Attitudes of Future Managers Towards Business Ethics: A Comparison of Finnish and American Business Students

The cross-cultural survey presented here examines the attitudes towards business ethics of Finnish and American business students from the Southern states. The findings indicate that the differences between the attitudes of these groups are small and essentially linked to the strength of their position. Both see deliberation on moral issues as part of a business manager's job and believe that managers should participate in the solving of social problems. Both Finns and Americans make a distinction between acting legally and ethically, and both endorse cultural relativism.     

Corporate cash holdings: Evidence from Switzerland

This paper investigates the determinants of cash holdings for a comprehensive sample of Swiss non-financial firms between 1995 and 2004. The median Swiss firm holds almost twice as much cash and cash equivalents as the median US or UK firm. Our results indicate that asset tangibility and firm size are both negatively related to corporate cash holdings, and that there is a non-linear relationship between the leverage ratio and liquidity. Dividend payments and operating cash flows are positively related to cash reserves, but we cannot detect a significant relationship between growth opportunities and cash holdings. Most of these empirical findings, but not all of them, can be explained by the transaction costs motive and/or the precautionary motive. Analyzing the corporate governance structures of Swiss firms, we document a non-linear relationship between managerial ownership and cash holdings, indicating an incentive alignment effect and an opposing effect related to increasing risk aversion. Finally, our results suggest that firms in which the CEO simultaneously serves as the COB hold significantly more cash.

The Great COVID-19 Divergence: Managing a Sustainable and Equitable Recovery in the EU

Intereconomics - The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the biggest global recession since the Second World War. Forecasts show the European Union underperforming economically relative to the United...     

Reforming public services: does service logic have anything to offer?

ABSTRACT

This article discusses what service management and the logic of service (SL) can offer to public service management. There are no real inbuilt differences between public and private service organizations and no reasons why public service organizations (PSOs) would be less efficient and less service-focussed and oriented towards service users than private service organizations. Good service management rather than privatization is required to make a PSO more efficient and effectively outward-oriented. Service-focussed value creation management and how service logic can be applied by PSOs to enable them to transform to outward-focussed service organizations are discussed. A change framework is presented.     

Benchmarking Corporate Social Responsibility within Spanish Companies

In this paper, the authors focus on the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) upon business profitability. In order to be capable of working with homogeneous data, the authors’ starting point is to use the criteria defined by PricewaterhouseCoopers’ work on the subject, and published by the Spanish journal Actualidad Económica. In this work, an index was created which assigns between one and five points to the companies depending on the importance given by them to CSR. The CSR measurement published by the Observatorio de la RSE will also be considered. In order to measure companies’ profitability, this paper will take into account their return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA) of 2005 and 2006. The authors’ purpose is to demonstrate that the relationship between CSR and business profitability is neutral.

Psychology at work

We compare three wage–effort psychological games. In the first game, the agent’s motivation hinges on a degree of altruism influenced by the surprise generated by the principal’s wage offer. The agent works harder when the wage is greater than expected and vice versa when the wage is smaller than expected. Consistent equilibrium beliefs oblige the principal to randomize in order to surprise the agent, which results in the principal being worse off than if she were dealing with an unemotional agent. We then consider an intention-based reciprocity model and a model of guilt aversion. We find that guilt aversion may potentially yield the best outcome for the principal.     

Unraveling the Perceived Reasons Underlying Entrepreneurs' Retirement Decisions: A Person‐Centered Perspective

This study investigated the reasons and psychosociological mechanisms underlying French entrepreneurs' decisions to terminate their career, based on the Push Pull Anti push Anti Pull model (Chevalier et al. 2013 ). The purpose of this article is (a) to examine naturally occurring profiles of entrepreneurs' motivation to retire using cluster analysis, and (b) to investigate associations of the profiles with social characteristics and the intention to retire. The results revealed four distinctive profiles: (1) “eager to retire,” (2) “ready to retire,” (3) “ambivalent,” and (4) “reluctant.” Subjective health, level of education, and income were differentially related to the four profiles. Entrepreneurs with profiles 1 and 2 had the highest level of intention to retire. Implications of the findings for professional counselors and directions for future research are discussed.     

To Trust or to Control: Informal Value Transfer Systems and Computational Analysis in Institutional Economics

This article illustrates the usefulness of computational methods for the investigation of institutions. As an example, we use a computational agent-based model to study the role of general trust and social control in informal value transfer systems (IVTS). We find that the terms of interaction between general trust and social control have an impact on how IVTS work, become stable, and prove highly effective. The case shows how computational models may help (i) to operationalize institutional theory and to clarify the functioning of institutions; (ii) to test the logical consistency of alternative hypotheses about institutions; and (iii) to relate institutionalist theory with other paradigms and to practice an interested pluralism.