How I reversed an unfair UR denial

When an insurer wouldn't pay for a drug his patient needed, the author let loose a barrage of letters. See what made them work.     

Office Romances: The New Battleground Over Employees' Rights to Privacy and the Employers' Right to Intervene

Office romances have increased dramatically as more men and women work together for prolonged periods. The article reviews reasons why office romances are flourishing, examines the corporate response to office romances, discusses the rights and responsibilities of employees, co-workers, and employers, and recommends courses of action for each.     

The sales recovery audit: Learning to walk the talk

Little research attention has been devoted to the impact of salesperson failure and recovery management on customer relationship development. This paper develops a theoretically anchored and externally validated sales recovery audit for the purpose of assessing sales organization performance in these matters. Results based on a survey of 177 sales managers indicate that practice of sales recovery efforts lags behind their perceived importance as they relate to organizational success. The sales recovery audit presented here can be a useful tool to continuously evaluate and enhance sales recovery efforts for the purpose of building a stronger relationship selling organization.     

Ethics in business education: Working toward a meaningful reciprocity

This paper outlines and argues against some criticisms of business ethics education. It maintains that these criticisms have been put forward due to a misunderstanding of the nature of business and/or ethics. Business ethics seeks a meaningful reciprocity among economic, social and moral concerns. This demands that business organizations autonomously develop ethical goals from within, which in turn demands a reciprocity between ethical theory and practical experience. Working toward such a reciprocity, the ultimate goal of business ethics education is a moral business point of view through which one can live with integrity and fulfillment.To everyone who proposes to have a good career, moral philosophy is indispensible. Cicero, De Officiis, 44BC W. Michael Hoffman is Chair and Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Director at the Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College, Waltham, MA. He has received the following Grants: Council for Philosophical Studies, NEH Fellow, NDEA Fellow, Matchette. His most important publications are: Kant's Theory of Freedom: A Metaphysical Inquiry (UPA, 1979); Proceedings of the National Conferences on Business Ethics, 5 volumes (1977–1984); Business Ethics (McGraw-Hill, 1984) and articles in Journal of Business Ethics, Idealistic Studies, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Journal of Thought, The Journal for Critical Analysis, and The Southern Journal of Philosophy.Paper presented at the 16th Conference on Value Inquiry, entitled: Ethics and the Market Place: An Exercise in Bridge-Building or On the Slopes of the Interface.     

Testing the restrictions implied by the rational expectations hypothesis

The nature and form of the restrictions implied by the rational expectations hypothesis are examined in a variety of models with expectations and the properties of appropriate test statistics are analyzed with Monte Carlo evidence. Specifically, we consider the implications of lagged variables, simultaneous equations, and future period expectations upon the number and functional form of the rational expectations restrictions. Two asymptotically equivalent test statistics — a likelihood ratio and a Wald test — are available for implementing a test of these restrictions. Monte Carlo evidence is offered to provide a comparison between the properties of the alternative test statistics in small samples.     

Clothing,chips and competitive advantage: The impact of microelectronics on trade and production in the garment industry

This paper presents the results of a research project which examined the impact of microelectronics on the nature of production and the patterns of international trade in the clothing industry. Empirical evidence is given on the effects of microelectronics-related innovations currently being used by clothing manufacturers in the developed countries. Radical innovations have been introduced in the ‘pre-assembly’ stage which have revolutionized this phase of production. In contrast, the introduction of microelectronics into assembly technology is still limited. As a result, the clothing industry remains reliant on labor-intensive techniques that place it at a competitive disadvantage compared to low-wage developing countries. Hence, the determinants of international competitive advantage in the industry remain largely unaltered. However, due to increasing concentration and major new R&D efforts in the public and private sector, it is argued that the preconditions are being laid for a fundamental structural and technological transformation of the industry in the North, which could have very important implications for the competitive position of Third World clothing exporters. Emphasis is also placed upon the continued restraining effects of protectionist barriers imposed by the main importing nations and on the differential impact of this on the ability of newer entrants to achieve rapid and sustained export growth.     

Wage inequality and the labor market impact of economic transformation: Croatia, 1970–2008

In this paper, we examine wage inequality and wage differentials in Croatia from 1970 to 2008 using two long aggregate time series on the distribution of income. We focus especially on changing income inequality related to educational and vocational attainment, changing income inequality within those groups, and how these two components of inequality were affected by the economic transformation from socialism to capitalism. We find that income inequality between groups rose moderately post-transformation, while overall inequality increased more sharply. This finding is consistent with a growing importance of individual rather than group productivity in labor market compensation, a change broadly consistent with the economic transformation of the Croatian labor market.