FOCUS: Research in Business Ethics* Business Ethics Research: Shaping the Agenda

“The most significant outcome of effective business ethics research would be an improvement of ethical standards and ethical behaviour in organizations”. So how can such research be made effective? The author is Lecturer in Management Studies, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College.     

A critical comparison of tourism policies of Hong Kong and Singapore — an avenue to mutual learning

This study examines how mutual learning can potentially enhance the destination competitiveness and sustainability of Hong Kong and Singapore. By comparing the recent tourism policies of the two city states, and by interviewing key government officials, major industrial players, academic experts and representatives of international tourism organisations, it was found that both governments can learn from each other in various aspects. The Hong Kong government can learn from its Singapore counterpart the recognition and proactive support it provides to the industry, its visionary leadership, and its eagerness to learn. At the same time, the Singapore government can learn from Hong Kong in promoting entrepreneurship within the tourism industry. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Individual Characteristics and the Disposition Effect: The Opposing Effects of Confidence and Self-Regard

We conduct two experiments to examine potential causes of the disposition effect. In Experiment 1, we rule out beliefs in mean reversion as a cause of the disposition effect. Although a belief in the mean reversion of stock prices should be independent of whether an investor owns or only follows the stock, we show only investors who own the stock behave as though prices will reverse. In Experiment 2, participants buy and sell securities over multiple periods. We find that self-regard and investing confidence (two types of self-esteem) have opposing influences on investors’ tendency to hold losing investments. Investors with lower self-regard hold losing investments longer than those with higher self-regard, and investors with higher confidence hold losing investments longer than those with lower confidence. We focus on investors’ tendency to hold losing stocks too long because prior research suggests the gain versus loss sides of the disposition effect are driven by different biases.     

Does Living Alone Confer a Higher Risk of Hospitalisation?

The rise in one‐person households is a worldwide trend. This means that informal care is less available, particularly for elderly people, with important implications for health‐care utilisation and health expenditure. This paper uses a two‐part model to examine the relationship between living alone and hospitalisations in Australia in terms of both the likelihood and the length of hospitalisation. The results show living alone increases the probability of hospitalisation by 2.9 percentage points and length of stay by 3.8 days for people aged 45 and above. Further analysis indicates that these impacts depend on the length of living alone. Additionally, the probability and the length of hospitalisation vary depending on whether the cause of living alone is separation/divorce, widowhood or never having married.