The customer is not always right

Consumers can sustain markets that are morally questionable. They can make immoral or morally suspect demands of individual businesses, especially small businesses. Even when they do not, the costs to firms of consumer protection can sometimes drive them to ruin. This paper presents cases where deference to the consumer is variously unwarranted, cases that may prompt second thoughts about some kinds of consumerism.Tom Sorell is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Essex. He was educated at McGill University and Oxford. He is on the editorial board ofBusiness Ethics: A European Review, and is the author (with John Hendry) ofBusiness Ethics (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1994).     

景新海：“洋海归”圆了软件梦

2003年10月19日,在大洋彼岸的加拿大里贾纳大学,代表该校最高荣誉的“荣誉法学博士”学位被授予了一位中国人。这是加拿大里贾纳大学继中国国家领导人万里、乔石之后,第三次将此荣誉授予中国大陆人士。 这个人就是中创软件公司董事长兼总裁景新海。     

Making Financial Goals and Reporting Policies Serve

The main. nancial goal of Progressive Insurance, the third largest underwriter of auto insurance in the U.S., has remained the same since the late 1960s. Expressed in three words, "96 and grow," the goal tells the company's managers to pursue all growth opportunities while maintaining a "combined ratio" no higher than 96, or what amounts to a minimum 4% spread between revenues (premiums) and costs (including expected losses). Thanks in part to the clarity of mission provided by this goal, the company has produced an average 15% rate of growth in revenues and earnings, along with a remarkably stable 15% return for its shareholders, since going public in 1971.
Progressive's simplicity and clarity of mission is also partly responsible for another of the company's distinctive policies: product pricing that, while disciplined, is aggressive and highly decentralized. Having invested some $500 million per year developing statistical models for pricing individual customer risks and acquisition costs, the company was among the. rst in its industry to underwrite "non-standard" risks. And aided by sophisticated pricing models, each of Progressive's 100 or so local product managers are charged with adapting those models to come up with premiums for their own regions.
To go along with its strategic and organizational innovations, Progressive also has an innovative disclosure policy. Apart from SEC reports, the company's communications seldom mention earnings or earnings per share, and the company has never provided earnings guidance. With the passage of Reg. FD in late 2000, the company brie. y considered offering guidance. But in the spring of 2001, the board decided instead to provide monthly releases of its realized combined ratio. Since adoption of this new disclosure policy, Progressive has seen a 50% drop in the volatility of its stock price.     

In Search of Theory Development in Grounded Investigations: Doctors' Experiences of Managing as an Example of Fitted and Prospective Theorizing

This article draws on a study of doctors’ experiences of clinical managing to highlight research conventions that limit the development and use of middle range theories in grounded studies. Using sensemaking and the psychological contract as example frameworks, we illustrate how customary deductive evaluations of middle range theories turn grounded researchers away from theory building. As a correction to these conventions, we offer an inductive approach to building existing theory in grounded investigations that does not depend solely on working with frameworks under different empirical conditions. We suggest that forward theorizing is most likely to progress from a synthesis of fitted explanation and prospective thinking that presses at the limits of the data's usefulness. To illustrate this approach, trialled thinking about novel theoretical juxtapositions and alternative sources was used in conjunction with our clinical director data. The value of this approach was supported in two ways. First, a number of fitted and prospective conjectures are offered about how social identity articulates with psychological contracts and sensemaking in role change situations. Second, new light is shed on the process by which particular social conditions differentially modify employees’ social categorizations, and how these inform employee responses to the evolving experience of role change. The article concludes with some tentative proposals for promoting more discussion of theory building in grounded investigations.     

国际贸易中的技术性壁垒及我国对策

二十一世纪是全球经济一体化的知识时代 ,科学的巨大变革已经渗透于人类社会的方方面面 ,而国际贸易中的技术性壁垒则体现了贸易保护主义与科技相结合的作用。并且 ,这种非关税壁垒形式以其正义的外衣、巨大的影响力和借助科技的快速发展越来越成为国际贸易中不可忽视的保护手段。中国作为世界贸易组织的新成员更应在这方面进行研究 ,并制定相应的战略。     

The proletarianisation of academic labour

This article looks at industrial relations changes, conflict and control in higher education, particularly among university academics. It suggests a tendency towards proletarianisation, and a focus on the academic labour process is useful in explaining growing conflict. An apparent HRM agenda and (reluctantly) increasing managerialism are forms, not causes, of change which is driven by funding pressures similar to those affecting other HE systems.     

会计在风险管理中的作用

风险无处不在,如何在管理中规避或利用风险是企业成功的关键之一.企业应在分析风险成因的基础上,对风险计量、会计披露制度、会计信息的反馈控制功能在风险管理活动中的作用进行分析,从会计学角度采取风险管理的具体措施.     

The Multilevel Approach to Repeated Measures for Complete and Incomplete Data

Repeated measurements often are analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). An alternative approach is provided by multilevel analysis, also called the hierarchical linear model (HLM), which makes use of random coefficient models. This paper is a tutorial which indicates that the HLM can be specified in many different ways, corresponding to different sets of assumptions about the covariance matrix of the repeated measurements. The possible assumptions range from the very restrictive compound symmetry model to the unrestricted multivariate model. Thus, the HLM can be used to steer a useful middle road between the two traditional methods for analyzing repeated measurements. Another important advantage of the multilevel approach to analyzing repeated measures is the fact that it can be easily used also if the data are incomplete. Thus it provides a way to achieve a fully multivariate analysis of repeated measures with incomplete data. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

从媒体的社会责任谈《广告法》修订

《广告法》自1995年2月正式实施以来，确实起到了积极作用。但是11年过去了，随着市场经济的高速发展和广告发布量的明显增多，《广告法》暴露出越来越多不够完善的地方。为什么有些凭经验就可以判定的违法、违规广告偏偏有合法的批文？为什么在电视上明令禁止的广告却可以在其他媒体刊登？除传统四大媒体以外的新兴媒体的广告发布是否也应该同样遵守《广告法》？个别广告主利用广告从事违法经营活动的行为日趋严重，虚假医疗、药品广告铺天盖地，媒体在观众中造成极坏的印象，为什么这些违法广告得以发布？仔细归纳一下，无非是广告主大打擦边球，钻《广告法》的空子；媒体的广告经营部门行走在创收压力与媒体社会责任失衡的空间。     

Trends in British public investment

British public investment has declined sharply both as a share of GDP and as a share of government spending since the 1970s. Only part of this decline is explained by privatisation, which transferred some public investment to the private sector. More important was the very large and permanent reduction in public house‐building between the mid‐1970s and the early 1980s. Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the rate of public investment recovered somewhat, but after that time it declined again, reaching a record low in 1999. The most recent decline in public investment has affected a range of central government programmes, and it has not been significantly offset by investment under the Private Finance Initiative. The government now plans to increase investment spending, although levels look set to remain low by historical standards for some time to come.