Bus transportation crews planning by goal programming

In the present paper, an integer goal programming model formulation is presented for the bus transportation crews planning to find an optimal schedule in which each crew is assigned two days off (consecutive or non-consecutive) per week and several goals like upper and lower limits on the total number of crews having consecutive and/or non-consecutive days off on each day, lower limit on the number of crews having consecutive days off on the particular pairs of consecutive days, and minimization of the number of crews having non-consecutive days off, are taken into consideration. The model is demonstrated by a numerical example.     

Voluntary disclosure and its impact on share prices: Evidence from the UK biotechnology sector

In the UK, SSAP 13 requires that firms immediately expense most of their R&D expenditures. The reported earnings of high-R&D expenditure firms are therefore likely to convey less value-relevant information to investors than those of less research-intensive firms. Using a sample of firms from the high-R&D UK biotechnology/pharmaceutical sector, we find that earnings announcements have a much lower price impact than drug development announcements. We also find that there are significantly more ‘good news’ voluntary announcements than ‘bad news’ announcements. Furthermore, our findings indicate that these firms are more likely to announce late than early stage developments, and that the pattern of disclosures, and the market’s reaction to them, varies between larger, dominant firms and their smaller counterparts.     

Bringing meaning to the sales job: The effect of ethical climate and customer demandingness

Top performing salespeople are attracted to organizations that provide opportunities to make full use of their abilities. Responses from 1450 sales directors from a leading direct selling organization were used to examine salesperson's experienced meaningfulness. Results show that experienced meaningfulness is critical to sales because it impacts salesperson's performance, turnover intentions and felt stress. Further, ethical climate and customer demandingness influence experienced meaningfulness perceptions.     

Religions's moral compass and a just economic order: Reflections on Pope John Paul II's encyclicalCentesimus Annus

The purpose of Pope John Paul's encyclicalCentesimus Annus (CA) is to propound the foundations of a just economic order and to sketch its essential characteristics. As such he essentially provides an orientation or moral compass for the political economy rather than a precise road map. This article first reviews the principal components of CA and then analyzes and evaluates its central contentions on both cultural and economic grounds.S. Prakash Sethi is a Professor of Management and Associate Director of the Center for Management, Baruch College, The City University of New York. He has published twenty books and over 130 articles in scholarly and professional journals in such diverse areas as business and public policy, corporate strategy, and international business.Paul Steidlmeier is associate professor at the School of Management of Binghamton University in the State University of New York system. He has written a number of articles in leading journals and has publishedPeople and Profits: The Ethics of Capitalism (Prentice Hall, 1992). Recent work has focused upon institutionalist aspects of Business and Society issues and problems of intellectual property and the social responsibility of business in developing countries (China).     

SUSTAINABLE URBANIZATION: NEEDED POLICY CHANGES FOR INDIA

This paper is concerned with two questions: what is it that is unsustainable about the process of urbanization and growth of cities in developing countries?; and why do countries persist with strategies that are evidently unsustainable? Making use of data from India, which today has the second largest urban population in the world, and taking note of increasing global concern for sustainable urbanization, this paper points out that the developing countries have to move beyond a general acceptance of the concept to see it being put into practice.