General Business Practice Research Articles

Crisis, Change, the IT Revolution, and Covid‐19's Enduring Impact On Dispute Resolution and General Business Practice

Disaster, in tandem with innovation, is the principal catalyst of change.

СТАТТЯ 7 ЦИВІЛЬНОГО КОДЕКСУ УКРАЇНИ: АНАЛІЗ КРІЗЬ ПРИЗМУ ФЕНОМЕНУ ЗВИЧАЄВОГО ПРАВА

Стаття присвячена взаємодії тексту Цивільного кодексу України (зокрема ст. 7) зі звичаєвим правом як суспільним явищем. Досліджено співвідношення понять звичаю та правового звичаю в контексті регулювання цивільних відносин. Обґрунтовано тезу про те, що регулятором цивільних відносин є звичай загалом, а джерелом цивільного права - правовий звичай як його вид. Поняття звичаю, вказане у ст. 7 ЦК України, визнано вдалим, адже воно включає як правові звичаї (регулюють правовідносини як юридичні норми), так і звичаї релевантні праву (мають значення у правозастосуванні).
 Виконано порівняння звичаїв загального характеру та правил персональної ділової практики конкретних контрагентів. Зроблено висновок про те, що звичай як правило, утворене загальною діловою практикою (більшість підприємців відповідної галузі чи регіону), не є тотожним правилу, утвореною персональною діловою практикою сторін. Персональна ділова практика сторін здатна сформувати правило, що за юридичними наслідками прирівнюється до умови договору, укладеного між ними. Натомість загальна (деперсоніфікована) ділова практика утворює правовий звичай, який прирівнюється за юридичним значенням до норми законодавства (загальнодержавної, місцевої чи галузевої).
 Проаналізовано поняття звичаїв ділового обороту та доцільність його використання в тексті Цивільного кодексу України. За результатами цього аналізу звичаями ділового обороту окреслено ті, що були утворені за участю суб'єкта підприємницької діяльності. Запропоновано усунути відсилання до звичаїв ділового обороту з тексту кодексу та замінити їх у відповідних статтях відсиланнями до звичаїв загалом. Оскільки звичай набуває чинності у цивільних правовідносинах за умови його фактичної усталеності, ця характеристика звичаю повинна бути збережена в тексті Цивільного кодексу України.
 Висвітлено можливість письмової фіксації звичаїв у документах, які не мають статусу самостійних джерел права. Запропоновано доповненити текст Цивільного кодексу України окремою статтею про узанси в розумінні звичаїв, які зафіксовані у документарній формі торгово-промисловими палатами й іншими авторитетними організаціями. Розглянуто проблему конкуренції законодавчих і звичаєвих норм у ході регулювання цивільних відносин. При згаданій конкуренції повинна застосовуватися норма законодавства, якщо компетентним суб'єктом не буде встановлено, що така норма є неконституційною чи неправовою.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain on the Accounting Profession

Recent developments in technology have introduced dramatic changes to the practice of the accounting profession. This paper provides a comprehensive review of current developments in big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and blockchain utilized in general business practice and by specialized practitioners in the accounting profession worldwide. This paper explores the evolution of the accounting profession following these recent technological developments and assesses the impact of future developments. Inherent challenges and opportunities posed by these new technologies pertaining to accounting professionals and accounting educators are also examined, including an increased demand for IT professionals with accounting experience as opposed to accounting major graduates. Considering the dramatic changes and developments of AI applications in accounting, this paper reflects how all these technologies and the associated requirements of job candidates will affect the desired capabilities of accounting graduates and provides further discussion regarding what higher institutions and their accounting graduates can do to adopt such changes.

Determining the use of data quality metadata (DQM) for decision making purposes and its impact on decision outcomes — An exploratory study

Decision making processes and their outcomes can be affected by a number of factors. Among them, the quality of the data is critical. Poor quality data cause poor decisions. Although this fact is widely known, data quality (DQ) is still a critical issue in organizations because of the huge data volumes available in their systems. Therefore, literature suggests that communicating the DQ level of a specific data set to decision makers in the form of DQ metadata (DQM) is essential. However, the presence of DQM may overload or demand cognitive resources beyond decision makers' capacities, which can adversely impact the decision outcomes. To address this issue, we have conducted an experiment to explore the impact of DQM on decision outcomes, to identify different groups of decision makers who benefit from DQM and to explore different factors which enhance or otherwise hinder the use of DQM. Findings of a statistical analysis suggest that the use of DQM can be enhanced by data quality training or education. Decision makers with a certain level of data quality awareness used DQM more to solve a decision task than those with no data quality awareness. Moreover, those with data quality awareness reached a higher decision accuracy. However, the efficiency of decision makers suffers when DQM is used. Our suggestion would be that DQM can have a positive impact on decision outcomes if it is associated with some characteristics of decision makers, such as a high data quality knowledge. However, the results do not confirm that DQM should be included in data warehouses as a general business practice, instead organizations should first investigate the use and impact of DQM in their setting before maintaining DQM in data warehouses.

Business Training Plus for Female Entrepreneurship? Short and Medium-Term Experimental Evidence from Peru

With millions of women around the developing world thrown into self-employment but with low productivity, the question about how to increase the profitability and growth potential of their businesses is increasingly relevant for poverty reduction and gender equity. This study evaluates the impacts of a business development services program serving female microentrepreneurs in Lima using an experimental design, that included two treatment groups: One received only general training (GT), albeit more time-intense than previous studies, and delivered by experts, while the other received in addition technical assistance (TA). Results show the existence of room for efficiency gains and growth, as all treated showed increased sales revenues and self-reported adoption of recommended business practices, although timing differed. Those that received full treatment (GT TA) were the only ones reporting increased sales 4-7 months after the end of the treatment, but GT-only treated were able to catch up about a year later. Low take up of the training may suggest some space to improve recruitment and delivery of good general business practices.

Reporting Policies of ISPs: Do General Terms and Conditions (GTCs) Match with the Reality?

Technological progress allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to carry out network management practices in a discriminatory fashion without being detected by their customers. This creates an opportunity that providers will exploit this information asymmetry in an opportunistic way by blocking and/or throttling certain services and applications without informing their customers in an adequate fashion that their Internet service is a restricted one. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the extent to which reporting policies – as implemented through the General Terms and Conditions (GTCs) – of selected ISPs match with the display of discriminatory behavior by those ISPs as shown by Grove & Agic, (2012). Our analysis examines whether ISPs in Europe and the USA are informing their subscribers adequately about discriminatory traffic management. We, thus, analyze GTCs, signed between ISPs and their subscribers by applying a cross-country/provider approach, focusing on three main aspects of the contractual agreement: (1) availability of service, (2) obligations of the customers and (3) the contractual agreements concerning any intervention in services by ISPs. First results show that no significant evidence of contractual transparency regarding the actual adverse deployment of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and similar traffic management tools by the ISPs could be found. This supports the general goal to promote transparency regarding ISPs´ traffic management routines by suggesting compulsory rules that should oblige providers to make more accurate statements in terms of their general business practices. For policy makers, this is yet another factor that needs to be taken into account regarding potential regulatory interventions in this field and an explicit network neutrality stipulation may be required in order to safeguard the openness of the Internet and protect consumers´ basic rights of information and well-grounded choice.

The transformation of automotive brands and the triumphs and pitfalls of current positioning

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the restructuring and, in many cases, rebirth of automotive brands in the aftermath of the late 1990s and early 2000s economic boom. The paper illustrates both good and bad brand strategies and positioning through advertising and corporate structures, utilising traditional branding models and current market trends and reaction. A new automotive era has dawned and the genuine, creative, and customer-focused brands will excel. As a multi-billion dollar industry, the automobile sector affects many facets of life, from manufacturing and engineering to general business practices. A thorough analysis of the sector's brands provides corollary tools and insight into other industries.

Fan Perceptions of Latino Baseball Players and Their Influence on Overall Fan Satisfaction with Major League Baseball

Revered within American history and society, baseball has captivated many historians and scholars in their attempts to understand the underpinnings of professional baseball as a sport and source of commerce within the United States. As sport in America has become increasingly popular, and many resources are dedicated to increasing the growth of these enterprises, officials within Major League Baseball (MLB) have dedicated time and resources to identify factors leading to fan satisfaction. (1) Dave Winfield contends baseball has lost its public appeal and luster over the past thirty years and the game is slowly becoming a sport of the past. (2) On the surface, it would seem that Winfield's assessment is inaccurate, as MLB has reported record-breaking season attendance figures and increased media visibility (e.g. MLB.com and MLB Extra Innings). (3) However, issues such as drug use, inflated player contracts, limited national visibility of teams across the United States due to media contracts, and the lack of revenue sharing may dilute professional baseball's positive image for its fans. (4) These factors may have undermined baseball fans' positive perception of the sport, as other professional enterprises, such as NASCAR and The Bull Riding Circuit, have gained popularity among the general public. (5) These unconstructive factors encourage baseball scholars to look at the current status of professional baseball in attempts to uncover positive attributes such as the globalization of professional baseball to many countries outside of the United States. Further, officials within MLB should focus on player development and explore the changes in ethnic participation in attempts to increase a diverse fan base. One such area that has been neglected by baseball scholars is the significant increase in the number of Latino baseball players within MLB. (6) This particular ethnic group has become more visible on MLB rosters and within the media, thus, creating potential interest in existing and future baseball fans. (7) As such, it is timely to identify the effects of this particular group of players on fans' overall satisfaction with MLB. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore fans' perception of Latino baseball players and the relationship between a fan's perception of Latino major leaguers and fans' overall satisfaction with MLB. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Commercial sports are not isolated from the common business practices of the general economic market. Similar to other profit-seeking organizations, commercialized sport organizations focus their concerns on minimizing costs and increasing revenues to sustain large profits. One strategy that has been employed to accomplish this goal is the utilization of globalization tactics. This general business practice has also accounted for many labor strikes and union movements within MLB. (8) Similar to other professional leagues, MLB has encountered many changes over the past decade as it has grown the sport's global reach. In their quest to attract more consumers, Bud Selig and other MLB executives have focused on increasing baseball's popularity around the globe, and this global expansion has resulted in an increased diversity in player talent. MLB has invested many resources in developing foreign player talent, as well as developing international leagues. (9) Baseball academies built in the Dominican Republic, Japan, and Australia offer substantial evidence of MLB's attempts to develop cross-national player talent. In fact, by the 1990s nearly every major-league organization--as well as professional teams from Japan--had a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. The introduction of these academies has resulted in the percentage of Dominican players in major leagues rising from 6 to 12 percent in the last fifteen years. Additionally, the percentage of Venezuelan ballplayers has tripled since the 1950s. As a result of these globalization efforts, the participation of Latino baseball players within MLB has increased significantly. …

Asia's Legal Systems in the Wake of the Financial Crisis: Can the Rule of Law Carry any of the Weight?

People have long been interested in the relationships between legal systems and economic performance, and have approached these issues in many different ways. The original American institutional economics produced such works as Ely’s Property and Contract in Their Relations to the Distribution of Wealth (Ely 1914) and Commons’ The Legal Foundations of Capitalism (Commons 1924). That law should have occupied a central place in their thinking about economics should come as no surprise, since the study of legal institutions was key to the German historical approach to political economy (Cohn 1894), which strongly influenced many American institutionalists (Kloppenberg 1997; Hovenkamp 1991). For Weber, of course, legal, political and economic organization were intimately related, and the rise of a specific style of legality (‘formally rational’ in his terms) was closely tied to the rise of modern, industrial capitalism (Weber 1968; Trubek 1972). And although he seems not to have elaborated on the theme, law, or rather the lack of a functioning legal system, also played a role in the theorizing of the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron. In explaining why the modernizing Russian state of the 1890s had to assume capital accumulation and allocation functions that had been successfully performed by private universal banks in Germany, Gerschenkron speculated that ‘no bank could have successfully engaged in long-term credit policies in an economy where fraudulent bankruptcy had been almost elevated to the rank of a general business practice’ (Gerschenkron 1965).

Measured markets: Limited edition publishing and the Grabhorn Press, 1920–1930

In the postwar prosperity of the 1920s there burgeoned a new interest in fine book-making, which typically featured handcraft production, luxurious materials, “worthy” texts, and—virtually by definition—limited editions. A small but socially prominent community of bibliophiles and wealthy collectors consituted an eager market for these elite books, distinguished by their visible repudiation of mass culture and “commercialism.” This article examines the publishing enterprise of the Grabhorn Press, one of the foremost producers of finely printed books in twentieth-century America. It analyzes the press's editiorial and design strategies, pricing and marketing policies, and general business practices in order to better understand the cultural paradoxes of producing such books both “for love” and for profit.

OPERATIONAL ASPECTS OF RETAIL FRANCHISES

Through an exploratory study, based on interviews with retail franchisees and franchisers belonging to the British Franchise Association, the operational nature of the relationship between franchisee and franchiser is explored. The views of franchisees and franchisers on the nature and level of their respective responsibilities throughout the relationship are sought, and differences in perceptions are pinpointed. The early findings suggest that, whilst apparently a franchise is an opportunity for a new entrant with no previous business experience, the whole process from vetting and training, through to trading, is in fact based on the assumption that the entrant is familiar with general business practice.

Exclusive Dealing in General Business Practice

Exclusive Dealing in General Business Practice

A Profit Calculation for Agency Management

Every business has some way of expressing its accomplishments. Dollar amount of sales, for example, is a very common standard of expression, but by itself is not a very useful measure as it is primarily concerned with activity. A more meaningful expression is concerned with performance as well. In our economy, this reasoning has led most business firms to adopt a profit-oriented statement of accomplishment. Dollar amount of profit is reported and often translated into the profit per share of ownership or the profit return on investment. This profit-oriented statement of accomplishment then serves many purposes: a statement of activity, a measure of performance, a tool for motivation, and so on. Given the meaningful concept of profit, business managers have been able to develop many applications of it to the management of their business. The life insurance industry is conspicuous by its nonconformity to this practice. The concept of profit, as developed in general business practice, plays virtually no role either in the reporting responsi-