Sustainable Transport Policy: The Contribution from Behavioural Scientists

Publication of the UK Government's White Paper on Transport, in July 1998, has raised public awareness of the problems associated with widespread car use. The authors argue that these problems, which largely result from the aggregated choices and behaviour of many individual car uses, could be mitigated if the main determinants of car use and the underlying behavioural mechanisms were better understood. This article examines six strategies for changing social behaviour, and some important conditions for reducing car use. Examples are presented of how the insights gained can be applied in practice.     

Exercised Voice as Management Failure: Implications of Willing Compliance Theories of Management and Individualism for De Facto Employee Voice

The advantages of employee voice for organizations and individuals are well known, but in practice those who exercise voice sometimes face serious sanctions. Tensions surrounding voice are rooted in tacit presumptions of willing compliance embedded in influential theories of management, particularly the works of Chester Barnard and Herbert Simon and those who follow their traditions. Employees who exercise voice demonstrate that management has failed to secure willing compliance, action which managers may take as personal affront. The individualism prevalent in the U.S. may exacerbate managerial tendencies to respond negatively and emotionally to those who exercise voice. Reprisals lead to self-censorship, limit de facto voice and restrict crucial organizational feedback. In addition to being valued as a right and a source of important organizational feedback, employee voice needs to be considered as an ongoing struggle within organizations.     

The effect of framing and negotiation partner’s objective on judgments about negotiated transfer prices

A common approach to set transfer prices is via intra-firm negotiation. However, Luft and Libby [Luft, J. L., & Libby, R. (1997). Profit comparisons, market prices and managers’ judgments about negotiated transfer prices. The Accounting Review, 72(2), 217–229] found that because of the existence of self-serving biases, negotiating managers have different expectations regarding what constitutes a ‘fair’ transfer price, leading to a less efficient negotiation process. In this study, we examine two factors that are expected to affect managers’ transfer price negotiation judgments, namely, framing as a gain or as a loss and the negotiation partner’s objective (whether the partner’s objective involves high or low concern-for-others). We propose that these two factors affect managers’ perceptions of the negotiation context, and thus the way they interpret the economic and social consequences of accounting information. Our results show that a loss frame (compared to a gain frame) exacerbates managers’ self-serving biases and increases the ‘transfer price expectation gap’ between buyers and sellers. Further, in our experiment where market price is higher than equal-profit price, we find that managers’ transfer price expectations are lower (and deviate more from the prevailing market price) when they are negotiating with a partner with high concern-for-others than with a partner with low concern-for-others. We discuss the broader implications of these results for the design of management accounting systems.     

A sequential procedure to test three values of a binomial parameter

Sequential tests to decide among three binomial probabilities are needed in many situations, such as acceptance sampling used to determine the proportion of defective items and presence and absence sampling to decide whether pest species are causing economic damage to a crop such as corn. Approximate error probabilities associated with Armitage's (1950, JRSS B) method of simultaneously conducting three sequential probability ratio tests (SPRTs) are derived for the binomial distribution. These approximations provide a basis for adjusting the error rates used to establish the individual SPRTs so that the desired overall error rates are attained. Monte Carlo simulation is used to evaluate the revised procedure. Received: September 1998     

A case-control comparison of direct healthcare-provider medical costs of chronic idiopathic constipation and irritable bowel syndrome with constipation in a community-based cohort

Objective: Patients with constipation account for 3.1 million US physician visits a year, but care costs for patients with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C) or chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) compared to the general public have received little study. The study aim was to describe healthcare utilization and compare medical costs for patients with IBS-C or CIC vs matched controls from a community-based sample.

Methods: A nested case-control sample (IBS-C and CIC cases) and matched controls (1:2) for each case group were selected from Olmsted County, MN, individuals responding to a community-based survey of gastrointestinal symptoms (2008) who received healthcare from a participating Rochester Epidemiology Project (REP) provider. Using REP healthcare utilization data, unadjusted and adjusted standardized costs were compared for the 2- and 10-year periods prior to the survey for 115 IBS-C patients and 230 controls and 365 CIC patients and 730 controls. Two time periods were chosen as these conditions are episodic, but long-term.

Results: Outpatient costs for IBS-C ($6,800) and CIC ($6,284) patients over a 2-year period prior to the survey were significantly higher than controls ($4,242 and $5,254, respectively) after adjusting for co-morbidities, age, and sex. IBS-C outpatient costs ($25,448) and emergency room costs ($6,892) were significantly higher than controls ($21,024 and $3,962, respectively) for the 10-year period prior. Unadjusted data analyses of cases compared to controls demonstrated significantly higher imaging costs for IBS-C cases and procedure costs for CIC cases over the 10-year period.

Limitations: Data were collected from a random community sample primarily receiving care from a limited number of providers in that area.

Conclusions: Patients with IBS-C and CIC had significantly higher outpatient costs for the 2-year period compared with controls. IBS-C patients also had higher ER costs than the general population.     

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY INVESTMENT AND SOCIAL OBJECTIVES: AN EXAMINATION ON SOCIAL WELFARE INVESTMENT OF CHINESE STATE OWNED ENTERPRISES

We apply the theory of corporate social responsibility to analyse social welfare investment undertaken by Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). We present a simple theoretical model to illustrate how the presence of social objectives in the firm's objective function changes its investment behaviour. Our theoretical model accommodates special features of Chinese SOEs, whose social welfare investment is driven by both social objectives and profit concerns. The model is then tested using a panel of Chinese enterprises during the period 1995–1999. The empirical analysis indicates that despite of the corporatization reform social welfare investment undertaken by Chinese SOEs is still inefficient due to the lack of profit concerns, suggesting that social objectives still dominate profit concerns in motivating the SOEs' social welfare investment. However, we do obtain clear-cut evidence showing that social objectives become less important as time progresses.     

Leadership,Trustworthiness, and Ethical Stewardship

Leaders in today’s world face the challenge of earning the trust and commitment of organizational members if they expect to guide their companies to success in a highly competitive global context. In this article, we present empirical results indicating that when leadership behaviors are perceived as trustworthy through the observer’s mediating lens, trust increases and leaders are more likely to be viewed as ethical stewards who honor a higher level of duties. This article contributes to the growing body of literature about the importance of ethical stewardship in the trust relationship.     

Do the Numbers Add Up to Different Views? Perceptions of Ethical Faculty Behavior Among Faculty in Quantitative Versus Qualitative Disciplines

Faculty across a wide range of academic disciplines at 89 AASCB-accredited U.S. business schools were surveyed regarding their perceptions of the ethical nature of faculty behaviors related to undergraduate course content, student evaluation, educational environment, research issues, financial and material transactions, and social and sexual relationships. We analyzed responses based on whether instruction in the academic discipline focused mainly on quantitative topics or largely on qualitative issues. Faculty who represented quantitative disciplines such as accounting and finance (n = 383) were more likely to view behaviors such as selling complimentary textbooks and grading on a strict curve as more ethical than faculty representing more qualitative disciplines such as management and marketing (n = 447). In contrast, faculty in quantitative disciplines were more likely to view behaviors such as showing controversial media and bringing up sexual or racial charged matters as less ethical than their counterparts. Whereas these differences may be attributed to the respondents’ academic backgrounds, the large level of agreement on ethical behaviors raises questions about the growing influence of business disciplines that operate within more unified research and teaching paradigms. Linda Kidwell (PhD, Louisiana State University) is an associate professor in the Accounting Department at the University of Wyoming where she teaches auditing as well as accounting ethics. Her research interests include academic ethics, auditing ethics, and governmental auditing. Her research has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Teaching Business Ethics, CPA Journal, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy and elsewhere. She has taught in the United States, Australia, and Canada. She has also been a frequent faculty mentor in the National Conference on Ethics in America held annually at the United States Military Academy (West Point). Roland Kidwell (PhD, Louisiana State University) is an associate professor in the Management and Marketing Department at the University of Wyoming where he teaches courses in new ventures, human resource management and general management. His current research interests include ethical issues involving family businesses and new ventures, social entrepreneurship, and workplace deviance such as withholding effort (free riding, shirking, social loafing) in organizational contexts. He is co-editor of a book of readings and cases, Managing Organizational Deviance (2005, Sage), and his research has appeared in Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management, Journal of Business and Psychology and elsewhere.