Strategic Similarity and Emergent Conventions: Evidence from Similar Stag Hunt Games

This paper reports evidence on the origin of convention in laboratory cohorts confronting similar but not identical strategic situations repeatedly. The experiment preserves the action space of the game, while randomly perturbing the payoffs and scrambling the action labels in an effort to blunt the salience of retrospective selection principles. Hence, the similarity between stage games is reduced to certain strategic details, like efficiency, security, and risk dominance. Nevertheless, we do observe conventions emerging in half of the laboratory cohorts. When a convention emerges subjects's behavior conforms to the selection principles of efficiency rather than security or risk dominance. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C78, C92, D83.     

What Is in a Municipal Bond Rating?

Studies on the determinants of municipal bond ratings contain two conspicuous patterns: the use of financial accounting variables and the application of discriminant analysis to them. Over 70 different financial accounting variables have been specified, leading to different findings across the studies. In addition, discriminant analysis has been applied in these studies without correcting for violations of its underlying assumptions. Akaike's information criterion and Lachenbruch's U method are used to show how a probit model specified with economic base diversification, economic expansion, and fiscal management variables may be an improvement over the application of discriminant analysis to financial accounting variables in the determination of a triple A bond rating.     

Managers' conservatism and corporate performance

This article argues that conservatism as a personal value among senior managers significantly affects corporate performance. A scale to measure conservatism was developed and its measurement properties were tested on several hundred executives. Empirical results were consistent with the hypotheses that conservatism among senior management teams is negatively associated with the firm's social responsiveness as well as certain aspects of financial performance.     

The conditional probability and the linear flow graph approaches to analyzing probabilistic causal systems

An alternative theoretical approach to the analysis for dichotomous causal systems that involve probabilistic causation, the conditional probability approach, has recently been explicated. It was shown that there exist various composition and decomposition rules for analyzing various kinds of general causal systems, and an important distinction between pure-“or”-and pure-“and”-causal systems was explicated. In this paper these earlier results are used to analyze a causal system which has been studied by J.A. Davis (1976), who uses his linear flow graph approach to analysis. The results of the conditional probability approach are compared to the linear flow graph, and it is shown that the two approaches lead to strikingly different results.     

Professional Ethics in a Virtual World: The Impact of the Internet on Traditional Notions of Professionalism

Numerous articles in the popular press together with an examination of websites associated with the medical, legal, engineering, financial, and other professions leave no doubt that the role of professions has been impacted by the Internet. While offering the promise of the democratization of expertise – expertise made available to the public at convenient times and locations and at an affordable cost – the Internet is also driving a reexamination of the concept of professional identity and related claims of expertise and standards of integrity.This paper begins with a presentation of case studies illustrating the ease by which impostors infiltrate the ranks of professionals. Reports of individuals masquerading as professionals via the Internet often reveal that these imposters cause harm to the unwary victims who rely on assertions of professional expertise. Such reports motivated the authors to examine the origins and evolution of the traditional roles of professions and professionals in today’s society, as well as question how, or whether, the standards for professional practice have been adapted to the challenges posed by technology, i.e., do statements of professional ethics provide a ‘guiding light’ for practitioners and their clients in the cyber age? The authors challenge the professions to consider the notion that technology forces a confrontation between the guild-like aspects of a profession that have served, on the one hand, to protect a profession from encroachment and, on the other hand, have purportedly protected the public.The authors conclude by presenting an examination of websites that show recognition of the challenges that the Internet poses to professionalism, as we have known it. Detailed discussion of the websites of two professions illustrates different approaches to responding to these challenges.     

A moral basis for corporate philanthropy

The authors argue that corporate philanthropy is far too important as a social instrument for good to depend on ethical egoism for its support. They claim that rule utilitarianism provides a more compelling, though not exclusive, moral foundation. The authors cite empirical and legal evidence as additional support for their claim.Bill Shaw is the Woodson Centennial Professor in Business Administration at The University of Texas at Austin. He teaches courses in business ethics and in legal environment of business. Professor Shaw's articles have appeared in law and ethics journals, and he is co-author, with Art Wolfe, ofStructure of the Legal Environment (1991).Frederick R. Post is Assistant Professor of Business Law and Management at the College of Business Administration, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio. Professor Post teaches business law and labor policy courses. His research interests include business ethics and labor management relations. His publications have appeared inThe Journal of Business Ethics, The Mid-American Journal of Business andThe Journal of Legal Studies Education.     

Marketing's Interfunctional Interfaces: The MSI Workshop on Management of Corporate Fault Zones

This paper first introduces the purposes and processesof the Marketing Science Institute's Workshop on Interfunctional Interfaces: The Management of Corporate Fault Zones. The motivatingissues of value migration and market orientation are considerednext followed by discussion of marketing's paradigm shift. Thelast half of the paper deals with several management problemsand research issues which were identified during the workshop.Hopefully, these questions and research needs will help to acceleratedevelopment of research into these interface issues.