Social desirability bias as an influencing factor of ethical consumer behavior

Consumers usually consider themselves as more ethical than their peers, manifesting a need to appear more socially orientated than they actually are. The main objective of this study was to analyze the influence of social desirability bias on ethical consumer behavior considered at a component level. Data were collected from a sample of 332 Romanian individuals from the 18-26 age group. The data analysis process involved co-variance structural equation modeling performed with the help of AMOS. Results show that both the positive and negative sides of social desirability significantly influence the three dimension of ethical consumer behavior. Therefore, based on results from this study, researchers can better understand the complex structure of ethical consumer behavior form a different point of view.

From management consultancy to management therapy: Diagnostic of managerial disorders and anatomy of management therapy.

In this paper I develop an idea which can provide the ground in order to start the transition from an amatorial/common sense management consultancy practice towards a scientific validated management consultancy practice. Rooted in medicine, psychiatry and psychology, the innovative tool is aiming at moving the management consultancy practice towards a direction already present in the classical fields of science mentioned above. The new more formal, rigorous, systematic and science-based management consultancy practice is called management therapy (MT). The MT is different from management consultancy because it is substantiated in the emerging field of research called Evidence Based Management (EBM). The paper introduces the first two steps in order to favor opening the discussions and the practice of management therapy: (1) developing the analogous/equivalent of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in the management field and (2) developing the action/process of MT (the anatomy of the MT).

Some aspects concerning the economics of sovereign debt and possible influences of the COVID-19 pandemic

In the last 10 years, the sovereign debt crisis and its effects have made certain concepts, reserved until then only to specialists, to become elements of current language – public debt, sovereign debt, default, over-indebtedness, structural deficit, monetary policy, indebtedness ratios, sovereign debt effects, IMF intervention, willingness to pay… The indebtedness and over-indebtedness generated negative effects that affected not only the public finances, but also the economic agents (businesses) and the population, fueled by the lack of vision and responsibility of some governors. After the global economic crisis of 2008 and that of sovereign debt after 2010, a better control of indebtedness was tried, a more rigorous approach was implemented, but the Coronavirus pandemic that manifested itself in 2020 (and continues to do so) brought back to the forefront the problem of sovereign indebtedness and sovereign default.

Analyse der Methoden zur Aufwand- und Kostenschätzung eingesetzt in IT-Projekten

This paper aims to provide a comparison of different methods for the process of effort and cost estimation used by an IT company in IT-projects. Based on a literature review on the topic of effort estimation methods, the tool for effort and cost estimation operated by project management teams is getting investigated for the purpose of further improvement. The findings obtained are derived and presented to the involved parties as well as to other stakeholders that might benefit from this research results.

Interpersonal communication: Basics of interaction and negotiation.

This essay dates back to a series of lectures we ran some years ago, and to respective manuscripts written for students to help them prepare for their exams. The idea is to summarize some of the most relevant empirically confirmed theories and findings on interpersonal communication in a brief compendium. That is why – thus deviating from usual scientific conventions – no references will be found within the following discourse. The scientific authors which we are, above all, obliged to many thanks are: Watzlawick, Argyle, Scherer, and Schulz von Thun. Their pioneering research work will be cited among our references.

Determinants of competitive intensity: substitutability and pricing policy

The article offer a critical perspective of several elements and some associated indicators used in characterizing and estimating the intensity of competition (i.e., the extent to which the mutual pressure of rivals is exerted on the market). We focus on the pricing policies of the firms and its impact and expected responses from competitors. Influences of substitutes and overall production capacity surplus are also analyzed.

Le rôle des entreprises et leurs comportements sur la stabilité du système financier

Investment determines the sustainability and prosperity of an economy. The paper seeks to (1) give an overview of the roles of companies on the stability of the financial system, based on existing theoretical and empirical work; and (2) to highlight the reasons which expose them to the non-application of their duties against the State. For this purpose, a bibliometric analysis using the Direct Science database was employed. The results of the analysis allowed us to study the search trend by analyzing the distribution of publications, authors, types of publications and fields of research and also showed that the themes of the study are of great scientific interest because of the surge in the number of publications on the role of companies over the last ten years averaging 76.3 per year while 1,690 were on the impact of company behaviour on the stability of the financial system.

The role(s) of the business English teacher: a practical approach

Starting from Jeremy Harmer’s (1994) general list and Evan Frendo’s (2012) Business English-focused perspective on teacher roles, this paper aims to discuss in more detail the different dimensions of the teaching process I have identified during my seminars at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration and provide practical examples of the teacher’s role(s) in the classroom based on the fundamental process of needs analysis. It will show that teaching ESP is indeed more of a collaborative process between the students and the teacher and, consequently, the latter’s role must shift according to the former’s learning needs.

International portfolio diversification and genetic relatedness

The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on how relatedness between counterparties can explain investment behavior, specifically how much can investor’s inherited traits influence the exchange of capital. We use the genetic distance index and regress it against the foreign bias measure on pairs from 40 countries on a time period from 2001-2016. We identify that the prior exerts a significant impact on foreign investment decision, even when controlling for previous documented determinants of foreign bias. These findings reflect that international portfolio allocation is obstructed by the cultural wedge created between source and destination country, since relative difference in these characteristics disturb the flow of equity investments across markets, which ultimately hinder diversification.