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In the last three years, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 246,575 charges of workplace discrimination, of which 43,437 alleged sexual harassment. In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two landmark decisions governing how U.S. courts analyze sexual harassment cases. Since those cases, U.S. courts have been faced with a new conundrum: is a constructive discharge a “tangible employment action” that gives rise to automatic employer liability? Although the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals have split on the issue, the trend appears to be in favor of imposing automatic liability, effectively denying employers a defense in cases in which the alleged victim often failed to report harassing conduct. This article argues that classifying a “constructive discharge” as a “tangible employment action” will, in most circumstances, violate the Supreme Court’s admonition that “no award against a liable employer should reward a plaintiff for what her own efforts could have avoided”.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

This paper aims to examine the merit of an indirect payment system for audit fees, a system where an intermediary collects fees from the auditee and then pays this audit fee to the auditor.

Big 4 auditors and professional analysts in South Korea participated in an experiment and survey to investigate whether the change in the payment channel (from direct to indirect) of audit fees positively impacts auditors’ decision-making.

The authors find evidence that the indirect payment of audit fees is positively associated with professional skepticism.

This paper, by highlighting the potential for alternate auditor payment channels to improve the quality of auditor judgments, motivates future research in this area.

Qualified by the need for further research, the potential merit in an indirect payment system may have implications for audit regulators.

An indirect payment channel has the potential to improve public perceptions of the audit function, thereby elevating society’s confidence in auditor opinions and improving the effectiveness and efficiency with which scarce resources are distributed within society.

This study is one of the first that looks into a systematic change in audit fee payment channel and how an indirect payment system of audit fees impacts professional skepticism.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the practical difficulties resulting from the UK Court of Appeal's recent guidance on the effect of anti‐avoidance provisions in the Landlord and Tenant (Covenants) Act 1995.

The paper analyses the Court's guidance, focusing on the inability of a guarantor to take a valid assignment of a lease from the outgoing tenant.

The paper identifies significant implications for due diligence, valuation and pricing of property investments, arguing that the result could be to deprive landlords of access to covenant strength that is crucial to its valuation or to any sale price.

The paper reflects practitioner discussions since the Court of Appeal gave its ruling in K/S Victoria Street v. House of Fraser. It highlights significant new issues that must be factored into property due diligence.

Briefly defines sexual harassment before discussing the pertinent section of the Civil Rights Act 1964. Outlines the procedures of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and looks at developments through the use of recent case law. Gives some examples of high profile cases. Concludes that there is an increased frequency in workplace relationships and there is a need for appropriate guidelines to be in place.

The aim of this paper is to provide a grammar for dissecting the financial crisis that began in the housing finance market of industrialized nations in 2007, rapidly becoming a general credit crisis and spreading to all parts of the world and causing a global recession of gigantic proportions. The unexpectedness and force of the crisis has had experts floundering for an explanation and the policy response has been an ad hoc collection of stimulus interventions by governments and central banks around the world, akin to scatter shots in the hope that some will hit the target whatever it be.

The paper is based essentially on a static equilibrium model. The author chose the assumptions carefully to capture some of the features of dynamics in this static model. Also, a static model does not have to mean one period but the infinite repetition of the same kind of world. The aim here is to draw on some existing ideas concerning equilibria where group behavior influences individual preferences, and which give rise to multiple equilibria. Unlike several other works, the model in this paper does not try to explain the collapse in terms of the bursting of a bubble.

As more and more lenders indulged in sub‐prime lending, the share of risky borrowers rose. With a little lag, defaults rose. More and more houses came back on the market, and the value of houses declined. So the value of F (value of the mortgaged property), with which individual lenders had begun their calculations, declined. Clearly, the value of F depends on how many others were indulging in sub‐prime lending. If this aggregate supply was forecast wrongly, some firms would end up discovering that their asset position had weakened since the foreclosed property did not have the value originally calculated.

The model developed is a new frame for conceptualizing the crisis. While there has already been some theorizing on this, the model has the advantage of novelty and simplicity. It provides a stark characterization of how a small credit correction can escalate into a major equilibrium shift with large changes in behavior, in this case, a sudden collapse in the supply of and demand for loans. It is distinct from existing models of collapse in lending, which are based on the idea of bubbles bursting. Despite the model's simplicity, it turns out to be a useful structure addressing policy questions.

.. And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I'm concerned, it is a high‐tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured, by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree. (Clarence Thomas)

Responding in a timely manner to product recalls emanating from the supply chain presents tremendous challenges for most firms. The source might be a supplier from the same industry located next door, or one from a completely different sector of the economy situated thousands of miles away. Yet the speed of the firm’s response is crucial to mitigating the consequences of the recall both for the firm, and consumer health and well-being. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of geographic distance, industry relatedness and clustering on firm response time to a supplier-initiated product recall.

The authors test the theoretical framework via an examination of food recall announcements registered with the US Food and Drug Administration over a ten-year period. The authors develop a data set comprising 407 pairs of supplier and affected downstream manufacturing firms, and utilize cross-classified hierarchical linear modeling to understand the drivers of organizational responsiveness.

The results suggest that firm response time is lengthened by geographic distance but reduced when the supplier and affected firm operate in related industry sectors. The authors further find that as more firms in a given industry are affected by the same recall, response time deteriorates.

Product recalls in the agri-food industry are significant events initiated to protect consumer health and ensure the safety of the farm-to-fork food chain. The findings highlight how both geographic- and industry-related factors determine the speed of firm responsiveness to these events.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the paradigmatic justification for the use of case studies in logistics research. The argument is based on a critical realist (CR) ontology and epistemology. The current logistics paradigm's flat ontology – based on regularity – is replaced by an ontology emphasising structures and mechanisms underlying actual events in the form of logistics practice and performance.

The approach takes the form of desk research, conceptual work and theorizing.

Based on this CR view of the logistics domain it is argued that the justifications for conducting case studies lie in their ability: to reach the causal depth required for revealing the real domain of logistics activities and performance: to reveal the working of mechanisms in loosely coupled structures showing open systems characteristics through a constant alternation between abstract and concrete reasoning and; to include the causal powers and effects of agents' ascribed meanings. Also, it is argued, in contrast with Yin's work which refers to the possibility of generalising case studies, that the justification of case studies not only must refer to their complementary role in research but also must build on groundings that allow this form of research to take a primary role in knowledge creation.

The arguments have direct implications primarily for the scientific justification for case studies in logistics. CR thinking in this respect offers a view in which case studies should be seen as a more legitimate method in logistics inquiries. Second, the paper has implications for further work on the methods of using case studies in logistics: between what types of case studies can one distinguish, and which practical guidelines regarding design and reasoning can be developed based on the CR view?

The paper problematizes current research methodology in logistics. Based on critical realism, it presents a thorough and systematic justification for using case studies as a research approach.