Ethical judgments on selected accounting issues: An empirical study

This study investigates the judgments made by accounting majors when confronted with selected ethical dilemmas that pertain to accounting practice. Drawing upon literature in philosophy and moral psychology, it then examines these judgments for potential gender differences. Five case studies, each involving a specific ethical dilemma that a practicing accountant might face, were administered to 151 acounting majors (males = 67; females = 84), in four sections of intermediate accounting II at a large, state university. The results suggest that although the vast majority of participants wouldnot engage in unethical behavior, a reasonable opportunity exists to improve the participants' ethical awareness. The results do not, however, support the existence of gender differences in ethical judgments. Keith G. Stanga is Distinguished Professor of Accounting at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His most recent publications include a book, Intermediate Accounting(3rd edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989, 1486 pp.), and articles published in the Journal of Accountancy, Accounting and Business Research, Accounting Horizons,and Advances in Accounting.Professor Stanga's teaching and research interests are in financial accounting. His most recent research topics have included the relevance of segment cash flow reporting, the Financial Accounting Standards Board's conceptual framework, and the last-in, first-out method of inventory costing. Richard A. Turpen is an Assistant Professor at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His primary teaching interest is in financial accounting, while his research focuses mainly on competitive issues in the market for audit services. Professor Turpen has published most recently in Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory.     

Applications of business analytics in healthcare

The American healthcare system is at a crossroads, and analytics, as an organizational skill, figures to play a pivotal role in its future. As more healthcare systems capture information electronically and begin to collect more novel forms of data, such as human DNA, how will we leverage these resources and use them to improve human health at a manageable cost? In this article, we argue that analytics will play a fundamental role in the transformation of the American healthcare system. However, there are numerous challenges to the application and use of analytics: the lack of data standards, barriers to the collection of high-quality data, and a shortage of qualified personnel to conduct such analyses. There are also multiple managerial issues, such as how to get end users of electronic data to employ it consistently to improve healthcare delivery and how to manage the public reporting and sharing of data. In this article, we explore applications of analytics in healthcare, barriers and facilitators to its widespread adoption, and ways in which analytics can help us achieve the goals of the modern healthcare system: high-quality, responsive, affordable, and efficient care.     

Interpreting value in the customer service experience using customer-dominant logic

Abstract

Traditionally, customer value has been examined from the perspective of the firm. New understandings of customer value from the customer-dominant logic perspective of services emphasise the need to move away from the service-dominant perspective and adopt a customer-based approach that considers value within the broader context of a customer’s lifeworld. This article explores how individual customers make sense of their participation in an extraordinary, commercially-driven consumption experience. A phenomenological approach is taken to understand the lived experience of these participants. The findings of this exploratory study reveal the highly complex nature of value in the experience in the chosen context of luxury driving experience days. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Economics at the FTC: Office Supply Retailers Redux,Healthcare Quality Efficiencies Analysis,and Litigation of an Alleged Get-Rich-Quick Scheme

We discuss in this essay three of the matters on which economists in the Bureau of Economics (BE) at the Federal Trade Commission have worked this past year. BE revisited familiar ground in the first matter, a proposed merger of office supply retailers. The second part of the essay considers efficiency claims in health care mergers, with focus on the acquisition of a physician group by a health care system in Idaho. The final part of the essay discusses empirical work that was undertaken by the Bureau to investigate claims made by marketers of an alleged get-rich-quick scheme.     

Multidimensional Screening in Insurance Markets with Adverse Selection

Bundled coverage of different losses and distinct perils, along with differential deductibles and policy limits, are common features of insurance contracts. We show that, through these practices, insurers can implement multidimensional screening of insurance applicants who possess hidden knowledge of their risks, and thereby reduce the externality cost of adverse selection. Competitive forces drive insurers to exploit multidimensional screening, enhancing the efficiency of insurance contracting. Moreover, multidimensional screening allows competitive insurance markets to attain pure strategy Nash equilibria over a wider range of applicant pools, resolving completely the Rothschild–Stiglitz nonexistence puzzle in markets where the perils space is sufficiently divisible.     

Comparative research in industrial relations: helping the survey cross frontiers

There has been a relative dearth of comparative, cross-national research which has followed a survey-based approach. This partly reflects the difficulty that researchers encounter in collecting such information, either via primary collection or the secondary matching of existing survey material. This paper addresses these difficulties and suggests ways in which their impact can be minimized. It notes that such difficulties are much more severe in the case of secondary matching and are thereby likely to constrain the scope of this approach. They are not totally absent in primary collection and it is suggested that there are limits to what can be achieved during data collection to promote the development of like data-sets across countries. This indicates that great care must be taken in interpreting data so obtained. Despite such limits and cautions, it is nevertheless concluded that the survey approach can be an important adjunct to the process of understanding why the world of work varies across frontiers.     

The Innovative Performance Of The World'S Largest Firms: Some New Evidence ‡

Data on R & D expenditures and US patenting in the world's 660 largest, technologically active firms both show a linear relation between firm size and the volume of innovative activities, despite some inconsistencies between the two measures. Technological diversity increases with firm size, but relatively weakly, especially in R & D-intensive sectors. Sectoral variations in the comparative technological advantage of large firms based in Japan, the USA and W. Europe are better explained by variations in rivalry in their home market than by variations in their size.