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The long‐term goal of a manufacturing strategy should be to propel the status (and contribution) of manufacturing from a perceived corporate liability to that of a true competitive advantage. Significant improvement in manufacturing productivity is measured by output, costs, lead time, and focused resource allocation.

The USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) made several changes to the crop insurance products available to organic growers for the 2014 crop year. Most notably, a 5 percent premium surcharge was removed and organic-specific transitional yields (t-yields) were issued for the first time. The purpose of this paper is to use farm-level organic crop yield data to analyze the impact of these reforms on producer insurance outcomes and compare the insurance options for new organic growers.

This study uses a unique panel data set of organic corn and soybean yields to analyze the impact of organic crop insurance reforms. Actual Production History values and premium rates are calculated for each farm and crop yield sequence. Producer loss ratios and subsidized premium wedges are compared for yield, revenue and area-risk products before and after the instituted reforms.

Results indicate that RMA succeeded in improving the actuarial soundness of the organic insurance program, though further refinement of organic t-yields may be necessary to accurately reflect the yield potential of organic producers and avoid reductions in program participation.

This paper provides insight into the effectiveness of reforms intended to improve the actuarial soundness of organic crop insurance and demonstrates the effect that the reforms are likely to have on new and existing organic farms. Because this analysis uses data collected independently of RMA and includes farms that may or may not have purchased crop insurance, it avoids the self-selection problems that might affect analyses using crop insurance program data.

This research looks at the main effect of individuals’ moral philosophies, idealism and relativism, and its impact on the four dimensions of the consumer ethics beliefs – active benefit, passive benefit, no harm and doing good. The moderating impact of two dominant personalities – Machiavellianism and narcissism – was also analyzed. Based on Hunt–Vitell theory of ethics, this study aims to propose that there is a positive and significant impact of more relativistic and less idealistic moral philosophies on the decreased consumer ethical perceptions and that the narcissistic/Machiavellian personality traits drive that effect.

A total of 497 survey respondents were recruited via an online platform. All respondents were asked to answer questions, which were divided into four major parts. The first part consisted of scales related to both moral philosophies, the second part had both dark personality scales, the third part questioned about their consumer ethical beliefs and the final part was related to consumer demographics.

Relativists had higher scores in three consumer unethical belief dimensions. Idealists were not supportive of the active and passive illegal activities, as did their positive relation with doing good aspect of the ethical beliefs. Machiavellians strengthen the positive relativism relationship. The idealistic relation of narcissists, compared to relativistic relation, is stronger on unethical decision-making for consumers.

This study contributes to the current knowledge of individual’s moral philosophies and their impact on consumer ethical beliefs. It further demonstrates how the dark personalities of narcissism and Machiavellianism drive the relationship.

“The issue we confront today is not primarily one concerning a special day for an individual. The issue is in reality whether our nation can summon the will and vision to recognize a great and historic period in its history by designating the birthdate of one who made major contributions to the period a national public holiday.”

In 1967, Robert N. Bellah famously argued that there existed an “American Civil Religion,” which was distinct from churchly religion and captured the “transcendental” dimension of the American project. In this chapter, I revisit the civil religion concept and reconstruct it along more Weberian lines. Specifically, I argue that the civil religion tradition is one of three competing traditions for thinking about the proper relationship between religion and politics in America; the other two are religious nationalism and liberal secularism. Whereas liberal secularism envisions a complete separation of the religious and political value spheres, and religious nationalism longs for their (re)unification, civil religion aims for a mediating position of partial separation and productive tension. Following Bellah, I argue that the two central strands of the civil religion tradition have been covenant theology and civic republicanism. The body of the chapter sketches out the development of the tradition across a series of national foundings and refoundings, focusing on the writings of leading civil theologians from John Winthrop and John Adams through Abraham Lincoln and John Dewey to Martin King and Barack Obama. The conclusion advances a normative argument for American civil religion – and against liberal secularism and religious nationalism. I contend that liberalism is highly inclusive but insufficiently solidaristic; that religious nationalism is highly solidaristic but insufficiently inclusive; and that only civil religion strikes a proper balance between individual autonomy and the common good.