Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Conflicts Of Interest And Law-Firm Structure, Cassandra Burke Robertson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Business and law are increasingly practiced on a transnational scale, and law firms are adopting new business structures in order to compete on this global playing field. Over the last decade, global law firms have merged into so-called “mega-brands” or “mega-firms”—that is, associations of national or regional law firms that join together under a single brand worldwide. For law firms, the most common mega-firm structure has been the Swiss verein, though the English “Company Limited by Guarantee” structure is growing in popularity as well, as is the similar “European Economic Interest Grouping.” All of these structures allow related entities to …

Corporate Income Tax And Manufacturing Sector Performance In Nigeria: A Panel Data Analysis, Ogudu George Nwoge, Kingsley Imandojemu, Akinlosotu Nathaniel Toyosi

Bullion

The study examined the impact of corporate income tax on the performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria from 2013 – 2017. The ex-post facto research design was adopted for this study. The population of this study covered all the 23 registered manufacturing firms dealing with consumable foods in Nigeria. The sample of five manufacturing firms, dealing with consumable foods in Nigeria which represent 35% of the quoted manufacturing firms on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) market was selected for the study. This study made use of the fixed and random effect regression technique. The result showed that company income …

“I’Ll Know It When I See It”: Defending The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’S Approach Of Interpreting The Scope Of Unfair, Deceptive, Or Abusive Acts Or Practices (“Udapp”) Through Enforcement Actions, Stephen J. Canzona

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

New Partnering Opportunities For The Nonprofit Sector, Kathleen M. Wilburn, H. Ralph Wilburn

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

Consumers are demanding that corporations practice social responsibility. In order to meet this demand and keep their activist stockholders satisfied that they are still focused on profit and dividends, many corporations have established foundations that operate separately from the company. The foundations provide grants to nonprofits that can help the corporations fulfill their social responsibility, but, unlike prior philanthropic programs, these grants are based on developing partnerships with nonprofits that share the corporations’ social mission. There is also a group of smaller companies that nonprofits can partner with, the Benefit Corporation, as well as a new certification called the B …

Divorcing Your Job French Style: An Argument To End At Will Employment In The United States, Vincent Agnello, Nicole Stolowy, Joseph F. Winter

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

The United States and France are at opposite ends of the spectrum in protecting employees from employment termination. France has developed an elaborate regulatory and judicial scheme to protect workers, while the U.S. still allows workers to be in an at will relationship with their employers. In France employment is deemed to be permanent. In the U.S., workers are employed at the whim of their employer. In a major shift of policy, France adopted legislation allowing parties to enter into voluntary employment separation agreements. To protect against abuse, all settlement agreements are subject to court review for approval of the …

Not So "Clean Diesel"-- How Germany's Protection Of Industry Risks The Health Of Its Citizens, Thomas White

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

“Clean Diesel.” This was the tagline of a significant advertising campaign that Volkswagen (“VW”) debuted in 2008. These advertisements attempted to counter the notion that diesel engines are dirty and polluted the air. It featured older women in Volkswagens discussing tales of what they knew about diesel engines (a play off the phrase “old wives tales”). At the time of airing, few could have predicted what was to come for VW and their eventual diesel engine scandal, the fallout of which is still ongoing at the time of writing this Note. As this Note will show, the myth of the …

Consumer Welfare And Price Discrimination: A Fine Line, Marie Wallmark, Eyal Greenberg, Dan Engels

SMU Data Science Review

Traditionally, it was not feasible for businesses to determine the maximum price the buyer was willing to pay, but with the availability of big data and the deployment of sophisticated algorithms, with a great degree of precision businesses can ascertain the maximum willingness price. Some forms of price discrimination are prohibited under the Robinson-Patman Act of Antitrust (1890), provided demographic characteristics such as race and gender are the determining factors. The problem with this interpretation is that sellers are not transparent about what factors are taken into consideration when determining price. Current laws are either limited in their interpretation or …

Methodology And Applications Of Christian Leadership Ethics, Elmar Nass, Ellen Kreuer

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

A fundamental methodology for Christian leadership ethics will be proposed, which has long been pending in the discourse on ethical leadership. It is necessary to first clarify what characterizes leadership ethics, and secondly, what Christian leadership ethics imply and how this methodology should be classified with regard to alternative paradigms. Thirdly, the practical impact for selected areas of application will be pointed out. It will be demonstrated that leadership ethics in general is based on a transparent basis of values and apply to specific scopes. It defines the relationship between economic efficiency and human utility in a narrower sense as …

When Making Money Is More Important Than Saving Lives: Revisiting The Ford Pinto Case, Stuart Strother

Journal of International & Interdisciplinary Business Research

Despite a long tradition of ethics training in business colleges, managers commonly make unethical business decisions. This paper reports a five-year study of ethical decision making of business students (n = 192). In an undergraduate microeconomics course, students were presented with financial data from the infamous Ford Pinto case where defective engineering, coupled with unethical management behavior, resulted in a number of fiery fatalities. Facing the decision to repair the cars or pay the estimated costs of lost wrongful death lawsuits, 56.8% of students chose to pay for the deaths. This paper describes the classroom experiment and uses logistic …

Partner-Centered Evaluation Capacity Building: Findings From A Corporate Social Impact Initiative, Lisa Frantzen, Julie Solomon, Laura Hollod

The Foundation Review

Funders can play a proactive role in helping to fill the gap between funders’ expectations and nonprofits’ ability to evaluate grant results. Using a partner-centered design, Johnson & Johnson piloted an evaluation capacity-building initiative that supported eight grantees in strengthening their ability to measure and use findings concerning health-related outcomes, by focusing on key evaluation challenges identified by the grantees.

Grantees’ approaches to capacity building naturally grouped around the areas of evaluation- framework development, data-systems strengthening, and staff training. Through individualized projects, grantees increased their ability to both do and use evaluation.

This article describes the design, implementation, and results …

Domestic Asset Tracing And Recovery Of Hidden Assets And The Spoils Of Financial Crime, Nathan Wadlinger, Carl Pacini, Nicole Stowell, William Hopwood, Debra Sinclair

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

The Wall Street Gap: A Theoretical Analysis Of Company Valuation Discrepancy, Peter Twomey

Undergraduate Economic Review

Examination of prior research suggests that affiliated sell-side analysts are subject to conflicts of interest that cause them to issue optimistically biased stock recommendations for investment banking clients. Using a sample of public technology companies, I find that analysts have a theoretical discrepancy of up to 26% when valuing companies using a discounted cash flow model, and a 19-22% theoretical discrepancy when using comparable company analysis. I showcase how conventional valuation methodologies can allow sell-side analysts significant leeway that can be used to further unethical agendas and draw conclusions around the usefulness of regulatory intervention in the financial services industry.

China's Anti-Corruption Crackdown And The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Daniel C.K. Chow

Texas A&M Law Review

China’s highly publicized crackdown on corruption may affect the type and number of cases in China that arise under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), but it should not be assumed that the crackdown will necessarily lead to fewer FCPA prosecutions. Although there is some overlap of the goals of China’s corruption crackdown and the goals of the FCPA, China’s crackdown also serves important goals of the ruling Communist Party. The main goal of the current crackdown is to reinforce the Party’s power by targeting enemies and rivals of the current leadership. The crackdown is not aimed at prohibiting bribes …

Asarco Llc V. Atlantic Richfield Company, Ryan L. Hickey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liabiltiy Act, commonly known as CERCLA, facilitates cleanup of hazardous waste sites and those contaminated by other harmful substances by empowering the Environmental Protection Agency to identify responsible parties and require them to undertake or fund remediation. Because pollution sometimes occurrs over long periods of time by multiple parties, CERCLA also enables polluters to seek financial contribution from other contaminators of a particular site. The Ninth Circuit clarified the particuar circumstances under which contribution actions may arise in Asarco LLC v. Atlantic Richfield Co., holding non-CERCLA settlements may give rise to CERCLA contribution …

Comparative Study: Reducing Cost To Manage Accessibility With Existing Data, Claire Chu, Bill Kerneckel, Eric C. Larson, Nathan Mowat, Christopher Woodard

SMU Data Science Review

“Project Sidewalk” is an existing research effort that focuses on mapping accessibility issues for handicapped persons to efficiently plan wheelchair and mobile scooter friendly routes around Washington D.C. As supporters of this project, we utilized the data “Project Sidewalk” collected and used it to confirm predictions about where problem sidewalks exist based on real estate and crime data. We present a study that identifies correlations found between accessibility data and crime and housing statistics in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. We identify the key reasons for increased accessibility and the issues with the current infrastructure management system. After a thorough …

Four Imperatives Driving Business Schools To Adopt Mobile Content Delivery, Toni P. Mulvaney, Frank J. Cavaliere, Melissa M. Baldo

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Look around at people on any sidewalk, school hallway, classroom, and, most disturbingly, any car around yours on the road. You know that you are likely to see a staggering percentage of those people staring into the screen of a “smart” phone. Millennials and post-millennials are constantly “connected.” The Millennials even connect during class; at best to fact-check their teachers, at worst, to check the latest updates on Facebook. It will only get worse with the soon to arrive Post-Millennials who have been termed “millennials on steroids” by Lucie Green, the worldwide director of the Innovation Group at J. Walter …

Two-Pronged Approach To Imbedding Values In Organizations, Evans Lusuli

The Siegel Institute Journal of Applied Ethics

The purpose for this paper is to argue that in order to successfully implement values and develop an ethically conscious or morally intelligent organizations, a two-pronged strategy must be adopted. A two-pronged strategy is an approach that seeks to imbed ethical values at both the organizational level – which, in this case includes the organization’s leadership, and empowering employees at the individual level to do what Mary Gentile (2010) describes in her book, as giving voice to values. Empowering employees to speak their minds when they know what is right is an avenue that enables employees to imbed ethical values …

Dealing With Un(Expected) Ethical Dilemma: Experience From The Field, Zaleha Othman 6762207, Fathilatul Zakimi Abdul Hamid

The Qualitative Report

Despite the growing interest in qualitative research and discussion of ethics, there has been little focus in the literature on the specific ethical dilemmas faced by researchers. In this paper, we share our fieldwork experiences regarding the ethical dilemmas that we encountered while doing research on a sensitive topic. Specifically, we share some of the ethical dilemmas, that is, concerning confidentiality, anonymity, legitimacy, controversial data, interpretation and off-the-record data, which emerged from the research. Most importantly, this paper shares ideas concerning how researchers might deal with ethical issues while preserving their integrity in the research process. Overall, this paper suggests …

Entire Fairness: A Call To Preserve Delaware Doctrine, Lisa Bei Li

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

Appraisal arbitrage is on the rise. Institutional investors—namely, hedge funds—buy into target companies after their merger announcements and bet on the price. By purposely taking a minority position, these funds proceed to courts to obtain what they otherwise could not in the market: a “fair value.” Where there is no allegation of wrongdoing or injury, these plaintiffs nonetheless successfully divert deal value away from business combinations. Based on a misunderstood statute, appraisal arbitrage has exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry for large fund investors. In June 2016, amid growing concerns, the Delaware General Assembly amended section 262, Delaware’s appraisal statute. …

Money And Morality: Pathways Toward A Civic Stewardship Ethic (2012), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Based on a plenary presentation made at the Ninth Harvard University Forum on Islamic Finance, held at Harvard Law School in 2010, less than two years after the 2008 financial crisis, this article argues for the restoration of ethical values and civic commitments in capitalism and economic enterprise, drawing on traditional religious, theological, and philosophical principles regarding the civic moral obligations associated with building and managing wealth. The article is divided into three main parts. It begins with an overview of reform measures emanating from the financial debacle, including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and an …

Corporate Civic Responsibility And The Ownership Agenda: Investing In The Public Good (1994), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article seeks to provoke broader public discussion about ways in which human and ecologic dignity, prosperity, and the civic ideal can be advanced through a revitalized and principled ownership agenda that features greater levels of corporate accountability and civic virtue. It draws from portions of what then was called an “Occasional Paper,” part of a series emanating from the early days of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. Written in 1994, it introduces a new paradigm for corporate governance called the “corporate covenant,” which casts ownership within the framework of citizenship. These …

Equity Culture And Decent Work: The Case Of Amazon (2017), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Every year, publicly traded companies hold annual meetings at which management presents a summary of the year’s accomplishments and shareholders vote on a slate of ballot issues, referred to as “proxy resolutions,” that are placed there by either management or shareholders. As in public life, in theory this form of corporate governance relies on a division of authority and checks and balances among shareholders, the board of directors, and company management. In theory, shareholders function much like registered voters, boards serve as their elected representatives, and management operates much like the executive branch to carry out the mandates accorded to …

Trusting Harvard: The Cost Of Unprincipled Investing (2014), Marcy Murninghan, Robert A.G. Monks

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article provides a framework for answering two questions: How can Harvard fulfill its fiduciary obligation as an investor in ways that advance its beliefs, values, and commitments? How can Harvard take the lead in creating a curriculum for students, professionals, and the general public about the civic moral obligations of wealth? While aimed at Harvard, the issues covered are relevant to other universities and tax-exempt institutional investors, because they have a special duty to advance the public interest. Commissioned and co-authored by the noted corporate governance and responsible ownership guru Robert A. G. Monks, it calls on Harvard to …

Introduction, Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

America faces a reckoning, a crucible of what Reinhold Niebuhr observed more than eighty years ago. Our democratic principles and traditions are imperiled by the power of financial oligarchs and unfettered money flows, which have contributed to massive inequality that, in turn, has given rise to political unrest and a sense of cultural unmooring.

The articles presented here are both descriptive and normative, setting forth a complex social problem with seemingly bottomless proportions and then offering a design or set of remedial actions to alleviate them. Drawing on my professional experience going back to the mid-1970s, I wrote these pieces …

Improving Impact: Collaborative Multi-Party, Multi-Sector Engagement (2011), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Most people do not realize the full implications of the fact that we live now in an era marked more by networks than hierarchies. Nowadays, power is distributed across boundaries and borders, rather than concentrated in one place—be it a physical setting, demographic group, industrial sector, or professional discipline. Thanks to systems thinking and the ubiquity of digital tools and platforms, there are many more opportunities for lawmakers, policymakers, and economic institutions to collaborate with concerned citizens on critical public issues, thereby breaking the grip of lobbyists, third-party intermediaries, and the power elite. On top of that are recent breakthroughs …

A Framework For Good Ownership And Good Governance (1999), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article encapsulates a more extensive analysis that was commissioned by The Boston Foundation’s board of trustees in December 1998 to investigate its investment practices and identify ways in which its asset management decisions might be brought into fuller alignment with its charitable purpose—without conceding earnings or undermining its philanthropic fiduciary responsibility. The undertaking was spurred by the leadership of Robert A. Glassman, co-founder and co-chair of Wainwright Bank and a trustee of The Boston Foundation (TBF) since 1985, who took the reins from David Rockefeller Jr. in 1995 as chair of TBF’s investment committee. The research project built on …

The Early Eight And The Future Of Consumer Legal Activism To Fight Modern-Day Slavery In Corporate Supply Chains, Andrew G. Barna

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Freedom For The Wolf, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Freedom for the Wolf (2018), directed by Rupert Russell.

The Impact Of Sustainability Reporting On Firm Profitability, Lancee L. Whetman

Undergraduate Economic Review

Using a hand-collected representative sample of 95 publicly traded American firms from various sectors in 2015-2016, I examine how corporate sustainability reporting affects the financial performance of firms. I find a positive and significant effect of sustainability reporting on a firm’s return on equity, return on assets, and profit margin in the subsequent year. However, this relationship is found only for firms with low institutional ownership. These results suggest that sustainability reporting would be a worthwhile use of corporate resources for this subset of firms. Further, corporate sustainability reporting is shown to be an effective substitute for monitoring by institutional …

Marketing Unhealthy Foods And Beverages: Our Children At Risk, Cheryl Ward, Diane R. Edmondson, Allison Wheeley

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This paper examines the ethical dilemma created because of the largely ineffective self-regulation of the advertising industry as it relates to children and the corresponding drastic increase in childhood obesity. Unhealthy food and beverage companies are intentionally targeting children who have not yet developed the cognitive skills necessary to discern programming content from advertising. Children, who have many years of consumption ahead of them, can be an appealing target market for companies promoting products high in fat and calories. Given that existing self-regulation policies have been largely unsuccessful, four potential solutions are discussed.