Virtue and virtuousness in organizations: Guidelines for ascribing individual and organizational moral responsibility

This article advances research on moral responsibility in organizations by drawing on both philosophical virtue ethics grounded in the Aristotelian tradition and Positive Organizational Scholarship research concerned with virtuousness. The article discusses the very conditions that make possible the realization of virtues and virtuousness, respectively. These conditions ground notions of moral responsibility and the resulting praise or blame on organizational contexts. Thus, we analyze the way individuals and organizations may be ascribed interconnected degrees of retrospective moral responsibility and blame as depending on the interplay between the individual conditions leading to virtue and the organizational conditions leading to virtuousness. Based on this analysis, we develop a two-level account of moral responsibility in organizations that connects individual and organizational moral responsibility through the concepts of virtue and virtuousness. This is further operationalized into practical guidelines to ascribe degrees of individual and organizational blame, which can be used as a tool by managers, policymakers, or industry regulators.     

Level changes in volatility models

Level shifts confound the estimation of persistence. This paper shows analytically, in simulations, and using high-frequency stock price data that models for financial volatility that feature a separate source of randomness in the volatility equation are less susceptible to this effect. Such models include recently proposed time series models for realized volatility, as opposed to GARCH models for daily observations, which are highly sensitive to unknown shifts, as has been shown before.     

Existence of equilibria for economies with externalities and a measure space of consumers

Summary. This paper considers an exchange economy with a measure space of agents and consumption externalities, which take into account two possible external effects on consumers preferences: dependence upon prices and dependence upon other agents consumption. We first consider a model with a general externality mapping and we then treat the particular case of reference coalition externalities, in which the preferences of each agent a are influenced by prices and by the global or the mean consumption of the agents in finitely many (exogenously given) reference coalitions associated with agent a. Our paper provides existence results of equilibria in both models when consumers have transitive preferences. It extends in exchange economies the standard results by Aumann [2], Schmeidler [16], Hildenbrand [12], and previous results by Greenberg et al. [11] for price dependent preferences, Schmeidler [17] for fixed reference coalitions and Noguchi [15] for a more particular concept of reference coalitions. We also mention related results obtained independently by Balder [4].Received: 25 May 2004, Revised: 19 October 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D62, D51, H23. Correspondence to: Bernard CornetThis paper has benefited from comments and valuable discussions with Erik Balder, Stefan Balint, Jean-Marc Bonnisseau, Alessandro Citanna, Gael Giraud, Filipe Martins-da-Rocha, Jean-Philippe Médecin, Jean-François Mertens, Nicholas Yannelis and an anonymous referee.     

Are high-performance work practices related to individually perceived stress? A job demands-resources perspective

This study investigates the relationship between high-performance work practices (HPWP) and individually perceived stress. Contrary to most past research, which evaluates HPWPs positively, this study emphasizes the potential downside of HPWPs, and suggests that some HPWPs are more strongly associated with enhanced stress than others. Drawing on the job demands-resources model, we differentiate between challenge demand HPWPs (i.e., performance evaluation systems, continuing education) and job resource HPWPs (i.e., flexible working hours, participation in decision-making). We then analyze 197 employees and their work environments, demonstrating that there is a positive relationship between challenge demands and individual stress among employees. Contrary to what we predicted, no empirical evidence indicates that the two analyzed job resources relate negatively to stress.     

Corruption and Banking Stability: Evidence from Emerging Economies

This article investigates the effect of corruption on banking stability using data from banks in emerging markets. The analysis first reveals that a lower level of corruption had a positive impact on bank stability and is associated with fewer credit losses and with more moderate credit growth. It then highlights the importance of bank and country characteristics in identifying the asymmetric effects of corruption on bank stability. Our evidence suggests that stability of banks that are acting in a country that has not adopted a corporate governance code or is not a member of the European Union is affected more by the corruption. Also, in countries with higher levels of corruption banks could increase their stability if they implement rigorous corporate governance practices.     

Designing a foresight exercise for the future of rural communities in Romania

The paper aims to offer a good guideline for anyone who intends to do a futures or a foresight exercise for rural communities. The case presented is the one of the future of rural communities in Romania. The article begins with a brief presentation of the prevailing rural situation in Romania followed by a dialogue regarding suggestions for the possible objectives of a foresight exercise and the methods used (e.g. visioning, alternative futures, scenarios).     

Comparative content analysis of professional,semi-professional,and user-generated restaurant reviews

This study examines the content of professional, semi-professional, and user-generated reviews. By comparing these three review types, this study was able to identify characteristics and factors unique to each type of review. Although, the amount of discourse in a particular factor varied, food is clearly the most important review factor regardless of review type. Semi-professional reviews emphasize atmosphere and décor more than both newspaper and user-generated reviews, while price factors were more prevalent in semi-professional reviews and user-generated reviews than in newspaper reviews. Understanding the varied structures of review types provides guidance for both restaurateurs and review users.