Weak Business Culture as an Antecedent of Economic Crisis: The Case of Iceland

The authors of this article contend that traditional corruption, which was largely blamed for the current situation in the Icelandic economy, was perhaps not the most fundamental reason for the ensuing crisis. The weak business culture and a symbiosis of business and politics have actually allowed for the bulk of self-serving and unethical decisions made by the Icelandic business and political elite. In order to illustrate this point, 10 expert interviews have been conducted within the period of 6 months in 2009 to support in-depth research carried out by the authors. The article also discloses questionable business practices that have recently come to the attention of the public both in Iceland and abroad and that ultimately facilitated the downfall of the Icelandic economy. While traditional corruption has probably played its role in this downfall, the measures currently employed to determine its level did not account for various peculiarities of Icelandic society. The article thus argues that there was a high level of corruption in Iceland, but it was outside of the traditional definition. This other corruption has ultimately prevented the government from acting appropriately upon the questionable business practices mentioned above. The article also offers some general recommendations which should be useful to both policy makers and business leaders wishing to engage in business activities in a transparent, ethical manner and learn from the tragic Icelandic experience. Among these recommendations are the necessity to recognize the limitations of current definitions of corruption, as well as a word of caution to commercial enterprises to pay a close attention not only to commonly accepted indices and mainstream reports but also to a country’s history, culture, and political environment, prior to making any sort of investment decisions in that country.     

Vertrauen in Public Relations

When PR research addresses trust, the perspective that PR provides trust in organizations dominates in most cases. For PR to successfully providing trust, trust in PR seems to be a central condition. This applies to its relations to journalism as well as to its relations to other organisational environments. Since the motives behind PR as strategic communication usually arouse suspicion, trust in PR tends to be improbable. Trust in PR has been an unobserved subject in PR research so far. Thus, this paper will develop, on a systems-theoretic and non-dualistic approach, a theoretic understanding of trust in PR. After discussing the present state of research regarding the subject of trust and PR, the paper will briefly introduce the theoretic basis of PR and trust, in order to develop in the following a new theoretic perspective for trust in PR. In this context, internal and external trust in PR will have to be differentiated.     

Extrinsic motivation as a determinant of knowledge exchange in sales teams: A social network approach

This paper investigates extrinsic motivation as a determinant of knowledge exchange among employees in sales teams. Applying a social network approach, we study different forms of knowledge-exchange behaviors from the perspective of a focal employee and from the perspective of the dyad. From the focal employees' perspective, we disentangle knowledge seeking from knowledge providing, and argue that these two behaviors are affected differently by employees' extrinsic motivation. From the dyad perspective, we take similarity in motivation of tied-to employees and reciprocity of exchange ties into account. To test our hypotheses, we apply exponential random graph models to data gathered from 138 employees in five different sales teams distributed across three companies in Central Europe. The results of our analysis from the focal employees' perspective show that extrinsically motivated employees generally engage in less knowledge exchange. The dyad perspective further highlights that sales employees proceed purposefully when they exchange knowledge with coworkers. For instance, two employees' relative levels of extrinsic motivation determine their willingness to engage in reciprocal knowledge exchange. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on the microfoundations of organizational knowledge management and draw conclusions concerning HRM practices used to foster extrinsic motivation, thereby affecting knowledge exchange.     

Multi-Site Bundling of Drought Tolerant Maize Varieties and Index Insurance

Drought Tolerant Maize Varieties (DTMV) and Rainfall Index Insurance (RII) are potential complements, though with limited empirical basis. We employ a multivariate spatial framework to investigate the potential for bundling DTMV with a simulated multi-site and multi-environment RII, designed to insure against mild, moderate and severe drought risk. We use yield data from on-farm trials conducted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and partners over 49 locations in Eastern and Southern Africa spanning 8 countries and 5 mega-environments (dry lowland, dry mid altitude, wet lower mid altitude, low wetland and wet upper mid altitude) in which 19 different improved maize varieties including DTMV were tested at each location. Spatially correlated daily rainfall data are generated from a first-order two-state Markov chain process and used to calibrate the index and predict yields with a hierarchical Bayes multivariate spatial model. Results show high variation in the performance and benefits of different bundles which depend on the maize variety, the risk layer insured, and the type of environment, with high chances of selecting a sub-optimal and unattractive contract. We find that complementing RII with a specific DTMV produces contracts with lower premiums and higher guaranteed returns especially in dry lowland increasing the chances of scaling up RII within this environment.     

Effective Management of Own Funds in Polish Cooperative Banks

Today cooperative banks belong to the most significant financial institution in the world. Moreover, they can compete with commercial banks. The own funds of the cooperative bank are important in their activity. The main goal of this paper is to investigate how much the level of the own funds of the Polish cooperative banks influenced their efficiency. The research pertained to operating cooperative banks in Poland. The following measures of the efficiency were used in the research： return on Equity （ROE）, net profit, index C/I, and financial margin. The results of the study indicate that banks from the Quartile III （highest aggregate own funds）, had the highest net profits, the highest ROE, the lowest C/I value, the lowest ROE, and the lowest financial markups. On this basis, it remains to be recommended that banks of highest aggregate own funds continue expansion of own funds which will increase lending capacity and subsequently contribute to higher effectiveness.     

Do workers perceive high wage settlements of craft unions as fair?

In recent years, Germany has experienced an increasing impact of craft unions that negotiate high wage increases for the occupations they represent. This article analyses under which conditions workers perceive such over-proportional wage increases for occupational groups represented by craft unions as (rather) fair. We use a vignette approach, asking respondents for their fairness perceptions of several hypothetical scenarios. The results show that perceptions depend on the burdens of the occupational group, the size of the wage increase, information policies and potential consequences for other groups. These findings are in line with social and organizational justice theories about equity and informational justice.     

Reassessment of cross-impact analysis

Five problems in cross-impact methodology are discussed, solutions are proposed, and a simple illustrative case is provided. The problems are lack of commutativity, probabilistic imbalances, double counting of impacts, linearity, and two-dimensionality.     

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