In the Name of Merit: Ethical Violence and Inequality at a Business School

Journal of Business Ethics - This study examines how meritocracy as a collective social imaginary promoting social justice and fairness reproduces class and caste inequalities and fosters ethical...     

Driven to Be Good: A Stakeholder Theory Perspective on the Drivers of Corporate Social Performance

Despite growing evidence of the benefits to a firm of improving corporate social performance (CSP), many firms vary significantly in terms of their CSP activities. This research investigates how the characteristics of the stakeholder landscape influence a firm’s CSP breadth. Using stakeholder theory, we specifically propose that several factors increase the salience and impact of stakeholders’ demands on the firm and that, in response to these factors, a firm’s CSP will have greater breadth. A firm’s CSP breadth is operationalized as the number of different sub-domains of CSR for which a firm has taken positive actions and is captured using a unique dataset from Kinder, Lydenburg, and Domini (KLD). This data set includes positive and negative firm actions across more than 35 different dimensions of socially responsible behavior. Findings based on a longitudinal, multi-industry sample of 447 US firms during the period from 2000 to 2007 demonstrate that firms which: (1) have greater sensitivity to stakeholder needs as a result of the firm’s strategic emphasis on marketing and/or value creation, (2) face greater diversity of stakeholder demands, and (3) encounter a greater degree of scrutiny or risk from stakeholder action have a greater breadth of CSP in response to the stakeholder landscape that they face.     

Contracting for information under imperfect commitment

We study optimal contracting under imperfect commitment in a model with an uninformed principal and an informed agent. The principal can commit to pay the agent for his advice but retains decision‐making authority. Under an optimal contract, the principal should (i) never induce the agent to fully reveal what he knows—even though this is feasible—and (ii) never pay the agent for imprecise information. We compare optimal contracts under imperfect commitment to those under full commitment as well as to delegation schemes. We find that gains from contracting are greatest when the divergence in the preferences of the principal and the agent is moderate.     

Some statistical problems in the presence of an outlier when sampling from truncation parameter densities

Summary In this paper we derive some recurrence relations for moments of order statistics of a random sample from a truncation parameter density when one of the observations is an outlier. We also derive uniform minimum variance unbiased estimator of a parametric function.     

Frame Changes in Social Movements: A Case Study

Abstract

We examine the emergence and evolution of collective action frames in the palliative care movement in Kerala, India. We do so by leveraging secondary data published over seventeen years as well as interviews with thirty movement actors. Our findings suggest two key themes: First, frames that emerge at the grass-roots level, and in many occasions from bystanders, can become dominant frames of a movement. Second, frame alignment processes may be directed by non-elites towards the elites. These findings diverge from prior literature which emphasizes roles of movement leaders and key actors in framing issues and strategies.     

Culture,industrialisation and multiple domains of employees' job satisfaction: a case for HR strategy redesign in India

This paper explores the link between cultural behavioural traits, the potential effect of industrialisation and multiple domains of job satisfaction, utilising survey data collected from public and private service sector employees in Shillong, the capital city of Meghalaya in the North East Region (NER) of India. Results from ordered probit regressions demonstrate a statistically significant impact of both, extrinsic and intrinsic moderating factors on Indian employees' job satisfaction. In view of India's widely reported collectivistic cultural traits, which are assumed to emphasise primarily the importance of extrinsic job aspects, our findings are surprising. They suggest that in the wake of India's significant economic developments the impact of intrinsic job rewards has played ‘catch-up’ with that of their extrinsic counterparts. As such, the study provides evidence in support of embracing human resource management (HRM) practices that incentivise Indian employees not only through their traditional methods aimed at extrinsic job rewards but also by explicitly addressing individual ambitions, needs and aspirations.     

Remittances and child labour in Ghana: Does the gender of the household head matter?

This study investigates the effect of remittance income on child labour and the role of gender in Ghana. Data were sourced from the Ghana Living Standards Survey Round 6. In order to solve the issue of endogeneity, we adopt the instrumental variable approach. The study finds evidence that, irrespective of whoever is the head of the household, the total effect of remittances on child labour is negative. However, the negative effect is much higher for female-headed households. It is recommended that more mobile money transfer outlets be established and the cost of transferring money be reduced to the barest minimum so as to enable households to maximise the benefits of the remittances they receive. Furthermore, financial transfers should be given to female household heads upon the condition of school attendance by their children so as to reduce child labour.