Actors-in-Time: A Proposed Real Time,Decisional Model for Evaluating the Ethical Content of Decisions in the Financial Services Industry

A number of theoretical approaches to ethicaldecision making in the business context arecriticized as being too complex and cumbersometo be useful in day to day decision making. Byway of a potential solution, the authorspresent a universalistic, real-time model forassessing and resolving ethical decisions. Utilizing this model requires students andpractitioners to evaluate their decisionsaccording to two dimensions. In the firstdimension, stakeholders are identified aseither ``insiders' or ``outsiders' relating tothe differential advantages and/ordisadvantages a decision has on these twogroups. With the second dimension, consequences for the short term and long termfor these two stakeholder groups are assessed. The paper concludes with an illustration fromreal financial services business decisions asviewed through the model. These examplesprovide readers a sense of the model'spotential for consulting and pedagogicalpurposes.     

“But we can't go back”

In 2004, a provincial cancer agency in Canada developed and implemented a provincewide Leadership Development Initiative (LDI) to enhance organizational leadership and relationships. Research using a quasi‐experimental survey design determined whether LDI implementation influenced the emotional health and leadership practices of LDI participants. An ethnographic approach (18 focus groups and 13 individual interviews) explored participants' perceptions of the LDI. This article presents qualitative findings that contribute to understanding the statistically significant findings of increasing levels of cynicism, emotional exhaustion, and burnout for most LDI participants. The LDI was regarded as a critical strategy for helping leaders grow and cope with change and help in changing organizational leadership culture to be more collaborative and inclusive. However, an organizational history of short‐lived, flavor‐of‐the‐month development initiatives and growing skepticism and disengagement by leaders represented in the themes of Catch‐22 and “there is no going back” contributes to understanding why these quantitative measures increased. Few studies have explored the hypothesis that real organizational development happens through a series of planned stages. In this study, leaders experienced escalating frustration because change was not seen to occur fast enough in “others” and reported that this was necessary before they would alter their own behavior. Leadership development programs in general need to reflect the reality that it takes considerable time, patience, and effort to effect fundamental change in leadership culture.     

“Managing” Corporate Community Involvement

In academic research, many attempts have been undertaken to legitimize corporate community involvement by showing a business case for it. However, much less attention has been devoted to building understanding about the actual dynamics and challenges of managing CCI in the business context. As an alternative to existing predominantly static and top-down approaches, this paper introduces a social movement framework for analyzing CCI management. Based on the analysis of qualitative case study data, we argue that the active role of employees pressuring for CCI policies and practices, as well as the organization audience responses to their efforts, are at the core of the challenges involved in managing CCI. These challenges also pose limits to how far CCI can be extended to a “business as usual” activity.     

On the maximizing behavior of a monopoly planner

Conclusions The model developed here leads to some useful conclusions. If we consider an economy without trade where the supply of inputs varies in response to the level of current real consumption paid to inputs, then the relevant social input constraint for the planners is not a single production possibilities locus, but the planners feasibility constraint developed here. This constraint traces the locus of points on a family of production possibility surfaces that would be generated by each alternative quantity of inputs. The rate of product transformation along the planners' feasibility function will differ from the rate of product transformation along the production possibilities locus by an amount that reflects the marginal input supply. In such an economy, whenever the arguments of the planners' welfare function are not identical with the arguments of the input supply function, the necessary conditions for the planners' optimum will be non-optimal with reference to usual market socialist welfare criteria. At equilibrium, the marginal rate of product substitution in the planners' welfare function will not equal the marginal rate of product transformation on the production possibilities function. In addition, when the tastes of planners and of consumers diverge, the necessary conditions for the planners' optimum imply the exercise of some monopoly power by the planners. For given input supply conditions and given production functions, the magnitude of the monopoly effect increases to a limiting value as the diverge of tastes between planners and consumers increases.     

Brand Imitation: Do the Chinese Have Different Views?

Trademark infringement is a big problem for international brands in Asia, especially among the three Chinese societies — the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. An exploratory study of the perceptions and attitudes of these consumers regarding their acceptability and willingness to purchase brands which imitate the look of multinational brands was carried out. The results showed the Hong Kong Chinese to be more aware and loyal to multinational brands. The PRC nationals and Taiwanese generally had low awareness of which brands were originals and which were imitators. All respondents thought the manufacture of imitator brands to be unethical, but not the purchase of such brands. The major predictor of choosing an imitator brand was the respondent's ability to identify the original brand. The results from this study suggest marketers should educate their new consumers that they are the original brand or market leader in their product category.     

In praise of boundaries. A conversation with Miss Manners. Interview by Diane L. Coutu

The past three decades have been a time of increasing informality in the American workplace. It's easy to characterize this growing comfort with the casual as a positive step for workplace culture, an outgrowth of the American democratic belief in workers' equality. Informal environments are said to be more trusting and open, and workers who are free to express their personalities are more comfortable and thus more creative--right? According to etiquette guru Judith Martin--known far and wide as Miss Manners--informality in the workplace may do more harm than good. Without some formality in social intercourse, Miss Manners argues, human interactions end up being governed by laws, which are too heavy-handed to serve as a guide through the nuances of personal--or professional--behavior. Since our earliest beginnings, we have developed formal rules to accompany shared human experiences, such as eating and mourning. Yet, says Miss Manners, something in us rebels against form and etiquette, and every so often, an anti-manners movement takes hold, and people come to believe that following etiquette is unnatural. One recent such movement has led to the belief that a distinction between our work life and our professional life is unnecessary. If we hope to reassure our customers that we are indeed professional, however, we need to be aware of the boundaries of professional behavior. On the whole, Miss Manners argues, informality in the workplace leads to a host of problems, from making employees feel pressured to "socialize" with coworkers during weekends and evenings to sexual harassment. Despite the shortcomings of informality in the American workplace, though, Miss Manners believes that we have the best code of manners the world has ever seen-in theory. In practice, American etiquette is undoubtedly still a work in progress.     

Expatriate success may depend on a “learning orientation”: Considerations for selection and training

To support globalization, managers increasingly are sent to live and work in other countries. An unsuccessful expatriate assignment is costly for the organization and damaging to the individual's career, yet few companies have adequate processes for selecting and training expatriate managers. The concept of “learning orientation” is proposed as a valuable dimension for assessment and training. Employees with weaker learning orientation tend to withdraw from situations that could result in low judgment of performance; those with stronger learning orientation adapt and continue. The described approach can benefit employees and their families and can increase the organization's chance for international success. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Managing industrial brand equity: Developing tangible benefits for intangible assets

Young and Rubicam's (Y&R) BrandAsset Valuator® (BAV), commonly used to assess brand equity in consumer markets, was applied to assess the brand health of an industrial B2B supplier. Customers were asked questions about perceived esteem, relevance, knowledge and differentiation of the company to find its strengths and weaknesses. The results were then plotted to reveal the overall customer perception of the company and also its competitors. Through this plot, the strategic direction how to improve the brand equity of the company became clear. Evidence suggests that the BAV can be used in industrial markets to assess the brand equity of the firm.