Ethical Outsourcing in UK Financial Services: Employee Rights

Outsourcing is becoming a major option in British business, including the financial services industry, and it raises a number of ethical considerations. The author of this major ethical study contends that "Outsourcing seems to present a particular threat to employees ... because of the factors which have led to outsourcing and the way in which it tends to work." Mike Henderson is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and Senior Lecturer in Financial Services in the School of Financial Studies and Law of Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus, Pond Street, Sheffield S1 1WB, England.     

Half-Way House or Dead End?

Education vouchers ore conventionally attacked by commentators who prefer to maintain the dominance of the srate in the supply of education. Richard Henderson, of the stockbrokers Sheppards & Chase, analyses the vulnerability of vouchers to capture by pressure group and therefore argues for a genuine market in education without the compromise of vouchers.     

野狼也温柔从创意到品牌大理想

故事发生在积雪覆顶的雪山上,一个迷路的旅行者在寒冷的暴风雪中苦苦寻找一个落脚点,沿途一直有野狼紧随其后、伺机而动。饥寒交迫中,他终于忍不住而晕倒在地。狼群奔向晕倒的旅行者,静静地依偎在他身上、为他取暖。“不是非要相识,才能相拥入怀。”     

The measurement of left-right and libertarian-authoritarian values: A comparison of balanced and unbalanced scales

In this paper we compare the performance of balanced and unbalanced Likert scales of two core dimensions of political attitudes: left-right and libertarian-authoritarian values. The balanced scales control for the effects of acquiescence response sets, whereas the unbalanced scales do not. Using data from two panel surveys, balanced and unbalanced scales are compared for reliability, stability and validity both with each other, and with other measures of political ideology and values (left-right self-placement and postmaterialism). Both balanced and unbalanced versions of the left-right and libertarian-authoritarian Likert scales are found to be more stable and strongly associated with social characteristics than are the other measures. The unbalanced scales have slightly higher reliability than the balanced scales; they are also orthogonal, whereas balanced left-right and libertarian-authoritarian scales are moderately correlated. Unbalanced scales also display a slightly stronger relationship with social characteristics, but they do not differ in their pattern of association with political preferences. Differences between balanced and unbalanced scales are attributed to the effects of acquiescence bias. This needs to be considered when using the scales for substantive analyses, but its effects are not problematic.     

ECONOMIC PROGRESS AND CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUES: A DISSENTING VIEWPOINT

The attached text formed the basis for my opening contribution, and also some later remarks, at the discussion that followed the 2008 Clare Distinguished Lecture in Economics and Public Policy, given in Cambridge, England, on 14 May 2008. The lecturer was Professor Mohan Munasinghe, a Vice‐Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and his subject was ‘A Policy Framework for Climate Change and Sustainable Development: Economic Analysis and Beyond’. I have made a few small changes to take account of some more recent developments.