The Golden Rule and Business Ethics: An Examination

The phenomenon of globalization of markets has been accompanied by calls for a globalization of ethical norms. One principle often referred to in such calls is the so-called Golden Rule. The rule, often stated as Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, has long been used and referenced in the business literature. But those who use it often do so without full realization of the rule itself and what it stands for. This paper examines the history, meaning, and problems of the rule and attempts to show, through a case analysis, how these problems surface when using the rule in a business context. In so doing it attempts to clarify exactly what the rule means and how it can fit into a universal code of morality.     

Recent Advances in Structural Econometric Modeling: Dynamics, Product Positioning and Entry

In the empirical analysis of consumer markets, recent literature has begun to explore the dynamics in both consumer decisions as well as in firms' marketing policies. Other research has begun to explore the strategic aspects of product line design in a competitive environment. In both cases, structural models have given us new insights into consumer and firm behavior. For example, incorporating consumer and firm dynamics may help explain patterns in our data that are not well-captured by static models. Similarly, the strategic aspects of firm entry and product-positioning may be intrinsically linked to firm conduct and the intensity of competition in a market. Structural analysis of these consumer and firm decisions raise a number of substantial computational challenges. We discuss the computational challenges as well as specific empirical applications. The discussions are based on the session “Structural Models of Strategic Choice” from the 2004 Choice Symposium.     

Managing Relationships with Environmental Stakeholders: A Study of U.K. Water and Electricity Utilities

In this paper we report a study of the approach of six U.K. water and electricity companies towards managing the relationship with their 'green' stakeholders. Stakeholders are accorded increasing importance in political discourse and stakeholder theory is emerging as a promising framework for the analysis of corporate social performance.We studied the companies' general approach towards green stakeholders, their dealings with specific stakeholder groups and whether they emphasised the consultation or the information aspect of stakeholder management. We found that none of the six companies had a systematic stakeholder approach that extended to all potential green stakeholders. Rather, the importance of specific stakeholder groups seemed to be determined by managers' intuition and by the stance that the stakeholders themselves displayed towards the company.Green stakeholders with an institutional power base – government via legislation, environmental and industry regulators – emerged as the most immediately influential stakeholders. The Environment Agency, the environmental regulator, played an especially important role in the companies' environmental management. Customers and the general public – the source of corporate social legitimacy – were also considered to be important, but their influence was more long term and based on voice, rather than the potential for direct retaliation. Economic stakeholders were generally considered to be not very interested in the companies' environmental performance.     

Workplace Guanxi: Its Dispositional Antecedents and Mediating Role in the Affectivity–Job Satisfaction Relationship

This paper examines dispositional sources of workplace guanxi and the mediating role of workplace guanxi on the affectivity and job satisfaction relationship. Data were collected from 808 respondents in multiple industries in a city in China’s northeast. The study found that both positive affectivity and negative affectivity have an effect on supervisor–subordinate guanxi and co-worker guanxi, which supports the proposition that workplace guanxi has a dispositional source. Supervisor–subordinate guanxi has a positive relationship with job satisfaction, although co-worker guanxi is not significantly related to job satisfaction. The research also found a mediating role of supervisor–subordinate guanxi on the affectivity and job satisfaction relationship, which suggests that supervisor–subordinate guanxi can extend the influence of affectivity to job satisfaction. Taken together, these results suggest that in a high power distance country such as China, supervisor–subordinate guanxi plays a more important role than co-worker guanxi in influencing job satisfaction. Theoretically, this study suggests the as yet unexplored possibility of dispositional antecedents of workplace guanxi and the role of workplace guanxi on the relationship between dispositions and workplace attitudes such as job satisfaction.     

Tourism Services Exports and Economic Growth in Barbados

This article investigated the relationship between tourism and economic growth in Barbados from 1974–2004 using the techniques of multivariate cointegration, causality testing, and innovation accounting. Findings reveal the existence of a long-run relationship between tourist activity and economic growth. However, the nature of the directional relationship and the importance of the real exchange rate as an important determinant appear to be dependent on how output is specified and the statistical techniques employed. Still, our results provide justification for the Government of Barbados' objective of investing in its tourism industry as a means of stimulating growth over the long term. As there is an indication that forward and backward linkages are not as fully developed as they could be, and initiatives should also be put in place to foster stronger linkages between the tourism industry and other sectors, such as agriculture, food and beverage, and transportation. It is recommended, though, that policymakers do not over-rely on tourism for economic growth and that they pay greater attention to other industries given the tourism industry's capricious nature.     

Forecasting Advertising Expenditure

The 1980s are proving to be a decade of great uncertainty during which the possession of accurate short-term forecasting techniques can lead to better decision-making. Forecasts of advertising expenditure in total and by medium is an especially important source of information for the advertising industry—advertising agencies, media owners, advertisers—and all others concerned. Furthermore, it is particularly important to unravel the systematic from chance changes in the market as a whole. This paper attempts both to illustrate and to evaluate the ‘naive’ Box-Jenkins method of time series forecasting as related to aggregate advertising expenditures in Britain and West Germany.     

Creativity,attention and the memory for brands: an outdoor advertising field study

This study investigates whether creativity is sufficient by itself to attract attention to the ad space or whether the ad must also be conspicuous. Attention to the ad is an important driver of message processing that leads to favourable advertising effectiveness outcomes, such as improved memory for the brand. To provide insight on this, we conducted a field study of billboard advertising along an urban expressway to explore the variables that affect recognition of outdoor advertising. Using a computational neuroscience software program, we find evidence for the presence of an attention capture threshold. That is, creativity's message processing promoting strategy only improves memory when billboards cross a threshold, i.e., when the ads are at a sufficient level of conspicuity within an individual's visual field. This threshold represents a boundary condition for creativity and provides evidence that attention must first be captured in some contexts before creativity increases the memory for brands in advertising. Results also show that billboard size, visual saliency, and brand familiarity increase recognition rates.     

The application of micro‐modelling to predicting total market mix potential

In this paper, following a review of the historical development of research methods for predicting volume sales and brand shares of new products, a new model (MicroTest) is described which uses information gathered in a concept/product test for volume prediction. The model makes use of brand‐related parameters (such as advertising and distribution), attitudinal predispositions (e.g. “experimentalism"), and circumstantial factors as input to the model, and these are described, together with the method of integrating these for predicting at the individual respondent level. Individual results are then accumulated across a sample of individuals, and grossed up to provide national sales estimates.

The paper describes the various development stages undergone in the construction of the model, and the techniques used to assist this process. In particular, the way in which Artificial Intelligence techniques such as “rule induction” was used is discussed. Finally, the paper discusses the way in which the basic model may be extended, and some recent work which used the model to generate a measure of cumulative penetration.     

Channel member conflict and performance: a proposed model and research agenda

Empirical research to date has failed to uncover the most appropriate model specification of the functional relationship between conflict and performance in marketing channels. This paper reviews the literature on conflict, performance, and their relationships (theoretical and empirical). A modified model of the conflict-performance assumption is proposed which offers insights and premises for future testing. The conclusions include recommendations for future research in this area.     

Supporting collaboration in digital journal production

As digital journals come into use there arise new possibilities for the computer support of the group processes that are involved in developing, editing, reviewing, revising, annotating, and generally using a publication. There are now a number of products and research tools designed to support group‐writing teams that can be extended to support a wider range of interacting roles and activities. Most, however, require use of nonmainstream word‐processing systems, and usually assume that full information is continuously available through a network to mediate and avoid conflicts. In the context of digital journals, it is more realistic to suppose that they will be distributed through both on‐line and off‐line media, and that a requirement for continuous network access would severely limit their use. This article reports research on group‐writing tools that deviate as little as possible from conventional word processors and assume only intermittent network connection for document exchange and conflict resolution. The system developed can be used by some people as a conventional word processor, by others as a versioning and text and sound annotation system, and by others as a full hypertext system, all while working with the same corpus of documents. It offers full typographic and page‐layout facilities and imports typographic text from, and exports to, the mainstream commercial word processors so that users are not locked into a nonstandard technology. It is presented here as an example of the increased functionality that may be made available through a digital journal, supporting many of the current roles and activities involved in journal creation and use while deviating minimally from current journal and word‐processing practice.