Hospital Retailing

The United Kingdom 1988 Health and Medicine Act offered local Health Authorities the opportunity to generate income from commercial activities unrelated to health care. Retailing offers large income potential, and some Authorities are taking full advantage, employing commercial advisers or entering into agreements with retail developers and retailers to exploit this potential. The authors set out to discover whether there was much potential in hospital retailing, assess the views of the main interest groups involved (Health Authorities, retailers and customers) and see whether any guidelines could be suggested to aid Authorities and retailers considering taking this route. Their conclusion is that there is much potential since there are advantages for all three groups providing that customers requirements were met and that developers avoid an over-commercial environment in hospitals.     

A new approach to assess the normalization of differential rates of protest participation

Quality & Quantity - Research that compares those who do and do not participate in protest over time purports that protesters are becoming increasingly similar to the non-protesting population....     

Public–private partnerships and collective action in high value fruit and vegetable supply chains

Accessing developed country food markets entails meeting stringent food safety requirements. Food retailers impose protocols relating to pesticide residues, field and pack house operations, and traceability. To enable smallholders to remain competitive in such a system, new institutional arrangements are required. In particular, public–private partnerships can play a key role in creating farm to fork linkages that can satisfy market demands for food safety, while retaining smallholders in the supply chain. Furthermore, organized producer groups monitoring their own food safety standards through collective action often become attractive to buyers who are looking for ways to ensure traceability and reduce transaction costs. This paper compares the ways in which small producers of fruits and vegetables in Kenya and India have coped with increased demands for food safety from their main export markets.     

E-business audit: Advisory jurisdiction or occupational invasion?

This study sets out to examine the impact of technological change on the external audit function of e-businesses and, specifically, the professionals involved in executing it. Utilising semi-structured interviews combined with a questionnaire survey, this paper explores the possible implications of developments in e-business audit for financial auditors as a professional group. The findings suggest that the traditional authority enjoyed by external financial auditors is being, and will be, increasingly challenged by IT audit specialists. The role of the professional bodies, responsible for the education and training of financial audit professionals, in particular, is highlighted as key to the outcome if they are to fend off challenges in this growing arena and retain jurisdictional control.     

Consumer biases in the perception of organizational greed

This article extends current models of how consumers judge or perceive organizations as greedy using the theoretical framework of motivated moral reasoning. We show that inherent features of an organization (size and ‘black sheep’ status) and its behaviour (relative frequency) bias consumer perceptions of organizational greed. We use an experimental methodology, present subjects with vignettes describing different scenarios, validate our questionnaire using confirmatory factor analysis, and test our hypotheses using a general linear model with covariates. Our findings suggest that consumer perceptions of organizational greed are subject to three effects: the underdog effect (Study 1, n = 496), the black sheep effect (Study 2, n = 229) and the ‘common is moral’ heuristic (Study 3, n = 249). This is the first study to investigate greed under a motivated reasoning paradigm and to show that perceptions of organizational greed are subject to socio-psychological biases. This study also provides advice on branding and positioning strategies that appeal to the underdog status of an organization or its local origins.     

The collateral value of fine art

In this paper, we examine the effect of implicit seller reserves on the estimation of value-at-risk based on historical asset sales data. We direct our examination toward how and whether fine art might prove an appropriate form of loan collateral for banks and other financial institutions. Using a data set of French Impressionist paintings brought to auction from 1985 to 2001, we control for the effect of works that are bought in-house to construct a distribution of potential sale values that corrects for sample selection bias. It turns out that the downside risk surrounding deviations of auction prices from expert presale estimates depends critically on how buy-ins are incorporated. If downside risk is assessed solely on historical experience with successful auction sales, the data appear to support loan-to-value ratios between 50% and a 100% larger than loan-to-value ratios that countenance the existence of seller reserves. The auction process, however, is quantifiable and can reveal the necessary risk information required for loan consideration.     

Public participation: comparing approaches

Public participation in societal decision‐making is becoming more and more common. There have been numerous studies asserting the benefits of involving citizens and stakeholders in decision‐making at various levels in government and regulation. However, as several writers have noted, there have been few comparative studies demonstrating the relative advantages and disadvantages of different participation instruments. In this paper, we report a small series of experiments that seek to compare the efficacy of a few methods in a variety of circumstances. We argue that, although such experiments provide indications of the relative merits of participation instruments, a much more substantial and co‐ordinated programme is needed. We suggest two components of this programme: first, the development of a public domain knowledge base in which researchers can share, discuss and document their experiences within a common framework that will allow better comparisons; second, a programme of action research in which comparative experiments are attached to ‘live’ participation exercises on contemporary issues.     

Debate: Arm's- length bodies and alternative models of service delivery

What behaviours do public servants regard as representing publicness? Do those same behaviours allow us to meet the challenges of an increasingly diverse and testing civicness? The authors think not. They argue that the existing psychological contract needs to be examined and collectively redefined, initiating a reinvention in how we behave when we do public service.