Trust,but Verify: MD&;A Language and the Role of Trust in Corporate Culture

Recent scholarship in philosophy, law, and information systems suggests that respecting privacy entails understanding the implicit privacy norms about what, why, and to whom information is shared within specific relationships. These social contracts are important to understand if firms are to adequately manage the privacy expectations of stakeholders. This paper explores a social contract approach to developing, acknowledging, and protecting privacy norms within specific contexts. While privacy as a social contract—a mutually beneficial agreement within a community about sharing and using information—has been introduced theoretically and empirically, the full impact on firms of an alternative framework to respecting the privacy expectations of stakeholders has not been examined. The goal of this paper is to examine how privacy norms develop through social contract’s narrative, to redescribe privacy violations given the social contract approach, and to critically examine the role of business as a contractor in developing privacy norms. A social contract narrative dealing specifically with issues of privacy is an important next step in exploring a social contract approach to privacy. Here, the narrative is used to explain to analyze the dynamic process of privacy norm generation within particular communities. Based on this narrative, individuals within a given community discriminately share information with a particular set of obligations in mind as to who has access to the information and how it will be used. Rather than giving away privacy, individuals discriminately share information within a particular community and with norms governing the use of their information. Similar to contractual business ethics’ impact on global commerce in explaining how and why norms vary across global contexts, the social contract approach to privacy explains how and why norms vary across communities of actors. Focusing on agreements around privacy expectations shifts the responsibility of firms from adequate notification to the responsibility of firms as contractors to maintain a mutually beneficial and sustainable solution.     

The paradox of strategic management accounting

The evidence that strategic management accounting (SMA) techniques have not been adopted widely and that developments in the SMA literature seem to have languished may be consistent with the relatively short lifecycle of most strategic management (SM) tools and many concepts. Nevertheless, there is an inherent contradiction between the apparent decline of SMA and the sustained growth in the number of concepts, models, tools, theoretical perspectives, disciplines, academic and professional journals and consultancy practices that populate the SM domain.This paradox of SMA is explored in the context of the evolution of the SM literature, SMA practice, as exemplified by two recent case studies, and the cognate literatures of management control, performance measurement and knowledge management. It transpires that the SMA literature is based in large part on a narrow, first-era, view of the SM literature that reached maturity with Michael Porter's industry analysis model and generic competitive strategies.The second era of SM that began in 1977 with a move to a more internal, resource-based view of the firm and competitive advantage has been mostly neglected by the extant SMA literature. However, to judge from the small number of published case studies, SMA practices are developing in line with their strategy formulation and organisational processes. The links among the bundle of techniques that are usually included in SMA and between SMA and cognate literatures need to be integrated into a coherent, cohesive framework to complement SM.     

The Use of EDGAR Filings by Investors

Using data from the Security and Exchange Commission's Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval (EDGAR) server log, the authors examine the consumption of financial information in filings from 2003 to 2012. The EDGAR filings represent a first-source database for investors doing fundamental research on stock valuations. The magnitude of daily EDGAR requests for 10-Ks is surprisingly low and shows only a small difference between firms with and without publicly traded equity. The average publicly traded firm has their annual report requested only 28.4 total times by investors immediately after the 10-K filing. The lack of annual report requests suggests that investors generally are not doing fundamental research on stocks.     

Designing an electronic auction market for complex ‘smart parts’ logistics: Options based on LeBaron's computational stock market

Modern technologies, such as RFID, offer never-before seen learning abilities to parts moving in supply chains. Logistics systems may be understood as complex adaptive logistics systems (CALS). They also may be conceived as electronic auction markets as ‘smart parts’ bid for the best routing and pricing from transportation firms. To ensure the world-wide functionality and efficiency of CALS transportation markets, we suggest the utility of an agent-based computational market design based on Blake LeBaron's stock-market model. Given that parts may be more or less smart, markets more or less complex, and self-organizing CALS systems probabilistically subject to the bullwhip effect, we suggest nine different computational CALS market-design options, offering more adaptivity to unexpected environmental contingencies.     

What do technology shocks tell us about the New Keynesian paradigm?

Researchers have used unanticipated changes to monetary policy to identify preference and technology parameters of macroeconomic models. This paper uses changes in technology to identify the same set of parameters. Estimates based on technology shocks differ substantially from those based on monetary policy shocks. In the post-World War II United States, a positive technology shock reduces inflation and increases hours worked, significantly and rapidly in both cases. Relative to policy shock identification, technology shock identification implies: (i) long duration durability in preferences instead of short duration habit, (ii) built-in inflation inertia disappears and price flexibility increases. In response to technological improvement, consumption durability increases hours worked because households temporarily increase labor supply to accumulate durables towards a new, higher steady state level. Limited nominal rigidities allow inflation to fall because firms are able to immediately cut prices when households’ labor supply increases. Finally, we consider alternative data constructions and econometric specifications; we find that (i) and/or (ii) hold in nearly every case.     

A model of historical development and future trends of Italian cuisine in America

This study investigated both the historical development and future trends of restaurant cuisine in America. Italian cuisine is used as the basis of a prediction model. The study identifies the historical factors in menu trends in Italian–American cuisine; the factors that will influence culinary trends in the future, and whether the results can be applied to the development of a prediction model that will predict how restaurant cuisine in America may develop. This study used both qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (online survey) methods. The growing popularity of Italian cuisine in the United States will continue to shape the evolution of America's restaurant cuisine.     

IPO first-day returns,offer price revisions,volatility, and form S-1 language

Form S-1 is the first SEC filing in the initial public offering (IPO) process. The tone of the S-1, in terms of its definitiveness in characterizing the firm’s business strategy and operations, should affect investors’ ability to value the IPO. We find that IPOs with high levels of uncertain text have higher first-day returns, absolute offer price revisions, and subsequent volatility. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the theoretical models of uncertainty, bookbuilding, and prospect theory.