The Role of Corporate Value Clusters in Ethics, Social Responsibility, and Performance: A Study of Financial Professionals and Implications for the Financial Meltdown

This article delves into a potential mindset that may be responsible for the recent financial meltdown. Research relating to this mindset from different perspectives is reviewed. The findings from this literature review are used to create a conceptual framework for the empirical, ethical, and corporate social responsibility study of financial professionals. Data were collected from a survey of the professional membership of a large national association of financial professionals. This article reports the results of the analysis of data relative to the relationships among the four constructs—financial professionals’ perceived organizational value clusters, ethics, corporate social responsibility, and corporate performance. The findings indicate that organizational core values significantly affect corporate ethics, social responsibility, and financial performance. We propose that organizations in the financial industry can move toward being more ethical and socially responsible by adopting organic core values (e.g., democratic, open, trusting, enterprising, creative, stimulating) and moving away from mechanistic values (e.g., structured, regulated, procedural, authoritarian, closed, callous). We also found the adaptation of organic core values does not require the organization to suffer a loss in financial performance.     

Deutschlands Exportüberschuss auf dem Weg zu neuen Höchstständen — eine Projektion bis 2017

The economic and fi nancial crisis in 2009 triggered a stronger collapse in German exports compared to imports, with the high external surplus falling considerably. By now, global trade has recovered. The authors have calculated trends in German foreign trade, using a gravitation model. Based on IMF forecasts of global economic performance, the projections show that Germany’s export surplus looks set to reach new highs in the medium term.     

How Focused are the World’s Top-Rated Business Schools on Educating Women for Global Management?

Persuaded by the observed positive link between the flow of appropriately skilled and trained female talent and female presence at the upper echelons of management (Plitch, Dow Jones Newswire February 9, 2005), this study has examined current trends on women’s uptake of graduate and executive education programs in the world’s top 100 business schools and explored the extent to which these business schools promote female studentship and career advancement. It contributes by providing pioneering research insight, albeit at an exploratory level, into the emerging best practice on this important aspect of business school behavior, an area which is bound to become increasingly appreciated as more global economic actors wise up to the significant diseconomies inherent in the under-utilization of female talent, particularly in the developing world. Among the study’s main findings are that female graduate students averaged 30% in the sample business schools, a figure not achieved by a majority of the elite schools, including some of the highest ranked. Only 10% of these business schools have a specialist center for developing women business leaders, and only a third offered women-focused programs or executive education courses, including flextime options. A higher, and increasing, percentage of business schools, however, reported offering fellowships, scholarships or bursaries to prospective female students, and having affiliations with pro-women external organizations and networks that typically facilitate career-promoting on-campus events and activities. The implications of the foregoing are discussed, replete with a call on key stakeholder groups to more actively embrace the challenge of improving the supply of appropriately trained female talent, or top management prospects. Future research ideas are also suggested.     

INDIFFERENCE PRICE WITH GENERAL SEMIMARTINGALES

Using duality methods, we prove several key properties of the indifference price π for contingent claims. The underlying market model is very general and the mathematical formulation is based on a duality naturally induced by the problem. In particular, the indifference price π turns out to be a convex risk measure on the Orlicz space induced by the utility function.     

Measuring risky adolescent cycling behaviour

Adolescents are at a greater risk of being involved in traffic accidents than most other age groups, even before they start driving cars. This article aims to determine the factor structure of a self-report questionnaire measuring adolescent risky cycling behaviour, the ACBQ (Adolescent Cycling Behaviour Questionnaire). The questionnaire's structure was based on the widely used Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ). A sample of secondary school students (N?=?1749; age range: 13-18 years) filled out the questionnaire. Factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure underlying the questionnaire, which was confirmed on two equally large portions of the entire sample. These three underlying factors were identified as errors, common violations and exceptional violations. The ACBQ is a useful instrument for measuring adolescents' risky cycling behaviour.     

Innovation Economy,Productive Public Expenditure and Economic Growth

Multidisciplinary innovation is the main engine of growth for an increasing number of economies. Innovation requires the participation of and interaction between all economic agents. It also requires public spending on education, research and infrastructures. Our main goal is to emphasize the government's role in a growing innovation economy. Developing a non‐scale, idea‐based, one‐sector growth model with complementarities and productive public expenditure, we analyse theoretically the growth effects of an increase in productive public expenditure, which we find positive in the short, medium and long run.     

When work and family collide: ‘Resource Caravans’ of personal and contextual resources in remote work

Research on remote work remains without consensus as to its benefits, with continued questions about which factors may enable it to be more beneficial to employees working remotely. Applying Conservation of Resources theory, we explore the impact of ‘resource caravans’ on ‘work–family balance’ and subsequent ‘well-being’ in a sample of 446 remote workers. Our findings contribute to ongoing sociological debates by showing exactly how flexibility and control play a role in the remote workplace. Specifically, our model revealed that ‘sense of control’ over home was most beneficial for ‘work–family balance’ among experienced remote workers who had high levels of ‘schedule flexibility’, whereas ‘work–family balance’ benefited from lower levels of ‘schedule flexibility’ among new remote workers. Resources from the home domain were most critical for ‘work–family balance’, which mediated the effects of the ‘resource caravan’ from the home domain on overall employee ‘well-being’.     

Optimal pest control in greenhouse production of ornamental crops

In this study, we develop a conceptual bioeconomic model of floriculture production with aesthetic benefits, wherein optimal decision rules depend on an intertemporal economic objective to maximize profits subject to economic and biological processes. Necessary conditions of the model identify optimal trajectories (e.g., simultaneous, single, or cycling controls) that define decision rules and economic thresholds for profit maximizing growers producing crops with aesthetic attributes. The necessary conditions also highlight intertemporal trade‐offs between aesthetic benefits and expected future net benefits of arthropod stocks, which have important policy implications. The model is applied to the greenhouse production system of ivy geranium.