Stakeholder-Sensitive Business Ethics Teaching

Well-established, well-intended and well-designed business ethics teaching can still have little effect. This is not surprising, as long as business ethics does not undertake a business-school-wide dialogue about goals and obstacles, not least as an example of stakeholder participation. The article elaborates such views in a systematic fashion and formulates a list of thirteen premises and nine recommendations in thesis format.     

Consuming Alone: Broadening Putnam's “Bowling Alone” Thesis

Despite the popularity of Wi‐Fi technologies and social networks, many residents in developed nations are more socially isolated now than a few decades ago. Applying fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis, using a nationally representative sample in one developed nation this study investigates the relationship between social isolation and advice‐giving and advice‐seeking behaviors with regard to brands or products. This study raises the proposition that people who are socially isolated lack the opportunity to give and seek advice, and, thus, abstain from doing so. Additionally, the study proposes that lacking ability or motivation also represent causal conditions for isolation. The study also investigates consumer behavior outcomes of low advice‐giving and advice‐seeking behaviors; that is, pampering and status buying. The findings from an analysis of an omnibus annual survey of residents in one nation support the propositions that the study proposes from theory and are likely relevant for residents of most developed nations.     

On business ethics and moralism

Business ethics as an academic field is, not least, about moral criticism and self‐criticism, of business and of business education. However, the business ethics discourse appears to shift between a critique of immorality (which deserves criticism) and a crude moralism. The article explores the concept of moralism with reference to the relevant literature and illustrates its various manifestations with reference to empirical studies. This is followed up by theses for further discussion and research.     

Competition and productivity growth in South Africa

This article shows that mark‐ups are significantly higher in South African manufacturing industries than they are in corresponding industries worldwide. We test for the consequences of this low‐level of product market competition on productivity growth. The results of the paper are that high mark‐ups have a large negative impact on productivity growth in South African manufacturing industry. Our results are robust to three different data sources, two alternative measures of productivity growth, and three distinct measures of the mark‐up. Controlling for potential endogeneity of regressors does not eliminate the findings.     

Combining Risk and Responsibility Perspectives: First Steps

Business activity can be analyzed through a ‘risk awareness’ perspective and a ‘responsibility awareness’ perspective. However, risk and responsibility are actually interdependent. Risk-taking triggers responsibility issues and taking responsibility means risking being asked critical questions. This article suggests some first steps for combining these two perspectives conceptually. After several introductory illustrations showing how risk and responsibility issues are intertwined, the article looks separately each at risk and at responsibility. Then the argument that such perspectives could be usefully combined is elaborated further from a theoretical angle and from a practical angle, by looking at various ethical issues and by presenting paradigmatic examples of balancing or sharing risk and responsibility related to leadership, to ERM and to insurance.     

Competition to international satellite communications services

Rapid construction of transoceanic fiber optic cables and the successful establishment of private satellite companies with inter-regional or global coverage have fundamentally altered the environment in which international telecommunications capacity is provided. This article presents industry data and discusses market developments which document substantial competition that has emerged in international facilities-based telecommunications. Intelsat, historically the largest provider of international telecommunications capacity, has seen its market position decline rapidly for all services and all major geographic market areas worldwide.     

Welfare effects of the euro cash changeover

Using merged data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this paper applies a parametric difference-in-differences approach to assess the real effects of the introduction of the euro on subjective well-being. A complementary nonparametric approach is also used to analyze the impact of difficulties with the new currency on well-being. The results indicate a loss in well-being associated with the introduction of the new currency, with the predicted probability that a person is contented with his/her household income diminishing by 9.7 percentage points. We calculate a compensating income variation of approximately one-third. That is, an increase in post-government household income of more than 30% is needed to compensate for the clear decline in well-being. The reasons for the negative impact are threefold. First, perceived inflation overestimates the real increase in prices resulting in suboptimal consumption decisions. Second, money illusion causes a false assessment of the budget constraint. Third, individuals have to bear the costs from the conversion and the adjustment to the new currency. Moreover, it is thought that losses are higher for persons who have difficulties with the new currency. However, the impact of difficulties in using and converting the new currency is rather small, and the initial problems were overcome within one year of the introduction of euro cash.