The central distinction in the theory of corporate moral personhood

Peter French has argued that conglomerate collectivities such as business corporations are moral persons and that aggregate collectivities such as lynch mobs are not. Two arguments are advanced to show that French's claim is flawed. First, the distinction between aggregates and conglomerates is, at best, a distinction of degree, not kind. Moreover, some aggregates show evidence of moral personhood. Second, French's criterion for distinguishing aggregates and conglomerates is based on inadequate grounds. Application of the criterion to specific cases requires an additional judgment of a pragmatic nature which undermines any attempt to demonstrate French's thesis that actual conglomerates are moral persons and aggregates are not. Thus, French's theory is seriously lacking both empirical basis and empirical relevance.     

Mapping sexual orientation research in management: A review and research agenda

Attitudes, norms, and laws regarding sexual orientation are undergoing a worldwide revolution. Managers and HR professionals play a key role in responding to these changes, and managing issues related to sexual orientation diversity in organizations. As such, the amount of management scholarship on sexual orientation has been rapidly growing to help inform practice. However, at present, the literature is fragmented across management specialty areas. This makes it difficult to have an overview of what has been learned to date, and detect research opportunities. Thus, this article aims to provide the first integrative review of sexual orientation research across the management field over 23 years. We use bibliometric techniques to (a) systematically identify and map 111 topics in this literature (map downloads from: https://bit.ly/SOTopicMap ), (b) identify topic trends and topic citation rates, and (c) derive an inductive taxonomy of major topic clusters. We then identify key theories and relationships in the literature, review key findings for scholars and practitioners, and identify future research directions. Among these, we highlight the need to incorporate sexual orientation as a standard demographic question in management research, and highlight best practices for doing so from other scientific fields.     

The economic effects of extending shop opening hours

In this paper we investigate the economic effects of deregulation of shop opening hours legislation. The theoretical literature is rather mixed about the possible effects of such a policy. Using an empirical model for optimal retail behavior, it is shown that the economic potential can be high. It is demonstrated that employment goes up mainly because of an increase in threshold labor. However, the magnitude of this effect depends on the average number of additional hours as a consequence of deregulation. Therefore, by using the model for optimal retail behavior an optimal rule for extending opening hours is given. This rule implies that the potential for longer opening hours is high. It is, however, shown that in the noncooperative equilibrium this potential is higher than in the cooperative equilibrium, and that large-scale stores gain more from this deregulation.     

Steps in selling effort deployment

Sales deployment decisions are among the most important and most difficult decisions facing sales organizations. Sales- force decision models have been developed as analytical tools for deployment analysis, but model use poses difficult problems for many firms. We propose an operational approach for the strategic analysis of selling effort deployment and provide three examples of how it might be used in deployment analysis.     

The Relationship between the Environmental and Financial Performance of Public Utilities

A growing body of research has centered on theissue of the relationship between financial andenvironmental performance. The lack ofconsensus in this literature can be attributedto several factors. The cost of complying withenvironmental regulation can be significant anddetrimental to shareholder wealth maximization.Conversely, a firm that can effectively controlpollution might also be able to effectivelycontrol other costs of production and henceearn a higher rate of return. We utilize datafrom the Investor Responsibility ResearchCenter as well as a proprietary database toinvestigate the relationship betweenenvironmental performance and financialperformance in electric utilities. Utilities,as producers and distributors of energy,produce substantial amounts of pollution.However, since public utilities are regulated,studying the financial and environmentalperformance of utilities affords us theopportunity to see what role regulation playsin enhancing or diminishing the relationshipbetween financial and environmentalperformance.Our results differ from earlier studies in thatwe find do not find a positive relationshipbetween holding period returns and anindustry-adjusted measure of environmentalperformance nor do we find that regulatoryclimate appears to explain returns. While theredoes not appear to be a clearly definedrelationship between regulatory climate and acompliance based measure of environmentalperformance, there is evidence of a negativerelationship between financial return and amore pro-active measure of environmentalperformance. We offer several possibleinterpretations of these results and extensionsfor future research.     

The trade-off between environmental care and long-term growth—Pollution in three prototype growth models

The effects of increased environmental care on optimal technology choice and long-term growth are studied for an economy in which pollution is a side-product of physical capital used in production. First, it is shown that in case of a standard neoclassical production structure, the result is a less capital-intensive production process whereas the long-run growth rate is not affected. Next, we introduce assumptions of the endogenous growth literature. When there are constant returns to physical capital, an increase in abatement activities crowds out investment and lowers the endogenous growth rate. When human capital accumulation is the engine of growth, physical capital intensity declines and the endogenous optimal growth rate is unaffected by increased environmental care or is even higher, depending on whether or not pollution influences agents' ability to learn.The authors are grateful to an anonymous referee, to Lans Bovenberg, Noud Gruijters, Theo van de Klundert, Lex Meijdam, and Sweder van Wijnbergen for helpful and stimulating comments. The views expressed in this paper are the authors' own and should not be attributed to the Ministry of Finance.     

Statistical considerations in the fitting of growth curves

In long range trend projection, one of the most frequently used models is the “S”-shaped growth curve originally suggested by Pearl and Reed. Because of the nonlinear form of this model, problems exist in the statistical evaluation of model fit and in estimating the precision of forecasts developed from the model. Based on an approach first suggested by Yule, a procedure for fitting and evaluating the Pearl–Reed curve is developed. Confidence intervals for parameters and forecast prediction intervals are presented.     

Contingent Valuation and Lost Passive Use: Damages from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

We report on the results of a large-scale contingent valuation (CV) study conducted after the Exxon Valdez oil spill to assess the harm caused by it. Among the issues considered are the design features of the CV survey, its administration to a national sample of U.S. households, estimation of household willingness to pay to prevent another Exxon Valdez type oil spill, and issues related to reliability and validity of the estimates obtained. Events influenced by the study's release are also briefly discussed.     

Bitcoin mining: converting computing power into cash flow

Bitcoin is the world’s leading cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization briefly exceeding $300 billion. This hints at Bitcoin’s amorphous nature: Is this a monetary or a corporate measure? Hard values become explicit in the processing of transactions and the digital mining of Bitcoins. Electricity is a primary input cost. Bitcoins earned are often used to circumvent local currency controls and acquire US dollars. For the period August 2010 to February 2018, we examine the financial components of Bitcoin mining revenues, their statistical contribution to daily changes, and to its variance. We provide empirical evidence that Bitcoin transaction processing is capacity constrained.