The Influence of Corporate Psychopaths on Corporate Social Responsibility and Organizational Commitment to Employees

This study investigated whether employee perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) were associated with the presence of Corporate Psychopaths in corporations. The article states that, as psychopaths are 1% of the population, it is logical to assume that every large corporation has psychopaths working within it. To differentiate these people from the common perception of psychopaths as being criminals, they have been called “Corporate Psychopaths” in this research. The article presents quantitative empirical research into the influence of Corporate Psychopaths on four perceptual measures of CSR and three further measures of organizational commitment to employees. The article explains who Corporate Psychopaths are and delineates the measures of CSR and organizational commitment to employees that were used. It then outlines the research conducted among 346 corporate employees in Australia in 2008. The reliability of the instrument used is commented on favorably in terms of its statistical reliability and its face and external validity. Results of the research are described showing the highly significant and negative influence of Corporate Psychopaths on all of the measures of CSR and of organizational commitment to employees used in the research. When Corporate Psychopaths are present in leadership positions within organizations, employees are less likely to agree with views that: the organization does business in a socially desirable manner; does business in an environmentally friendly manner and that the organization does business in a way that benefits the local community. Also, when Corporate Psychopaths are present in leadership positions within organizations, employees are significantly less likely to agree that the corporation does business in a way that shows commitment to employees, significantly less likely to feel that they receive due recognition for doing a good job, to feel that their work was appreciated and to feel that their efforts were properly rewarded. The article argues that academics and researchers in the area of CSR cannot ignore the influence of individual managers. This is particularly the case when those managers have dysfunctional personalities, or are actually psychopaths. The article further argues that the existence of Corporate Psychopaths should be of interest to those involved in corporate management and corporate governance because their presence influences the way corporations are run and how corporations affect society and the environment.     

Price and earnings momentum in Australian stock returns

There is no prior published Australian research on earnings momentum and only one prior unpublished work of limited depth and scope. We provide some of the first Australian evidence on earnings momentum and revisit price momentum with the first Australian evidence of the behaviour of returns beyond 12 months. Price momentum is found to be a feature of this market, but there is some reversal of returns during the second year after portfolio formation, suggesting trend chasing behaviour. Earnings momentum is also present, but with weak continuation into the second year. Price momentum and earnings momentum are shown to provide independent explanatory power over future returns.     

Cogitate,articulate, communicate: the psychosocial reality of technology roadmapping and roadmaps

Roadmapping has gained acceptance by technology management practitioners as a key tool in planning and strategy development. Technology roadmapping workshops are essentially a socially facilitated mechanism that solicits a diverse group of participants for their pool of experience and expertise in order to explore the opportunities and challenges facing an organisation. The group collaboration is captured through the generation of a roadmap which provides a visual representation of their collective cognitive efforts. It must therefore be acknowledged that the actual practice of roadmapping involves numerous complex underlying cognitive factors and social interactions. In this regard, an initial framework for the exploration of the psychological and sociological aspects involved in technology roadmapping and roadmaps is presented. The postulation is that roadmapping/roadmaps provide a mechanism/vehicle to cogitate, articulate and communicate.     

Human Capital Spillovers within the Workplace: Evidence for Great Britain*

In this paper, we use a unique matched worker–workplace data set to estimate the effect on own earnings of co‐workers’ education. Our results, using the 1998 GB Workplace Employee Relations Survey, show significant effects. An independent, significantly positive effect from average workplace education is evident; own earnings premia from years of education fall only slightly when controlling for workplace education. This result suggests that the social returns to education are strongly positive – working with colleagues who each had 1.2 years (1 standard deviation) of more education than the average worker, boosts own earnings by 11.1%. An additional year of any single co‐worker's education is worth about 3.2% of an additional own year of education. We also test for interactions between own and co‐worker education levels and for ‘skills incompatibility’ when worker education levels are heterogeneous. The interactions appear negative: own education is not much valued at workplaces where co‐workers’ education levels are already high. There is no evidence that workplace heterogeneity in worker education levels adversely affects own earnings. This result runs counter to theoretical predictions, and suggests that workers compete in tournaments for high‐paying jobs.     

Forecasting—looking back and forward: Paper to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Econometrics Institute at the Erasmus University,Rotterdam

The first two influential books on economic forecasting are by Henri Theil [1961, second edition 1965. Economic Forecasts and Policy. North-Holland, Amsterdam] and by George Box and Gwilym Jenkins [1970. Time Series Analysis, Forecasting and Control. Holden Day, San Francisco]. Theil introduced advanced mathematical statistical techniques and considered a variety of types of data. Box and Jenkins introduced ARIMA models and how they are used to forecast. With these foundations, the field of economic forecasting has considered a wide range of techniques and models, wider and deeper information sets, longer horizons, and deeper questions including how to better evaluate all forecasts and how to disentangle a forecast, a policy, and the outcomes. Originally, forecasts were just for means (or expectations) then moved to variances, and now consider predictive distributions. Eventually, multivariate distributions will have to be considered, but evaluation will be difficult.     

The political economy of the ‘recurrent cost problem’ in the West African Sahel

The syndrome of development projects in agriculture and the social sectors languishing after completion of their foreign-aided establishment phase, due to lack of host government budget support, is particularly characteristic of, though by no means limited to, the eight countries of the West African Sahel. A two-year study of the problem by a multilateral working group attributed the problem substantially to donor policies causing recipients to attach a low opportunity cost, only a fraction of nominal value, to project-specific aid resources, as against the high opportunity cost, corresponding to a shadow price well over 1.0, attached to use of their own uncommitted budget resources.     

The credibility of self-regulation: Evidence from the accounting profession's peer review program

Following the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, self-regulated peer reviews at accounting firms were replaced by independent inspections conducted by the Public Company Accounting and Oversight Board. Critics of self-regulation had argued that the peer review program lacked credibility. This paper tests whether the opinions issued by the peer reviewers provided credible information to clients about audit firm quality. We find audit firms gained clients after receiving clean opinions from their reviewers and lost clients after receiving modified or adverse opinions. This suggests peer review opinions provided credible information about quality differences between audit firms.     

Motives behind willingness to pay for improving biodiversity in a water ecosystem: Economics, ethics and social psychology

This paper reports on empirical work extending the standard economic approach to valuation by including psychological and philosophical factors. More specifically a contingent valuation method survey was applied to biodiversity improvement while simultaneously assessing rights based beliefs, consequentialism and the theory of planned behaviour. The latter was assessed using measures of attitudes, subjective norms and perceptions of control over willingness to pay. The results show that standard socio-economic explanatory variables are far inferior to those of social psychology and philosophy, and that these factors offer a better understanding of the motives behind responses to contingent valuation. The implication is that alternative means of measuring an individual's pluralistic values should be taken into account in order to assess the validity and meaning of willingness to pay.