German legal historians of nineteenth and twentieth centuries defined the main characteristics of the corporations and believed that one renaissance institution, the Casa di San…
Abstract
German legal historians of nineteenth and twentieth centuries defined the main characteristics of the corporations and believed that one renaissance institution, the Casa di San Giorgio at Genoa (1407–1805), was similar to the corporations of later centuries. This paper proposes to reverse this perspective: did the founders of early modern corporations know the financial model of the fifteenth century Casa di San Giorgio? The research shows the connection between the model of the Casa di San Giorgio and the Mississippi Company of John Law (1720), the famous financial scheme and bubble. The history of the Casa di San Giorgio was mainly transmitted through a passage of Machiavelli’s History of Florence (VIII, 29). The paper offers new biographical evidence that Law had been to Genoa and introduces sources connecting the genesis of Law’s scheme for the Mississippi Company in France with the model of the Casa di San Giorgio.
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PHILIP HEPWORTH, GODFREY THOMPSON, JE HAMILTON and PAUL SYKES
OUR STACK ROOMS are fast filling with different folk's ideas of carving up England. The Local Government Boundary Commission, Maud, Senior, Labour White Paper, Conservative White…
Abstract
OUR STACK ROOMS are fast filling with different folk's ideas of carving up England. The Local Government Boundary Commission, Maud, Senior, Labour White Paper, Conservative White Paper, and now the Bill. Each subsequent issue has attracted less and less public attention and the latest green and black map was hustled to the inside newspaper pages, quite unable to compete with 0z and the Stolken/Wolfson law court extravaganza. Some of us weary of this cartographic librarians' feast, having first seen this kind of map on page 157 of the McColvin report in 1942, with boundaries identical with the new map, as it happens, for my own area of Norfolk.
Rashmi Kumari, Aruna Divya Tatavarthy and Arvind Sahay
Given the growing acceptance of cashback offers (e.g. $10 PayPal cashback within 24 hours of the transaction) among retailers, this paper aims to understand how consumers evaluate…
Abstract
Purpose
Given the growing acceptance of cashback offers (e.g. $10 PayPal cashback within 24 hours of the transaction) among retailers, this paper aims to understand how consumers evaluate them vis-à-vis traditional price-discounts and their subsequent impact on retailers’ promotional strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
Six experimental studies examine if and when consumers can discern differences in the time-of-reward-accrual (i.e. the waiting time associated with receiving promotional savings) of cashbacks and price-discounts. Building on evaluability theory, we propose that the time-of-reward-accrual of promotion is hard-to-evaluate. Put simply, consumers find it hard to assess the duration of waiting time associated with receiving promotions. Consequently, consumers’ perceptions of cashbacks vis-à-vis price-discounts can be influenced by whether they evaluate both promotions simultaneously [joint-evaluation (JE) mode] or independently [single-evaluation (SE) mode].
Findings
The initial four studies show that the time-of-reward-accrual of promotions is hard-to-evaluate. Cashbacks appear just as appealing as price-discounts when consumers evaluate them independently (SE-mode) but lose their appeal when consumers view them alongside price-discounts (JE-mode). The next two studies further enhance the generalizability of our findings by replicating the observed effects for different purchase types (hedonic vs utilitarian) and varying promotional benefit levels (high vs low).
Originality/value
By shedding light on evaluations of time-of-reward-accrual of promotion, this paper adds a new dimension to research on promotions. The paper also extends the application of evaluability theory beyond domains such as hiring, fairness judgments and product bundle assessments. The paper presents evaluation mode as a boundary condition to explain contradictory predictions from prior research for consumers’ preferences for delayed vs immediate promotions.
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G.G. Chowdhury and Sudatta Chowdhury
A number of digital libraries have been set up in the course of various research and development activities in different parts of the world during the last few years. How do these…
Abstract
A number of digital libraries have been set up in the course of various research and development activities in different parts of the world during the last few years. How do these digital libraries fair in terms of information retrieval features? This paper looks into this question by reviewing the information retrieval features of 20 digital libraries chosen from around the globe. The first part of the paper briefly describes the features of the chosen digital libraries in terms of their nature and content. The second part looks into the information retrieval features of each digital library. Unique features of some digital libraries have been indicated. Major areas of research that would improve the information retrieval features of the future digital libraries have been indicated.
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A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balanceeconomics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary toman′s finding the good life and society enduring…
Abstract
A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.
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Ritu Tayal, Mamta Tripathi, Nishant Singh and Umesh Bamel
The objective of this paper is to employ a model to expand the literature's comprehension of the organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) phenomenon in the Indian banking…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this paper is to employ a model to expand the literature's comprehension of the organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) phenomenon in the Indian banking sector. The authors examine OCB as a mediator of the relationship between job embeddedness (JE), self-efficacy (SE) and organisation effectiveness (OE). The authors also verify the moderating role of affective commitment (AC) on the JE, SE and OE relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
Data for the purpose of this paper are collected from 568 employees in 89 branches of banks located in North and Central India using a survey questionnaire. The data collected were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).
Findings
The findings confirm the positive association between JE, SE and OE. The results also suggest that OCB mediates the association between the independent and dependent variables. Furthermore, the authors observed that AC moderates the OCB and OE relationship.
Practical implications
The results of this examination will assist the employees to realise the substance of OCB in directing their performance towards OE. This investigation will inspire bank managers to notice that employee readiness to put in extra effort in a bank is primarily the effect of apt individual characteristics, namely JE and SE, that can be shaped and developed. Furthermore, this study draws the attention of bank managers towards the significance of AC, as an essential phenomenon to emotionally attach the employees to their organisation.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the existing literature on OCB by examining how OCB leads to desired outcomes and the conditions that promote the effect of OCB. The authors address these questions by building on a more contemporary perspective, i.e., PsyCap.
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Prediction of increased risk of suicide is difficult. We had the opportunity to follow up 20 patients receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) because of severe depression. They…
Abstract
Prediction of increased risk of suicide is difficult. We had the opportunity to follow up 20 patients receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) because of severe depression. They filled in the Antonovsky sense of coherence test (SOC) and Beck depression inventory (BDI) before and after a series of ECT treatments. Seventeen surviving patients had a mean observation time of 20.6 months, whereas the three deceased patients had 11.3 months. There was a lower mean age at onset of illness and a longer mean duration of disease in the deceased. Other clinical parameters did not differ. The surviving patients had a significant decrease on the BDI from 35 to 18 (P<0.001) and an increase on the SOC test after ECT from 2.45 to 3.19 (P<0.001), indicating both less depression and better functioning in life. The deceased had a larger change on the BDI from 32 to 13, not attaining significance because of the low number of deceased. The SOC test, however, did not increase to a purported normal level; that is, from 2.43 to 2.87. Although the SOC scale has been shown to predict mortality in substance abusers, the SOC test has not been part of earlier reviews of predictive power. Tentatively, a low pathological score on the SOC test may indicate low sense of coherence in life that might increase the propensity for suicide. These preliminary results need replication in larger studies.