Dysfunctional executive behavior: What can organizations do?

Much has been made of dysfunctional executive behavior in recent years. As such, the purpose of this article is to assist organizations in the design of executive work. To better construct a work environment that diminishes self-serving and unethical behavior, we propose that organizations structure an executive's work around three factors: the accountability environment, managerial discretion, and relationship composition. These factors are used to describe how organizations can better design executives’ work so as to promote more desirable executive behavior. We describe how these factors should be calibrated, as well as how they affect each other.     

The Limits of Strategic Rationality: Ethics, Enterprise Risk Management, and Governance

This article explores the links between strategic goals, enterprise risk management, and ethics. We offer a typology of managerial attitudes toward strategic goals and rationality and explore the interaction between strategic and ethical decision making. In so doing, we offer a practical framework for managers to approach ethical dilemmas in the highly complex, volatile, and risky economy that we currently find ourselves in.     

A Rose by Any Other Name: Identity and Impression Management in Résumés

Résumés provide critical information for organizations to make selection decisions and applicants with their first opportunity to influence decision makers. While résumés are intended to convey job relevant information, they also potentially provide information about applicants that could hinder their employment prospects. For example, many names give clues about an applicant’s sex or race, and previous research has shown this can have negative implications for historically disadvantaged groups. This creates an incentive for some people to engage in impression management regarding how they identify themselves in their résumé. The paper develops a typology for assessing the ethics of these attempts at impression management. Sample vignettes are provided to help explicate the proposed typology.     

Compatibility,interoperability, and market power in upgrade markets

We examine the market power of a seller who repeatedly offers upgraded versions of a product. In the case of pure monopoly, the seller also controls compatibility across versions. In the case of an entrant who offers an upgrade, the incumbent seller also controls subsequent interoperability across versions. We argue that control of compatibility and interoperability does not allow an incumbent seller to charge a price premium relative to when such control is absent and, consequently, neither is a necessary source of market power.     

Disfavored Nations: Anti‐Dumping at the WTO

The proliferation of Anti‐Dumping actions may be explained by the Most Favored Nation rule of safeguards, the advantages of unilateral retaliatory measures as an alternative to formal dispute resolution, and the exercising of discipline in a risk‐sharing agreement. Use of unilateralism is attractive to developing members that are constrained by legal capacity. The expression of the Anti‐Dumping Agreement appears to be a hybrid of rules and standards. However, a lack of interpretive guidance from the WTO and the opportunities for discretion in the implementation of rules render them standards in a shroud of rules. This is due to the presence of large proxy spaces, or the domestic investigative authority being substantially the arbiter of satisfaction with the agreement.     

Mortgage Credit: Denmark’s Financial Capacity Building Regime

ABSTRACT

The integration of small states into the international financial system has constrained their ability to enact the traditional macroeconomic tools of fiscal and monetary policy. As systems of mortgage credit are tightly integrated into global capital markets and influence flows of capital between states, this paper uses Denmark as a case study to explore whether domestic mortgage sector reforms have been used to build financial capacity to compensate for the loss of economic policy autonomy. The results of this analysis suggest that the Danish government has actively used mortgage credit to meet three specific macroeconomic objectives since the 1980s: (1) mortgage credit was restricted in the 1980s to resolve Denmark's persistent balance of payments problem; (2) liberalisations of mortgage credit in the 1990s and 2000s allowed the Danish government to stimulate the economy via privatised/house-price Keynesianism and reduce their sovereign debt burden; and (3) mortgage credit has been used as a form of privatised monetary policy, allowing Denmark to break-free from the ‘iron-cage’ of the Mundell-Fleming trilemma. It is in these specific ways that the Danish government has used mortgage reforms to achieve macroeconomic policy autonomy and navigate economic challenges whilst adhering to the constraints of the international financial system.     

Evidence and Implications of Regime Shifts: Time‐Varying Effects of the United States and Japanese Economies on House Prices in Hawaii

We show that local house prices may be driven almost entirely by the demands of one identifiable group for several years and then by demands of another group at other times. We present evidence that house prices in Hawaii were subject to such regime shifts. Prices responded to demands associated with U.S. incomes and wealth for most years from 1975 through 2008. For about a decade starting in the middle of the 1980s, after the Japanese yen appreciated dramatically and Japanese housing and stock market wealth soared, however, house prices in Hawaii responded to Japanese incomes and wealth. Estimated models with these regime shifts outperformed conventional, constant‐coefficient models. The regime‐shifting model helps explain why, when and by how much the volatility and the elasticities of house prices in Hawaii with respect to the incomes and wealth of the United States and Japan varied over time.     

Trade imbalance in international message telephone services

An econometric model is estimated to identify determinants of trade imbalance in international message telephone services markets. Results indicate that asymmetric market structure is important in explaining bilateral market imbalances for high income country pairs. For low and high income country pairs, GDP per capita is the dominant cause of traffic imbalances. The findings suggest that telecommunications liberalization policies are effective in reducing distortions in international traffic flows and settlement payments. However, liberalization should be accompanied by developmental programmes that enhance income per capita and telecommunications network investment in developing countries. Such programmes may be effective in providing a more equitable distribution of the gains from telecommunications reform across countries.     

A Cross-cultural comparison of customer complaint behavior in restaurants in hotels

This study documented consumer complaint behavior in hotel restaurants in two diverse cosmopolitan cities, Hong Kong, SAR and Houston, USA. It was found that in the area of food and beverage attributes, the Hong Kong group rated tastiness, temperature and freshness less important to make a complaint about the Houston group. As for service, service efficiency, greetings, attentiveness and helpfulness were rated differently, with the Hong Kong group rated “greetings” higher than the Houston counterparts. Regarding atmospherics, the two groups were most alike, though the Hong Kong group would be more likely to complain about the noise level while the Houston group, temperature and décor of hotel restaurants.