Perceptions of Business Ethics in a Multicultural Community: The Case of Malaysia

Leaders and managers of today's multinational corporations face a plethora of problems and issues directly attributable to the fact that they are operating in an international context. With work-sites, plants and/or customers based in another country, or even several countries, representing a vast spectrum of cultural differences, international trade and offshore operations, coupled with increased globalisation in respect to political, social and economic realities, contribute to new dilemmas that these leaders must deal with. Not the least of these being a Code of Ethics and ethical decision making.This paper examines the differences in culture between a group of managers from the United States and similar group from Croatia using Hofstede's theory of International Cultures. The study explores how these cultural dimensions may help in our understanding of the differences in reported whistleblowing. The authors then postulate four hypotheses regarding various aspects of whistleblowing. These Hypotheses were than tested using a survey administered to a sample of U.S.A. and Croatian managers. Finally, the paper discusses the findings and practical implications for contemporary managers in the international arena.     

Economic Analysis for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Synthesis and Scenario Valuation of Changes in Ecosystem Services

We combine natural science modelling and valuation techniques to present economic analyses of a variety of land use change scenarios generated for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment. Specifically, the agricultural, greenhouse gas, recreational and urban greenspace impacts of the envisioned land use changes are valued. Particular attention is given to the incorporation of spatial variation in the natural environment and to addressing issues such as biodiversity impacts where reliable values are not available. Results show that the incorporation of ecosystem services and their values within analyses can substantially change decisions.     

Using Pacioli’s pedagogy and medieval text in today’s introductory accounting course

Students today see little relevance in learning double-entry bookkeeping and find it difficult to learn how to prepare journal entries correctly. In particular, they struggle with the first stage of the double-entry process: identifying which accounts are to be debited and which are to be credited for each transaction. This paper reports on an attempt to overcome this situation by using the first printed instructional text on the subject (Pacioli, 1494) as the principal textbook on a 20-hour component of the introductory financial accounting course in an undergraduate accounting degree program. Instruction followed the pedagogy presented by Pacioli and only minimal additional costs to faculty were incurred.     

Changes in the value relevance of accounting information over time: Evidence from the emerging market of China

We investigate the changes in the value relevance of accounting information among Chinese firms over the past two decades, during which accounting reforms are launched to provide decision makers with increased disclosure and higher quality financial information. We also investigate the factors that differentiate firms showing significant value relevance improvement from firms showing little improvement. We find increases in the value relevance of some financial variables and decreases in others, which suggests that accounting numbers help to explain the pricing process of stock shares although at different levels. In addition, we find that value relevance improvements are more pronounced for smaller firms, firms with lower growth rates, and those with greater asset tangibility. We also document that value relevance improvements are generally lower in an exuberant stock market. These results have implications for a variety of information users and policy makers in emerging countries which are reforming their accounting systems.     

Capital-induced labor migration in a spatial Solow model

Journal of Economics - In this work we consider labor mobility in the spatial Solow model for economic growth. Besides considering that labor diffuses from regions with higher density to regions...     

On automated e‐business negotiations: Goal,policy, strategy,and plans of decision and action

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in automated e‐business negotiations. The automation of negotiation requires a decision model to capture the negotiation knowledge of policymakers and negotiation experts so that the decision‐making process can be carried out automatically. Current research on automated e‐business negotiations has focused on defining low‐level tactics (or negotiation rules) so that automated negotiation systems can carry out automated negotiation processes. These low‐level tactics are usually defined from a technical perspective, not from a business perspective. There is a gap between high‐level business negotiation goals and low‐level tactics. In this article, we distinguish the concepts of negotiation context, negotiation goals, negotiation strategy, and negotiation tactics and introduce a formal decision model to show the relations among these concepts. We show how high‐level negotiation goals can be formally mapped to low‐level tactics that can be used to affect the behavior of a negotiation system during the negotiation process. In business, a business organization faces different negotiation situations (or contexts) and determines different sets of goals for different negotiation contexts. In our decision model, a business policymaker sets negotiation goals from different perspectives, which are called goal dimensions. A negotiation policy is a functional mapping from a negotiation context to some quantitative measures (or goal values) for the goal dimensions to express how competitive the policymaker wants to reach that set of goals. A negotiation expert who has the experience and expertise to conduct negotiations would define the negotiation strategies needed for reaching the negotiation goals. Formally, a negotiation strategy is a functional mapping from a set of goal values to a set of decision‐action rules that implement negotiation tactics. The selected decision‐action rules can then be used to control the execution of an automated negotiation system, which conducts a negotiation on behalf of a business organization.     

Market illiquidity and bounds on European option prices

The paper analyses the impact of illiquidity of a stock paying no dividends on the pricing of European options written on that stock. In particular, it is shown how illiquidity generates price bounds on an option on this stock, even in the absence of other imperfections, such as transaction costs and trading constraints, or the assumption of stochastic volatility. Moreover, price bounds are shown to be asymmetric with respect to the option price under perfect liquidity. This fact explains, under some conditions, the appearance of a smile effect when the implied volatility is estimated from the mid-quote.     

Changing Women's Lives: Child Care Policy in Ireland

Child care as a policy issue has been forced to the center of the national planning agenda in Ireland with the report of an expert working group on child care. As Ireland has broken into the ranks of wealthy Western economies, Irish women have joined the formal workforce in ever greater numbers, dramatically breaking the traditional ideology of women as childbearers and homemakers. However, women are now carrying the double burden of work that accompanies the lack of any state policy on child care. This article traces this recent history of the feminizing of the Irish workforce, amidst a fast-changing social context for family life, and the multiple problems confronting the expert working group of securing an adequate range of policies for the provision of child care in a country which has one of the lowest rates of formal state provision in the entire European Union.     

Energy-saving Supporting Tourism Sustainability: A Case Study of Hotel Swimming Pool Heat Pump

Based on energy-related measurements, this article evaluates the thermal performance, energy-saving, indirect emissions and financial feasibility of using heat pumps for hotel out-door swimming pools in subtropical climates. A rooftop pool of a city-centre hotel was investigated. It was found that the average coefficient of performance (COP) was around 2.0. The measured electricity consumption was 24.6 MWh and the total heat output was 49.1 MWh for the heating season studied (mid-December to the late April). Compared with conventional electric boilers and gas-fired condensing/non-condensing boilers, the total energy savings during the heating season ranged from 26.5 to 32.5 MWh. Greenhouse and noxious emissions can also be indirectly reduced by about 12,000 kg. A discounting approach was adopted to compute the net present value of fuel costs over a lifecycle of 10 years. It was found that, over a 10-year lifecycle, the energy cost could be reduced by HK$226,400 when a heat pump with an average COP of 2.0 was used instead of a conventional electric boiler. Derived from the energy cost saving over other conventional type of water heating equipment, the simple pay-back period can be about 2 years and the lowest internal rate of return can be 39%.