Management Students’ Attitudes Toward Business Ethics: A Comparison Between France and Romania

This study focuses on the differences in the perception of business ethics across two groups of management students from France and Romania (n = 220). Data was collected via the ATBEQ to measure preferences for three business philosophies: Machiavellianism, Social Darwinism, and Moral Objectivism. The results show that Romanian students present more favorable attitudes toward Machiavellianism than French students; whereas, French students valued Social Darwinism and Moral Objectivism more highly. For Machiavellianism and Moral Objectivism the results are consistent with the literature and our hypotheses. However, contrary to our expectations, we find that Social Darwinism is more important in France than Romania. The results indicate that religious practice does not influence preferences for the three business philosophies. In terms of gender differences, women have less favorable attitudes toward Machiavellianism and more favorable attitudes toward Moral Objectivism than men.     

Organizational Citizenship Behaviour for the Environment: Measurement and Validation

While the importance of employee initiatives for improving the environmental practices and performance of organizations has been clearly established in the literature, the precise nature of these initiatives has rarely been examined (particularly the issue of their discretionary or mandatory nature). The role of organizational citizenship behaviour in environmental management remains largely unexplored. The main objectives of this paper were to propose and validate an instrument for measuring organizational citizenship behaviour for the environment (OCBE). Exploratory (Study 1, N?=?228) and confirmatory (Study 2, N?=?651) analyses were conducted to examine the factor structure of OCBEs. The factor structure that emerged from Study 1 indicated that the three main types of OCBEs were eco-initiatives, eco-civic engagement and eco-helping. The factor structure found in Study 1 was confirmed by Study 2. Analysis of the three types of OCBEs highlighted the complexity of discretionary initiatives for the environment in the workplace and points to a number of avenues for further research.     

Distributional consequences of labor-demand shocks: the 2008–2009 recession in Germany

The distributional consequences of the recent economic crisis are still broadly unknown. While it is possible to speculate which groups are likely to be hardest-hit, detailed distributional studies are still largely backward-looking due to a lack of real-time microdata. This paper studies the distributional and fiscal implications of output changes in Germany 2008–2009, using data available prior to the economic downturn. We first estimate labor demand on 12 years of detailed, administrative matched employer-employee data. The distributional analysis is then conducted by transposing predicted employment effects of actual output shocks to household-level microdata. A scenario in which labor demand adjustments occur at the intensive margin (hour changes), close to the German experience, shows less severe effects on the income distribution compared to a situation where adjustments take place through massive layoffs. Adjustments at the intensive margin are also preferable from a fiscal point of view. In this context, we discuss the cushioning effect of the tax-benefit system and the conditions under which German-style work-sharing policies can be successful in other countries.     

Weighted majoritarian rules for the location of multiple public facilities

We consider collective decision problems given by a profile of single-peaked preferences defined over the real line and a set of pure public facilities to be located on the line. In this context, Bochet and Gordon (2012) provide a large class of priority rules based on efficiency, object-population monotonicity and sovereignty. Each such rule is described by a fixed priority ordering among interest groups. We show that any priority rule which treats agents symmetrically — anonymity — respects some form of coherence across collective decision problems — reinforcement — and only depends on peak information — peak-only — is a weighted majoritarian rule. Each such rule defines priorities based on the relative size of the interest groups and specific weights attached to locations. We give an explicit account of the richness of this class of rules.