The Limits to Moral Erosion in Markets: Social Norms and the Replacement Excuse

This paper studies the impact of a key feature of competitive markets on moral behavior: the possibility that a competitor will step in and conclude the deal if a conscientious market actor forgoes a profitable business opportunity for ethical reasons. We study experimentally whether people employ the argument "if I don’t do it, someone else will" to justify taking a narrowly self-interested action. Our data reveal a clear pattern. Subjects do not employ the "replacement excuse" if a social norm exists that classifies the selfish action as immoral. But if no social norm exists, subjects are more inclined to take a selfish action in situations where another subject can otherwise take it. By demonstrating the importance of social norms of moral behavior for limiting the power of the replacement excuse, our paper informs the long-standing debate on the effect of markets on morals

Peering at the Past Century's Corporate Strategy Through the Looking Glass of Time-Series Analysis: Extrapolating from Chandler's Classic Mid-Century American Firms?

This study has a dual thrust. "Substantively", it revisits Chandler's pragmatic fit-performance directive (Chandler's 'efficiency thesis') or his assertion that firms whose structure matches their strategy become more effective than mismatched firms. It is important to revisit the empirical origin of this result in view of its gradual international extrapolation beyond the time and place in which it originated. By gathering the financial data relevant to the firms cited as examples by Chandler, we identify whether the change to the multidivisional structure did indeed lead to improved financial performance in the mid-twentieth century American firms he described. "Methodologically", it explores a novel approach to the empirical validation of basic theories. Using historical replication, it undertakes a longitudinal, time-series analysis of a classic theory based on twentieth-century data, and thus investigates the testing of classic data with a modern tool. We undertake multiple replications. Three separate longitudinal studies are performed, consisting of two forecasting methods applied to 11 individual time series, and a comparison technique applied to the same. These are used with the three most common measures of performance at the time of Chandler's writing. All three methods reveal that the differences predicted by his theory are not borne out by the longitudinal analysis of a core group of Chandler's own exemplary firms. The three sets of longitudinal analyses we present raise some substantive questions regarding this cornerstone of classical theory, and carry positive methodological portents regarding the use of "historical replication" as a stepping-stone for twenty-first-century research. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.

Event Information - Proceedings - Part 01: Welcome and Introductions (November 29, 2007)

Video footage of Part 1 ("Welcome and Introductions") of the NSFNET 20th Anniversary event. Speakers relate how, in 1979, the benefits of computer networks were not fully appreciated, even within the academic community. The ARPANET provided network services to a small group of researchers in academia and affiliated research laboratories. A number of community networks—Bitnet, CSNET, UUCP and SPAN/HEPNET—served a growing number of users in universities and industry who understood the value of network connectivity to their teaching and research missions. These early activities led to a proposal for a national ScienceNet and later for a network to connect researchers to supercomputer centers. Ultimately, the National Science Foundation initiated the NSFNET Program and constructed an initial 56 kbps NSFNET backbone network. The video includes a panel discussion of NSFNET's evolutionary steps, controversies over technical and financial models, issues in providing nationwide access, the development of policies, and the emergence of a three level system consisting of a national backbone, regional connectors and campus networks.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96198/1/Movie-Recording-1.mo