Marketing orientation in the nonprofit sector: The case of hospitals

Is there an increasing concern for consumers in the nonprofit sector of the economy? Does it manifest itself in the measurement of consumer satisfaction as it does in the profit sector? According to the study reported here, the answer is “yes”—at least in the case of nonprofit hospitals. A sample of administrators of large nonprofit hospitals responded to a mail survey inquiring about the extent to which they measure the satisfaction of their patients. Their responses were compared with a similar study of business executives. The findings from the study indicate that, in general, nonprofit hospitals show as much concern for the satisfaction of their consumers as business does. Since hospitals are significant and conspicuous members of the nonprofit sector of the economy, the findings confirm recent writings that suggest that a consumer orientation is developing among nonprofit organizations.     

Emerging Spatial Dependencies within U.S. Organic Supply Chains

Organic production and processing, in particular the regional distribution of market actors, is analyzed to determine if regional clustering is emerging. Trends in the spatial concentration of certified organic production are assessed using Gini coefficients and a multiplicative model that compares the number of certified producers and the complexity of a state's organic market. Results suggest that the distribution of organic producers is increasingly non-uniform over time. Further, the interaction of market access and intermediate input factors is strongly correlated to the distribution of organic adopters implying increasing spatial concentration of U.S. organic supply chains. Implications for consumers, particularly those relating organic with local and for firms in organic supply chains are advanced.     

Business Ethics Perspectives: Faculty Plagiarism and Fraud

Faculty plagiarism and fraud are widely documented occurrences but little analysis has been conducted. This article addresses the question of why faculty plagiarism and fraud occurs and suggests approaches on how to develop an environment where faculty misconduct is socially inappropriate. The authors review relevant literature, primarily in business ethics and student cheating, developing action steps that could be applied to higher education. Based upon research in these areas, the authors posit some actions that would be appropriate in higher education and suggest topics for continued study.     

Universit?tsendowments – Eine Bestandsaufnahme der theoretischen und empirischen Forschung

While university endowments have a long history, their contribution to operating budgets has gained considerable significance in recent years. Further as an important class of institutional investor there is strong interest in behavior and performance from the academic research side. This paper surveys the literature in the emerging field of scientific research studies concerning university endowments. We classify papers into four areas. (1)?Organization, which pertains to governance structure and the investment policy statement; (2)?asset allocation, where we discuss the main theoretical framework and the relevant observations both across time and for type of endowment; (3)?performance, in which (risk-adjusted) performance is discussed and distinguished by type and size of endowment; (4)?spending, which discusses the relation to the classical views and theoretical literature as well as what university endowments do in practice. We find that the modern framework for theoretical and empirical analysis can provide a very useful perspective for understanding the role of endowments. Nonetheless we highlight several challenges that should form the basis for future research agendas.