Avoiding Litigation: The Benefits of Employment Contracts and Arbitration

This research reviews the current environment in employment disputes. In an ever-increasing litigious era where it is not uncommon to see six-figure settlements, the entrepreneur needs to examine the possible legal options in the event of a lawsuit involving current or former employees. While many employment-oriented lawsuits are settled through litigation, this is a time-consuming and costly process. Indeed, due to its adversarial nature, dispute resolution through litigation can take years  to settle.   In contrast,  one business strategy that  is growing in popularity includes the use of employment contracts specifying arbitration in dispute resolution. Because arbitration is "almost entirely  separate from  the  legal  system " (Siegel, Sect. 586), it offers many advantages to both employers and employees

The First Accounting Course: An Outcomes Assessment Approach Project

This paper discusses a class project that can be used in an introductory accounting class as an outcomes assessment tool.  The project is done in groups of four to five students.  Each student analyzes one company’s ratios for a two year period and compares their firm’s ratios with their firm’s industry’s ratios.  When this is complete, the group then uses the individual firm data to make an investment decision.  The investment decision must be based on the data from the individual firm ratios.  Once the group has decided which firm to invest in, they then have to complete a pro-forma income statement for the firm assuming a $2 billion expansion.  Overall, the project is done in steps that help the students build their final project throughout the semester.  The project is submitted at the beginning of the 13th week of classes so that the instructor can grade it and hand it back to the students at the beginning of the 14th week of classes.  The groups present their projects during the last two class periods of the semester.&nbsp

Family Values, Competition And The Environment: An International Study Of Business Ethics

This study compares the attitudes of international college students concerning personal versus business ethics, the environment, and competition. The sample consists of 999 business students from Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, South Africa, Spain, and the United States. While Hofstede’s cultural constructs were significant for two of our five research questions (one dealing with family values and the other with ethical practices), Paulus’ (1986) Image Management Subscale was significant for three of the research questions. Our data do not support gender differences in ethical sensitivity after controlling for social desirability response bias on an international sample

Improvements In Audit Report Lag And Reporting Timeliness: A Non-Event For Technology Advances

Technological advances have transformed the professional lives of all accountants.  Consequential expectations would include improvements in the timing of the audit report and the reporting of financial information.  There is a presumption in the empirical literature that audit report lag is a primary cause of financial reporting delay.  This empirical research study finds little or no change in the audit report lag and timeliness of reporting during the period 1996 to 2001.  Audit report lag appears to play a questionable role, if any, in financial reporting delays and other factors such as inertia and interest may be the major impediments to timely reporting.  Finally, given the financial atmosphere after the Enron-Arthur Andersen debacle, our research finds no difference among auditing firms for the variables examined.  While this could be interpreted in a positive manner, it could also indicate that all Big-5 firms potentially have similar problems

Data Contamination By Social Desirability Response Bias In Research On Students Cheating Behavior

Our study examines the effect of social desirability on the model developed by Salter et al. (2001). We believe that social desirability response bias contaminates many of the variables that have been used in previous research modeling academic cheating. We initially examined the effect of variables identified in prior research to demonstrate that our sample is equivalent to those in prior studies.  We then examined the effect of social desirability response bias using Paulhus’ Image Management Subscale (1986) on their tolerance towards cheating; their cynicism about cheating; and one’s acknowledged intention to cheat in the future

The Associations Among Family Values, Business Ethics, The Environment, And Competition: An International Study

This paper looks at ethical attitudes among international college students and personal versus business ethics, the environment, and competition. The sample includes 541 responses from six countries (Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Japan, Nepal United States). Hofstede’ s cultural dimensions were used to explain differences in the perceptions of different countries. Uncertainty avoidance was found to be the most statistically significant of Hofstede’s cultural constructs. The image management Le was used to determine the self-deception of respondents. Finally, we controlled for gender when considering our hypotheses

Leadership In The Fortune 500: Women At The Executive Level Of Corporate Management

This study examines the influence of executive women in business using a sample of firms included in the Fortune 500.  Our analysis looks at the movement of female executives on or off corporate management to determine whether an increase of female representation at the highest levels of corporate management signals an increased commitment of a firm to a higher representation of females on their boards of directors.  Our sample includes a group of 73 corporations for which we longitudinally examined the data for women at the director and executive manager levels for the period from 1999 through 2003.  Our data indicate that, while the number of firms having multiple female directors increased over this period, the increase was even more pronounced for women at the executive management level.  Our data also indicate that, while the number of executive level managers was relatively stable (increased) between 1999 and 2001 (2001 and 2003), the number of women at this level increased by 25.5 (27.1) percent

The influence of political ideology on DIT scores: fact or artifact?

Concern about the validity of the DIT and Fisher and Sweeney’s measurement of conservative, moderate and liberal political orientation using a seven-point Likert scale motivates our study. We perform two experiments to investigate these interrelated issues. First, we assess the degree to which 569 undergraduate students’ political orientation as measured by a seven-point Likert scale associates with their corresponding political orientation as measured by a ninepoint Likert scale. We find differences in categorization of subjects depending upon scale used, suggesting problems with the sampling distribution arise when a seven-point Likert scale is used for categorizing subjects. Second, we measure 115 students’ political orientation utilizing a nine-point Likert scale to assess Fisher and Sweeney’s findings. Our results suggest that Fisher and Sweeney’s findings may relate to their using a seven-point Likert scale in measuring political orientation rather than a flaw in the DIT’s validity resulting from an embedded political ideology

Gender Differences In Students Ethical Impressions Of Questionable Marketing Practices

In this study, we test the theory that female business majors are more sensitive than male business majors to the ethical issues in advertising promotions. We also examine whether or not business majors are as sensitive as liberal arts majors. Our sample is made up of 218 students from the Northeast area of the US. To measure ethical sensitivity in marketing situations, the participants responded to six scenarios developed from actual news data. The results indicate that female students and female business majors were more sensitive to potentially unethical advertising than male students. We also found that liberal arts students were more sensitive to ethical issues than their counterparts in business schools

Evidence Of Social Desirability Response Bias In Ethics Research: An International Study

This paper analyzes the association between ethical perceptions of questionable business practices and Hofstede’s Individualism, Transparency International’s Corruption Index, and social desirability response bias.  The sample consists of 1,048 business students from ten countries: Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Nepal, South Africa, Spain, and the United States.  The results of our analysis indicate that, while Hofstede’s (1980) cultural construct of Individualism was significant for two of the questions, social desirability response bias was the most consistent variable in modeling subjects’ responses.  Our data indicate that social desirability response bias should be controlled for when using self-reported data in ethics and/or international studies.&nbsp