Backlash Hits Business Ethics: Finding Effective Strategies for Communicating the Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility

Recently, several articles have asserted that corporate social responsibility programs have gone too far and need to be reigned in. These critics have charged that corporate social responsibility is to be regarded with skepticism and that any changes in corporate accountability should be superficial at best. I will examine a␣number of these objections; I conclude that these critiques are largely ill founded, but that their increasing frequency in popular media is a cause for concern. I argue that these purported objections are better understood as one part of a long-term cycle that generally accompanies positive moral change in institutions. Using the feminist movement as a touchstone, I examine the similarities between backlash against the movement for corporate accountability as compared to backlash against feminists. I␣also suggest ways in which successful strategies adopted by feminists could be used effectively to communicate the aims of those working to increase awareness of business accountability.     

Paradigm,paradox, paralysis: An epistemic process

The potential of the transformative capacity of education requires critique of a dominant paradigm, in order to apprehend the unconscious acceptance of capital markets as solutions to societies’ woes. We engaged with media texts as practicum which advocated carbon markets to mitigate carbon pollution: a contemporary issues in society. We found that although we critique the dominant paradigms upheld by the media texts which we chose, our engagement had the potential to reinforce the status quo. Once this paradox is evident, it precipitates a paralysis of the educative process. However, this is not an end state but the struggle to overcome the paralysis mobilises a reconsideration of the paradigm and opens new possibilities. We argue that the collision of the concepts of paradigm, paradox and paralysis demonstrates an epistemic process which has emancipatory possibilities.     

Valuation-based accounting research: Implications for financial reporting and opportunities for future research

This paper discusses the relation between financial reporting research and practice, particularly standard setters. Many studies addressing financial reporting issues use a valuation approach. The paper describes alternative approaches to valuation research and summarises the findings relating to four major current issues: fair value accounting for financial, tangible, and intangible assets, cash flows versus accruals, recognition versus disclosure, and international harmonisation of accounting standards. The summaries include identifying what standard setters and others would like to learn from research, what we have learned, and what is left to learn. The paper concludes with observations about future financial reporting academic research.     

英特尔联袂阿里巴巴推出迅驰“侠商”群英会——如何利用商人社区互动推进网络精准营销

英特尔结缘阿里巴巴 随着移动互联网的发展，移动办公逐渐成为商务主流。如何与国际人群对接，加速普及移动办公的概念、技术和产品，是芯片创新领域的领先厂商英特尔以及整个产业所考虑的问题。     

Can we improve the perceived quality of economic forecasts?

A number of topics are discussed concerning how economic forecasts can be improved in quality or at least in presentation. These include the following: using 50% uncertainty intervals rather than 95%; noting that even though forecasters use many different techniques, they are all occasionally incorrect in the same direction; that there is a tendency to underestimate changes; that some expectations and recently available data are used insufficiently; lagged forecasts errors can help compensate for structural breaks; series that are more forecastable could be emphasized and that present methods of evaluating forecasts do not capture the useful properties of some methods compared to alternatives.     

A dyadic study of interpersonal information search

Although interpersonal word-of-mouth communication, by definition, takes place between two people, rarely has the phenomenon of word of mouth been studied using both members of the dyad. Building on the literature, this article offers a model of active interpersonal information search that is tested by using a method in which information seeker and source perceptions were obtained. Source characteristics were important determinants of interpersonal influence, but seeker characteristics also played an important role. Interestingly, it proved useful to distinguish between demographic and attitudinal homophily of seeker and source as the former was inversely and the latter directly related to interpersonal influence. Mary C. Gilly is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Management and associate dean of Graduate Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her Ph.D. is in marketing from the University of Houston. Her research interests include the unintended effects of marketing actions, such as the effects of advertising on employees. She also has interests in services marketing, such as customer service, including consumer complaint handling, and cross-cultural service encounters. Her work has been published in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Consumer Research, theJournal of Business Research, and other academic journals. John L. Graham is a professor in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. His Ph.D. is in marketing from the University of California, Berkeley. His primary research interests regard international marketing, international business negotiations, and structural equations modeling. His work has been published in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, theJournal of International Business Studies, Management Science, and other academic journals. Mary Finley Wolfinbarger is an associate professor at California State University, Long Beach and is doing research on the topics of internal marketing and gift giving. She teaches Marketing Principles and Marketing Research. She received her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of California, Irvine. Her work has appeared in theJournal of Marketing and other academic journals. Laura J. Yale came to Fort Lewis College in 1991. She holds degrees in Hotel, Restaurant, and Travel Administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. She teaches a variety of courses in Marketing and Travel and Tourism Administration, including Marketing Research, International Marketing and Services. Her industry experience and most of her research interest are in the services sector, particularly the tourism industry. She is on sabbatical leave this academic year, writing an introductory textbook on the tourism industry. She will return to teaching in September 1998.