Managing organizational ethics: How ethics becomes pervasive within organizations

This study analyzes real experiences of culture management to better understand how ethics permeates organizations. In addition to reviewing the literature, we used an action-research methodology and conducted semistructured interviews in Spain and in the U.S. to approach the complexity and challenges of fostering a culture in which ethical considerations are a regular part of business discussions and decision making. The consistency of findings suggests patterns of organizational conditions, cultural elements, and opportunities that influence the management of organizational cultures centered on core ethical values. The ethical competencies of leaders and of the workforce also emerged as key factors. We identify three conditions—a sense of responsibility to society, conditions for ethical deliberation, and respect for moral autonomy—coupled with a diverse set of cultural elements that cause ethics to take root in culture when the opportunity arises. Leaders can use this knowledge of the mechanisms by which organizational factors influence ethical pervasiveness to better manage organizational ethics.     

Ultrafiltration versus diuretics for the treatment of fluid overload in patients with heart failure: a hospital cost analysis

Abstract

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a common, serious disease in the US and Europe. Patients with HF often require treatment for fluid overload, resulting in costly inpatient visits; however, limited evidence exists on the costs of alternative treatments. This study performed a cost-analysis of ultrafiltration (UF) vs diuretic therapy (DIUR-T) for patients with HF from the hospital perspective.

Methods: The model used clinical data from the literature and hospital data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project to follow a decision-analytic framework reflecting treatment decisions, probabilistic outcomes, and associated costs for treating patients with HF and hypervolemia with veno-venous UF or intravenous DIUR-T. A 90-day timeframe was considered to account for hospital readmissions beyond 30?days. Sensitivity and scenario analyses were performed to gauge the robustness of the results.

Results: Although initial hospitalization costs were higher, fluid removal by UF reduced hospital readmission days, leading to cost savings of $3,975 (14.4%) at the 90-day follow-up (UF costs, $23,633; DIUR-T costs, $27,608).

Conclusions: UF is a viable alternative to DIUR-T when treating fluid overload in HF patients because it reduces hospital readmission rates and durations, which substantially lowers costs over a 90-day period compared to DIUR-T.     

Issues for Management Thought and Research

One of the tenets of the editors of The Journal of Product Innovation Management is the principle, probably first enunciated by social scientist Kurt Lewin, that there is nothing more practical than a good theory. That principle is one that draws together academics and practicing managers to the journal's task of advancing the management of product innovation. It is a principle that says to academics that their theories must meet the test of utility, and to managers that it can be useful to develop a theoretical perspective.
Questions of practice and theory emerged in the first two issues of the journal when members of the Editorial Board presented a series of viewpoints on the issues they thought would be significant for the future of product innovation management. These were viewpoints that questioned our current practices and suggested     

Inducing private wildfire risk mitigation: Experimental investigation of measures on adjacent public lands

Increasing private wildfire risk mitigation is an important part of the larger forest restoration policy challenge. Data from an economic experiment are used to evaluate the effectiveness of providing fuel reductions on public land adjacent to private land to induce private wildfire risk mitigation. Results show evidence of “crowding out” where public spending can decrease the level of private risk mitigation. Findings also indicate that spending on private mitigation efforts increase when information about individual expenditures are made available and spending on public land fuel reductions are conditional upon a threshold level of private mitigation effort being achieved.     

A comparison of rents and producer surplus when industry input supply functions are interdependent

The concept of producer surplus is used quite often in conventional welfare analyses. In the long run, producer surplus has no meaning unless it reflects the sum of the rents paid to factors of production. This paper demonstrates that if industry input supply functions are interdependent, then producer surplus is not equal to the sum of the rents. Furthermore, the size of the difference between producer surplus and rents can be made indefinitely large by appropriate choices of values for the relevant parameters, such as the price of output, production function parameters, the slopes of the industry input supply curves, and the degree of interdependence between input supplies.     

Health Among Leaders: Positive and Negative Affect, Engagement and Burnout, Forgiveness and Revenge

abstract    The health of an organization's leader has profound implications not only for the leader, but also for the organization itself and for its members. This study focused on three indicators (positive affect, engagement, forgiveness behaviours) of eustress, the positive stress response, and three indicators (negative affect, burnout, revenge behaviour) of distress, the negative stress response, in relation to the health of pastors, whose jobs closely parallel those of leaders in all types of organizations. Results indicated that both positive affect and revenge behaviour were significantly related to health. A post-hoc analysis indicated that work–family conflict was negatively related to revenge behaviour, while family–work conflict was positively related to revenge behaviour, and that engagement was negatively related to revenge behaviour. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for future studies of leader health, and their practical applications for promoting leader health while preventing distress.     

GLOBAL AND DISAGGREGATED MEASURES OF EARNINGS MOBILITY: EVIDENCE FROM FIVE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

This paper offers the first application of the local approximation method pioneered by Schluter and Trede (2003) for the Shorrocks mobility indices across the earnings distribution for a range of European Countries covering the main European social models: Denmark, Germany, Spain, the UK and Italy in the pre‐accession EU (1994‐2001). This insightful approach allows us to offer a global and disaggregate analysis of mobility as proportionate change in inequality and hence provide the reader with a full set of information to make his/her own judgment about the extent of mobility and country ranking. Specifically, we investigate the degree to which mobility is driven by low or high earners and how this picture changes across three different earnings measures: full‐time full‐year working, adding part‐time working and then part‐year working. Our results draw out some general key facts. First of all the vast bulk of the measured mobility occurs in the tails especially the lower tail with at least half of the index driven by mobility in the bottom earning quintile. Second, in the top 20 percent of the distribution there are few movements of earnings that effect the level of permanent inequality except in Denmark. Third, no country has a clear dominance for mobility across the full earnings distribution but Denmark differs from the other countries with clearly greater mobility in the middle and at the top. Finally, we find that with the exception of Denmark and Italy, mobility does not lead to clear convergence to the mean but rather to points around 0.7‐0.8 and 1.5 to 2 times the mean.