corporate philanthropic disaster response and ownership type evidence from chinese firms response to the sichuan earthquake this article examines whether the charitable giving amount and likelihood of firm response to catastrophic events relate to firms ownership type using a unique dataset of listed firms in china where state ownership is still prevalent based on the data of chinese firms response to the 2008 sichuan earthquake we find that the extent of corporate contributions for state owned firms following this disaster is less than that for private firms state owned firms are also less likely to respond in this disaster compared to private firms the results also reveal that firm size profitability geography cash resource available and leverage affect firms philanthropic disaster response behavior in china

national institutional structures transaction cost economizing and competitive advantage the case of japan japan s economic success since world war ii has been striking modern japan was the first major industrial economy to emerge from outside the western tradition economically devastated in 1945 by 1990 japan had the world s second largest economy and a gdp per head 20 percent greater than that of the united states in this paper it is argued that one reason for japan s success is that the costs of achieving cooperation and specialization are lower in japan than in the west cooperation and specialization have been acknowledged to have a beneficial impact upon productivity ever since adam smith wrote about cooperative specialization in the context of the division of labor modern economic theory however suggest that in a world of self interested individuals the costs of achieving cooperation and specialization are substantial in this paper it is argued that the cultural value system that japan has inherited from its preindustrial past and particularly the tokugawa period helps facilitate cooperation b

organizational membership and environmental ethics a comparison of managers in state owned firms collectives private firms and joint ventures in china abstract this study empirically examines the relationship between organizational type and the environmental ethical orientation of managers in the people s republic of china prc on three dimensions stewardship and long and short term utilitarianism it was found that chinese managers uniformly self report strong ethical commitments to environmental protection in addition organizational type was found to be a significant predictor for the different ethical dimensions overall managers in state owned firms uniformly reported the strongest values managers in private firms on the other hand self reported lower values and appeared relatively more skeptical of emergent utilitarian arguments that economic performance and environmental performance are compatible in the short term

openness central bank independence and the sacrifice ratio traditional explanations of the negative correlation between openness and inflation presume that an inverse relationship between the degree of openness and the sacrifice ratio reduces the inflation bias of descretionary monetary policy temple 2002 concludes however that such a relationship fails to emerge in cross country data our analysis of the same cross country data considered by temple indicates that once the degree of central bank independence and its interaction with greater openness and the sacrifice ratio in addition increased openness lessens the positive effect of central bank independence on the sacrifice ratio

the dark side of board political capital enabling blockholder rent appropriation resource dependence theorists argue that boards of directors with political capital can benefit focal firms by reducing uncertainty and providing preferential resources here we develop theory reg

applying and advancing internalization theory the multinational enterprise in the twenty first century internalization theory has provided a resilient analytical framework that explicitly or implicitly underlines much of international business scholarship internalization theory is not a monolithic body of knowledge instead it has devolved into several streams each of which focuses on the interests of particular epistemic communities while also acting as a more generic organizing framework for those more broadly interested in its application to real world challenges following a review of the various streams we trace the frontiers of current research of the broader internalization framework and identify emerging themes raised by the papers in the special issue these include transaction cost considerations in the bundling and recombination of assets across diverse contexts the growing relevance of quasi internalization the theoretical challenges of bounded rationality for internalization theory and the increasing disconnect between ownership control and responsibility these developments point to new research frontiers for scholars looking to apply or advance internalization theory

corporate social responsibility and worker rights institutionalizing social dialogue through international framework agreements international framework agreements ifas represent a new generation of transnational agreements between multinational companies and global trade union federations this paper analyzes the impact of such an agreement on a successful union organizing campaign in colombia in 2012 we argue that management strategies towards corporate social responsibility and social dialogue influence the impact of ifas on worker rights however this relationship is mediated by the capacity of managers and worker representatives at multiple levels to mobilize their capabilities the results highlight the importance of institutionalized dialogue between managers and worker representatives of the dissemination of capabilities across multilevel coordination structures and most importantly of their complementarities at various levels

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

collective institutional entrepreneurship and contestations in wind energy in india with 21 136 mw of wind energy installed in 2014 india is considered a success story in terms of net installed capacity few existing studies on indian wind energy have highlighted the important role of institutions and how they stemmed from the work of advocacy groups studies also tend to focus on short time periods this paper uses the notion of collective institutional entrepreneurship to analyze indian wind energy across three time periods 1985 1995 1995 2003 and 2003 2013 the analysis shows that indian wind power development was driven by collective efforts of institutional entrepreneurs using two aggregated strategies that is supportive techno economic and socio political networks and an indigenous innovation infrastructure the paper highlights setbacks controversies and tensions between various entrepreneurship groups and argues that actions must be taken for including actors who have been marginalized

multinationality and corporate ethics codes of conduct in the sporting goods industry the international operations of firms have substantial impact on the formulation and implementation of business ethical principles such as codes of conduct the international sporting goods industry has been a pioneer in setting up codes and thus provides much relevant experience different sourcing strategies degrees of multinationality and national backgrounds affect the contents of codes moreover international non governmental organizations prove equally effective in triggering sophisticated codes

consumer support for corporate social responsibility csr the role of religion and values ethical behavior among businesses has gained significant prominence in recent years survey evidence shows that asian consumers demand for greater social responsibility among businesses thus a deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to such a demand is useful this study examines the influence of religiosity and values on corporate social responsibility csr support among consumers in hong kong and singapore primary data collected among consumers in these cities point to a significant direct relationship between religiosity and csr support in hong kong this attitude is due both to altruistic as well as for egotistical or face saving reasons in singapore this is mainly due to the latter the results imply that different motivations should guide csr strategies in these two cities

stock market s reaction to disclosure of environmental violations evidence from china the stock market s reaction to information disclosure of environmental violation events eves is investigated multi dimensionally for chinese listed companies including variables such as pollution types information disclosure sources information disclosure levels modernization levels of the region where the company locates ultimate ownership of the company and ownership held by the largest shareholder using the method of event study daily abnormal return ar and accumulative abnormal return car are calculated under different event window for examining the extent to which the stock market responds to the eves furthermore statistical significance of the difference in stock market reaction is compared between event firms with different characteristics the relationship between car and its impact factors is examined by multivariate analysis the findings reveal that the average reduction in market value is estimated to be much lower than the estimated changes in market value for similar events in other countries demonstrating that the negative environmental events of chinese listed companies currently have weak impact on the stock market

enforcing higher labor standards within developing country value chains consequences for mnes and informal actors in a dual economy the 2013 collapse of the rana plaza building in dhaka bangladesh led external stakeholders to insist on higher labor standards in apparel global value chains gvcs stakeholders now expect mnes to take full chain responsibility however the increased monitoring and enforcement costs of a large network of suppliers have been non trivial mnes instead implement a cascading compliance approach coupled with a partial re internalization elevated costs are further exacerbated in developing countries where the informal and formal sectors are linked and cost competitiveness greatly depends on this duality monitoring actors in the informal sector is difficult and few informal actors can achieve compliance gvcs have therefore reduced informal sector engagement by excluding non compliant actors and investing in greater automation by seeking to strictly enforce compliance mnes are attenuating some of the positive effects of mne investment particularly the prospects for employment creation especially among women and enterprise growth in the informal sector i discuss how these observations might inform other cross disciplinary work in development ethics and sociology finally i note implications for ib theory from the disparities between the ownership control and responsibility boundaries of the firm

input price variation across locations and a generalized measure of cost efficiency abstract we propose a non parametric model for global cost minimization as a framework for optimal allocation of a firm s output target across multiple locations taking account of differences in input prices and technologies across locations this should be useful for firms planning production sites within a country and for foreign direct investment decisions by multi national firms two illustrative examples are included the first example considers the production location decision of a manufacturing firm across a number of adjacent states within the us in the other example we consider the optimal allocation of us and canadian automobile manufacturers across the two countries

corporate social responsibility ownership structure and political interference evidence from china prior research suggests that ownership structure is associated to corporate social responsibility csr in developed countries this article examines whether and how ownership structure affects csr in emerging markets using chinese firms social responsibility ranking our empirical evidences show that for non state owned firms corporate ownership dispersion is positively associated to csr however for state owned firms whose controlling shareholder is the state this relation is reversed we attribute the reversed relationship to political interferences and further test this hypothesis by demonstrating that regional economic development is negatively related to csr for state owned firms due to decreased political interference in more developed areas this study is the first to directly examine the relationship between the dispersion of corporate ownership and csr in emerging markets and our results depict that it is important to consider ownership type in assessing csr in emerging market where state ownership is still prevalent such as china the results also reveal that firm size profitability employee power leverage and growth opportunity affect csr in china

cost constrained industry inefficiency in this paper a definition of industry inefficiency in cost constrained production environments is introduced this definition uses the indirect directional distance function and quantifies the inefficiency of the industry in terms of the overall output loss given the industry cost budget the industry inefficiency indicator is then decomposed into sources components reallocation inefficiency arising from sub optimal configuration of the industry firm inefficiency arising from a failure to select optimal input quantities given the prevalent inputs prices firm inefficiency due to lack of best practices the method is illustrated using data on ontario electricity distributors these data show that lack of best practices is only a minor component of the overall inefficiency of the industry less than 10 percent with reallocation inefficiency accounting for more than 75 percent of the overall inefficiency of the system an analysis based on counter factual input prices is conducted in order to illustrate how the model can be used to estimate the effects of a change in the regulation regime

taiwanese it firms offshore r d in china and the connection with the global innovation network abstract although it is evident that technology is becoming increasingly globalized resulting in the expansion of r d internationalization by firms despite this discernible trend the substantial body of literature in this area is based mainly on the experience of the developed country this paper aims to contribute to the understanding of this issue by examining the r d internationalization of a newly industrializing country taiwan being a prime example and its connection with the global production network we begin with an examination of the literature on r d internationalization and globalization based upon which we propose a conceptual framework adapted from dunning s eclectic paradigm in doing so we set out to develop arguments based not only on the reasons why cross strait r d internationalization may be undertaken by taiwanese information technology it firms but also the likely patterns of their r d portfolios across the strait drawing on an original questionnaire survey and firm level interviews the paper presents and discusses empirical data on the cross strait r d deployment of taiwanese it firms it then goes a stage further using the smiling curve to put forward a holistic view of the cross border innovation network in the it hardware industry in order to determine what cross strait r d internationalization means to the global production network

do codes of conduct improve worker rights in supply chains a study of fair wear foundation the rise of private regulation of sustainability in global production networks has led to intensive debates about the impact of this regulation at the point of production yet few empirical studies have systematically examined this impact in practice based on multiple factory audits of 43 garment factories conducted by the multi stakeholder initiative fair wear foundation we show that codes of conduct improve although marginally worker rights on an overall level but that few significant results are found for specific worker rights our findings also lend support to the widespread argument that codes have uneven impact furthermore we show that even rigorous multi stakeholder factory audits seldom are able to identify process rights violations such as those affecting freedom of association and discrimination and that auditing is thus is more fundamentally flawed than assumed in previous research given companies extensive investments in private regulation of worker rights the findings have important implications for both scholars and managers

factors that drive chinese listed companies in voluntary disclosure of environmental information based on the institutional theory this article attempts to examine two consecutive questions regarding the impact of various factors on corporate decision in environmental information disclosure eid 1 whether or not to disclose and 2 the level of disclosure the relevance of these factors is empirically tested using data collected from publicly listed manufacturing companies from 2006 to 2008 in china some interesting findings appear we find that firms that are state owned those that operate in environmentally sensitive industries those having more industrial peers engaged in eid and those with better reputation are more likely to disclose environmental information when it comes to the content of eid variables that attempt to capture external institutional pressures exhibit either no or weak explanatory power only the variable of organizational image and reputation is demonstrated to have a significant impact on both the act and the content of eid this study provides a snapshot of the dialogues between constituencies in the organizational field and eid development

what do unions and employers negotiate under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility comparative evidence from the italian metal and chemical industries the corporate social responsibility csr and industrial relations ir studies have evolved mostly in parallel in this paper we integrate the ir with the csr perspective highlighting their similarities and differences in particular the study adopts a framework which includes a wide set of csr related issues to explore what unions and companies negotiate under the umbrella of csr it analyses and compares the national sectoral agreements of two key industries in the italian economy i e metal and chemical we find that these two sectors exhibit differences because the csr related issues covered by the two contracts are formally labelled as csr in the chemical contract and not labelled as csr in the metal contract we also find similarities regarding the csr related issues covered and not covered by the national contracts and the binding processes centrally negotiated for their implementation we interpret the similarities in light of the specificities of the italian ir system and the differences in light of the negotiation traditions of the two sectors under study which induce the actors in the metal sector traditionally with more conflictual ir relations to focus more on what differentiates the csr and ir perspectives and the actors in the chemical sector traditionally with more cooperative ir relations to focus more on what the csr and ir perspectives share

evidence on nominal wage rigidity from a panel of u s manufacturing industries we provide a set of stylized facts on the response of industry nominal wage growth to aggregate and industry specific influences using annual data for 450 u s manufacturing industries over the period 1958 to 1989 we find support for the canonical wage contracts model the response of nominal wage growth to expected inflation is estimated to be between 0 6 and 0 8 this estimate holds for several sectors within manufacturing the response of nominal wage growth to unexpected inflation is around 0 1 indicating a striking departure from the classical assumption of full indexation we also find support for the multisector wage indexation models the estimated profit sharing elasticity is positive as hypothesized in these models the instrumental variable estimates of the profit sharing elasticity are typically between 0 1 and 0 2 copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

agency in national innovation systems institutional entrepreneurship and the professionalization of taiwanese it this paper examines institutional entrepreneurship as a form of internal agency within national innovation systems in particular we consider the entrepreneurship of taiwanese it firms over 1980 2007 in creating a new professionalized organizational form markedly different from the traditional taiwanese model of family business we compare two successful sectors personal computers and semiconductors and one failure hard disk drives we emphasize how entrepreneurial firms used strategies of framing aggregating and networking f a n to build legitimacy mobilize local resources and reach out beyond the limitations of their immediate contexts we discuss how f a n strategies may evolve from introversion to extraversion and develop implications for policy makers and further research

responsibility boundaries in global value chains supplier audit prioritizations and moral disengagement among swedish firms to address substandard working conditions in global value chains companies have adopted private regulatory systems governing worker rights scholars agree that without onsite factory audits this private regulation has limited impact at the point of production companies however audit only a subset of their suppliers severely restricting their private regulatory attempts despite the significance of the placement of suppliers inside or outside firms responsibility boundaries and despite scholars having called for more research into how firms prioritize what suppliers to audit few if any systematic studies have examined the topic this is problematic as the placement of firms responsibility boundaries determines what suppliers and workers are included in firms private regulatory attempts based on a study of 12 swedish firms and the theory of moral disengagement this paper starts to fill this research gap by exploring how firms responsibility boundaries are placed the paper illustrates how firms responsibility boundary placement is best described as a patchwork with firms defining and delimiting their responsibilities differently the paper also demonstrates that three supplier types i e the worst morally justified and immediate suppliers are particularly likely to be placed inside firms responsibility boundaries while a fourth type i e disregarded suppliers is likely be placed outside

do private standards benefit workers in horticultural export chains in peru private standards are spreading rapidly in international food production and trade and are moving beyond food quality and safety aspect to address environmental and social concerns we examine how effective private standards are in improving employment conditions in global food supply chains using panel data from own company and worker surveys and different econometric techniques we analyze how the adoption of a variety of private standards that differ with respect to their focus on labor influences employment conditions in production processing and exporting companies in the horticultural export chain in peru we find that workers employed in companies adopting private labor standards are more likely to be paid a minimum wage to have a contract and to receive training but there is no effect of private standards on the level of the wage and on the employment period we conclude that labor standards are most effective in reinforcing the respect of national labor laws and when there exists a clear cut definition on the employment requirements they push forward despite the existence of labor regulations at the national level and the wide spread use of private labor standards ethical labor concerns do remain an issue in the peruvian horticultural export sector

revisiting supplier compliance with mnc codes of conduct recoupling policy and practice at chinese toy suppliers does private regulation of workers rights in global value chains improve working conditions on the factory floor drawing on one of the first systematic longitudinal studies of supplier compliance with multinational corporation mnc codes of conduct this paper finds in contrast to previous research substantial improvements over time while in 2004 the four examined chinese toy suppliers violated most of the evaluated code of conduct criteria and consciously decoupled the code of conduct policy from actual practices by 2009 they had recoupled policy and practice and complied with nearly all examined criteria except working hours the paper contributes to the private regulation literature by challenging previous research claims identifying factors that could make private regulation effective and outlining a research method for empirically studying the effects of codes of conduct over time the paper also contributes to new institutional theory by discussing how recoupling could be influenced by two factors not identified in previous research i trusting relationships between the organization and the stakeholder exerting pressure and ii factors unrelated to main external pressures leading to accidental recoupling

business ethics and finance in greater china synthesis and future directions in sustainability csr and fraud following the financial crisis and recent recession the center of gravity of global economic growth and competitiveness is shifting toward emerging economies as a leading and increasingly influential emerging economy china is currently attracting the attention of academics practitioners and policy makers there has been an increase in research interest in and publications on issues relating to china within high quality international academic journals we therefore organized a special issue conference in conjunction with the journal of business ethics jbe in lhasa tibet on may 19 20 2014 on business ethics in greater china past present and future the papers for the special issue focused on the intersection of ethics and finance and fit within one of the three themes environment and sustainability corporate social responsibility and fraud within these themes issues of intellectual capital protection gender equality political connections regional development investor protection corporate stewardship trust and corruption and corporate transparency each play a significant role in this paper we survey these studies and the related literature to provide a comprehensive coverage of business ethics and finance issues that affect china

suppliers compliance with mncs codes of conduct behind the scenes at chinese toy suppliers despite increased academic and practitioner interest in codes of conduct there has been little research into the actual compliance of suppliers in developing countries with the codes of conduct of multinational corporations mncs this paper addresses this lack by analysing chinese suppliers level of compliance with swedish toy retailers codes of conduct based on unannounced and unofficial interviews with employees of chinese suppliers the study shows that all of the nine studied suppliers breached some of the standards in the toy retailers codes with over two thirds of the suppliers not complying with the majority of the studied standards while there are different explanations of this lack of compliance the main explanation seems to be that chinese suppliers successfully deceive toy retailers monitoring organisations by decoupling the formal monitored part of their organisation from the actual operational part of their organisation the paper concludes with a discussion of how to increase compliance with mncs codes of conduct

to be different or to be the same it s a question and theory of strategic balance this paper addresses the performance consequences of firm level strategic similarity past research observed that firms face pressures to be different and to be the same by differentiating firms reduce competition by conforming firms demonstrate their legitimacy both reduced competition and legitimacy improve performance this paper begins building a theory of strategic balance by synthesizing the differentiation and conformity perspectives the theory directs attention to intermediate levels of strategic similarity where firms balance the pressures of competition and legitimation empirical support for the theory is found in a longitudinal study of commercial banks several suggestions for developing a theory of strategic balance conclude the paper the theory s major implication is that firms should be as different as legitimately possible copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

political connections and industrial pollution evidence based on state ownership and environmental levies in china we investigate how state involvement in the ownership of non listed entrepreneurial firms affects pollution fees levied by national and provincial governments in china environmental levies while the national government sets minimum environmental standards provincial governments can enact requirements that exceed these minimums and they are largely responsible for enforcing even the national standards so environmental levies can measure concessions that provinces make to encourage development and employment furthermore state ownership is a good proxy for a firm s political connections which can influence the relationship between the firm and the environmental authorities we find that firms with state ownership pay lower environmental levies which indicates that concessions are made for political or economic purposes however these concessions are conditional on the level of development of the province offering them with better developed provinces providing fewer concessions

do lenders value corporate social responsibility evidence from china drawing on risk mitigation theory this article examines whether the improvement of firms social performance reduces debt financing costs cdfs in china the world s largest emerging market employing both the ordinary least square ols and the two stage instrumental variable regression methods we find that improved corporate social responsibility csr reduces the cdf when firms csr investment is lower than an optimal level however this relationship is reversed after the csr investment exceeds the optimal level firms with extremely low or extremely high csr are subject to a higher cdf the results also suggest that the optimal csr level for small firms is higher than that for large firms this study is the first to document a u shaped relationship between csr and cdf and also the first to investigate this relationship within an emerging market context

impacts of corporate code of conduct on labor standards a case study of reebok s athletic footwear supplier factory in china this study examines the social impacts of labor related corporate social responsibility csr policies or corporate codes of conduct on upholding labor standards through a case study of csr discourses and codes implementation of reebok a leading branded company enjoying a high profiled image for its human rights achievement in a large taiwanese invested athletic footwear factory located in south china i find although implementation of reebok labor related codes has resulted in a race to ethical and legal minimum labor standards when notoriously inhumane and seriously illegal labor rights abuses were curbed chinese workers were forced to work harder and faster but earned less payment and the employee elected trade union installed through codes implementation operated more like a company union rather than an autonomous workers organization representing worker interests in order to explain the paradoxical effects of reebok labor related codes on labor standards i argue the result is determined by both structural forces and agency related factors embedded in industrial national and local contexts to put it shortly i find the effectiveness of reebok labor related codes is constrained not only by unsolved tension between reebok s impetus for profit maximization and commitment to workers human rights but also by hard nosed competition realities at marketplace and chinese government s insufficient protection of labor rights despite drawing merely from a single case study these findings illuminate key determinants inhibiting the effectiveness of labor related csr policies or codes in upholding labor standards and hence two possible way outs of the deadlock 1 sharing cost for improving labor standards among key players in global supply chain and 2 combining regulatory power of voluntary codes and compulsory state legislations

regulatory sanctions on independent directors and their consequences to the director labor market evidence from china we investigate the regulatory sanctions imposed on independent directors for their firms financial frauds in china these regulatory sanctions are prima facie evidence of significant lapses in business ethics during the period 2003 2010 302 person time independent directors were penalized by the regulator the china securities regulatory commission the csrc and the two stock exchanges we find that the independent directors with accounting experiences are more likely to be penalized by the csrc though they do not suffer more severe penalties than do the other sanctioned independent directors we also find that independent directors suffer less severe penalties than do the insider directors these results are consistent with the hypothesis that the sanctions on independent directors are tied to their assumed ethical and legal responsibilities following a regulatory sanction penalized independent directors experience a significant decline in the number of other board seats held however they can gain board seats in better quality firms we find that interlocked firms that share penalized independent directors with the fraud firm do not suffer from a valuation decline overall our results suggest that regulatory sanctions have not triggered further sanctions on the penalized directors in the labor market but they have instead created a disincentive for these directors to serve on the company boards of high risk firms

women workers industrialization global supply chains and corporate codes of conduct the restructured globalized economy has provided women with employment opportunities globalisation has also meant a shift towards self regulation of multinationals as part of the restructuring of the world economy that increases among others things flexible employment practices worsening of labour conditions and lower wages for many women workers around the world in this context as part of the global trend emphasising corporate social responsibility csr in the 1980s one important development has been the growth of voluntary corporate codes of conduct to improve labour conditions this article reviews from a feminist interdisciplinary perspective the broad academic literature on women workers covering the more classical debate on women workers in the industrialization process and entering into women workers in the global supply chains and women workers and corporate codes of conduct the main argument is that this research on women workers is crucial to frame the issues of business ethics and in particular csr and codes of conduct in the context of women in the global political economy when this crucial knowledge is ignored then the ethical policies of the companies also ignore the real situation of the women workers at the bottom of their supply chains

openness the sacrifice ratio and inflation is there a puzzle abstract the standard time inconsistency based explanation for the negative correlation between openness and inflation requires an inverse relationship between the sacrifice ratio and openness but daniels et al 2005 openness central bank independence and the sacrifice ratio journal of money credit and banking 37 2 371 379 have provided evidence that controlling for central bank independence reveals a positive relationship this paper embeds the time inconsistency approach within a model of a multisector imperfectly competitive open economy in this setting greater openness raises the sacrifice ratio but reduces the inflation bias thus failure to observe an inverse relationship between openness and the sacrifice ratio does not necessarily imply that the time inconsistency approach is irrelevant to understanding the openness inflation relationship

global value chains labor organization and private social standards lessons from east african cut flower industries summary this article examines the opportunities and challenges that private social standards pose for labor organizations it explores different labor responses to private social standards in east african cut flower industries the analysis incorporates the concept of labor agency in global value chain analysis and reveals how retailer driven chains offer more room for labor organizations to exercise their agency than the traditional cut flower value chains labor organizations have been able to influence social standard setting and implementation and to use standards to further labor representation at production sites however labor organizations ability to seriously challenge the prevailing governance structure of the cut flower value chain appears extremely limited

private regulation and trade union rights why codes of conduct have limited impact on trade union rights codes of conduct are the main tools to privately regulate worker rights in global value chains scholars have shown that while codes may improve outcome standards such as occupational health and safety they have had limited impact on process rights such as freedom of association and collective bargaining scholars have though only provided vague or general explanations for this empirical finding we address this shortcoming by providing a holistic and detailed explanation and argue that codes in their current form have limited impact on trade union rights due to i buyers paying lip service to trade union rights ii workers being treated as passive objects of regulation in codes of conduct iii auditing being unable to detect and remediate violations of trade union rights iv codes emphasizing parallel means of organizing v suppliers having limited incentives for compliance and vi codes being unable to open up space for union organizing when leveraged in grassroots struggles our arguments suggest that there is no quick fix for codes limited impact on trade union rights and that codes in their current form have limited potential to improve trade union rights we conclude by discussing ways in which codes of conduct and private regulation of worker rights more generally could be transformed to more effectively address trade union rights

globalization and the environment determinants of firm self regulation in china critics assert that globalization is detrimental to the environment because it encourages location of polluting industries in countries with low environmental regulations we suggest that globalization might also have positive environmental effects because global ties increase self regulation pressures on firms in low regulation countries using survey data from firms in china we find that multinational ownership multinational customers and exports to developed countries increase self regulation of environmental performance

potential foreign competition in us manufacturing abstract trade barriers are falling and firms are competing in increasingly open international markets the data reveal considerable heterogeneity across industries in the intertemporal path of import shares against this backdrop we focus on an issue that is increasingly important for competition policy analysis potential foreign competition inadequate attention to this aspect could result in a biased picture of total competition leading to misguided antitrust decisions drawing on the conceptual framework outlined by landes and posner harvard law review 94 1981 937 we measure potential foreign competition by the intertemporal response of industry import share to industry specific and aggregate economic factors and our estimates indicate wide variation across industries in this dimension a particularly striking finding is that highly concentrated industries which are more likely to be subject to antitrust scrutiny have a greater degree of potential foreign competition than industries with low concentration even though the extent of actual foreign competition is similar across these groups of industries

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure presents a transcript of the presidential address delivered at the 94th meeting of the american economic association on december 29 1981 discussion of developments in the theory of industry structure welfare attributes of contestable markets behavior characteristics of oligopoly equilibrium intertemporal vulnerability to inefficient entry ebsco

a measure of price advantage and its decomposition into output and input specific effects abstract in this paper we develop a price advantage measure obtained as the difference between efficiency scores computed with quantity based and value based data this measure is interpreted as an increase in the firm s profit rate due to a favourable input and output price environment compared to traditional allocative efficiency measure which uses only the evaluated firm s prices price advantage measure considers prices of peers in the market our main contribution is to show that total price advantage decomposes into the sum of output and input specific price advantages the application of the measure to a french farm s dataset in the context of the successive common agricultural policy reforms aiming at the liberalization of agricultural prices 1992 2013 illustrates our theoretical model

non parametric efficiency progress and regress measures for panel data methodological aspects this purely methodological paper deals with the role of time in non parametric efficiency analysis using both fdh and dea technologies it first shows how each observation in a panel can be characterized in efficiency terms vis a vis three different kinds of frontiers i contemporaneous ii sequential and iii intertemporal these are then compared with window analysis next frontier shifts outward and inward interpreted as progress or regress are considered for the two kinds of technologies and computational methods are described in detail for evaluating such shifts in either case these are also contrasted with what is measured by the malmquist productivity index finally an alternative way of identifying progress and regress independent of the frontier notion and referring instead to some benchmark notion is extended here to panel data

from voluntarism to regulation a study on ownership economic performance and corporate environmental information disclosure in china this article examines whether economic performance could affect eid and how the relationship is determined by the form of ownership from voluntarism to regulation under the current chinese context in this study our empirical results show that the relationship between firms performance and eid is complex and the interactive impact of ownership and economic performance on eid significantly varies from voluntary disclosure to mandatory disclosure this study provides a more comprehensive understanding of the motivations in corporate eid the performance impression theory can be used to explain the disclosure behaviors during the period of voluntary disclosure while the pressure legitimacy theory can be used during the period of mandatory disclosure the finding suggests that when evaluating corporate eid associated with economic performance in emerging economies such as china it needs to be cautious as which tends to vary with the form of ownership and whether there is any mandatory regulation in place

trade offs in supply chain transparency the case of nudie jeans co though transparency is increasingly central to corporate sustainability and sustainable supply chains the scholarly conversation about supply chain transparency is limited as it defines supply chain transparency inconsistently and lacks an empirical basis we address these shortcomings by developing a multidimensional definition of supply chain transparency and studying the swedish garment retailer nudie jeans attempt to become the most transparent company in the world we extend the scholarly conversation by analyzing how a company in practice attempts to work with supply chain transparency and how to explain the transparency outcomes of such attempts we argue that three underlying tradeoffs i e threat vs collaboration standardization vs differentiation and means vs ends shape a firm s transparency outcomes we question whether more supply chain transparency is always desirable and argue that managers must choose between a compliance or cooperation approach to supply chain transparency

corporate social responsibility and crony capitalism in taiwan corporate social responsibility csr has become increasingly popular in advanced economies in the west in contrast csr awareness in asia is rather low both on the corporate and state level however recent events have shown that the csr is receiving more attention by corporations in asia recent development in csr in taiwan is one example of such a trend a 2005 survey on the 700 publicly listed companies in taiwan on csr has highlighted the current csr situation concurrently the numbers of corporate scandals and corruption have dramatically increased over the past 6 years corporate csr activities co existing with pervasive corporate scandals create a phenomenon of contradictions this article aims to report via the survey findings the current development of business ethics in corporate taiwan and to interpret the findings in context of taiwan s business ethos especially its confucian familism and crony capitalism

japan s software industry a failure of institutions abstract this article argues that the key cause of the current weakness of japan s software industry is the institutional arrangements of japan s system of catch up capitalism these include industrial policy the keiretsu industrial groups a centralized bank centered financial system lack of enforcement of the antimonopoly law a weak intellectual property regime and education and employment systems that emphasize conformity loyalty and stability key to success in other industries these arrangements are found to be the source of its weakness in software the case thus exposes some of the costs and limitations of the catch up system

player and referee roles held jointly the effect of state ownership on china s regulatory enforcement against fraud this article examines the impact of the prevailing state ownership in the chinese stock market on corporate governance and the financial regulatory system respectively as the internal and external monitoring mechanisms to deter corporate fraud and protect investors in line with the literature that state ownership exaggerates the agency problem we find that the retained state ownership in privatised firms increases the incidence of regulatory enforcements against fraud for the state owned enterprises soes however larger state ownership is associated with a lower incidence of enforcement actions this is attributed to the mutual political affiliation of the fraudulent soes and the regulatory commission a new regulation solutions for listed firm checks promulgated in march 2001 has mitigated this effect by empowering the regulatory commission to increase the severity of regulatory conditions our evidence confirms the improvement in the regulatory environment and investor protection in the chinese stock market brought about by the regulatory reform and development

implementing supplier codes of conduct in global supply chains process explanations from theoretic and empirical perspectives western buying companies impose supplier codes of conduct scc on their suppliers in developing countries however many suppliers cannot fully comply with scc and some of them even cheat in scc in this research we link contract characteristics price pressure production complexity contract duration to the likelihood of supplier s commitment to scc through a mediating process how the buying companies govern their suppliers our structural equation model analysis shows that the hierarchy relational norms governance is a perfect mediator of contract characteristics effects on the likelihood of supplier s commitment the market governance an insignificant one the managerial implications are provided for successfully implementing scc in global supply chains

asian transnational corporations and labor rights vietnamese trade unions in taiwan invested companies according to the reports in the past decade some asian subcontractors mainly taiwan hong kong and korea transnational corporations tend to be labor abusive in their overseas investment destinations like china or southeast asia taking vietnam as an example this paper raises questions as to why taiwanese transnational companies can control workplace unions in a trade union supportive regime given the government s constraint of political rights and the individualized workplace unions the function of trade unions in vietnam is destined to be limited the trade unions turn out be an arm of management rather than representing workers interests in these transnational companies this article also explores the influence of the newly developed codes of conducts from western buyers in the survey of three companies which are required to follow the codes of conduct by buyers trade unions had no more freedom than those in companies without codes of conduct the paper discusses the implications of this research offering strategies for labor rights improvements

the effectiveness of public enforcement evidence from the resolution of tunneling in china this paper examines the effectiveness of public enforcement by studying the effects of regulatory intervention to curb tunneling through intercorporate loans in china specifically we explore whether public enforcement efforts in 2006 blacklisting and sanctions resulted in less tunneling and ultimately in increased performance for tunneling firms we show that tunneling is among the dominant factors increasing the likelihood of becoming blacklisted we also find that firms tunneling mechanisms decreased significantly after the regulatory shock and that their performance increased significantly compared to non tunneling firms after the regulatory shock finally we find a positive market reaction to the public announcement of tunneling both for firms that have been blacklisted and other tunneling firms that are not blacklisted collectively these results suggest that public enforcement in the presence of a credible threat succeeds in deterring the effect on tunneling behavior in china

mutual fund activism and market regulation during the pre ifrs period the case of earnings informativeness in china from an ethical perspective this paper investigates the emerging effect of mutual fund involvement on the agency problem between majority and minority shareholders during the pre ifrs period in china indicated by earnings informativeness from an ethical perspective we find that the presence of mutual fund hampers earnings informativeness implying that mutual funds in general at their early stage in china are not yet capable of serving as an effective monitor this finding is in sharp contrast to the role of institutional investors in mature markets as documented in the literature however mutual funds affiliated with banks have been found to be effective to improve earnings informativeness of chinese listed companies and the impact is more pronounced among those affiliated with joint equity banks compared to their counterparts affiliated with state owned banks

institutional emergence in an era of globalization the rise of transnational private regulation of labor and environmental conditions1 why have systems of transnational private regulation recently emerged to certify corporate social and environmental performance different conceptions of institutional emergence underlie different answers to this question many scholars argue that firms create certification systems to solve problems in the market a view rooted in a conception of institutions as solutions to collective action problems the author develops a different account by viewing institutions as the outcome of political contestation and by analyzing conflict and institutional entrepreneurship among a wide array of actors using a comparative case study design the analysis shows how these arguments explain the formation of social and environmental certification associations both theoretical approaches are needed but strong versions of the market based approach overlook an important set of dynamics that the author calls the political construction of market institutions the analysis shows how both problem solving in markets and

governing corporate social responsibility an assessment of the contribution of the un global compact to csr strategies in the telecommunications industry csr has become an important element in the business strategy of a growing number of companies worldwide a large number of initiatives have been developed that aim to support companies in developing implementing and communicating about csr the global compact gc initiated by the united nations stands out since its launch in 2000 it has grown to about 2900 companies and 3800 members in total the gc combines several mechanisms to support csr strategies normative principles networks for learning and co operation and communication and transparency about csr activities however up to now only a few empirical evaluations of the contribution of the gc to csr strategies have been conducted that however have not differentiated between different types of companies regarding type of industry or regarding the maturity of csr this paper aims to partly fill this knowledge gap by a case study examination of three frontrunner companies in the telecommunications industry the results show that the gc is only one of the many initiatives that these companies employ in shaping implementing and reporting about their csr strategies and that its role is at most modest there are two important reasons one is that many of the csr issues that these companies deal with are industry specific and are hence addressed in specific networks the second reason is that the gc principles are perceived as minimum requirements that do not provide many incentives to the three case study companies to perform better a differentiation of norms for gc members is expected to enhance the contribution of the gc to csr strategy employment not only for frontrunner companies but as well for other categories of companies

how does environmental corporate social responsibility matter in a dysfunctional institutional environment evidence from china drawing on institutional and signaling theories this study examines how environmental corporate social responsibility ecsr affects firm performance in a dysfunctional institutional environment we extend the ecsr literature by suggesting that ecsr indirectly influences firm performance through the mediating effects of business and political legitimacy based on a dataset of 238 firms in china we find that ecsr affects business and political legitimacy followed by firm performance moreover legal incompleteness weakens and legal inefficiency strengthens the effects of ecsr on business and political legitimacy

ethical sourcing codes of large uk based corporations prevalence content limitations codes of conduct have become the perhaps most often used tool to manage corporate social responsibility csr researchers have primarily analysed such documents at company wide or trans company levels whereas there is a dearth of studies into the use of codes for particular corporate functions hence this article will examine one particular group of sub company level codes namely codes of conduct that stipulate csr criteria for suppliers examining such ethical sourcing policies adopted by the ftse100 corporations the article draws out what environmental social and economic issues large corporations perceive to be important in the management of their supply chains at an aggregate level the coverage of csr issues is rather extensive yet at the level of the individual corporation a degree of selectivity in the issues that are addressed becomes noticeable the code content analysis furthermore confirms the business case and public pressure to be the most important drivers of csr finally the study highlights the role of isomorphic processes in the adoption of csr tools

a dea estimation of a lower bound for firms allocative efficiency without information on price data abstract in this paper we estimate a lower bound for the sum of firms allocative efficiencies in the absence of information on prices for this purpose we only estimate technical efficiency at both the firm and the industry level using a directional distance function and choosing a relevant direction our result relies on the decomposition of overall inefficiency into technical and allocative inefficiency at both the firm and the industry level the convexity of a technology induces a transfer from both total technical inefficiency and part of allocative inefficiency at the firm level to technical inefficiency solely at the industry level the remaining firms allocative inefficiency could be counted at the industry level hence the difference between technical inefficiencies at both levels can be interpreted as a lower bound for the sum of allocative inefficiency in the industry we show how to implement this bound in a dea framework

dynamics in innovation systems evidence from japan s game software industry in contrast to the us and recently europe japan appears to be unsuccessful in establishing new industries an oft cited example is japan s practical invisibility in the global business software sector literature has ascribed japan s weakness or conversely america s strength to the specific institutional settings and competences of actors within the respective national innovation system it has additionally been argued that unlike the american innovation system with its proven ability to give birth to new industries the inherent path dependency of the japanese innovation system makes innovation and establishment of new industries quite difficult however there are two notable weaknesses underlying current propositions postulating that only certain innovation systems enable the creation of new industries first they mistakenly confound context specific with general empirical observations and second they grossly underestimate or altogether fail to examine the dynamics within innovation systems this paper will show that it is precisely the dynamics within innovation systems dynamics founded on the concept of path plasticity which have enabled japan to charge forward as a global leader in a highly innovative field the game software sector 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

migration intermediaries and codes of conduct temporary migrant workers in australian horticulture over recent decades developments in network governance have seen governments around the world cede considerable authority and responsibility to commercial migration intermediaries for recruiting and managing temporary migrant labour correspondingly a by product of network governance has been the emergence of soft employment regulation in which voluntary codes of conduct supplement hard enforceable legal employment standards this paper explores these developments in the context of temporary migrant workers employed in australian horticulture first the paper analyses the growing use of temporary migrant labour in this industry it then describes how different types of intermediaries interact with this workforce the paper then outlines both hard and soft employment regulations and contrasts them with actual employment conditions questioning how a network governance approach has affected this vulnerable workforce the paper concludes that changes in network governance of migration and employment relations have emasculated formal legal regulation leaving market forces to operate without effective or ethical constraints at the expense of the public good