A 30-Year Historical Examination of Ethical Concerns Regarding Business Ethics: Who’s Concerned?

Understanding the ethical attitudes and concerns of future business leaders has been the focus of increasing research attention. Largely, this is due to the influence of such perspectives, as it is these presently held ideologies that ultimately translate into the actions and behaviors of the forthcoming workforce. This research examines how such business-related ethicality perspectives have evolved by administering a nationwide survey that builds on two Journal of Business Ethics studies, Beltramini et al. (J Bus Ethics 3:195?C200, 1984) and Peterson et al. (J Bus Ethics 10:733?C738, 1991), resulting in the latest segment of a three-decade historical perspective of ethical concerns. Our findings indicate fundamental shifts regarding the nature of concerns, and provide a number of practical and theoretical contributions to the ethics literature, bringing us one step closer to more comprehensively understanding, and ultimately enhancing ethical practices in business.     

The pathfinder process in Northern Ireland

Government has many customers — not just the individual citizen, but also corporate customers from the private sector. Getting close to those customers will require changes in the nature of public sector culture. Below are two examples — the first from Northern Ireland and the second from Whitehall — of government departments which have tried to change the way in which they do things.     

应运而生的产品生命周期管理

由于市场、技术、消费观念以及监管法规等多种因素的影响,制造行业和企业正在经历着一场深刻的变革。这场变革对企业产品及其管理带来了全方位的影响,包括产品设计、制造、市场投放和服务等。换言之,日益缩短的产品生命周期、全球化竞争、供应链的复杂性以及不断增长的客户需求,使新产品的研发和市场投放更困难,更具挑战性。     

Allocating U.S. Department of Homeland Security funds to States with explicit equity, population and energy facility security criteria

Allocation of funds to states and local governments by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been challenged for relying too heavily on the U.S. Patriot Act formula that contains set-asides for each state. Yet, DHS's recent efforts to include more vulnerability/risk information have been criticized for lacking transparency. Using only off-the-shelf data and an off-the-shelf optimization model, which is a compromise between politically grounded formulas and complex analyses supported by massive data manipulations, the authors maximize need (defined and represented here as funds to protect electrical-generating capacity) subject to explicit constraints based on political equity and population size but introduce risk-related criteria as well in the form of ease of securing the facilities and public perception of risk. The model results closely approximate the DHS allocations at the state level when electricity generation and its retail price are maximized subject to moderate set-asides for political equity and population size. The advantages of this approach are that the results are transparent and sensitivity analysis is relatively easy to do. The advantages and disadvantages of the approach presented here are compared with more sophisticated alternatives.     

What Role Do Acquisitions Play in Asian Firms' Global Strategies? Evidence from the Medical Sector, 1978–1995

This study compares the use of acquisitions by Asian, European, and North American firms operating in the U.S. medical sector between 1978 and 1995. We examine the incidence of acquisitions, the relative emphasis that acquirers place on resource deepening and resource extension, and the post-acquisition retention of acquired resources. We find substantial similarity in the asset-seeking role of acquisitions for medical sector firms from different continents, coupled with intriguing differences concerning what we refer to as asset keeping. The results suggest that there are many common causal factors that underlie the strategies of firms from different regions, but that some regional differences remain.     

The growth of China and India: implications and policy reform options for Malaysia

This study explores the trade‐related impacts of rapid growth of China and India on the Malaysian economy and evaluates policy options to better position Malaysia to take advantage of these changes. Higher growth in China and India is likely to raise Malaysia's national income and to expand Malaysia's natural resource and agricultural exports, while putting downward pressure on exports from some manufacturing and service sectors. Increases in the quality and variety of exports from China and India are likely to increase substantially the overall gains to Malaysia. The expansion of the natural resource sectors and the contraction of manufacturing and services reflect a Dutch‐disease effect that will raise the importance of policies to facilitate adaptation to the changing world economy and improve competitiveness. Most‐favoured‐nation (MFN) liberalisation would increase welfare, and, by increasing competitiveness, raise output and exports of key industries. Preferential liberalisation with India and completely free trade with China would provide greater market access gains than MFN reform, but neither would be as effective in increasing income as MFN liberalisation, and free trade agreements would lead to greater competitive pressure on many of Malaysia's industries than MFN liberalisation. Increased investments in education and infrastructure could boost manufacturing and services sectors in Malaysia, while improving trade logistics would benefit sectors with high transport costs, including the agricultural and resource‐based industries.