A paradigm for design,promulgation and enforcement of ethical codes

The paper explores the promise of ethical codes as a means to control unethical behavior in business. After a review of arguments for ethical codes from outside the business system, the paper outlines the arguments for codes from inside the business system at the level of the industry, firm and individual executive.The paper then discusses the problems of code design — the dilemma between specific practices and general precepts — and offers a model for a thoroughgoing code. This is followed by a discussion of the problems of promulgation and code enforcement.In conclusion, the paper summarizes the limitations of ethical codes and the arguments which have been made against them. Earl A. Molander is Associate Professor of Management at Portland State University. He is the author of Responsive Capitalism,and co-author of Is the Ethics of Business Changing, which appeared in Harvard Business Review.     

DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: EFFECT OF INCLUDING PENSION RIGHTS,AND ANALYSIS BY AGE-GROUP*

This article on the distribution of wealth among individuals in the United Kingdom presents recent work on the effects of including pension rights and the significance of sex, age and marital status. It describes the rationale for including the accrued rights in occupational and State pension schemes (funded or unfunded) and the methods of estimation used. For funded schemes the rights are valued as the accrued liability of the schemes to their members, and for unfunded schemes similar liabilities are hypothecated; these estimates of the value of accrued pension rights involve assumptions about future earnings and interest rates. The trend in average marketable wealth with age is upwards until advanced years when it slows down or slightly reverses. Adding occupational pension rights only slightly raises the trend for females but has a bigger effect for males. Adding State pension rights raises these upward trends until the age of 60 after which there is a decline. For marketable wealth on the average males are wealthier than females but less wealthy if single, divorced or widowed. Adding occupational pension rights improves the relative position of males; adding State pension rights cancels this out. The effect of marital status rises with both age and sex and therefore a detailed three-way analysis is made. For females widows are on average the wealthiest; for young males the married; for older males the single. Using Theil's coefficient of entropy for comparing the inequality of wealth, the addition of pension rights reduces inequality by two-thirds. Age accounts for only 6 percent of inequality for marketable wealth but for 31 percent if pension rights are included.     

Technology improves sales performance—doesn't it?: An introduction to the special issue on selling and sales technology

Firms around the globe are rushing to invest in sales force technology or sales force automation (SFA). SFA appears to mean different things to different people. For example, management and sales personnel view the need for, application of, and advantages of SFA quite distinctly. As a result of technology, this special issue examines many areas of sales force automation to provide both practicing managers and sales force academicians with a clearer perspective of new technology in the B2B marketplace. This article introduces the special issue topic, individual contributors, and acknowledges support proffered by myriad individuals.     

Ecological Gentrification in Response to Apocalyptic Narratives of Climate Change: The Production of an Immuno-political Fantasy

Anxieties over the potential impacts of climate change, often framed in apocalyptic language, are having a profound, but little studied effect on the contemporary Western urbanscape. This article examines the ways in which current theorizations of ‘ecological gentrification’ express only half the process, describing how green space is used for social control, but not how ecology is used as a justification regime for such projects. As urbanites seek out housing and living practices that have a lower environmental impact, urban planners have responded by providing large-scale regeneration of the urbanscape. With the demand for this housing increasing, questions of inequality, displacement and dispossession arise. I ask whether apocalyptic anxiety is being enrolled in the justification regimes of these projects to make them hard to resist at the planning and implementation stages. The article shows that, in capitalizing on collective anxiety surrounding an apocalyptic future, these projects depoliticize subjects by using the empty signifier, ‘Sustainability’, leading them into an immuno-political relationship to the urbanscape. This leaves subjects feeling protected from both responsibility for, and the impacts of, climate change. Ultimately, this has the consequence of gentrification coupled with potentially worsening consumptive practices, rebound effects and the depoliticization of the environmentally conscious urbanite.     

Replicating the Levitt and Porter estimates of drunk driving

Estimates of the prevalence and risk of drinking-and-driving are a high-priority need for researchers and policymakers. Levitt and Porter (Journal of Political Economy, 2001, 109(6), 1198–1237) demonstrate how these can be recovered using publicly available information in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). Although robust to systematic misreporting and sample selection and far cheaper to implement than surveys, their methodological innovations are largely ignored. We believe this arises partly from difficulty in replicating their results. This article identifies the underlying causes of replication failure and offers practical guidance for future implementation that takes advantage of the current structure of the FARS data.     

The effects of competitive context on consumer response to price changes

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to understand how a brand’s price level, relative to its competitors, will affect consumers’ responses to price changes of the brand. The study uses experiments to examine brand choice responses to price increases and decreases across contexts differing in competitor brands and their respective prices. These experiments are conducted with six consumer goods categories. The research identifies three key factors that affect the size of responses to brand price changes – (1) passing a competitor brand’s price, (2) narrowing versus widening the price gaps with competitors, and (3) whether competitors are predominantly higher or lower priced brands.     

Urban recreation research: An overview

Despite the fact that the population of the United States ha shifted from largely rural to largely urban in this century, the commitment to research in recreation, inadequate as it is, has remained in the hinterlands. There is no critical mass of recreation researchers focusing on urban recreation as there now is focused on outdoor recreation. Urban recreation studies have been noncumulative in nature due to the wide range their sponsors, staff, substantive topics, lack of generalizability, and inevitable tensions between practitioners and researchers. Ironically, urban recreational research, and support of it, has diminished in this country at the same time that there has been an increasing concern for such information and knowledge. The future looks bleak insofar as the development of a strong, major, national urban recreation research program is concerned.