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Explains why executive severance contracts contingent on a change in control (i.e. golden parachutes) have developed and reviews previous relevant research. Develops a mathematical model of their effects on shareholder wealth and uses it to determine an optimal contract which aligns the interests of shareholders and managers (i.e. where marginal benefit to shareholders equals marginal cost of the contract). Points out that these contracts alone do not guarantee that managers will aim to maximize shareholders wealth: they should form only part of a package of compensation agreements to align their interests.

The meteoric rise of the Internet has left information science researchers struggling to keep pace, so that much discussion about the phenomenon has been based on assumption, anecdote and sheer hype. This paper reports on a major British Library funded project seeking hard evidence as to what is really happening in the information landscape, with the media being a case study. Discussed here are results pertaining to user characteristics, with particular reference to age. Contrary to received wisdom, it is the old, more experienced journalist pioneering Internet use, rather than the stereotypical young computer whiz kids. Several factors are emerging, including information needs characteristics, job security, Internet access, experience with online systems and, for senior managers, economic implications. The wider context is considered, such as early adoption generally of technological innovations, and evidence suggests that the newsroom environment may be characteristic of a general pattern of end‐user Internet adoption.

The purpose of this paper is to explore altruism born of suffering (ABS), a theory that explains how the experience of suffering within one’s own life may result in the motivation to help others, even outgroup members.

Participants were 186 emerging adults (63 per cent female, 37 per cent male; 69 per cent Protestant, 41 per cent Catholic; average age =21.3, SD=2.57 years old) in Northern Ireland, a setting of protracted intergroup conflict. Participants were randomly assigned to an in/outgroup condition, read four types of adversity that occurred to same-sex victim(s), and indicated their empathetic response and how much they would like to help the victims.

Moderated mediation analyses revealed that empathy for the victim partially mediated the impact of perceived harm on desire to help; moreover, recent negative life events strengthened the link between harm and empathy. The path between empathy and helping was stronger in the outgroup compared to the ingroup condition.

These findings support ABS, highlighting empathy as a key factor underlying more constructive intergroup relations in a divided society.

This paper extends previous research on ABS by focusing on a post-accord context. The value of the current analyses demonstrate the important role of fostering empathy to promote outgroup helping in settings of divisive group identities.

In a world of increasingly global commerce, individual managers frequently migrate permanently to a new place of work. Over time, they acculturate—they learn and acquire the values of their host culture. The differences between national cultures' norms concerning the morality of questionable (by North American norms) accounting practices, and the ways in which individuals' beliefs about the morality of such action change as they settle into a new culture, are not well understood. This paper presents an exploratory study of the acculturation process with respect to accounting ethics of Chinese managers moving to Canada for an extended period of time. We test for two effects: first, for differences in ethical perceptions and intentions between members of the two cultures resident in their country of birth, and second, the effect of a significant acculturation effect on the Chinese group resulting from their living in Canada and studying in a North American MBA program for approximately one year. We find two acculturation effects. First, Chinese managers perceived a questionable cost accounting allocation to be more ethical than the Chinese in Canada. Although there was no significant difference in an overall measure of morality, investigation of this effect among various moral schema identified some perceptions of utilitarianism, moral Tightness and self‐interest to be significantly different among those Chinese who had spent one year in Canada compared to those in China, and closer to the beliefs of the Canadian‐born managers. We also found an acculturation effect relating to intention to take a questionable action. While there was no significant difference in intention between the Canadian‐born and Chinese in China, the newly‐arrived Chinese in Canada were significantly more willing to take the questionable action. This result was robust to controls for social desirability bias, gender and work experience. We conclude that reasoning processes differ between Chinese and Canadian managers, and are affected by an intense one‐year acculturation process (the first year of a North American MBA program). However, the acculturation process of the Chinese in Canada appeared to result in their greater willingness to undertake a questionable cost allocation than either their Canadian‐born or Chinese in China colleagues.

Although the theoretical trade-off between the quantity and quality of children is well established, empirical evidence supporting such a causal relationship is limited. This chapter applies a recently developed nonparametric estimator of the conditional local average treatment effect to assess the sensitivity of the quantity–quality trade-off to functional form and parametric assumptions. Using data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey and controlling for the potential endogeneity of fertility, we find mixed evidence supporting the trade-off.

Various politicians and public commentators seek to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented or temporary migrants. Among their claims, critics of universal birthright citizenship contend that the practice flies in the face of liberal principles, in which both individuals and the state should consent to membership. From this perspective, citizenship through naturalization is valorized, since it rests on the affirmative choice of the immigrant and the clear consent of the state. This chapter proposes a different approach to these debates, one that underscores the principles of inclusion and equality. The argument rests on empirical evidence on how those affected by these debates – foreign-born residents and their U.S.-born children – understand belonging in the United States. Interviews with 182 U.S.-born youth and their immigrant parents born in Mexico, China, and Vietnam show that despite a discourse portraying U.S. citizenship as a civic and political affiliation blind to ascriptive traits, many of those interviewed equate “being American” with racial majority status, affluence, and privilege. For many immigrants, membership through naturalization – the exemplar of citizenship by consent – does not overcome a lingering sense of outsider status. Perhaps surprisingly, birthright citizenship offers an egalitarian promise: it is a color-blind and class-blind path to membership. The Citizenship Clause of Fourteenth Amendment provides constitutional legitimacy for the ideals of inclusion and equality, facilitating immigrant integration and communal membership through citizenship.

While the literature contains plenty of theoretical models for cultural competence training of health care staff, the personnel and clinicians have seldom been asked for their views on transcultural competence. Focus group interviews that we carried out in this study showed that the main concern of the participants (interprofessional teams in Swedish psychiatry) is to understand the culturally diverse in psychiatry, rather than being culturally competent. Three major themes of the process of understanding emerged in our analyses: (1) diversity reflection (sub‐themes: reflecting on co‐existent cultural differences and similarities, moving from a one‐dimensional to a multi‐dimensional approach to cultural diversity and self‐reflection), (2) cultural knowledge and skill acquisition (generic and specific) and (3) communication (sources, discrimination). Listening to staff's learning needs may motivate greater sensitivity to the needs of their culturally diverse patients.

Educational statistics in Britain make depressing reading. Recent surveys show that 80% of children from professional families gain university degrees compared with 14% from working class homes:¹ that black children are more likely to leave school with fewer academic qualifications even though they enter the system showing promise: that only a small minority of children from comprehensive schools² gain places at Oxbridge although 90% of the population attend such schools: that a mere 4% of medical and dentistry students come from working class backgrounds etc. In spite of John Major’s³ optimistic insistence that Britain has become a classless society, it would appear that class differences in educational performance are not disappearing. On the contrary, a recent OECD⁴ survey, based on data gathered from 16,000 people born in 1958 and 1970 shows that the detrimental effects of inequality of opportunity are actually growing and that the opportunities gap between those from different social backgrounds is no better for those born in 1970 than it was for those born a generation earlier in 1958.