My Favorite Teacher

Teaching Business Ethics -     

THE URBAN–RURAL INCOME GAP AND INEQUALITY IN CHINA

Using new household survey data for 1995 and 2002, we investigate the size of China's urban–rural income gap, the gap's contribution to overall inequality in China, and the factors underlying the gap. Our analysis improves on past estimates by using a fuller measure of income, adjusting for spatial price differences and including migrants. Our methods include inequality decomposition by population subgroup and the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition. Several key findings emerge. First, the adjustments substantially reduce China's urban–rural income gap and its contribution to inequality. Nevertheless, the gap remains large and has increased somewhat over time. Second, after controlling for household characteristics, location of residence remains the most important factor underlying the urban–rural income gap. The only household characteristic that contributes substantially to the gap is education. Differences in the endowments of, and returns to, other household characteristics such as family size and composition, landholdings, and Communist Party membership are relatively unimportant.     

AUTHORITY: A MONOPOLY RUNNING AMOK IN BUSINESS1

This article show why Authority ‐ in the form of the Competition Commission ‐ produces harmful consequences when it seeks to impose idealised notions of competition on real‐world markets. The recent anti‐trust measures taken against Microsoft are a classic example of such regulatory failure. Paradoxically, monopolistic behaviour is characteristic of the provision of services by the public sector but draws no response from those authorities charged with curbing monopoly power.     

Bank Mergers and Small Firm Finance: Evidence from Lender Liability

As a merger approaches, the value of repeat business for the target bank can drop sharply, so loan relationships between this bank and small businesses are often disrupted. Small firms sometimes experience serious value destruction as a consequence of this sudden lack of credit. This paper shows that lender liability may result from bank mergers and bankers involved in mergers often engage in aggressive, scorched‐earth defense tactics to discourage further litigation. I summarize six lender liability cases to illustrate these points. Bank mergers have been shown to reduce credit availability in a number of studies. Since small firms depend on credit for their daily existence, owners of small firms do have a reason to fear a merger of their bank with a larger institution. Analyzing merger effects with survey data of firms obtained after a bank merger, an empirical strategy used in a number of studies, raises problems since the only firms considered are the ones that survived the bank merger. Suggesting that the problem will cure itself in the long run, an argument advanced in other studies, ignores small firms' daily dependence on credit. In the long run we are all dead. Bank examiners need to evaluate an institution's litigation experience and measure a bank's organizational architecture – its ethical climate. Banks which are repeatedly involved in lender liability lawsuits should be denied future mergers until there is a change in organizational architecture. To assist in evaluating organizational architecture, banks should be required to report their litigation expense on their call reports. Furthermore, regulators should seriously consider the recent suggestion of Carow, Kane and Narayanan (2006) that they take steps to ensure that participants in bank mergers preserve target bank relationships. Otherwise negative effects on small business lending and economic growth will continue as bank consolidation proceeds.     

“Going to market”: Changing patterns in the organisation and character of process research

This paper explores a meta level question in process research: the implications of the move to a more market based mode of research now evident for the production of process knowledge. It first of all examines the implications for the changing organisation of process research. For example, there has been the emergence of a group of contract process researchers. These researchers may also form alliances with researchers from other disciplines within multidisciplinary teams. Second, it examines implications for the changing character of process knowledge in relation to criteria of internal and external validity. Different effects are evident at different stages at the research cycle, but it is argued that there is no inherent threat to concepts of validity. These trends are exemplified by a project on which the authors are currently engaged. The article concludes with a discussion about the possible future for process research.     

Annual Review Article 1990

This personal annual review examines recent events, particularly in the trade unions but also among employers, in the context of the changed environment of the last decade. It finds that unions have emerged both strengthened and weakened from their experiences, but that they have some reasons for optimism. Employers' policies remain uncertain, mixing change and stability, but perhaps some new patterns towards union recognition are emerging. Neither unions nor employers have been able to match actions to their grander designs. The latest piece of labour legislation — the Employment Act 1990 — has the potential greatly to alter both the particular and the general.     

EXAMINATION OF A PATH MODEL RELATING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE WITH FIRM PERFORMANCE

This article draws on the resource‐based view of the firm to investigate the mechanisms through which information technology (IT) impacts firm performance. Research suggests that the relationship between IT and firm performance may be both direct and indirect. In this study, a path model is tested that proposes a firm's IT infrastructure resources as having both a direct impact on organizational performance, as well as an indirect effect that is propagated through its impact on an intermediate organizational resource, a firm's logistics information system (LIS). The results suggest that positive firm performance may be derived directly from an organization's superior IT infrastructure, as well as indirectly, through its enabling impact on LIS's. These findings contribute to our understanding of the nature of the relationship between IT and firm performance by exploring the value of IT at both the process and organizational levels.