Voluntary Siting and Equity: The MRS Facility Experience in Native America

This article focuses on aspects of intragenerational and intergenerational equity in the context of a unique policy experiment: the effort of the U.S. government to site a monitored, retrievable storage (MRS) facility for high-level civilian nuclear waste. This process and its outcomes are examined from both normative and subjective perspectives. While the MRS siting process was designed to be equitable, its eventual focus on Native American communities raises profound questions about environmental justice, as well as procedural, outcome, and intergenerational equity in cross-cultural contexts. The diverse reactions among Native American tribes demonstrate that translating theoretical concepts of equity into practice is an extraordinarily complex exercise. The MRS siting process, instead of being a bold policy experiment that promoted equity, emerges substantially flawed after its implementation in the Native American context.     

Resource allocation. The cost of care: two troublesome cases in health care ethics.

With the cost of health care rising rapidly, both physicians and administrators regularly face resource allocation decisions. Under these conditions of relative scarcity, the equitable and appropriate distribution of limited resources becomes an ethical as well as a financial issue. Through ethical analysis, physician executives can assist their physician colleagues and fellow administrators to find rationally defensible answers to questions regarding the distribution of limited resources. Six criteria are frequently "weighted in the balance" by ethicists when analyzing whether justice is served in the distribution of a limited resource: need, equality, contribution, ability to pay, effort, and merit. The authors argue that, from an ethical standpoint, the best single criterion upon which one can base an allocation decision is that of merit, defined as the potential to benefit from the investment of additional resources.     

Natural law and the "right to die"

Over the last two decades social concerns with the "right to die" have grown beyond the ability of our governmental and judicial institutions to consistently deal with them. One reason for this difficulty has been the unavailability of any legal or judicial standard that is consistent with American conceptions of liberty, morality, and justice. This article attempts to examine the theory of natural law to determine whether it may provide a consistent standard for resolving these difficult questions. As natural law theories are traced through history, they lead directly to the United States where a uniquely American interpretation became one of the foundational principles for our constitution. By applying these theories to the contemporary question of the "right to die," natural law can again provide the foundational principles needed to develop standards for dealing with such questions that are consistent with our historical, philosophical, and political traditions.     

Discounting Across Generations: Necessary, not Suspect

Periodically, ethical objections are raised against the practice of discounting for future effects. Concerns about the potential effects on future generations from long-term nuclear waste disposal and global climate change have caused these ethical objections to recur. This article rebuts the various ethical objections to future discounting on practical, ethical, and analytic grounds. Discounting for future effects is a ubiquitous practice that cannot be practically prevented. In the event that public policy would dictate against future discounting in public decisions, such a constraint could never be successfully imposed on markets. Market values will always reflect the full, discounted streams of future effects even if governments prohibited the practice among individuals. Ethically, there is no basis for choosing an upper-bound time horizon beyond which discounting should be rejected. Any proposed horizon is arbitrary and has no obvious foundation. All decisions are fundamentally irreversible, so opponents of future discounting also must define a degree of irreversibility beyond which normal discounting should not apply, and defend on ethical grounds the basis for this demarcation. This task is further complicated by the likelihood that choices are rarely, if ever, as irreversible as opponents suggest. Typical examples given to prove future discounting is inappropriate overstate the degree of irreversibility actually present and understate subsequent opportunities for modifications. Finally, opposition to distant-future discounting on the ground that burdens are shifted to future generations must face the fact that such shifts are characteristic of intergenerational transfers now practiced widely and with great public support.     

Zombies and Originals: How Cultural Theory Informs Stakeholder Management

The question of stakeholder salience has recently resurfaced in the suggestion that the ethical foundations of corporate cultures result in stakeholder cultures that largely explain how firms allocate resources among stakeholders. The present article seeks to complement this novel approach to understanding stakeholder management by adding insights from the multilevel influences that create the corporate culture in the first place, and ultimately affect managers in their stakeholder decisions. This article draws on cultural theory to examine how the individuals who compose firms present group and grid solidarity that results in cultural biases in the corporate culture. These cultural biases—individualism, hierarchy, fatalism, and egalitarianism—are then paired with the stakeholder cultures they enable, and inferences are extracted concerning the salience managers are likely to accord to various classes of stakeholders as a result. Future research and managerial implications stemming from this new view on stakeholder management conclude this article.     

Corporate Governance in Russia:: towards a European, US, or Russian Model?

This article analyzes Russia’s emerging corporate governance system taking into account both foreign and domestic influences. It discusses influences on Russia’s corporate governance from other countries, particularly the US, Germany, and France. Aspects of Russian culture and traditions are then examined to see how they might influence the country’s evolving corporate governance system. Although Russia will continue to be influenced by international standards and systems of other countries, the article concludes that Russian corporate governance will evolve into its own unique model reflecting the country’s traditions, values, and culture. Implications for Western investors are discussed.     

How does interpersonal justice affect outside directors’ governance behavior? A cross-cultural comparison

We examine the impact of interpersonal justice among outside directors on the board and between a director and the CEO regarding the director’s monitoring and resource provision behaviors in different cultural contexts. We argue that directors from individualistic countries are more influenced by CEO interpersonal justice while directors from collectivistic countries are more affected by the board interpersonal justice. Our main effect results indicate that interpersonal justice with board members is positively related to both monitoring and resource provision by a director, while CEO interpersonal justice is related only to resource provision. Our results also show different effects on the director’s behaviors between three countries, i.e., Canada, Singapore, and Spain. We found that CEO interpersonal justice is positively associated with resource provision in Canada, while board interpersonal justice is positively related to both monitoring and resource provision in Singapore and Spain. These results suggest that directors discharge their board duties differently by how they are treated by other directors and the CEO and that their governance behaviors vary by culture. This study contributes to the literature on comparative corporate governance by showing the differences in directors’ behaviors in different cultural contexts.     

Identifying and Structuring the Objectives of Terrorists

The risk of terrorism is of great concern to many countries and significant resources are spent to counter this threat. A better understanding of the motivation of terrorists and their reasons for selecting certain modes and targets of attack can help improve the decisions to allocate resources in the fight against terrorism. The fundamental question addressed in this article is: “What do terrorists want?” We take the view that terrorists’ preferences for actions are based on their values and beliefs. An important missing piece in our knowledge of terrorists’ preferences is an understanding of their values. This article uses a novel approach to determine these values and state them as objectives, using principles from decision analysis and value‐focused thinking. Instead of interviewing decisionmakers and stakeholders, as would be normal in decision analysis, we extract the values of terrorists by examining their own writings and verbal statements. To illustrate the approach, we extract the values of Al‐Qaeda and structure them in terms of strategic, fundamental, and means objectives. These objectives are interrelated through a means‐ends network. This information is useful for understanding terrorists’ motivations, intent, and likely actions, as well as for developing policies to counter terrorism at its root causes.     

营销伦理对品牌重生影响的实证研究

本文构建了非营销伦理行为、品脾资产衰减和品牌重生难度三个变量之间的结构方程模型,利用来自教育培训业的数据进行了实证研究。结果发现,非利他主义营销行为和非社会公正营销行为直接影响品牌重生难度;利己主义营销行为对品牌衰减影响显著,并对品牌重生难度产生间接影响;非经典效用营销行为对品牌资产衰减和品牌重生难度都产生了直接影响,并对品牌重生难度产生间接效应;品牌资产衰减对品牌重生难度存在显著的直接影响。消费者从不同视角感知到的企业非营销伦理行为越严重,企业品牌重生的可能性就越小。     

Intergenerational Considerations Affecting the Future of Nuclear Power: Equity as a Framework for Assessing Fuel Cycles

Alternative fuel cycles are being considered in an effort to prolong uranium fuel supplies for thousands of years to come and to manage nuclear waste. These strategies bring with them different benefits and burdens for the present generation and for future generations. In this article, we present a method that provides insight into future fuel cycle alternatives and into the conflicts arising between generations within the framework of intergenerational equity. A set of intersubjective values is drawn from the notion of sustainable development. By operationalizing these values and mapping out their impacts, value criteria are introduced for the assessment of fuel cycles, which are based on the distribution of burdens and benefits between generations. The once‐through fuel cycle currently deployed in the United States and three future fuel cycles are subsequently assessed according to these criteria. The four alternatives are then compared in an integrated analysis in which we shed light on the implicit tradeoffs made by decisionmakers when they choose a certain fuel cycle. When choosing a fuel cycle, what are the societal costs and burdens accepted for each generation and how can these factors be justified? This article presents an integrated decision‐making method, which considers intergenerational aspects of such decisions; this method could also be applied to other technologies.     

Ecological Risks and Community Perceptions of Fairness and Justice: A Cross-Cultural Model

Intergenerational justice is implicit in international commitments to sustainability. If ecological, economic, and social components of sustainability are to be achieved, there is a necessity for intergenerational justice considerations to be included in decision making. The present generation's risk judgments should include consideration of the possible outcomes for their children. But intergenerational issues cannot be considered in isolation from other current risk and fairness concerns. This article reports on a community-based integrative model that describes justice and other attitudes and motivations that determine community and individual proenvironmental behavior in two nations: Germany and Australia. This model can account for a considerable amount of the variance in political compliance as well as various proenvironmental behaviors. Group or individual self-interests have nearly no effects on global protective behavior. It is shown that universal as well as contextual principles, including distributive (within or between generations), procedural, and interactive justice, play a crucial role in fairness judgments. Other principles are also taken into account, such as efficiency, environmental rights, and rights to economic welfare. The results are discussed in relation to the importance of complex community fairness judgments in predicting and evaluating acceptance of political decisions, and for promoting proenvironmental behavior.     

Fairness Perceptions of Work−Life Balance Initiatives: Effects on Counterproductive Work Behaviour

This study examined the impact of employees' fairness perceptions regarding organizational work?life balance initiatives on their performance of counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). Moderating effects of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism were also explored. Quantitative data collected from 224 public sector employees demonstrated significant main and moderating effects of informational justice, adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism on CWB. Adaptive perfectionism weakened the link between informational justice and CWB, while maladaptive perfectionism strengthened it. Qualitative data collected from 26 employees indicate that both the social exchange and job stress models are useful frameworks for understanding CWB in the context of work?life balance initiatives; CWB emerged as both a negative emotional reaction to unfairness and as a tool used by employees to restore equity in the exchange relationship with their employer. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Does HRD have a moral duty to respond to matters of social injustice?

The purpose of this article is to question whether or not social injustice should matter to human resource development (HRD). The goal is to invoke a sense of moral agency and responsiveness within the HRD community for having more candid and open conversations about social injustice and the lived experiences of marginalized individuals. In this article, a social justice paradigm will be suggested as a dedicated platform for studying social justice as a necessary outcome of social injustice. Organizational social justice will be introduced as a progressive workplace norm that envisions an equal balance of social justice outcomes for all members in organizations and places of work.     

On Intergenerational Equity and Its Clash with Intragenerational Equity and on the Need for Policies to Guide the Regulation of Disposal of Wastes and Other Activities Posing Very Long-Term Risks

This article begins with some history of the derivation of 40 CFR Part 191, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard that governs the geologic disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level and transuranic radioactive wastes. This is followed by criticisms of the standard that were made by a Sub-Committee of the EPA Science Advisory Board, by the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and by a panel of the National Academies of Science and Engineering. The large disparity in the EPA approaches to regulation of disposal of radioactive wastes and disposal of hazardous, long-lived, nonradioactive chemical waste is illustrated. An examination of the intertwined matters of intergenerational equity and the discounting of future health effects follows, together with a discussion of the conflict between intergenerational equity and intragenerational equity. Finally, issues related to assumptions in the regulations concerning the future state of society and the biosphere are treated, as is the absence of any national philosophy or guiding policy for how to deal with societal activities that pose very long-term risks.     

On operations research and value conflicts

The paper addresses the question of how operations research (OR) ought to handle decision problems that involve value conflicts. First, we note that early OR was considered essentially value free within the OR community, with a mechanistic systems perspective, although some voiced concern that an analyst should not detach herself from the consequences of her work. Then we propose a value conflict scale, which we use to assess the conflict levels in a small sample of OR applications. We then turn to value identification. In practise, organizational value statements include many kinds of values, and we discuss how values can be sorted out according to ethical categories, which helps in identifying consequentialistic decision criteria. The next question is how values can be enacted in a decision process. We review findings in neuroscience, which indicate that intra-personal decision-making takes place in a field of tension between deliberation and affect. The implication is that low level conflicts may leave decision-makers too cold for values to be enacted and therefore want infusion of emotion. On the other hand, emotions in high-level conflicts may run too high to give reason a chance. Emotions, therefore, need to be tempered and this can be achieved through at least two strategies: a focus on consequences rather than virtues and rules and discourse ethics. These are the subjects of the two last parts of the paper. We conclude by proposing five ethical rules for OR analysis of value conflicts. An analyst should not regard herself as being detached from the decision that are made, should be conscious that good decision-making requires temperate emotions that balance affect and deliberation, should promote focus on consequences, should promote the view that stakeholders have intrinsic value; they should not be treated instrumentally and should encourage fair processes to identify stakeholder values.     

代际公平与社会偏好视角下优势金属矿产定价权分析——基于古诺均衡模型的分析框架

我国优势金属矿产定价权的缺失对我国经济增长及经济安全产生了重要影响,这让很多学者构建相应的模型来解释定价权缺失。基于此背景,本文把代际公平均衡、社会偏好均衡与古诺模型相结合,解决代际价值补偿与策略性价值补偿计量的技术难题;并通过计量分析优势金属矿产市场的需求状况和开发税费科目,获得开发补偿的相关数据,展开理论模型结论的算例验证分析。理论模型与数值模拟结论表明,代际公平均衡与社会偏好均衡由于代际价值与策略性价值的产生,提升了我国金属矿产国际贸易市场势力,但社会偏好对市场势力影响路径并非一致,利他古诺均衡、互动公平古诺均衡变动具有一致的结果,非公平厌恶的古诺均衡具有损失厌恶特征,即在考虑非公平厌恶的古诺竞争时,古诺纳什均衡随非公平厌恶的同情和嫉妒偏好单调变换。这些结论与构建的理论模型实现了可持续发展理念与价值评价思维的有效结合,拓展了矿产资源定价权缺失的理论分析框架,为相关商品贸易的定价权解释提供了新的思路。     

Cost of Equity in Homeland Security Resource Allocation in the Face of a Strategic Attacker

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in homeland security since September 11, 2001. Many mathematical models have been developed to study strategic interactions between governments (defenders) and terrorists (attackers). However, few studies have considered the tradeoff between equity and efficiency in homeland security resource allocation. In this article, we fill this gap by developing a novel model in which a government allocates defensive resources among multiple potential targets, while reserving a portion of defensive resources (represented by the equity coefficient) for equal distribution (according to geographical areas, population, density, etc.). Such a way to model equity is one of many alternatives, but was directly inspired by homeland security resource allocation practice. The government is faced with a strategic terrorist (adaptive adversary) whose attack probabilities are endogenously determined in the model. We study the effect of the equity coefficient on the optimal defensive resource allocations and the corresponding expected loss. We find that the cost of equity (in terms of increased expected loss) increases convexly in the equity coefficient. Furthermore, such cost is lower when: (a) government uses per‐valuation equity; (b) the cost‐effectiveness coefficient of defense increases; and (c) the total defense budget increases. Our model, results, and insights could be used to assist policy making.     

组织文化与公司绩效关系的实证研究

组织文化是企业的无形资源,对形成竞争优势具有重要的作用。本文应用实证研究的方法,对组织文化与公司绩效的关系进行了实证研究。研究结果显示,组织文化与公司绩效具有显著的正相关关系,公司规模对组织文化与公司绩效的关系具有调节作用,小企业文化与绩效的关系更强,而行业类型对其关系没有调节作用。     

Perceptions of ethical climate and organizational justice as antecedents to employee performance: The mediating role of employees' attributions of leader effectiveness

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating role of employee attributions of leader effectiveness on relationships between perceptions of (a) ethical climate and (b) organizational justice and both positive and negative types of performance. We argue that these relatively under-investigated perceptions are critical antecedents to effective productivity in the workplace. Accordingly, this study is the first to examine the associations of both ethical climate and organizational justice on both positive and negative performance within the context of mediation via employee attributions of leader effectiveness. Based on online survey data from 2486 Romanian employees, our SEM-based findings reveal that the attribution of leader effectiveness functions as a mediator between the associations of ethical climate and justice perceptions on two distinct types of performance: (1) Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and (2) Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWB).Additionally, the results revealed that trait negative affect moderates the mediating role of leader effectiveness with OCB but not with CWB. This study contributes to the recent and growing interest in the mediating role of attributions regarding work performance. Several theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed concerning leader-specific attributions, employee empowerment, and employee performance. Most prominently, we discuss why individuals with strong trait negative affect may engage in CWB without the influence of ethical climate or organizational justice.     

Cui bono? Depicting the benefits of the new municipal budgeting and accounting regime in Germany

The new budgeting and accounting regime for the public sector (Doppik), which is based on private sector accounting standards, has been the subject of numerous discussions in research and practice in Germany for the last 20 years. However, those discussions were mostly characterized by assertions, unproven statements and logical arguments. The objective of this paper is to empirically analyze the perceived benefits of a reformed municipal accrual budgeting and accounting system by using a structural equation model. Our results show that improved management capabilities are an important indirect factor, whereas efficiency, intergenerational equity, and transparency are direct determinants of benefit. The consistent implementation of the new output-/outcome-oriented management rationality and the necessity of harmonizing budget laws are revealed as prerequisites for further development.