggests two broad conclusions. First, it confirms the links in the extant literature between situational (project management) dimensions, structural/process dimensions, and outcome dimensions in NPD. Second, firms can improve cross‐functional integration and planning through various project management practices. Generally, we find that firms interested in improving both proficiency in their development process and the survival rate of new products should take steps to promote cross‐functional integration and to improve their planning processes. While the linkage between cross‐functional integration and NPD outcomes is well established in the literature, the impact of the planning process on NPD outcomes is a research area ripe with opportunity. Our study highlights three aspects of planning that contribute to NPD outcomes. Plans should be detailed, team members should participate actively in the planning process, and teams should be given flexibility and autonomy to respond to unanticipated issues as they appear.     

Asymmetric Network Interconnection

We develop a model of competition between interconnected networks,that allows for carriers to differ in size. Under two-partpricing, we show that because of asymmetry the larger network willalways prefer a reciprocal interconnection charge be set at cost.For sufficiently large asymmetry the smaller network will have thesame preference. Under the assumptions of our model a particularly simple regulation is optimal – if carriers cannot agree on the terms of interconnection, the larger carrier is entitled to select the access price which is then applied reciprocally.     

Explaining Real Commercial Rents Using an Error Correction Model with Panel Data

This paper presents rent models for retail and office property in the United Kingdom. Panel data are used covering eleven regions for 29 years, enabling us to overcome the limitations of a relatively short time series. We use an error correction model (ECM) framework to estimate long-run equilibrium relationships and short-term dynamic corrections. The combination of panel data and an ECM is an innovative approach that is still being developed in economics. We construct new supply series that combine infrequent stock data with more frequent construction data. Separate regional models are estimated for retail and office properties. The regions are then combined into a number of panels on the basis of the income and price elasticities in the long-run and short-run models. Unlike previous studies, we find no evidence of a board north–south divide between low growth and high growth regions. Like these studies we do find a London effect: in London, demand elasticities for space with respect to both price (rent) and income are much lower in magnitude. We conclude that, while the economic drivers may vary, there is no evidence of differences in the operation of the regional property markets outside London. Elasticities for retail and office are similar. Our final models are parsimonious with single measures of economic activity and of supply and always support the use of an ECM.     

Does Corporate Diversification Destroy Value?

We analyze several hundred firms that expand via acquisition and/or increase their number of business segments. The combined market reaction to acquisition announcements is positive but acquiring firm excess values decline after the diversifying event. Much of the excess value reduction occurs because our sample firms acquire already discounted business units, and not because diversifying destroys value. This implies that the standard assumption that conglomerate divisions can be benchmarked to typical stand-alone firms should be carefully reconsidered. We also show that excess value does not decline when firms increase their number of business segments because of pure reporting changes.