Business goals in market versus transition economies: An exploratory comparison of Hungarian and U.S. MBA students

Developed market economies and transition economies are characterized by radically different institutional, economic, and cultural environments, which we expected would produce differences in business goals among MBA students. We measured differences between 103 Hungarian and 454 U.S. part‐time MBAs and found that U.S. respondents placed more importance on growth of the business, short‐term profits, staying within the laws, and honor, face, and reputation. Hungarians placed more emphasis on game and gaming spirit, and family values. Although the results showed significant differences on some business goals, they were not as great as the literature would suggest, indicating that some convergence has occurred since transition began. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Refractory Materials: The Global Market,The Global Industry

World demand for refractory products—heat-resisting ceramic materials used in metal refining, glass making, and other high-temperature industrial applications—will be slowing down considerably from an annual rate of 10.8 percent during 2002–07 to 3.5 percent during 2007–12. Such slower growth reflects many factors, but is due primarily to: unsettled economic conditions; better efficiencies in steelmaking (which accounts for about half of all end uses of refractories); and the preference of end-users for maintenance rather than new facilities. The four key markets or end uses for refractory materials are: iron and steelmaking; other metal-making; nonmetallic materials such as glass; and an all-other category. In 2007, world refractory demand was 38.1 million metric tons valued at $22.9 billion; the corresponding figures for 2012 are projected at about 45.2 million metric tons valued at $28.5 billion. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for about 45 percent of total weight in 2007; its share by 2012 should rise to about 69 percent, with China becoming the dominant producer and consumer of refractory materials.     

Pre-Harvest Price Expectations for Corn: The Information Content of USDA Reports and New Crop Futures

This article examines the puzzle of why futures prices continue to react to USDA crop reports despite the fact that reports appear to be no longer newsworthy, that is, provide no better production estimates than private forecasts. The information value of reports is measured in terms of their influence on rational agents' harvest-time corn price expectations, which are uncovered using a Hamilton-type modeling approach. Results show that reports are still newsworthy, as they would contribute to agents' price expectations if released a day early. Thus futures price reactions, which closely reflect price expectations, are rational and consistent with efficient markets hypothesis.     

Overt sexuality in advertising: A discourse analysis of gender responses

Recent developments in advertising imagery often involve the use of overt sexuality. Consumer responses to advertisements using a range of sexual explicitness are explored using a discourse analytic approach. The dominant negative themes articulated across sex and age groups concerned the use of sex-role stereotypes and the objectification of women. Dominant positive themes shared by both sexes involved equality in sexual representations and sexuality as art. Younger consumers' discourse concerned how advertising can add symbolic value to consumption by investing the products with a romantic style of sexuality which becomes a potent cultural form drawing its energy from the desires of the body. The shared dominant themes were supported by gendered interpretive repertoires. The unexpected gender consistency in dominant themes is discussed in relation to the cultural function of advertising as art in allowing women to speak more easily of their desires through consumption choices.

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Zusammenfassung Offene Darstellung von Sexualität in der Werbung: Diskursanalyse geschlechtstypischer Reaktionen Die neuere Entwicklung werblicher Darstellungsformen ist gekennzeichnet durch hÄufigere Darstellung von Sexualität. Konsumentenreaktionen auf Werbeanzeigen mit variierender sexueller Deutlichkeit werden mit Hilfe eines diskursanalytischen Ansatzes untersucht. Dominante negative Themen, die bei beiden Geschlechtern und quer durch alle Altersgruppen zur Sprache kamen, betrafen die Verwendung von Geschlechterstereotypen und die Darstellung von Frauen als Objekten. Dominante positive Themen, die ebenfalls von beiden Geschlechtern genannt werden, sind die Gleichrangigkeit der Darstellung der Geschlechter und die Darstellung der Sexualität in künstlerischer Form. Jüngere Konsumenten beschÄftigten sich mit der Frage, wie Werbung den Konsum mit symbolischem Wert anreichern kann dadurch, da\ den Produkten eine romantische Sexualität angeheftet wird. Die eigentlich nicht erwartete übereinstimmung beider Geschlechter bei den dominanten Themen wird im Zusammenhang mit der kulturellen Funktion von Werbung als neue Kunstform diskutiert, die es Frauen erlaubt, ihre Bedürfnisse leichter durch Konsumakte zu Äu\ern.

     

Boom and Bust in Power Plant Construction: Lessons from the California Electricity Crisis

This article argues that competitive electricity markets are prone to the same cycles of boom and bust that appear in commodity markets and in a specialized industry like real estate. The article then demonstrates how boom and bust might appear in the western electricity system using computer simulation. A “business as usual” simulation shows that the west might be at the crest of a building boom and on the verge of a bust in wholesale prices. Without fundamental changes in the wholesale markets, the next construction boom would come too late to prevent a decline in reserve margins and the reappearance of price spikes. If we continue with the current market structure, we run the risk of exposing the western electricity markets to another round of reliability alerts and price spikes. The article concludes with suggestions for alternative market structures in California and a discussion of whether these suggestions apply to other countries engaged in electricity restructuring.     

Professional Ethics and The Culture of Trust

The cause of ethical failure in organisations often can be traced to their organisational culture and the failure on the part of the leadership to actively promote ethical ideals and practices. This is true of all types of organisations, including the professions, which in recent years have experienced ongoing ethical problems. The questions naturally arise: what sort of professional culture promotes ethical behaviour? How can it be implemented by a profession and engendered in the individual professional? The answers to these questions are of interest to business ethicists since the causes of ethical problems in business are often the same and the professions, as ethically challenged organisations, make useful and informative analogues for the measures to be adopted or avoided when the attempt is made to raise the ethical standards of business. Given this focus on the professions, it will be argued that the usual, direct attempts to control unethical behaviour by using codes of ethics, legislation and self-regulatory regimes, are not successful. The answer, it will be argued, lies in using an enforced self-regulation model that aims for ethics indirectly. Such a strategy seeks to develop a goal-orientated professional culture which is actively promoted by the leadership of the profession as well as the members. Specifically, the culture is one that seeks to promote trust in the profession and trustworthiness as a virtue exemplified in each individual. It will be argued that in order to develop a professional culture that cultivates trust a profession will need to develop certain institutions, programs and structures within the profession. I conclude by setting out a model of these trust-cultivating structures.     

The mediating effects of perception and emotion: Digital signage in mall atmospherics

Digital signage (DS), public screens showing video, is an important, little-researched topic. The “direct” route in the elaboration likelihood model suggests that DS influences cognition, which then influences emotions whereas the “peripheral” route is emotion→cognition. We predict that these operate in parallel and report a survey of mall consumers (n=315). DS has a significant, positive, total effect on approach behaviors, mediated by positive affect and (arguably) perception of mall environment. Results extend the limited capacity model of mediated message processing from television to DS, which predicts the effectiveness of vivid moving visual images as atmospheric stimuli.     

Can national infrastructure spending reduce local unemployment? Evidence from an Australian roads program

We examine the effect of a federally-funded local infrastructure spending program on local unemployment rates. To address the likely funding endogeneity problem, we exploit variation in spending due to pork-barreling, and find that higher government expenditure on roads substantially reduces local unemployment.     

Welfare Measurement and Measurement Error

The approximate effects of measurement error on a variety of measures of inequality and poverty are derived. They are shown to depend on the measurement error variance and functionals of the error–contaminated income distribution, but not on the form of the measurement error distribution, and to be accurate within a rich class of error–free income distributions and measurement error distributions. The functionals of the error–contaminated income distribution that approximate the measurement error induced distortions can be estimated. So it is possible to investigate the sensitivity of welfare measures to alternative amounts of measurement error and, when an estimate of the measurement error variance is available, to calculate corrected welfare measures. The methods are illustrated in an application using Indonesian household expenditure data.