Retailer perceptions on hiring prospective employees with disabilities

While US retailers have a general sense of openness toward employing people with disabilities, they still harbor a variety of concerns about how to best carry out workplace integration. However, the exact nature and degree of these concerns have not been quantified in recent literature. This study aims to understand retailers in terms of their perceptions and practices regarding hiring employees with disabilities. Using secondary government survey data, retailers with fewer employees are found to be consistently more wary of employing people with disabilities than those with more employees. This study then addresses the implications of these concerns and how they relate to hiring practices.     

Internet and distance channel use and European consumer complaint behavior

This exploratory study analyzes the effect of distance-shopping channel choice (i.e. the format first used by consumers in a retail transaction) on consumer complaint behavior, with a special focus on the Internet channel. It analyzes 2011 Eurobarometer data using a logistic regression model controlling for sociodemographic and country-specific variables to measure the impact of using the Internet, post/catalog, and telephone channels on complaint behavior. The results indicate that consumers using the Internet channel exhibit the greatest likelihood of complaint behavior when compared to consumers using traditional distance-shopping channels. Implications and suggestions for retailers are discussed, as are the contributions to the consumer complaint behavior literature.     

Virtual Meetings With Hundreds of Managers

This paper describes the use of a Group Support System (GSS) in a distributed meeting with hundreds of managers. All were managing directors of the local banks of Rabobank. The distributed meeting has contributed to reducing the lead-time of a decision of hundreds of managers from an estimated 6 months to 4 weeks while at the same time increasing the involvement of the managers. The paper discusses the processes followed, the results achieved, the feedback from the managers as collected in a survey and the lessons learned. The experience shows that large-scale virtual meetings with business managers are feasible today. The participants recognize the usefulness of the virtual meeting but also indicate the need to improve the processes followed and the IT used.     

Border Effects in House Prices

This article estimates the effect of the Dutch–German border on house prices. We argue that the difference between house prices at the border indicates the willingness to pay to stay in a country compared to living across the border. After a change in the tax rules in 2001, migration from the Netherlands to Germany increased substantially and the gradient of Dutch house price towards the German border steepened. Combining a German and Dutch real estate dataset and using different estimation strategies, we find that asking prices of comparable housing drop by about 16% when one crosses the Dutch–German border.     

Equality of competition: A consistent approach to equality of opportunity in sport

Accepting the principles of equal treatment and equality of opportunity as standards means that individuals should have the same chances and receive the same rewards. If there is no reason to maintain that these principles should not be decisive in the domain of sport, the consequences of accepting them must be accepted. Equality of opportunity, in particular, which may with respect to sport be termed ‘equality of competition’, raises some issues that are examined.     

The real price of parking policy

This paper is the first to empirically examine the residents’ willingness to pay for on-street parking permits as well as the cost of cruising using an identification methodology based on house prices for Amsterdam. The residents’ cost of cruising is about €1 per day. The residents’ willingness to pay for a parking permit is about €10 per day.     

Strategic stakeholder orientations and performance consequences—a case of private nonprofit performing arts in the US

• This paper borrows a market orientation perspective in considering how organizations behave toward stakeholders and the implications on performance in the institutional performing arts environment. To investigate the relationship between stakeholder orientations and organizational performance, both interviews and a survey instrument were used. Using nonprofit performing arts organizations in three metropolitan areas of Northwestern US as a sample frame, primary data was collected from leading directors of these organizations. The results generally indicate a positive relationship between stakeholder orientation and organizational performance. Complex relationships between dimensions of stakeholder orientation and performance consequences were also observed.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

贸易性洗钱

转运可以增加海运的效率,但这种贸易方式也有缺陷,其中之一是增加了贸易性洗钱（TBML）的可能性。根据2009年美国国务院发布的《国际毒品管制策略报告》,每年国际贸易中都隐藏了价值数十亿美元的洗钱活动。