Toyota Story 2: Still Winning the Productivity Game

The main features of the Toyota Production System (TPS) have been widely publicised and discussed since the 1980s. By now, other car manufacturers might reasonably have been expected to have learned the lessons and fully caught up with Toyota's productivity levels. This has still not happened. Part of the explanation is simply Toyota's high investment in plant and equipment. This article focuses on the complementary human aspects, the subtle elements of Toyota's organisation and culture which have ensured the continuing success of the TPS.     

Financial intermediation,regulation and the formal microcredit sector in South Africa

This article evaluates demand- and supply-side aspects of the formal microcredit sector in South Africa and the environment in which the sector is regulated. Although South Africa has a competitive financial sector relative to a sample of upper middle-income countries, the historical bias towards formal sector banking resulted in a lack of appropriate credit instruments for poorer people. In 1992, new regulations facilitated the legalisation of microfinance institutions and, by 2000, the sector had grown to over 2 per cent of total credit extended by the monetary sector, with over 1 300 institutions supplying microcredit to the public. The article presents the first statistics of different types of microcredit institutions as well as some of their disbursement trends, recorded since 1999 by the Micro Finance Regulatory Council. Thereafter, the demand for credit is assessed between 1995 and 2000, before best-practice regulation and South Africa's degree of compliance are discussed.     

Business Ethics Perceptions of Public and Private Sector Iranians

Ethical maturity is a great concern to all educators, firms, and investors across the globe. This research surveyed 448 citizens, managers and employees in Iran to measure their Personal Business Ethics Scores (PBES) to see if age, education, management experience, and government work experience make a difference in making more ethical decisions. This study contributes to the theory of moral development across the Iranian culture as it is the first known study using this method. The results suggest that education and more years of government work experience make a difference in the moral maturity of respondents. This study confirms that the ethical maturity of respondents is enhanced either through the authoritarian regime or socialization with Islamic values. Kohlberg’s moral development theory regarding ethical maturity is partially supported since those with more years of experience in government and more formal education have higher business ethics scores. Implications are discussed.     

Crash-related factors associated with the severity of road traffic injuries in Iran

Although the impact of traffic crashes is very high in Iran, there are few works on the association of crash-related factors with injury severity. This study was conducted on 145 drivers injured on the Qazvin-Loshan road in order to assess this association. The New Injury Severity Score (NISS), based on the conditions of the injured drivers during their first visit to regional hospitals, was used as the main outcome measure. Multiple linear regression analysis was performed by considering logarithmic scale for NISS as response variable and adjusting for the confounding effects, including the transfer to hospital variables. The results showed that high-vehicle damage (i.e. damage with repair cost more than 25% of the pre-crash value of the driver's vehicle) and being trapped inside the motor vehicle raised the NISS by 5.25 (95% confidence interval (CI) 2.51-10.71) and 2.34 (95% CI 1.20-4.67), respectively.     

An Experimental Analysis of Face to Face versus Computer Mediated Communication Channels

Experimental research on Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) has generally focused on democratic groups whose members typically share the same objectives. In organizations, however, there are many situations where groups have a leader who has the power to override the group's recommendation, the objective of the leader may not be the same as the objective of each member, and not everyone may have the same information. This paper reports the results of an experiment in which the groups, having a designated leader, worked on a mixed-motive task. Within this context, we analyze group decision outcomes and processes for groups that use a face-to-face channel of cormnunication and those that utilize computer mediated communication. We compare performance of the leader and members with respect to an objective measure of performance, the efficient frontier. The results indicate that for this task groups using face-to-face channel outperform groups using computer mediated communication.     

On Offshoring and Trade Deficit

The paper constructs a general equilibrium model of North–South trade with nontraded goods, real exchange rate, and a continuum of components that North partly offshores to South. It is shown that a protectionary policy which restricts offshoring may have the unintended consequence of widening the trade deficit.     

Which Dimension of Corporate Social Responsibility is a Value Driver in the Oil and Gas Industry?

The oil and gas (O&G) industry suffers from a negative perception of poor sustainability. O&G companies are therefore engaged in several socially sustainable activities related to community development and environmental protection. This article determines whether the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are equally value‐additive to O&G companies. We measure the company‐specific level of CSR activities from the information provided in the annual financial reports of O&G companies and determine the effects of CSR dimensions on firm value. We find that CSR enhances firm value of O&G companies. While social activities such as employee well‐being and community development are key value‐drivers, environmental and economic sustainable activities have an insignificant impact on the market value of O&G companies. Copyright © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd     

Regulatory Federalism and Broadband Divergence: Implications of Invoking Europe in the Making of Canadian Telecom Policy

Invocations of Europe are increasingly evident in Canadian debates about wholesale broadband access, consumer protection, network neutrality and basic service policies. While some stakeholders in Canadian debates point to national and local approaches in Europe that appear to have been relatively successful in fostering broadband infrastructure development, others suggest that Europe is lagging behind and Canada should avoid Europe’s purported policy errors.     

Who Moves the Asia-Pacific Stock Markets—US or Japan? Empirical Evidence Based on the Theory of Cointegration

This study examines the recent debacle of the Asian-Pacific stock markets by utilizing the theory of cointegration to investigate which developing markets are moved by the markets of Japan and the United States. The empirical evidence suggests that some countries are dominated by the US, some are dominated by Japan, and the remaining countries are dominated by neither during the time period investigated. The appropriate error correction model is estimated and is used to perform out-of-sample forecasting.     

Economic prosperity of the gold-mining industry in Australia and the consequent gold tax

Income from gold mining in Australia was declared tax-exempt in 1924. This tax-exempt status was removed and tax on income from gold mining was imposed in 1988 with effect from 1 January 1991. This paper documents the political process that led to the imposition of this tax. It provides evidence that rapid prosperity of the Australian gold-mining industry in the 1980s led to increased political sensitivity and removal of the industry's tax-exempt status of nearly seven decades.