The Law and Economics of Historic Preservation in St. Petersburg, Russia

St. Petersburg's architectural heritage makes it one of the most beautiful cities in Russia. However, as government subsidies continue to dwindle, the city is increasingly dependent upon private sources of financing to restore and preserve the many seriously deteriorated monuments and buildings. This article considers whether the economic and legal environment in St. Petersburg provides sufficient incentives for private investors to undertake historic rehabilitation projects. A pro forma model is used to analyze a developer's return on investment in new residential construction on the outskirts of the city versus rehabilitation of an historic residential building. The results show that the costs associated with historic preservation are significantly greater than for new construction and for a developer to make a reasonable rate of return on historic preservation the square meter price of residential space would be affordable by only a small segment of the population. Simultaneous changes to multiple legal and economic policies are recommended to encourage additional private investment in historic preservation.     

Erratum to: Ethical Leadership,Organic Organizational Cultures and Corporate Social Responsibility: An Empirical Study in Social Enterprises

Decades of tobacco control initiatives have turned public opinion against cigarette smoking. Smokers, once considered glamorous, are now stigmatized in domains including the workplace. Extant literature lacks scrutiny of smoker stigmatization and devaluation within the job selection process, and mechanisms that lead to such outcomes. Using an experimental design, we empirically examine initial reactions to job applicants’ smoking behaviors within two samples (N = 122 Canadian business students, and N = 143 online U.S. respondents with hiring experience). We show that initial impressions are significantly worse when job applicants smoke versus do not in a store-based context. Moreover, this effect occurs indirectly through perceived likelihood of engaging in counterproductive work behaviors (and to some extent negative emotions experienced), and is conditional upon respondents’ own attitudes towards smoking (particularly within the U.S. sample). These relationships—similar for customer service and inventory management jobs—are indicative of potential biases within the hiring process. Implications of these findings, and the moral dilemmas they raise around the treatment of smokers, are discussed from the ethical perspective of human resource management.     

Using Conjoint Analysis to Help Design Product Platforms

This article illustrates how one can combine different conjoint analysis studies, each containing a core of common attributes, to help design product platforms that serve as the foundation for multiple derivative products. The illustration is based on actual, but disguised, data from a small company that makes electronic test equipment.
This article demonstrates that decisions that consider products individually are likely to be suboptimal and can be significantly different than those based on product platforms. Suboptimality can occur either when preferences for product features differ across markets or when a technology is more important to the overall company than it is to an individual product. Additionally, we show the importance of considering both fixed and variable costs when performing this type of analysis as sales, contribution, and profit-maximizing products are quite different. Finally, sensitivity analyses show that these results are robust with respect to assumptions about price sensitivity, fixed costs, and timing of entry. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.     

Wind of change brought by COVID-19: Exploring the response and the new normal from the perspectives of Indian flexpatriates

Drawing from the positive organizational change theory, this paper aims to explore how Indian flexpatriates responded to the change brought by the pandemic of COVID-19 and what is the new normal according to them. Thematic analysis of 19 in-depth interviews with flexpatriates from the IT industry revealed four explicit phases of change process – reflection, communication, collaboration, and transformation. Further, the analysis brought out four tenets of the new normal. First, it is time to blend physical and virtual work; second, the “personal” touch of Indians in international assignments is irreplaceable; third, working from home amidst the entire household being housebound is the new normal; and last, international travel will resume soon with some changed protocols. This is the first qualitative study combining the issue of global talent management with Indian flexpatriates vis-à-vis the impact of COVID-19, the findings of which expand the positive organizational change theory and have important implications.