Panda and elephant – contesting animal icons in Thai tourism

In May 2009, during a period of rising political polarization in Thailand, a cub was unexpectedly born in Chiang Mai's Zoo to a pair of Chinese pandas. The authorities used the occasion to boost the crisis-ridden tourism to the northern Thai city, instigating an unprecedented national craze around the tiny cub, and promoting a massive pilgrimage of domestic visitors to the zoo. In a conspicuous act of protest against the prioritization of the foreign pandas, some elephant keepers in the Ayutthya kraal, painted their animals in panda colors, leading to an implicit contest between the two animal icons. In this case study, the wider theoretical and comparative implications of that contest are analyzed. Whereas previous studies of tourists engagement with captive wild animals paid scant attention to its wider social context, the article examines the cultural and economic background of the contest, and the manner in which it became implicated in the process of political polarization between the societal center and the periphery.     

The conjoint community resiliency assessment measure as a baseline for profiling and predicting community resilience for emergencies

Community resilience is a term that describes the community's ability to function amidst crises or disruptions. Community resilience is perceived as a fundamental element in emergency preparedness and as a mean of ensuring social stability in the face of crises, including disasters. However, there is a paucity of empiric evidence for this conjecture. This paper demonstrates the use of the Conjoint Community Resilience Assessment Measurement (CCRAM) for estimating the ability of a community to be resilient in the face of disaster. Six factors of community resilience were identified based on a study conducted in nine small to medium size towns (N = 886): Leadership, collective efficacy, preparedness, place attachment, social trust and social relationship. Multiple logistic regressions yielded the CCRAM protective factors for perceived community resilience. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis confirmed the quality of the CCRAM as a diagnostic tool for perceived community resilience. The CCRAM tool is presented as a potential provider of information for authorities and decision makers as an aid for foreseeing and planning towards the challenges present during emergency times.     

Sustainable Consumption Research as Democratic Expertise

Academic proponents of sustainable consumption have marshaled considerable evidence over the past decade to support calls for more efficacious lifeways among residents of the world’s developed countries. Policymakers continue, however, to resist these recommendations because sustainable consumption runs counter to dominant tenets of neo-liberal economics and conventional political objectives. Unless investigators in the field can identify a cadre of clients that is interested in forming tacit partnerships, the concept of sustainable consumption is likely to remain little more than a prospective pursuit. This article suggests that there are some nascent indications that these kinds of alliances are developing. For sustainable consumption to take root in the policy sphere, it will be necessary to more actively foster these relationships and to cast this form of knowledge as a form of democratic counterexpertise that challenges elite economic and political institutions that regularly appropriate and deploy consumer science to advance their own interests.     

Promoting Ethical Judgment in an Organisational Context

The essay argues that individual ethical judgment is a necessary ingredient in an organisation’s ethical performance. Attempts to systematise judgment, removing it from individual responsibility are not successful, and sometimes can even be counterproductive. Focus on systems of accountability can actually detract from the production of ethical behaviour. A number of examples are provided. Although it is much more difficult to produce, individual responsible decision-making and individual judgment should be the features that an organisation focuses on in its interest to promote ethical performance. Accountability systems are important; but they have very limited application toward production of an ethically excellent environment. The essay argues that there has been too much attention paid to accountability systems within organisations, and much too little paid toward the development and cultivation of individual ethical decision making and responsible behaviour.     

The Applicability of a Contingent Factors Model to Accounting Ethics Research

This paper discusses the relevancy of a contingent factors model posited by Jones for conducting accounting ethics research. Using a sample of 37 experienced Australian auditing managers and partners of all of the ‘Big Four’ multinational accounting firms, we find that the contextual model developed by Jones can help guide accounting ethics research by isolating the contingent factors that affect ethical decision making. Moreover, we examine how the factors differ across different accounting settings. Implications for accounting ethics research and accounting practice are then discussed.Jeffrey R. Cohen, PhD is an Associate Professor at the Carroll School of management at Boston College. His research focuses primarily on behavioral ethics issues as well as investigating governance from a behavioral perspective.Nonna Martinov Bennie is a Senior Lecturer at Sydney University. Her research focuses on ethical issues in auditing as well as issues surrounding materiality judgments.