Psychological and implied contracts in organizations

Two forms of unwritten contracts derive from relations between organizations and their members. Psychological contracts are individual beliefs in a reciprocal obligation between the individual and the organization. Implied contracts are mutual obligations characterizing interactions existing at the level of the relationship (e.g., dyadic, interunit). Employee/employer relations and changing conditions of employment give rise to issues not addressed in conventional transaction-oriented models of motivation and individual responses. The development, maintenance, and violation of psychological and implied contracts are described along with their organizational implications.Promise is most given when least is said. (George Chapman,Hero and Leander, 1598)     

Ethics in accounting: Values education without indoctrination

The integration of ethics into accounting curricula is a critical challenge facing accounting educators. The ethical subject matter to be covered and the role of the professor in ethical debates in the classroom are important unresolved issues. In this paper, we explore teaching basic values as an integral part of ethics education. Concern about indoctrination of students is addressed and the consistency of values education with the goals of ethics education is examined. A role for ethics researchers in identifying and clarifying the basic values that define our profession is recommended, and suggestions for implementing values education in accounting ethics are provided.H. Fenwick Huss is Associate Professor of Accounting at Georgia State University. His recent research focuses on ethical and regulatory issues in financial reporting. He has presented papers and served as a panel member in sessions on ethics at regional American Accounting Association conferences.Denise M. Patterson is a doctoral candidate at Georgia State University. Her research interests are in the areas of auditing and the impact of ethics on the role of the auditor. Denise has audit experience with an international accounting firm.     

Inflation Expectations in Manufacturing Industry

Firms' expectations regarding the future are useful in understanding economic behaviour and can be used to produce short term forecasts. In this article, Paul Robson examines how price expectations can be derived from business surveys and uses survey data from the CBI Industrial Trends Survey to generate a measure of manufacturers' price expectations. This series can be used to tell us how the view of firms about future inflation trends has been changing and how firms are now responding to the strength of the pound.     

World energy prices

Futures Dossiers present concise articles that summarize recent developments in major areas. They are intended for the interested non-specialist and contain suggestions for further readings. The first article in the series examines the historic trends and recent changes in the general level of world energy prices, discusses the range and effect of possible future price movements, and highlights the importance of the rate of increase over the actual level.     

A note on operating conditions and technology in African textile production

This note presents and discusses data on machine and labour requirements to produce cotton cloth in six African textile factories (three from each of two countries). The findings confirm the view that more use has to be made of machines and labour in Africa than in Europe to obtain the same output. They also reveal marked differences between the two countries, and - in one country - among factories.     

Technology and employment in the production of cotton cloth

This paper makes use of two well-known UN studies of the integrated spinning and weaving of cotton cloth in order to examine the relationship between technology and employment in developing countries. In particular the paper: (a) considers the choice of technology in the production of a given volume of cotton cloth in Western Europe, Latin America and Africa; (b) estimates and discusses the elasticity of capital-labour substitution in such production: and (c) examines some aspects of job creation, factor prices and economic efficiency. The variation in ‘optimal’ technology choice across wage areas is found to be rather narrow and to lie in the upper part of the capital-labour spectrum. The variation in profitability across technologies, however, is found to be much less than that of employment in all three areas. The limited range of ‘optimal’ technologies is partly explained by the elasticity of substitution which lies between 0.2 and 0.25 for Europe; 0.25 and 0.33 for Latin America; and 0.33 and 0.50 for Africa. A certain prodigality in the use of both men and machines in the developing regions is also part of the explanation of the relative similarity in optimal technology choice in the three wage areas considered. In the light of this prodigality and the low elasticity, consideration is given to the question of increasing developing country employment in a state enterprise and a private firm respectively. Not surprisingly, it is found that it would pay to exploit the scope for substitution in the state factory if more employment were sought, although the difference in total costs by ignoring such scope could be relatively small. It is further found that the magnitude of factor price changes required to induce a profit-maximizing businessman to provide the required volume of employment could be dauntingly large. It is noted that increased efficiency in the developing textile industry could result in increased unemployment.