Baylor University Roundtable on The Corporate Mission, CEO Pay, and Improving the Dialogue with Investors

A small group of academics and practitioners discusses four major controversies in the theory and practice of corporate finance:

• • What is the social purpose of the public corporation? Should corporate managements aim to maximize the profitability and value of their companies, or should they instead try to balance the interests of their shareholders against those of “stakeholder” groups, such as employees, customers, and local communities?
• • Should corporate executives consider ending the common practice of earnings guidance? Are there other ways of shifting the focus of the public dialogue between management and investors away from near-term earnings and toward longer-run corporate strategies, policies, and goals? And can companies influence the kinds of investors who buy their shares?
• • Are U.S. CEOs overpaid? What role have equity ownership and financial incentives played in the past performance of U.S. companies? And are there ways of improving the design of U.S. executive pay?
• • Can the principles of corporate governance and financial management at the core of the private equity model—notably, equity incentives, high leverage, and active participation by large investors—be used to increase the values of U.S. public companies?

     

Environmental Reporting Through an Ethical Looking Glass

This paper adopts the lens of environmental ethics to explore whether there is a disparity between the ethical approaches of a company in comparison to those expressed by stakeholders in relation to environmental issues, specifically those communicated through the corporate environmental report. Discourse analysis is adopted to explore the environmental section of the sustainability reports of the case study company as compared to the responses of a sample of the company’s stakeholders, using the lens of three branches of environmental ethics: utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. Results indicate that the ethical approaches expressed in the case study company’s environmental reports were grounded in utilitarianism and deontology, in contrast to a virtue ethics approach expressed by external stakeholders. The disparity widened as the relationship between the company and the stakeholder became less direct. This disparity signals a failure to meet one of the primary purposes for preparing sustainability reports: to engage with stakeholders. As such this research contributes to the literature by identifying a disparity in the how this information is communicated compared with how it is perceived by stakeholders. This has important implications for the success of current stakeholder engagement practices.     

Making working in retailing interesting: A study of human resource management practices in Danish grocery retail chains

This paper discusses how five retail chains in the Danish grocery industry attempt to make low-wage, low-status store-level retail jobs as checkout operators and sales assistants interesting. It does so from the perspective of both retailers and employees. Following analysis of the social and institutional context of Danish grocery retailers, we identify three types of retail employees (transitional workers, core employees and career seekers), who have different motivations and aspirations for working in grocery retailing. The central challenge for retailers is to make store-level retail jobs interesting to the different employee types. Although retailers mainly focus their attention on career seekers, we find that working in retailing is interesting for all employee types because the retailers are currently able to meet their respective motivations and aspirations. Nevertheless, we identify several areas in which retailers can improve their practices.     

The Ethics of Marketing to Vulnerable Populations

An orthodox view in marketing ethics is that it is morally impermissible to market goods to specially vulnerable populations in ways that take advantage of their vulnerabilities. In his signature article “Marketing and the Vulnerable,” Brenkert (Bus Ethics Q Ruffin Ser 1:7–20, 1998) provided the first substantive defense of this position, one which has become a well-established view in marketing ethics. In what follows, we throw new light on marketing to the vulnerable by critically evaluating key components of Brenkert’s general arguments. Specifically, we contend that Brenkert has failed to offer us any persuasive reasons to think that it is immoral to market to the vulnerable in ways that take advantage of their vulnerability. Although Brenkert does highlight the fact that the specially vulnerable are at greater risk of being harmed by already immoral marketing practices (e.g., deception, manipulation), he fails to establish that the specially vulnerable are a unique moral category of market clients or that there are special moral standards that apply to them. Moreover, even if Brenkert’s position were theoretically defensible, the practical implications of his position are far less tenable than he suggests. If our criticisms are sound, then Brenkert and others who endorse his position are seriously mistaken regarding how one can permissibly market products to vulnerable populations, and, in addition, they have improperly categorized certain morally permissible marketing practices as being immoral.     

Different paths to economic reform in Russia and China: causes and consequences

Economic reform in Russia has been described as ‘shock therapy’ because rapid industrial privatization, price liberalization and democratic reforms of the political system were introduced simultaneously. However, shock therapy led to insider control of most manufacturing firms, with important consequences for foreign investment. In contrast, China’s ‘gradualist’ reforms, without privatization or significant democratization, facilitated foreign joint ventures as the dominant means of reforming State-owned enterprises incrementally. This paper proposes an explanation for these contrasting reform paths in Russia and China and then traces their consequences for inward foreign domestic investment (FDI), exporting and for corporate governance in the short and long term. The impact of national level policies on enterprises is demonstrated in a matched pair of cases in Russia and China. Conclusions are drawn for policy, for practice and for future research.     

Does host-country education mitigate immigrant inefficiency? Evidence from earnings of Australian university graduates

Imperfect transferability of skills remains a dominant argument in explaining lower earnings of immigrants. Acquisition of host-country education plays a c