Delegating effectively across cultures

This article builds on the contingency approach to global leadership to examine empowerment in a cross-cultural context. Drawing upon ethnographic research on employees of a French NGO in Madagascar, our study demonstrates that effective empowerment is not dependent on the amount of delegation, but rather it is dependent on how delegation is performed. Understanding the cultural representations of formalization, skill development, collective work, and decision-making appeared to be crucial to effective delegation in Madagascar. This result suggests that managers should adapt the way that they empower their teams based on the conditions and forms of delegation prevailing in local cultures.     

Workforce Diversity and Religiosity

Journal of Business Ethics - Workforce diversity has received increasing amounts of attention from academics and practitioners alike. In this article, we examine the empirical association between a...     

The use of Fx derivatives and the cost of capital: Evidence of Brazilian companies

Large corporations have been using derivative instruments as a tool to protect their indirect exposure, as FX risks. A sample with 47 non-financial Bovespa Listed Brazilian companies from 2004 and 2010 was used to test the hypothesis that use of derivatives as a risk management policy tool reduces companies' cost of capital. In contrast to other countries, results rejected this hypothesis, showing that in Brazil there is a positive relationship between using these tools and cost of capital. However, a more in-depth analysis based on the TACC model for a Brazilian company, this hypothesis was not rejected after the 2008 crisis.     

The effects of financial literacy on the borrowing behaviour of Turkish financial consumers

Our research attempts to measure the effects of financial literacy of Turkish financial consumers on the borrowing behaviour. A questionnaire is administered to a sample of 550 people in the city of Eskisehir. In‐depth interviews are undertaken with 10 financial consumers to support the findings. Findings of the study indicate differences in the borrowing behaviour of consumers with different levels of financial literacy. Considering the relationship between financial literacy and borrowing behaviour, we suggest that attempts to increase financial literacy of financial consumers may have important implications in the prevention of excessive borrowing.     

Animal foods and climate change: shadowing eating practices

Animal farming exceeds all forms of transport in terms of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Despite the implications of the seriousness of addressing animal farming in relation to mitigating the effects of GHG emissions, to date, the relationship between consumer behaviour and climate change has tended to neglect the role of animal foods. This paper reports on a pilot study in which six UK households were ‘shadowed’ to facilitate the investigation of the relationship between animal food practices and environmental practices, as they emerge in day‐to‐day life. Results indicate that most participants make no connection between the two issues at present, in terms of awareness or practice. However, animal foods do have an ambiguous and complex status in most participants' food practices; for instance, being viewed as problematic for reasons of health or animal welfare. This finding suggests that further research is needed into the potential for raising awareness of the link between animal‐based foods and climate change. This might have a role to play in shifting food practices towards more plant‐based, less GHG intensive, foods.     

Competitiveness, resources, and capabilities: empirical evidence from retail banking

This research aims to identify and measure bank employee perceptions of the determinants of competitiveness in terms of resources, skills, and capabilities within the retail banking sector. All the 40 branches of a leading Portuguese bank—the Caixa Geral de Depósitos—operating in two Portuguese districts were surveyed. Our results show that bank competitiveness differs according to performance evaluation, human resource (HR) planning, the system of incentives, and managerial motivation. They also demonstrate that human capital is a source of success in the business of banks, which relies heavily on stable and enduring relationships with customers. The study also provides recommendations for retail bank managers seeking to refine their HR strategies as a means of improving their competitiveness.     

Globalization,Skill Accumulation and the Skill Premium

We analyze the impact of globalization upon the skill premium (inequality) in advanced countries from a two‐goods North–South model with skill accumulation. Globalization consists of an increase in the size of the South. Its impact on inequality depends on its intensity and on the pre‐globalization proportion of skilled workers. The post‐globalization inequality is a non‐monotonic function of the pre‐globalization proportion of skilled workers and of the globalization intensity. The impact is different for the generation in work and for the following generations. There is a threshold value of the skill endowment under (above) which inequality is lower (higher) after than before globalization.     

An algebraic index theorem for non-smooth economies

In this paper, we prove an existence theorem for equilibria in production economies with increasing returns, which generalizes the classic results on this topic. In particular, we eliminate both the free-disposal assumptions and any smoothness requirements on the boundary of the production sets. For this purpose, we propose a new definition of the topological degree for non-convex-valued correspondences defined on non-smooth topological manifolds.