Research in accounting traditionally regards transfer pricing as an intra-firm transaction problem. Within the context of a simple Cournot model, we demonstrate that firms can use transfer prices strategically as a collusive device. While firms are individually better off from a centralized organizational form with each internal division transferring intermediate goods at marginal cost, all firms benefit from a collusive agreement to organize along profit centers, transferring goods above marginal cost. This collusion yields roughly twice the competitive profits and is sustainable even when collusion on quantities is not. This practice may also escape legal scrutiny, even though the same cost shifting between regulated monopolists and their corporate affiliates is regarded as a major concern for regulators and researchers.

We find a significant discontinuity in the pooled distribution of monthly hedge fund returns: The number of small gains far exceeds the number of small losses. The discontinuity is present in live and defunct funds, and funds of all ages, suggesting that it is not caused by database biases. The discontinuity is absent in the 3 months culminating in an audit, suggesting it is not attributable to skillful loss avoidance. The discontinuity disappears when using bimonthly returns, indicating a reversal in fund performance following small gains. This result suggests that the discontinuity is caused at least in part by temporarily overstated returns.

This study investigated attitudes toward the use of deception in negotiation, with particular attention tothe distinction between deception regarding the informational elements of the interaction (e.g., lying about or misrepresenting needs or preferences) and deception about emotional elements (e.g., misrepresenting one's emotional state). We examined how individuals judge the relative ethical appropriateness of these alternative forms of deception, and how these judgments relate to negotiator performance and long-run reputation. Individuals viewed emotionally misleading tactics as more ethically appropriate to use in negotiation than informational deception. Approval of deception predicted negotiator performance in a negotiation simulation and also general reputation as a negotiator, but the nature of these relationships depended on the kind of deception involved.

Research has consistently shown that the process of eliciting environmental values is fraught with potential pitfalls that can produce biased estimates. The present research focused on how to preclude one such pitfall, overvaluation of a focal environmental entity, in light of the psychological processes that have been recently shown to underlie this bias. Analysis of a survey of respondents' valuations of environmental entities demonstrated focal entity overvaluation, and that specifying alternatives to a focal entity was not sufficient to preclude positive bias. Only when respondents were required to provide valuations of multiple entities were Much more moderate, less biased, valuations obtained. The implication of this research is that when the value of an environmental entity is assessed, respondents should be asked to provide valuations of the target entity as well as other intra-category alternatives so that positive bias is ameliorated.

Lateral hiring is the intentional action of one employer to identify, solicit, and hire an individual or group of employees currently employed by another firm, a practice often pejoratively labeled "poaching." We use the method of critical genealogy to demonstrate that the norms that discourage lateral hiring are constructions used by powerful employers to control the turnover of their employees, making them subjects of their employer's power rather than free and autonomous people in their own right. We suggest instead that ethical responsibility for entertaining or rejecting lateral hiring offers rests with the focal employee(s). We conclude that the form and symmetry of loyalty between employees and their current employers are the determinants of the appropriateness of an employee's decision to entertain and accept outside offers. These conclusions imply responsibilities for employers to forge (and employees to honor) symmetrical relational loyalty in the workplace, but not for alternate employers to refrain from making lateral hiring offers.

Each year the DM Bicycle Company focuses its CSR efforts on fighting childhood obesity, a program that's popular with everyone and in line with the company's mission. This year, though, the CEO's nine-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with Batten disease, and that's all he can think about. For the next fiscal year, he'd like the company to focus on Batten disease research instead of obesity prevention. The HR director, the protagonist of the case, wonders if the effort is more personal crusade than corporate social responsibility. Is it ethical for the CEO to ask employees to share in his family's struggle? Two experts comment on this fictional case study in R1006L and R1006Z.

The condition of the used products acquired by remanufacturing firms often varies widely. A firm can manage this variation by acquiring a quantity of used items that exceeds demand, enabling it to remanufacture a subset of the acquired items in the best condition. As more excess items are acquired, the firm can increase its selectivity and lower its remanufacturing costs. In this paper, we examine the tradeoff of acquisition and scrapping costs vs. remanufacturing costs when used product condition is widely varying and uncertain. We derive acquisition quantities that minimize total expected costs for several representations of condition variability and remanufacturing cost structures. We find that, when costs are linear, the optimal acquisition quantity has a closed form and increases with the square root of the degree of condition variability. Our models are based on experience with remanufacturers of cell phones and imaging supplies, and application of our results is illustrated using example data from industry.