Workplace sexual harassment: exploring the experience of tour leaders in an Asian context

Sexual harassment is a prominent issue in the workplace; it presents a particular challenge with regard to this sensitive area in the Asian context due to the Asian cultural value. Tour leaders are one of the main components of the tourism industry workforce and are expensive to train in terms of both time/experience accumulation and financial investment. The potential risk of sexual harassment in the hospitality and tourism workplace remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to investigate tour leaders’ experiences of sexual harassment at work and their awareness of the organizational polices/regulations relating to sexual harassment in the workplace. A survey was conducted on the tour leaders in Taiwan and results of the study suggested that gender sexual harassment and seductive harassment behaviour were found to occur more frequently than sexual bribery, sexual coercion and sexual assault. Asian tours leaders tend to adopt extremely passive coping strategies in dealing with sexual harassment incidents. More than half of the tour leaders in the current study were ‘unsure’ whether their affiliated travel agencies had a sexual harassment policy.     

Emotional Intelligence and Venture Performance

Scholars emphasize the importance of emotion in entrepreneurship and the potential of emotional intelligence, but research is sparse in the field. We develop and test a novel partial mediation model of emotional intelligence, interpersonal processes, and venture performance. The results indicate that interpersonal emotional skills, which entail the recognition and management of emotions in others, has a direct effect on venture performance, but intrapersonal emotional skills pertaining to self‐awareness and regulation of emotions do not. Additionally, both the intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions of emotional intelligence have an indirect influence on firm performance via interpersonal processes that entail functioning in key activities within the firm. We discuss the implications and address potential avenues for future research on this important topic.     

Sibling donation games: pure-altruism,strategic-altruism,and the interaction of familial and public transfers

Accompanying the rapidly aging populations of high-income countries are increasing transfers of time and money from adult children to elderly parents (ascending altruism). In this paper we first develop a theoretical model to characterize the general reaction-functions of two adult siblings choosing transfer amounts (possibly time) to their needy parents under two alternative motivations: pure altruism and strategic altruism. We show that transfers are strategic substitutes under pure altruism and strategic complements under strategic altruism. The Nash-equilibrium generates distinct predictions associated with each motivation and we then explore some implications of our findings. A result with potentially important policy implications is that the response of children transfers to increased pension payments to the parents depends on the children's motivations. This contrasts with much of the literature which assumes transfers decrease with increased pension payments.     

The Ethical Environment of Tax Professionals: Partner and Non-Partner Perceptions and Experiences

This article examines perceptions of tax partners and non-partner tax practitioners regarding their CPA firms’ ethical environment, as well as experiences with ethical dilemmas. Prior research emphasizes the importance of executive leadership in creating an ethical climate (e.g., Weaver et al., Acad Manage Rev 42(1):41–57, 1999; Trevino et al., Hum Relat 56(1):5–37, 2003; Schminke et al., Organ Dyn 36(2):171–186, 2007). Thus, it is important to consider whether firm partners and other employees have congruent perceptions and experiences. Based on the responses of 144 tax practitioners employed at CPA firms, the results show that tax partners rate the ethical environment of their firms as stronger than non-partner tax practitioners, particularly among those who describe a self-identified ethical dilemma. Tax partners also report having encountered more of the common examples of researcher-provided ethical dilemmas than non-partner tax practitioners, although non-partners perceive that certain ethical dilemmas occur at a higher rate than partners do. Overall, this study provides evidence of a disconnect between tax partners and non-partner tax practitioners with respect to perceptions of organizational ethics. Suggestions for potential remedies are offered.     

Spatial productivity spillovers from public infrastructure: Evidence from state highways

Is public-sector infrastructure a key determinant of productivity? Traditional, project-based analyses of benefits and costs typically do not find large rates of return. Proponents of infrastructure spending instead point to regressionbased analyses of the links between private productivity and public infrastructure that imply large productivity effects from public spending. The disparity in estimated returns is often attributed to geographic spillovers in productivity benefits that are not captured by disaggregated analyses. We examine the degree to which state highways provide productivity benefits beyond the narrow confines of each state's borders. Despite the fact that state highways-especially the interstate highway system-are designed at least in part with interstate linkages in mind, we find no evidence of quantitatively important productivity spillovers.     

Testing the significance of income distribution changes over the 1980s business cycle: a cross-national comparison

Using kernel density estimation we describe the distribution of household size-adjusted real income and how it changed over the business cycle of the 1980s in the United States and the United Kingdom. We confirm previous studies that show income inequality increased in the two countries and the middle of the distribution was squashed down. Using a series of statistical tests, however, we find that while the mass in both tails of the distribution increased significantly in both countries over the period, by far the greatest gains were in the upper tail. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Private Market for Long-Term Care Insurance in the United States: A Review of the Evidence

This article reviews the growing literature on the market for private long-term care insurance, a market notable for its small size despite the fact that long-term care expenses are potentially large and highly uncertain. After summarizing long-term care utilization and insurance coverage in the United States, the article reviews research on the supply of and the demand for private long-term care insurance. It concludes that demand-side factors impose important limits on the size of the private market and that we currently have a limited understanding of how public policies could be designed to encourage the growth of this market.     

Reactions to disappointing performance in manufacturer–distributor relationships: The role of escalation and resource commitments

A model is presented of an exchange episode between a manufacturer and a distributor that generates disappointing performance outcomes. The authors suggest that manufacturers commit different types of resources in the initial stages of relationships with distributors, which affect both the distributor's ability and willingness to achieve performance goals. These initial resource commitments affect the commitment of further resources, after the receipt of negative outcomes, both directly (through a mental budgeting process) and indirectly (through the attributions made about the cause of the disappointment). The authors use resource theory, attribution theory, and research on escalation of commitment to structure their conceptual framework and research propositions. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The development of business–government strategies by diversified firms

This paper uses grounded theory to explore internal (intrafirm) conflicts in the formulation of business–government strategies by corporations with diversified business units. We find that three types of conflict exist within firms: conflict over proactive policy positions advocated by the firm (prepolicy issues), conflict over reactive internal distribution of compliance costs/benefits (postpolicy issues), and representational conflict (e.g., individual business units vs. corporate representation in the external public policy arena). We also develop a grounded framework for organizational structures for conflict resolution in the strategic management of government relations, based upon our case studies, and find a relationship between particular structures and the degree of diversification. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.