Business Commons^™

Prostitution In Salt Lake City, Targeting Cigarettes, And Breaking The Speed: Three Case Study Vignettes On Ethics In The Capitalist Marketplace, Roy B. Johnson

Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology

"Three vignettes are presented to help students think about and apply ethical, social, and economic concepts they have learned in courses incorporating business ethics. Each vignette is short enough to cover in a single class."

Student Or Employee?— The Status Of Medical Residents In Relation To Fica Taxes, Eric S. Smith

Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology

"This article considers an issue which was resolved by the Supreme Court in the 2010 Term: the status of medical residents with respect to FICA taxes. Specifically at issue was whether medical residents qualify as students under Section 3121(b)(10) of the Internal Revenue Code, which qualification exempts both the resident and the university/hospital residency program from paying FICA taxes. Included with analysis of the various courts‟ opinions leading up to the Supreme Court decision are two brief case studies. The first focuses on an individual medical resident in the Penn State University Dermatology Residency Program, which considers whether his relationship …

The Financial Crisis: Irrational Exuberance Or Institutional Rationality?, Samuel E. Enajero

Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology

"The last financial crisis could have been caused by rational and irrational exuberance. (That is, overreaction by agents to both good and poor signals in the financial markets). The problem is further exacerbated by institutional rationality. Rule following is one mode of behavior in dual-mode institutional rationality (Redmond 2004; Verstegen 2006). Rule-following behaviors hamper agents’ abilities to adapt to new circumstances. It is shown that management structures where both upper-level and field managers exhibit purpose-seeking behaviors is necessary for corporations to overcome any type of economic and financial volatility. "

U.S. Commercial Electricity Consumption, Sergio Contreras, Wm. Doyle Smith, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr

Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology

"Commercial electricity usage exceeds that of industrial usage and is almost as large as residential electricity consumption in the United States. In this study, regional economic, demographic, and climatic data are used to analyze commercial electricity demand in the United States. Results indicate that total commercial demand for electricity is negatively related to price. In addition, the number of businesses and service income positively affect electricity demand for commercial use. The results are similar for equations estimated for kilowatt-hours demanded per business. The regional dummy variables exhibit different signs, which may occur due to climate factors because warm weather regions …

Teaching Supply Chain Coordination Within A Network Modeling Context, Stephen E. Hill

Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology

"This article describes an educational exercise that demonstrates the value of coordination within a supply chain environment while exposing students to the conflict between locally and globally optimal supply chain decisions. This exercise allows students to formulate, model, and solve a problem relating to the design of a small supply chain network. The exercise begins with student teams developing a solution that is optimal from each team’s local perspective. A solution that is globally optimal is then developed. As is often the case in a real-world supply chain, the solutions that are optimal for each team do not (when combined) …

Videos To Promote Ethical Decision Making – A Pedagogical Tool, David S. Christensen

Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology

"Note that this version of the paper is publicly available and limited: it contains no teaching notes. A longer version of the paper, including the teaching notes, is available through the Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Economics website.

This paper provides a tool for developing the ethical decision making skills of business students. Videos can enrich business ethics education by exposing students to more complete and realistic descriptions of ethical dilemmas and the characters involved. Instead of reviewing end-of-chapter ethics vignettes, students are exposed to interviews and testimonies of real people who faced real ethical challenges. The paper provides …

A Microsoft Excel® Template For Teaching About Bank Runs Or Running Bank Run Experiments, Laureano Gomez, Hilde Patron, William J. Smith

Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology

"In this paper we describe a Microsoft Excel® template useful for instructors wishing to show students the incentives faced by bank depositors who suspect that their bank is in danger of becoming illiquid or insolvent, or wishing to play the run-on-the bank game in class. The template is very flexible allowing for anywhere between two to ten bank customers, variable rates of return on bank investments, and lending rates. The template allows instructors to simulate traditional as well as silent bank runs, both of which are especially relevant to today‟s students in view of the recent financial crisis."