Greening the Danes? Experience with consumption and environment policies

Consumer-oriented environmental policies came high on the political agenda during the 1990s. Internationally, consumers were assigned a key role in environmental policies; also in Denmark, political initiatives were taken to promote sustainable consumer behaviour. In this article, the results of Danish policies related to consumption and environment are assessed by considering first, the environmental impacts of the political measures, and second, whether the policies have succeeded in addressing the dynamics behind increasing consumption. The study combines a theoretical understanding of consumption as an inseparable part of daily practices with empirical analyses of three fields of consumption: housing, transportation, and information and communication technology. It is pointed out that policies to promote sustainable consumption are successful only when technological development, economic structures, and information are all in accordance with each other, and this is the case only when sustainable consumption does not conflict with economic growth. A more fundamental critique thus concerns the failure of Danish consumer-oriented environmental policies to address consumption growth and the rising standards for “normal consumption.”     

Cullen, Lochhead and Brown, architects: the business, financial and accounting history of a non-profit maximising firm, 1902-2002

The study which follows charts the business and financial progress of a Scottish regional architectural practice, Cullen, Lochhead and Brown, from 1902-60 in detail, and from 1960 to the present in outline. It examines the firm's origins, the architectural context in which it has operated and the strategies by which it has survived and prospered over its life to date. Analyses of the firm's fee income and sources of work are given, together with details of its financial progress and accounting arrangements. The study concludes with some observations of relevance to the business strategy and small business literatures. Drawing brief comparisons with a Canadian study by Mintzberg et al. (1986), it also provides empirical evidence to suggest that at least some architectural practitioners are motivated by non-financial as well as financial rewards, and points to financial practices which may be characteristic of such firms.     

Diminished or Just Different? A Factorial Vignette Study of Privacy as a Social Contract

A growing body of theory has focused on privacy as being contextually defined, where individuals have highly particularized judgments about the appropriateness of what, why, how, and to whom information flows within a specific context. Such a social contract understanding of privacy could produce more practical guidance for organizations and managers who have employees, users, and future customers all with possibly different conceptions of privacy across contexts. However, this theoretical suggestion, while intuitively appealing, has not been empirically examined. This study validates a social contract approach to privacy by examining whether and how privacy norms vary across communities and contractors. The findings from this theoretical examination support the use of contractual business ethics to understand privacy in research and in practice. As predicted, insiders to a community had significantly different understandings of privacy norms as compared to outsiders. In addition, all respondents held different privacy norms across hypothetical contexts, thereby suggesting privacy norms are contextually understood within a particular community of individuals. The findings support two conclusions. First, individuals hold different privacy norms without necessarily having diminished expectations of privacy. Individuals differed on the factors they considered important in calculating privacy expectations, yet all groups had robust privacy expectations across contexts. Second, outsiders have difficulty in understanding the privacy norms of a particular community. For managers and scholars, this renders privacy expectations more difficult to identify at a distance or in deductive research. The findings speak directly to the needs of organizations to manage a diverse set of privacy issues across stakeholder groups.     

Peace and Economic Interdependence in the Middle East

Can economic interdependence pacify the Middle East? While Middle Eastern countries have, for the most part, avoided the global trend of regionalism, this study provides empirical evidence that Middle Eastern countries with significant trade ties to other countries in the region do cooperate more and fight less. In addition to confirming the liberal notion of peace through trade, this study shows that several conditions outlined by the selectorate theory of political survival must be fulfilled if economic interdependence in the Middle East is to be achieved. A case study outlining Israeli and Turkish economic cooperation is used to show the selectorate model's regional compatibility. The regional applicability of the selectorate theory leads us to conclude that politically liberal countries are more likely to maintain economic relations with one another than with autocratic ones. Since liberal countries will be more economically interdependent with one another they will also be more peaceful towards one another. Ultimately, then, this study concludes that political liberalisation is one way of enhancing regional economic interdependence and consequently the prospects for a more peaceful Middle East.     

'Tying the manager's hands': constraining opportunistic managerial intervention

We discuss and examine empirically a firm-level equivalent ofthe ancient problem of ‘tying the King's hands’,namely how to avoid managerial intervention that is undertakento reap private benefits but is harmful to overall value creation,that is, ‘managerial opportunism’. The link frommanagerial intervention to firm-level value-creation is moderatedby employee motivation. Thus, intervention in the form of managersoverruling employees or reneging on delegation may demotivateemployees, particularly when the intervention is perceived asbeing unfair, undertaken for personal gain, etc. We argue thata number of mechanisms, such as managers staking their personalreputation, employees controlling important assets, strong tradeunions, etc. may function as constraints on managerial proclivitiesto intervene, thus reducing the problem of managerial opportunism.We derive four hypotheses from these ideas, and test them, usingpath-analysis, on a rich dataset, based on 329 firms in theSpanish food and electric/electronic industries.     

Introduction to expert systems and potential ammonia plant applications

A conceptual approach for applying expert systems to ammonia plants, on an off-line basis, is discussed. These systems can be used for plant problem diagnostics, operator training, safety studies, and risk analysis.     

Internal auditors’ use of interpersonal likability,arguments, and accounting information in a corporate governance setting

Internal auditors play an important role in influencing managers’ judgments. Yet, the practitioner literature indicates that, because internal audit lacks the client services incentives of external audit, internal auditors often adopt a “policeman approach” that can lead to negative interpersonal relationships with managers. We investigate three variables fundamental to internal auditors’ ability to influence managers: (1) internal auditors’ interpersonal likability, (2) the information used to support their positions, and (3) whether they present that information in a thematically organized argument. We find that managers agree more with an internal auditor who is both likable and uses a thematically organized argument. We find further that this joint effect occurs regardless of whether the internal auditor’s information is relatively supportive or unsupportive of his position. Overall, our theory and findings suggest that an internal auditor can achieve agreement from managers on important corporate governance issues with this fairly straightforward presentation tactic, even when the underlying information is relatively unsupportive and managers otherwise tend not to agree with the internal auditor’s position. Our study contributes to accounting, psychology, and writing and discourse theories with new evidence of the effects of an argument structure (holding the underlying information constant) on users’ judgments, and how those effects depend on the likability of the source of information. Our findings have important implications for internal auditors, managers, external auditors, and others interested in corporate governance.     

On the completeness of complete markets

We reconsider the allocational invariance of equilibria to different formulations of market completeness. We identify the so-far neglected assumption of sophisticated behavior as being crucial. First, the Arrow–Debreu setting is considered, where markets do not reopen in the future. Second, sequentially complete markets are analyzed, where goods on the spot markets and all contingent one-period ahead commodities can be traded in every state. Finally, complete markets are analyzed, where all possible contingent commodities can be traded at every state. Preferences may be time-consistent or time-inconsistent. A distinction is made between naïve and sophisticated behavior.