Ethical encounters of the second kind

When our society holds widely shared norms and values, we can agree on what constitutes unethical business practices. To the extent our social consensus is unraveling, agreement becomes increasingly problematic. Unfortunately, mainstream Western moral philosophy offers no guidance in this situation. We must therefore begin to focus on the types of social relationships that must exist for there to be agreement on what is right, good and just. This line of argument is, at best, merely suggested in discussions and articles on business ethics. Jonathan B. King is Associate Professor of Managment at the College of Business at Oregon State University. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Antioch College (1965); subsequently served for eight years as an officer in the United States Navy; received his M.B.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) in Business, Government and Society from the University of Washington. His primary research interests are in the areas of epistemology and moral philosophy — e.g., the contribution of the liberal arts to interpretive thought, the sociology of moral knowledge, and the organizational distortion of information. His most important publications are: Teaching Business Ethics, Exchange1984 and A Case for the Humanities Perspective, Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal1984     

Timing and duration effects in residence histories and other longitudinal data: II. Studies of duration effects in Norway, 1965-1971

The main results of eleven studies of the nature and determinants of the timing of moves and duration of residence effects are presented. The studies (see table 1) illustrate the use of the methodological framework for studying individual histories of the previous article. There are substantial duration of residence effects in most population subgroups, implying that the migration process in non-Markovian at the mocro level and that the semi-Markov model is required. However, characterization of effects and their determinants are shown to depend so heavily on the type of interval and observation scheme used, that only within a comprehensive framework is proper interpretation of empirical results possible.     

Hölder continuity of the policy function approximation in the value function approximation

We show that given a value function approximation V of a strongly concave stochastic dynamic programming problem (SDDP), the associated policy function approximation is Hölder continuous in V.     

Managerial bonding and stock liquidity: An analysis of dual-class firms

Given the decision to create a second class of stock through a dual-class structure, we propose that management is more (less) likely to create a liquid secondary market for both classes of shares the lower (higher) its willingness to tie its personal wealth to firm performance. If market makers recognize this relation, they should assign a higher likelihood to trades motivated by superior information in shares of firms that list both classes of stock and a lower likelihood for firms that list only one class of stock pursuant to recapitalization. Additionally, they should assign a lower likelihood to trades motivated by superior information in shares of IPOs that choose a dual-class structure and list only one class relative to IPOs that remain single-class. Our empirical tests based on IPOS and recaps between 1985 and 1988 provide support for these propositions.