Traditional vocations and modern professions among Tamil Brahmans in colonial and post-colonial south India

Since the nineteenth century, Tamil Brahmans have been very well represented in the educated professions, especially law and administration, medicine, engineering and nowadays, information technology. This is partly a continuation of the Brahmans' role as literate service people, owing to their traditions of education, learning and literacy, but the range of professions shows that any direct continuity is more apparent than real. Genealogical data are particularly used as evidence about changing patterns of employment, education and migration. Caste traditionalism was not a determining constraint, for Tamil Brahmans were predominant in medicine and engineering as well as law and administration in the colonial period, even though medicine is ritually polluting and engineering resembles low-status artisans' work. Crucially though, as modern, English-language, credential-based professions that are wellpaid and prestigious, law, medicine and engineering were and are all deemed eminently suitable for Tamil Brahmans, who typically regard their professional success as a sign of their caste superiority in the modern world. In reality, though, it is mainly a product of how their old social and cultural capital and their economic capital in land were transformed as they seized new educational and employment opportunities by flexibly deploying their traditional, inherited skills and advantages.     

Some general results for moments in bivariate distributions

The purpose of this paper is to present a closed formula to compute the moments of a general function from the knowledge of its bivariate survival function. The result is derived by utilizing an integration by parts formula for two variables, which is not readily available in the literature. Many of the existing results are obtained as special cases. Finally, two examples are presented to illustrate the results. In both the examples, mixed moments as well as moments for the series system and parallel system are obtained. The integration by parts formula in two variables, derived here, is of interest in its own right and we hope that it will be useful in other investigations. The integration by parts formula in two variables is derived as a special case of a general formula in n variables.     

Do Tax Law Changes Influence Ex-Dividend Stock Price Behavior? Evidence from 1926 to 2005

We test the Elton and Gruber model of ex-dividend stock pricing over a period spanning all US tax law changes since 1926. Our results indicate that price drop ratios (ΔP/D) and ex-day returns are related to dividend and capital gains tax rates in the theorized manner. Consistent with tax clienteles, we also find that ex-day price movements of higher dividend yield stocks are driven more by corporate tax rates, while lower yield stocks are more influenced by personal rates. Finally, we demonstrate that the positive relationship between ΔP/D and the dividend yield becomes stronger as the tax differential | t_d− t_cg | widens.     

Perceptions of the ethicality of favors at work in Asia: An 11-society assessment

We explore macro-level factors that shape perceptions of the ethicality of favors in Asian workplaces using the subordinate influence ethics (SIE) measure. We also expand and use the crossvergence model to examine the cross-level relationship between socio-cultural (i.e., traditional/secular; survival/self-expression; in-group favoritism) and business ideology influences (i.e., human development level, control of corruption) on perceptions of favor-seeking at work. This study examines the perceptions of a total of 4,325 managers and professionals in a diverse set of 11 Asian societies: China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Our investigation focuses on both the “softer” (image management) and “harder” (self-serving) sides of subordinate influence attempts to seek favors, as well as the degree of ethical differentiation across these societies. Key results based on hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) suggest that both the World Value Survey’s socio-cultural values as well as in-group favoritism contribute to our understanding of influence behaviors in Asia. Likewise, level of human development and control of corruption also appear to be promising predictors of influence ethics. In sum, our results suggest that widening the scope of the crossvergence conceptualization of socio-cultural and business ideology influences engender a better understanding of differences in attitudes toward subordinate use of favoritism across Asian societies.     

Sarbanes-Oxley Act and corporate credit spreads

Stock market reaction suggests that despite improved disclosure and increased accountability, Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is too costly and not beneficial. Noting that bondholders are likely to reap the many potential benefits of SOX without bearing the brunt of costs, we examine how SOX affected corporate credit spreads to better assess its benefits. SOX has led to a significant structural decline in spreads of at least 27 basis points. Riskier firms (low rating, long maturity, high leverage, and small size) and firms closely related to SOX major provisions (earning variability, managerial trading, and corporate governance) experience greater declines in spreads.     

An Investigation of Justice in supply chain relationships and their performance impact

Justice is important in improving performance of supply chain relationships. However, the role of justice in improving performance in supply chain relationships is an under-investigated subject in the literature. In studying the joint impact of justice dimensions, the traditional assumption is that the three forms of justice interact with each other in a multiplicative manner. However, this assumption creates a managerial problem as discussed in this paper. We outline a different view of how the justice dimensions interact with one another utilizing the constraining factor model (CFM). We show that the CFM resolves some of the problems arising from the choice of multiplicative interaction of justice measures on performance. Specifically, we demonstrate that an increase in procedural, distributive or interactional justice results in a significant and positive improvement in performance only if the specific justice dimension is the constraining factor in the relationship. Overall, our analysis suggests that all three dimensions are important and a high level of one of the justice elements will not compensate for a low level of another, a view that is put forward by a number of past research studies in justice. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings.     

建立一个符合ISO标准的资产管理方法

说明一种方案,用于开发一种符合ISO 90012000要求的工业设备资产管理方法.资产管理可以称为是一种保证资产从需求报告到报废处理全寿命周期内的可用率和可靠性的方法.它包括设计、规划、协调以及实施维修、改造、修理等所需要的培训、分析和不断改进.也讨论ISO质量管理系统的好处.说明各种技术和推荐的最佳经验,指导读者如何开始研制资产管理方法.