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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the current limitations in compensating the civilian victims of armed conflicts and to examine the possibility of extending this practice.

Methodology/approach – The first half of the chapter employs legal and political analysis of the current framework of international law and the practice of the United States. The latter half of the chapter examines the literature on theory of liability in economics and philosophy.

Findings – The framework of international law, which does not require compensation for the victims of lawful attacks, is increasingly at odds with the current trend in which military force is used by a powerful state against a much weaker state on the grounds that the local population would benefit from the operation. The system developed by the United States is the most extensive and can form a model for other states and international institutions. Keating's analysis of enterprise liability can be applied to compensation of victims in military operations that are deemed to be beneficial to the population. Economic analysis, on contrary, suggests that compensation of civilian victims has minimal effect on the level of risks.

Originality/value – This chapter makes a unique contribution by applying theory of liability to a situation that widely diverges from the context in which the theory has developed. It critically examines the current practice and proposes a morally preferable and economically sustainable alternative model.

Directors play a hard-to-quantify but critical role in the success of corporations. Outside directors supplement the firm-specific knowledge of inside directors by providing expertise and monitoring. Prior research finds that outside directors who are commercial bankers can be both beneficial and costly to large, non-financial corporations. Smaller, bank-dependent corporations should benefit more than large firms from the services banker directors provide, but may also be more prone to the costs they can impose. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of bank dependency on appointments of banker directors.

The author estimates models relating the probability of a first-time banker-director appointment to proxies of bank dependency on data for a matched sample of firms with and without banker directors drawn from a size-representative sample of Compustat firms.

Bank-dependent firms are less likely to appoint bankers as directors than bank-independent firms. Bank-dependent firms are also less likely to appoint bankers whose employers are firms’ creditors (i.e. affiliated bankers). Bank-dependent and bank-independent firms are indistinguishable in their probabilities of appointing unaffiliated bankers as directors.

Bank-dependent firms with unexploited growth opportunities appear unable to ameliorate their financial constraints by having banker directors. Appointing retired bankers to boards may give firms the benefits of banker directors without the costs.

This paper is the first to: document the prevalence of banker directors at smaller corporations; present econometric evidence on banker-director appointments at firms ranging from small to large; and identify bank dependency as a factor limiting appointments of affiliated banker directors.

This study stresses the importance of considering a “joint” governance of interfirm relations as an alternative to external governance (by the State) and self-governance (by the business community) of these relations. We argue that a broadly-conceived structural and organizational approach to economic institutions provides insights into this joint governance because it shows how such a system spreads the costs of control among several kinds of stakeholders. We look at how transactions between any two firms are regulated through jurisdiction by “consular” judges (i.e. judges elected through the local Chamber of Commerce) who indirectly represent other firms and industries in that market, and are therefore considered to be at the same time third parties and potential levers of influence acting on behalf of corporate interests. We study an empirical case of such joint governance: The Tribunal of Commerce of Paris (TCP). Following previous work on lateral control and leverage, we hypothesize that industries and/or companies that have a strong stake in the conflict resolution process will be more represented among the judges of this court than other industries and/or companies, and that judges who are socially active in the court that enforces this joint governance will be sought out for advice more than other judges, and thus gain influence on their peers by suggesting specific outcomes. The analyses of the composition of the bench and of the advice network data collected in this court display an influence structure that confirms these hypotheses and that is likely to affect conflict resolution between businesses. It thus characterizes joint governance of markets as a complex set of social processes worthy of economic sociologists’ attention.

In his review of theoretical and empirical research on grievance procedures, Lewin (1999) states that the “grievance procedure is widely regarded by scholars and practitioners as the centerpiece of union-management relations.” It is somewhat strange, then, that a trawl through British industrial relations publications for the 1980s and 1990s reveals very few dealing with the process for resolving employment disputes in unionised workplaces (usually articles about industrial tribunals, now called employment tribunals). Given this paucity of studies in unionised workplaces, it is less surprising that almost no research has been published recently on how employees and management in non-union firms go about dealing with individual conflict in the workplace today.

Communal violence requires a prior existence of radicalism. The chapter shows that the degree of extremism of one group can increase or decrease in response to that of the other. Lootable wealth unambiguously raises radicalism. It is not the absolute level of income but the difference between peacetime income and that of conflict periods that determines the magnitude of radicalism.

In the presence of capital market imperfections, risk management at the enterprise level is apt to increase the firm's value to shareholders by reducing costs associated with agency conflicts, external financing, financial distress, and taxes. The purpose of this paper is to provide an accessible and comprehensive account of these rationales for corporate risk management and to give a short overview of the empirical support found in the literature.

The paper outlines the main theories suggesting that corporate risk management can enhance shareholder value and briefly reviews the empirical evidence on these theories.

When there are imperfections in capital markets, corporate hedging can enhance shareholder value through its impact on agency costs, costly external financing, direct and indirect costs of bankruptcy, as well as taxes. More specifically, corporate hedging can alleviate underinvestment and asset substitution problems by reducing the volatility of cash flows, and it can accommodate the risk aversion of undiversified managers and increase the effectiveness of managerial incentive structures through eliminating unsystematic risk. Lower volatility of cash flows also leads to lower bankruptcy costs. Moreover, corporate hedging can also align the availability of internal resources with the need for investment funds, helping firms to avoid costly external financing. Finally, corporate risk management can reduce the corporate tax burden in the presence of convex tax schedules. While there is empirical support for these rationales of hedging at the firm level, the evidence is only modestly supportive, suggesting alternative explanations.

The discussed theories and the empirical evidence are described in an accessible way, in part by using numerical examples.

To re‐examine the role of property management from an institutional economics perspective.

The role of property management is explored by asking why property management has emerged from the first principle. Then, an analytical framework for property management is put forward. Different dimensions of institutional arrangements, ranging from open access to communal private property or solely owned private property, are discussed in the real estate property context.

The paper shows that a unique feature of property management is its role in excluding outsiders and resolving internal conflicts among the stakeholders of communal private property.

This approach opens up a new research agenda for property management. The adoption of different institutional arrangements in property management can be explained by further studies.

The efficiency of different institutional arrangements for the governance of communal private property is situation‐specific. An endogenous assumption of institutional regime in property management practice greatly expands the flexibility of management.

This paper is the first to apply an analytical framework for interpreting the institutional arrangements in property management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of four policy options for the international community to help resolve conflicts involving black diamonds: foreign aid, a tax arms exports, a tax on blood diamond and a tax on diamond exports in general from the war zones.

A trade‐theoretic model of two open economies which are in conflict with each other was constructed. War efforts, which involve the use of soldiers and arms, are determined endogenously. The purpose of war is the capture of land containing a natural resource like diamond, but the costs are that lives are lost and production sacrificed. The capture of mining land helps to reinforce the war by using profits from the sale of the natural resource to purchase arms.

The paper identifies the role of the “protective” nature of arms, and of income effects of the policy instruments, on the results. For example, foreign aid is found, unambiguously, to increase war when the entire profit from the sale of blood diamond is used to buy arms. But, when the proportion of profits from blood diamond used to buy arms is chosen optimally, foreign aid increases war efforts when arms are significantly protective of soldiers' lives.

This paper helps to understand conflicts, the resolutions of which have serious social implications for the conflict‐torn areas of the world.

This paper provides the international community with an analysis of policy options for dealing with blood diamond. It shows, for example, that controlling supply of arms can be as effective as discouraging the consumption of blood diamond.

Multiplicity and conflicting Halal standards involve unnecessary repetition of testing for demonstrating the Halal integrity of the process and the product, thus making it difficult for the Halal commodities to get traction in international markets. The purpose of this paper is to suggest initiatives to facilitate harmonisation of Halal standards as to eliminate trade barrier of Halal and to assure the availability of Halal consumables to larger masses.

Ranking of the initiatives for the harmonisation of Halal standards taking in consideration the costs of accomplishment and associated benefits obtained has been done through the application of integrated Interpretive Ranking Process (IRP) and Fuzzy Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (Fuzzy TISM). This integrated methodology with the weighted criteria have refined the value of the net dominance of different variables, thereby increasing the efficacy of IRP in decision making.

Findings suggest that strengthening the strategic coordination and collaboration among competent HCBs is a significant initiative. This initiative needs to be undertaken to mitigate the conflict between HCBs. This necessitates to develop a common platform in making the collective decision for effectively controlling Halal businesses. Moreover, recognising competent HCBs will prompt the effective implementation and execution of Halal standards across the supply chain, and ease the global trading of Halal products. A framework has been conceptualised to enable harmonisation of Halal standards which intimates to develop globally agreed protocols for Halal practices.

The framework presented may act as a prelude to harmonise Halal standards and may positively affect the international trade of Halal commodities by phasing out the discriminatory and market-impeding standards.

A harmonised system may provide correct information to the stakeholders and may help in making an informed decision.