Gender Differences in Managerial Attitudes Towards Unearned Privilege and Favoritism in the Retail Sector

This paper describes the concepts of unearned privilege and favoritism and tests if there are differences in managerial attitudes towards the use of these behaviors based on respondent gender. Respondents included 180 managers employed with a large retail organization located in the southern part of the United States. The results indicate that female managers more strongly disapproved of the use of unearned privilege in making promotion decisions and more strongly disapproved of the decision to use favoritism in decision making related to customer relations. The results also indicated that male managers were less likely to disapprove of the use of unearned privilege when they had greater years of management experience. In addition, the most experienced female managers reported disapproval levels for the use favoritism in decision making related to customer relations equal to that of the most experienced male managers.     

Regional headquarters in China: Role in MNE knowledge transfer

To improve control and coordination with operations in distant locations, multinational enterprises (MNEs) establish regional headquarters (RHQs). The number of RHQs in Shanghai registered with the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce has increased from 154 in 2006 to more than 400 in 2012. Managing knowledge constitutes one of the major strategic advantages of an MNE, but little is known about RHQs and their role in MNE knowledge flows. Based on interviews with regional, subsidiary, and global managers, we explore knowledge flows involving the RHQ. Our data suggest that RHQs can have a role in inflows and outflows of knowledge, and that this involvement is influenced by RHQ management, structure, and position within the subsidiary network.     

Determinants of Ethical Decision Making: The Relationship of the Perceived Organizational Environment

This study attempts to help explain the ethical decision making of individual employees by determining how the perceived organizational environment is related to that decision. A self- administered questionnaire design was used for gathering data in this study with a sample size of 245 full-time employees. Perceived supervisor expectation, formal policies, and informal policies were used to assess the expressed ethical decision of the respondents. The findings indicate that the perceived organizational environment is significantly related to the ethical decision of the respondent.     

Order book characteristics and the volume–volatility relation: Empirical evidence from a limit order market

Using unique data, we address the issue of price formation in a limit order market. A standard volume–volatility relation is documented with the number of trades acting as the important component of volume. The main contribution of the paper is to identify strong evidence that volume, volatility, and the volume–volatility relation are negatively related to the order book slope. These results are robust to the inclusion of several liquidity measures. A significant empirical relationship between the order book slope and the coefficient of variation in earnings forecasts by financial analysts suggests that the slope is proxying for disagreement among investors. Hence, our results support models where investor heterogeneity intensifies the volume–volatility relation.     

Efficiency in housing markets: Which home buyers know how to discount?

We test for efficiency in the Swedish co-op market by examining the negative relationship between the sales price and the present value of future monthly payments or ‘rents’. If the co-op housing market is efficient, the present value of co-op rental payments due to underlying debt obligations of the cooperative should be fully reflected in the sales price. However, a one hundred kronor increase in the present value of future rents only leads to an approximately 75 kronor reduction in the sales price. These inefficiencies are larger at the lower end of the housing market and in poorer, less educated regions and appear to reflect both liquidity constraints and the existence of more ‘sophisticated’ buyers in higher educated areas. Overall, our findings suggest that there is some systematic failure to properly discount the future stream of rent payments relative to the up front sales price.     

Support for the Use of Deception Within the Work Environment: A Comparison of Israeli and United States Employee Attitudes

As businesses become more global, the opportunities for employees to work with individuals from different cultures increase. Research in cross-cultural interactions has increased in response to such changes. This research study considers employee attitudes and perceived organizational support for the use of deception within the work environment. In this study, two types of deception have been considered; deception for personal gain and deception for the organization's benefit. The reported likelihood for committing these two types of deception for United States and Israeli employees was gathered. The results indicate that United States employees are more likely to deceive others for personal gain than the Israeli employees. In addition, the results indicate that United States employees were more likely to perceive organizational support for the use of deception for personal gain than were the Israeli employees. No differences between the two samples were found for personal or organizational support for deception for the organization's benefit. Differences are explained using Hofstede's (1991) theory of international cultures.     

Criminal justice involvement and high school completion

This paper analyzes the relationships between juvenile justice system interactions and high school graduation. When controlling for a large set of observable and unobservable characteristics, arrested and incarcerated individuals are about 11 and 26 percentage points, respectively, less likely to graduate high school than non-arrested individuals. However, the effect of arrest is not robust to there being relatively little selection on unobservable characteristics. In contrast, the incarceration effect is less sensitive to such selection and therefore more likely to at least partially represent a real effect. The remainder of the paper explores the mechanisms underlying this incarceration effect, including hypotheses of an education impeding stigma and disruptions in human capital accumulation.     

Stimulus generalization in classical conditioning: An initial investigation and extension

Conditioning as a mechanism for attitude change has received much attention over the past 10 years. This research examines stimulus generalization, the extent to which a response conditioned to one stimulus transfers to similar stimuli. Stimulus generalization relates to both brand extension and private‐label imitations of national brands. Two studies collectively provide evidence that attitudes which are conditioned to a particular brand can be transferred to a product with a similar name in the same category, as well as a product with the same name in a different category. Study Two suggests that stimulus generalization effects may be relatively transitory. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Home as a communication hub: the domestic use of ICT

With the rapidly increasing ease of access to the Internet in people’s homes, more and more of our everyday activities are being carried out online. While the home has become what might be called a communication hub, open to question is the impact this virtual mobility is having on our physical mobility. The questions we address in this article concern the extent to which network communication is carried out in our homes and this in relation to (1) activities that demand transport, (2) those of us who utilize these options, and (3) the virtual and physical mobility/communication patterns. Data from a nationwide Norwegian sample are utilized in investigating these questions. The dataset comprises 2700 respondents with access to the Internet at home and who answered questions about daily travel and home-based use of information and communication technology (ICT) for purposes such as information-seeking, shopping, paid work, net-banking, chatting and playing games. The analysis indicates that while use of the Internet for many of these activities is common, it varies between groups. We discuss whether virtual activities have physical equivalents – physical twins - or whether these come in addition to previous equivalent activities. It is shown that the relation between virtual and physical mobility varies depending on type of activity and social group, but, overall, that is not very strong. One possible explanation is that many new ICT services and applications do not have as clear-cut functional equivalents – or physical twins – as many of the earlier ICT technologies had, and, if true, will make it increasingly difficult to track down the interplay between transport and communication.