Developing a Normatively Grounded Research Agenda for Fair Trade: Examining the Case of Canada

This paper examines two issues related to research of certified fair trade goods. The first is the question of how agendas for fair trade research should be developed. The second issue is the existence of major gaps in the fair trade literature, including the study of the particular features of fair trade practice in individual northern countries. In taking up the first of these issues, the paper proposes that normative analysis should provide the basis for developing research agendas. Such an approach is important to ensure that the necessary types of questions to make normative judgments and policy decisions are posed and that biases that tend to favor mainstreaming practices in the generation of knowledge are minimized. The paper addresses the second research issue by examining the development of research agendas at the level of individual countries, using Canada as a case.     

Precarious Professionals: (in)Secure Identities and Moral Agency in Neocolonial Context

We contribute to the literature on ethics in the professions by theorizing how global mobility precipitates professional insecurity and constrained moral agency. We present our findings of a study of accountants migrating to Canada. Using postcolonial theory and relational/poststructuralist theories of identity and ethics, we contrast the experiences of marginalized and privileged migrant accountants to show how those with “diverse” social identities are not recognized by professionals in Canada and must seek recognition from Canadian colleagues, employers, and clients to reconstitute their professional identities and moral agency. We discuss the implications of the exclusion and marginalization of professionals for migrants, the profession, and society more generally.     

Belt‐and‐Road Initiative: Driving the need to understand intellectual capital in Chinese multinational enterprises

China's Belt‐and‐Road Initiative (BRI) is one of the most ambitious trade and development projects in history which intends to link Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) to the Asian subcontinent, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe through two trade routes, land and sea. The project involves infrastructure development, human knowledge, and international relations to develop trade relationships. Increased competition along the two routes will see other governments taking initiatives to protect the business community in their nations; thus, adding barriers that must be overcome by CMNEs. The success of CMNEs in the BRI relies on the three components—structural, human, and relational—which are the three components of intellectual capital (IC). Through the use of IC CMNEs can assess their strengths and weaknesses. It will be the understanding of these strengths and weaknesses which will drive the success or failure of CMNEs.     

Optimizing tracking error-constrained portfolios

Active portfolios subject to tracking error (TE) constraints are the typical setup for active managers tasked with outperforming a benchmark. The risk and return relationship of such constrained portfolios is described by an ellipse in traditional mean-variance space and the ellipse’s flat shape suggests an additional constraint which improves the performance of the active portfolio. Although subsequent work isolated and explored different portfolios subject to these constraints, absolute portfolio risk has been consistently ignored. A different restriction – maximization of the traditional Sharpe ratio on the constant TE frontier in absolute risk/return space – is added here to the existing constraint set, and a method to generate this portfolio is explained. The resultant portfolio has a lower volatility and higher return than the benchmark, it satisfies the TE constraint and the ratio of excess absolute return to risk is maximized (i.e. maximum Sharpe ratio in absolute space).     

The Moderating Influence of Financial Market Development on the Relationship between Loan Guarantees for SMEs and Local Market Employment Rates

We empirically examine whether a major government intervention in the small firm credit market yields significantly better results in markets that are less financially developed. The government intervention that we investigate is Small Business Administration (SBA) guaranteed lending. After controlling for the appropriate cross‐sectional market characteristics, we find that SBA guaranteed lending has a significantly more positive impact on the average annual level of employment when the local market is relatively less financially developed. This result has important implications for public policy directives concerning where SBA guaranteed lending should be directed.     

Estimating the patent premium: Evidence from the Australian Inventor Survey

In this paper we use novel survey data on 1,790 Australian inventions to estimate the average patent premium, which provides an important benchmark for technology managers and IP professionals. Our data are drawn from the Australian Inventor Survey, which was sent to all Australian applicants who submitted a patent application to the Australian Patent Office from 1986 to 2005. Since some patent applications were unsuccessful, we have information about the private value of both patented and unpatented inventions. Our results suggest that the presence of a patent increases the returns to an invention by around 40 to 50 percent regardless of how we define ‘value.’ Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

New development: Managing and accounting for sustainable development across generations in public services—and call for papers

Social and environmental justice across generations is a fundamental attribute of sustainable development. In this article, which is also a call for papers for a future theme in Public Money & Management (PMM), we develop our case for further research on how governments and public service organizations seek to address sustainable development in their decision-making processes. We believe that accounting for social and environmental aspects is an underdeveloped area of research and practice that is worthy of further critical enquiry. We therefore call on researchers and practitioners to submit their research to a themed issue of PMM on managing and accounting for sustainable development in public services.