the governance of global value chains unresolved human rights environmental and ethical dilemmas in the apple supply chain the continued advance of global value chains as the mode of production for an increasing number of goods and services has impacted considerably on the economies and societies both of the developed world and the emerging economies although there have been many efforts at reform there is evidence of unresolved dilemmas of human rights environmental issues and ethical dilemmas in the operation of the global value chain this paper focuses on the role and performance of apple inc in the global value chain in asia apple is the most successful corporation on earth measured in financial terms and yet has failed to find a solution to recurrent employment and environmental problems occurring in plants manufacturing apple components this analysis informs the current theoretical debate on the development of the global value chain and the continuing institutional failure that leaves employees vulnerable and the environment neglected

the empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change a research agenda abstract technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability however the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context based on a careful review of the literature this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels i e regarding the conceptual framework the thematic scope of the studies some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable first an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change i e factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies and all the stages of this process with a greater emphasis on the invention stage should be developed other aspects should then be tackled including a focus on several themes i e a greater attention to cross sectoral technologies the barriers to different types of environmental technologies the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises methodological issues combination of case studies and econometric modelling and several issues related to the environmental policy variable

regulatory multiplicity and conflict towards a combined code on corporate governance in nigeria given the multiplicity of codes designed to regulate different stakeholders in terms of promoting good corporate governance this paper examines areas of conflicts among the various codes and the associated implications for corporate governance practices and regulatory compliances by public listed nigerian firms using the conflict signalling theory for developing the conceptual framework this study examines the proliferation of codes in nigeria through a mixed method approach to provide an exploratory account of the implications of corporate governance regulatory multiplicity evidence suggests the presence of conflict among the various codes which contributes to reduced compliance by firms and ineffective enforceability by regulatory agencies which both impede good corporate governance in nigeria the findings advance conflict signalling theory as an important framework for understanding the implications of the conflicts arising from the multiplicity of codes

vive la difference social banks and reciprocity in the credit market social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non economic i e social ethical and environmental criteria to investigate the behavior of social banks on the credit market this paper proposes both theory and empirics our theoretical model rationalizes the idea that reciprocity can generate better repayment performances based on a unique hand collected dataset released by a french social bank our empirical results are twofold first we show that the bank charges below market interest rates for social projects second regardless of their creditworthiness motivated borrowers respond to advantageous credit terms by significantly lowering their probability of default we interpret this outcome as the first evidence of reciprocity in the credit market

smuggling camouflaging and market structure we examine how market structure and enforcement affect smuggling and welfare in a model where smuggling is camouflaged by legal sales conditions are given for when some but not necessarily all firms smuggle with camouflaging the market price is below the price when all sales are legal so smuggling improves welfare if the price effect outweighs excess smuggling cost this welfare effect is directly related to the degree of competition increased enforcement in this model potentially reduces welfare the model is shown to be consistent with evidence on cigarette smuggling in the united states for 1975 1982

carbon emission reduction the impact on the financial and operational performance of international companies abstract over the last few decades companies operate in an environment in which exercising responsibility is a prerequisite for competing owing to the growing social concern for ethical social and environmental issues the question of the impact of emissions trading on firm competitiveness has acquired special relevance in recent years this research analyzes the impact of the variation in carbon dioxide emissions on financial and operational performance by using international data consisting of 89 companies for the period 2006 2009 the findings show a reduction in emissions that generates a positive impact on financial performance in addition certain control variables are considered such as company size sector growth sustainability index and legal system while a panel data methodology is used as the analysis technique overall this research shows that companies promote greater environmental behaviour in order to obtain higher financial performance nonetheless the findings do not show evidence for operational performance this study contributes to the literature on carbon emission reduction and corporate performance moreover it complements previous literature in the sense that results obtained show a reduction in emissions that generates a positive impact on financial performance

is ethical finance the answer to the ills of the uk financial market a post crisis analysis the 2008 financial crisis exposed the dark side of the financial sector in the uk it brought attention to the contaminated culture of the business which accommodated the systemic malpractices that largely contributed to the financial turmoil of 2008 in the wake of the crisis there seems to be a wide consensus that this contaminated culture can no longer be accepted and needs to change this article examines the ills of the uk financial market more specifically the cultural contamination problem which was uncovered by the 2008 financial crisis in order to explore its genesis and the suitable solutions for it in this regard the article analyses the ethical finance sector from theoretical and practical perspectives in order to assess its role in addressing the cultural contamination problem of the uk financial market

the location of foreign direct investment an empirical analysis in this piece of research those factors are analysed which determine the choice of location for fdi the analysis is conducted using two models a multicountry model containing seven industrializ

is trade good or bad for the environment sorting out the causality we seek to contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment by asking what is the effect of trade on a country s environment for a given level of gdp we take specific account of the endogeneity of trade using exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables we find that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution statistical significance is high for concentrations of so2 moderate for no2 and lacking for particulate matter although results for other environmental measures are not as encouraging there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment

corporate environmental responsibility this paper offers directions for the continuing dialogue between business ethicists and environmental philosophers i argue that a theory of corporate social responsibility must be consistent with if not derived from a model of sustainable economics rather than the prevailing neoclassical model of market economics i use environmental examples to critique both classical and neoclassical models of corporate social responsibility and sketch the alternative model of sustainable development after describing some implications of this model at the level of individual firms and industries i offer an ethical justification of the sustainability alternative that is derived from the same values that underlie traditional market economics

ethical compliance programs and corporate illegality testing the assumptions of the corporate sentencing guidelines this paper analyses the ethical performance of foreign investment enterprises operating in china in comparison to that of the indigenous state owned enterprises collectives and private enterprises it uses both the deontological approach and the utilitarian approach in conceptualization and applies quantitative and econometric techniques to ethical evaluations of empirical evidences it shows that according to various ethical performance indicators foreign investment enterprises have fared well in comparison with local firms this paper also tries to unravel the effect of a difference in business culture and competitive market forces on ethical performance by comparing the behavior of foreign investment enterprises with that of the indigenous state owned enterprises and collectives on the one hand and with that of the indigenous private enterprises on the other

management ownership and market valuation an empirical analysis we investigate the relationship between management ownership and market valuation of the firm as measured by tobin s q in a 1980 cross section of 371 fortune 500 firms we find evidence of a significant nonmonotonic relationship tobin s q first increases then declines and finally rises slightly as ownership by the board of directors rises for older firms there is evidence that q is lower when the firm is run by a member of the founding family than when it is run by an officer unrelated to the founder

toward a new theory of institutional change going beyond historical and rational choice institutionalism this article elaborates the core of a new theory that can account for the discontinuous disproportionate and frequently wavelike nature of institutional change cognitive psychological findings on shifts in actors propensity for assuming risk help explain why periods of institutional stasis can be followed by dramatic breakthroughs as actors eventually respond to a growing problem load with efforts at bold transformation and insights on boundedly rational learning explain why solutions to these problems often occur as emulation of other countries innovations and experiences the new approach which elucidates both the demand and the supply side of institutional change is illustrated through an analysis of the transformation of developmental states welfare states and political regimes

clusters chains and compliance corporate social responsibility and governance in football manufacturing in south asia a recent concern in the debate on corporate social responsibility csr in developing countries relates to the tension between demands for csr compliance found in many global value chains gvcs and the search for locally appropriate responses to these pressures in this context an emerging and relatively understudied area of interest relates to small firm industrial clusters local clusters offer the potential for local joint action and thus a basis for improving local compliance on csr through collective monitoring and local governance this article explores the interrelationship between global governance exercised through gvc ties and local governance via cluster institutions in ensuring compliance with csr pressures it undertakes a comparative analysis of two leading export oriented football manufacturing clusters in south asia that have both faced common challenges on child labour the article shows that both forms vertical and horizontal governance have played a part in shaping the response of the two clusters on child labour moreover these two distinct forms of governance have also led to quite differentiated outcomes in terms of forms of work organization and child labour monitoring this raises broader questions on how global csr demands can locally be better embedded and the conditions under which football stitchers labour in these new work forms

asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage given incomplete factor markets appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets that is critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in strategic factor markets barney barney j 1986 strategic factor markets expectations luck and business strategy management sci october 1231 1241 sustainability of a firm s asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process time compression diseconomies asset mass efficiencies inter connectedness asset erosion and causal ambiguity

diffusion and the international context of democratization democracy does not evolve sui generis the spatial clustering in democ racy and transitions suggests that international factors play a prominent role in forg ing democracies as well as influencing their durability we argue that democracy often comes about as a result of changes in the relative power of important actors and groups as well as their evaluations of particular institutions both of which are often influenced by forces outside the country in question the scope and extent of con nections with other democratic countries in a region can strengthen support for dem ocratic reform and help sustain institutions in transitional democracies results from a transition model demonstrate that international factors can exert a strong influence on the prospects for transitions to democracy and the spatial clustering in democ racy and transitions cannot adequately be explained by the hypothesized domestic social requisites of individual countries

community currency ccs in spain an empirical study of their social effects despite its sudden proliferation along the economic crisis period no previous study has investigated the social effects of the community currency ccs experiences in spain previous research on ccs experiences from different countries provided evidences about social capital improvement introducing ccs as sustainability tools this research uses the theoretical frameworks of social capital and complex adaptive systems to approach concepts like sustainability networks trust norms participation and cooperation statistical analysis of the data collected in june 2013 through online survey explores social capital and resilience indicators among the spanish exchange community users concluding that spanish ccs systems improve community social capital through the proposed dimensions although they are in an early stage and several weakness need to be corrected the values motivations attitude and positive perception of their members suggest that ccs could be appropriate tools for sustainability due its potential to improve social capital and resilience detected weakness may affect the interests and commitment of their members therefore experience from senior currency systems may help them to face adversities and fully develop their potential for sustainability

a global code of business ethics the international economy is changing at a rapid rate the alteration and reduction of both geographical and political borders coupled with the growing interdependence of socially politically economically and legally diverse countries have caused multinational corporate entities to revise various policies these revisions include revisions in marketing strategies strategic alliances product and service strategies and perhaps most importantly as it affects all strategies a mnc s approach to ethical systems the truly global company must come to grips with the legal and moral atmosphere in which it operates the concept of moral rights those transcending legal or political rights drives us to review four international codes of conduct and to attempt to develop one international uniform code that might be applicable to any business in any country or culture

human capital and fdi inflows to developing countries new empirical evidence abstract despite the dramatic increase in total foreign direct investment fdi flows to developing countries in the last few years the bulk of the inflows has been directed to only a limited number of countries it has been argued that developing countries might enhance their attractiveness as locations for fdi by pursuing policies that raise the level of local skills and build up human resource capabilities nevertheless the empirical evidence in the literature in support of this recommendation for a large sample of developing countries is scant this paper evaluates this argument in the light of the evolution in the structural characteristics of fdi and empirically tests the hypothesis that the level of human capital in host countries may affect the geographical distribution of fdi the empirical findings are a human capital is a statistically significant determinant of fdi inflows b human capital is one of the most important determinants and c its importance has become increasingly greater through time

corporate social responsibility theories mapping the territory the corporate social responsibility csr field presents not only a landscape of theories but also a proliferation of approaches which are controversial complex and unclear this article tries to clarify the sit uation mapping the territory by classifying the main csr theories and related approaches in four groups 1 instrumental theories in which the corporation is seen as only an instrument for wealth creation and its social activities are only a means to achieve economic results 2 political theories which concern themselves with the power of corporations in society and a responsible use of this power in the political arena 3 integrative theories in which the corporation is focused on the satisfaction of social demands and 4 ethical theories based on ethical responsibilities of corporations to society in practice each csr theory presents four dimensions related to profits political performance social demands and ethical values the findings suggest the necessity to develop a new theory on the business and society relationship which should integrate these four dimensions

community currencies and sustainable development a systematic review community or complementary currency systems have spread all around the world most often they have been promoted as tools to foster sustainable development albeit they differ in terms of specific objectives while many case studies have tried to assess the actual impact of these systems there has been no global analysis summarizing their global impact this paper aims to fill the gap by exploring whether complementary currencies contribute to the three pillars of sustainable development we use the systematic review methodology on an original dataset gathering most academic publications on the topic in english french and spanish our main findings suggest that community currencies mostly contribute to social sustainability and that their economic benefits are somewhat limited due to their small scale and the lack of awareness on their scope moreover very few studies explicitly identify environmental outcomes finally this review reveals some limits regarding current methods for impact assessment in this field therefore it encourages more standardization to provide greater accuracy and strengthen the legitimacy of community currencies in order to foster their continued development

planning in ambiguous contexts the dilemma of meeting needs for commitment and demands for legitimacy this paper argues that ambiguity of context manifested in pressures for legitimacy and commitment affect planning processes ambiguity arises from multiple conflicting constituencies and the lack of direct control over resources using nonprofit and entrepreneurial organizations as examples of organizations facing ambiguous contexts we examine their planning practices to develop an understanding of the relationship between commitment legitimacy and planning from this analysis we articulate a managerial dilemma the need to use informality and vagueness to gain commitment from diverse interests and the need to demonstrate formalization of managerial practices to acquire legitimacy from critical resource suppliers using elements of this dilemma we present a new planning framework for organizations in ambiguous contexts that recognizes planning as a strategy for resource acquisition rather than a strategy for resource allocation

the fallacy of only the strong survive the effects of extrinsic motivation on the persistence decisions for under performing firms abstract under performing firms persist even though existing theoretical perspectives indicate that they should be selected out of the market building upon threshold theory gimeno j folta t cooper a woo c 1997 survival of the fittest entrepreneurial human capital and the persistence of underperforming firms administrative science quarterly 42 750 783 and using staw s staw b m 1981 the escalation of commitment to a course of action academy of management review 6 4 577 587 theoretical model of commitment to a course of action we explore and test the factors that lead entrepreneurs to persist with under performing firms we found environmental munificence personal investment personal options previous organizational success and perceived collective efficacy impact the decision to persist with an under performing firm in addition extrinsic motivation moderates those relationships this research adds to the growing literature on highly persistent under performing firms and complements and extends threshold theory

the methods used to implement an ethical code of conduct and employee attitudes in the process of implementing an ethical code of conduct a business organization uses formal methods of these training courses and means of enforcement are common and are also suitable for self regulation the usa is encouraging business corporations to self regulate with the federal sentencing guidelines fsg the guidelines prescribe similar formal methods and specify that unless such methods are used the process of implementation will be considered ineffective and the business will therefore not be considered to have complied with the guidelines business organizations invest enormous funds on formal methods however recent events indicate that these are not by themselves yielding the desired results our study based on a sample of 812 employees and conducted in an israeli subsidiary of a leading multinational high tech corporation headquartered in the us indicates that of the methods used in the process of implementation one of the informal methods namely the social norms of the organization is perceived by employees to have the most influence on their conduct this result when examined against employee tenure remains relatively stable over the years and stands in contradistinction to the formalistic approach embedded in the fsg we indirectly measure the effectiveness of the percieved most influential implementation process methods by analyzing their impact on employee attitudes namely personal ethical commitment and employees commitment to organizational values our results indicate that the informal methods manager sets an example or social norms of the organization are likely to yield greater commitment with respect to both employee attitudes than the formal method training and courses on the subject of ethics the personal control method my own personal values differs significantly from all the other methods in that it yields the highest degree of personal ethical commitment and the lowest degree of employees commitment to organizational values

smarter than metering coupling smart meters and complementary currencies to reinforce the motivation of households for energy savings a crucial argument in the debate around smart meter deployment in the eu is the potential for households to save energy one strand of research in this field has investigated the effects on household energy consumption of the feed back provided by smart meters however another aspect that deserves attention is the motivation for households to use the feed back to save energy this paper explores how the emerging trend of using complementary currencies for sustainability policies could translate into new interventions adapted to the smart meter deployment and capable of promoting more autonomous forms of motivation compared to interventions using official currencies three systems designs rewarding regulatory and hybrid are presented and discussed within the framework of self determination theory because the rewarding system s1 can contribute positively people s basic needs for autonomy competence and relatedness it could lead to more autonomous forms of motivation the conclusions regarding the regulatory system s2 are less clear although the hybrid variant s3 that integrates mechanisms from the rewarding system into the regulatory system could be perceived as more consonant with people s basic need for autonomy

sustainable competitive advantage combining institutional and resource based views this article suggests that the context and process of resource selection have an important influence on firm heterogeneity and sustainable competitive advantage it is argued that a firm s sustainable advantage depends on its ability to manage the institutional context of its resource decisions a firm s institutional context includes its internal culture as well as broader influences from the state society and interfirm relations that define socially acceptable economic behavior a process model of firm heterogeneity is proposed that combines the insights of a resource based view with the institutional perspective from organization theory normative rationality institutional isolating mechanisms and institutional sources of firm homogeneity are proposed as determinants of rent potential that complement and extend resource based explanations of firm variation and sustainable competitive advantage the article suggests that both resource capital and institutional capital are indispensable to sustainable competitive advantage 1997 john wiley sons ltd

the new economy ethical issues the new economy is a technological revolution involving the information and communication technologies and which affects almost all aspects of the economy business and our personal lives the problems it raises for businesses are not radically new and even less so from an ethical viewpoint however they deserve particular attention especially now in the first years of the 21st century when we are feeling the full impact of the changes brought about by this technological revolution in this article i will try to draw a map of the main positive and negative ethical challenges raised by the new economy concentrating on its three basic features 1 a knowledge and information based technological change 2 which is taking place in real time on a planetary scale globalization and 3 which entails a new flexible network based business organization

reconsidering the common good in a business context in our contemporary post modern context it has become increasingly awkward to talk about a good that is shared by all this is particularly true in the context of mammoth multi national corporations operating in global markets nevertheless it is precisely some of these same enormous aggrandizing forces that have given rise to recent corporate scandals these in turn raise questions about ethical systems that are focused too myopically on self interest or the interest of specific groups locations or cultures the obvious traditional alternative to moral bellybutton gazing is the common good which challenges the modern business enterprise to realize non instrumental values that can only be attained in our life together the common good dictates that leadership should be judged first of all according to moral criteria rather than professional competence it helps correct the distorted prioritization of the maximization of profit in every business decision recognizing that businesses have a multitude of rights and responsibilities and the common good reminds us that the first of these is not always profit making

a brief history of long work time and the contemporary sources of overwork what are some of the key historical trends in hours of work per worker in us what economic social psychological organizational and institutional for ces determine the length of individuals working hours how much of the trend toward longer working hours among so many workers may be attributable to workers preferences workplace incentives or employers con straints when can work become overwork or worka holism an unforced addiction to incessant work activity which risk harm to workers families or even economies the first part of this article traces the history of the length of working hours and its recent polarization the second part develops a multi disciplinary model to identify motivations behind working longer hours individuals desired work hours will stem from the weighted contri bution of five sources 1 current real wage rates 2 forward looking wage trajectories 3 relative status associated with hours of labor 4 intrinsic rewards process benefits or amenities acquired through work 5 hours demanded by the employer and other structural constraints to which workers may adapt employers and their established conditions of work have influenced the course of long run trends labor supply and in work time structures the final section suggests policies that might address the persistence of long hours

foreign direct investment in the united states an analysis by country of origin given the large size and rapid growth of foreign direct investment in the united states this subject is a central concern of u s firms and u s government policymakers this study explores the factors that contribute to the explanation of fdi in the united states by country of origin of investment evidence from the past twelve years shows that the main significant positive influences are home country s exports to the united states and home country market size significant negative influences include the home country s imports from the united states the cultural and geographic distances of the home country from the united states and the exchange rate fx

ethical business and investment a model for business and society two key questions lie at the heart of the business challenge for business ethics is it possible for business and investors to do well while doing good and if so how can this be achieved this paper adopts an international investment perspective to address these questions it demonstrates that it is possible for business and investors to achieve a triple bottom line of environmental social and financial performance

when competitive advantage doesn t lead to performance the resource based view and stakeholder bargaining power what if rent from a competitive advantage is appropriated so it cannot be observed in performance measures the resourcebased view was not formulated to examine who will get the rent yet this essay argues that the factors leading to a resource based advantage also predict who will appropriate rent knowledge based assets are promising because firm specificity social complexity and causal ambiguity make them hard to imit ate however the roles of internal stakeholders may grant them a great deal of bargaining power especially relative to investors this essay integrates the resource based view with the bargaining power literature by defining the firm as a nexus of contracts this new lens can help to explain when rent will be generated and simultaneously who will appropriate it in doing so it provides a more robust theory of firm performance than the resource based view alone it is also suggested that this lens might be useful for examining other theories of firm performance

complementary credit networks and macroeconomic stability switzerland s wirtschaftsring abstract the swiss wirtschaftsring economic circle credit network founded in 1934 provides residual spending power that is highly counter cyclical individuals are cash short in a recession and economize by greater use of wir credits a money in the production function mipf specification implies that transactions in wir form a stabilizing balance that makes up for the lack of ordinary currency thus unlike the ordinary money wir money is negatively correlated with gdp in the short run this implication is confirmed by empirical estimates such credit networks play a stabilizing role that should be considered in monetary policy

globalization and the good corporation a need for proactive co existence large corporations are coming under intense pressure to act in a socially responsible manner corporations have accepted this notion provided that it is exercised voluntarily it has also been argued that corporations can do well by doing good and that good ethics is good business this paper presents an alternative viewpoint by demonstrating that while voluntary socially responsible conduct is desirable it plays a rather small role in inspiring good corporate conduct instead a it is the external economic competitive conditions that define the parameters and opportunities for good corporate conduct and b the values and traditions of the corporations and their perceived risk in exploiting those opportunities that influence the extent of a corporation s socially responsible conduct the framework presented here analyzes certain market competitive conditions which determine the scope and direction of socially responsible corporate conduct and the instruments available to society to enhance ethical corporate conduct it suggests that from society s perspective we should move away from the notion of corporate social responsibility and toward corporate social accountability most modern economies operate under conditions of imperfect competition where corporations gain above normal profits i e market rent from market imperfections therefore corporations should be held accountable for a more equitable distribution of these above normal profits with other groups e g customers employees etc who were deprived of their market based gains because of market imperfections and corporate power three approaches are suggested for measuring corporate accountability through corrections these are information imbalance bargaining power imbalance and adjudication remedy and relief imbalance

empirical estimates of the methane income elasticity we estimate the income elasticity of methane emissions per capita derived from production final production and consumption in a global sample of countries for 1997 2011 we find relative decoupling between emissions and income and evidence for a piecewise linear relationship the relation between economic growth and emissions improves as countries reach high levels of income although the magnitude of the improvement is small this points to very minor methane efficiency gains from economic development

economic growth sectoral structures and environmental methane footprints we analyze the impacts of economic growth on methane emissions per capita at the sectoral level for the period 1997 2014 we cover three stages of the supply chain distinguishing between emissions

i don t want to be green prosocial motivation effects on firm environmental innovation rejection decisions although the political and consumer consciousness has turned increasingly green many firms continue to resist the adoption of environment friendly technological innovations even in the face of higher costs negative health effects and stricter government oversight this article examines how business owners weigh the trade offs associated with environment friendly innovations by examining the role of prosocial motivation in their decision making process we use primary data to overcome a common restriction in studying environmental innovations the scarcity of relevant data to analyze how business owners expectations perceptions and motivations affect innovation in organizational processes and consequently the level of environmental friendliness of their products or services we found that prosocial motivation had a significant negative impact on innovation adoption and that it is expressed differently under high and low levels of customer compatibility possibly because business owners have a larger number of competing social objectives and priorities our results further showed that the innovation s ability to satisfy downstream customer demands has the greatest impact on environment friendly innovation adoption decisions by business owners this study enhances our understanding of how business owners make innovation decisions based on competing business environmental and social objectives and provides a foundation for future research in this area

the contribution of environmental and social standards towards ensuring legitimacy in supply chain governance increasingly companies implement social and environmental standards as instruments towards corporate social responsibility csr in supply chains this is based on the assumption that such standards increase legitimacy among stakeholders yet a wide variety of standards with different requirement levels exist and companies might tend to introduce the ones with low exigencies using them as a legitimacy front this strategy jeopardizes the reputation of social and environmental standards among stakeholders and their long term trust in these instruments of csr meaning that all expenses for their implementation are of no avail for the companies therefore this paper highlights which criteria are important for the selection implementation and improvement in order to achieve a company s aim but also to strengthen the legitimacy of social and environmental standards this research is based on conceptual thought and some existing empirical research comparing four different social and environmental standards revealing weaknesses and strengths it exposes the basic conditions for the success of such standards among stakeholders and identifies the need for more empirical data

the diffusion of regime contention in european democratization 1830 1940 this article goes beyond the established literature s focus on domestic conditions by examining the impact of external impulses on european democratization from 1830 to 1940 specifically it analyzes the diffusion of regime conflict that arose from the cross national spread of situational judgments about the feasibility of political change striking precedents of regime collapse such as the overthrow of french kings in 1830 and 1848 tended to produce dramatic waves of political contention across europe but because the actual distribution of power in polities that experienced such externally stimulated episodes of regime contention often differed from the front runner these conflicts produced various types of results the article distinguishes four outcomes of diffusion namely a successful replication b preemptive reform c abortive replication and d blockage of replication efforts the latter two outcomes help explain why in european history not only did political liberalism and democracy

the future of stakeholder management theory a temporal perspective we propose adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory and assess the implications thereof for firm level competitive advantage we argue that a firm s competitive advantage fundamentally depends on its capacity for stakeholder management related transformational adaptation over time our new temporal stakeholder management approach builds upon insights from both the resource based view rbv in strategic management and institutional theory stakeholder agendas and their relative salience to the firm evolve over time a phenomenon well understood in the literature and requiring what we call level 1 adaptation however the dominant direction of stakeholder pressures can also change namely from supporting resource heterogeneity at the firm level to fostering industry homogeneity and vice versa when dominant stakeholder pressures shift from supporting heterogeneity towards stimulating homogeneity in industry the firm must engage in level 2 or transformational adaptation stakeholders typically provide valuable resources to the firm in an early stage without these resources which foster heterogeneity in line with rbv thinking the firm would not exist at a later stage stakeholders also contribute to inter firm homogeneity via isomorphism pressures in line with institutional theory thinking adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory has far reaching implications for this theory s practical relevance to senior level management in business

the role of the board of directors in disseminating relevant information on greenhouse gases in today s world the corporate image of the largest companies is closely linked to their performance in the field of corporate social responsibility and the disclosure of information on that topic specifically on climate change since the board of directors is the body responsible for this process the aim of this article is to show the role that companies boards of directors play in the accountability process vis a vis stakeholders in relation to one specific aspect which has enormous significance in environmental information practices used to monitor greenhouse gas emissions in order to achieve this we shall verify certain business characteristics in addition to the size and activity of the board of directors and we shall take different dependence models into consideration these models will include variables related to the level of independence and diversity of the board of directors which interact with dummy variables representing the company s litigation risks regarding environmental behavior and the institutional macro context of the organization s country of origin the results make it clear that boards of directors are basically focused on the traditional responsibility of creating economic value instead of dealing with today s broader business world concepts which include social responsibility this focus therefore does not favor the accountability process before other stakeholders if this makes it more difficult to protect the interests of shareholders

carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth an assessment based on production and consumption emission inventories working with a new dataset on comparable global co2 production and consumption inventories spanning the 1997 2011 period we investigate the relationship between real gross domestic product gdp per capita and co2 emissions per capita associated with both production and consumption activities by including linkages between production based emissions in one country and final consumption in another via cross border value chains we focus on the entire carbon chain we estimate polynomial and threshold models accounting for reverse causality and identification problems we find that the income elasticity for both inventories is regime dependent and reflects small carbon efficiency gains from economic development carbon footprints show larger income elasticities while national policy instruments targeting production can clearly be circumvented by carbon embodied in intermediate trade this implies problems of environmental sustainability that may require consumption based policy instruments

when ideas trump interests preferences world views and policy innovations the contemporary approach to political economy is built around vested interests elites lobbies and rent seeking groups which get their way at the expense of the general public the role of ideas in shaping those interests is typically ignored or downplayed yet each of the three components of the standard optimization problem in political economy preferences constraints and choice variables rely on an implicit set of ideas once the manner in which ideas enter these frameworks is made explicit a much richer and more convincing set of results can be obtained in particular new ideas about policy or policy entrepreneurship can exert an independent effect on equilibrium outcomes even in the absence of changes in the configuration of political power

bankers at the gate microfinance and the high cost of borrowed logics in this paper we examine how the interaction between influences of commercial banking and poverty alleviation shaped the evolution of modern microfinance using institutional theory as a lens we observe that the commercial banking logic increasingly displaced the microfinance field s foundational poverty alleviation and development principles over time we argue that this process of displacement can occur inadvertently as organizations that embody multiple logics draw disproportionately on only one of those logics when developing legitimating accounts of their activity to stakeholders furthermore we introduce the concept of permeability the extent to which the elements of a logic are ambiguous and loosely coupled to explain why some logics may be more or less open to the influence of other logics we conclude by discussing implications for entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation more generally

internalization and the mne a note on the spread of ideas this paper examines the reasons for the impact of buckley and casson s the future of the multinational enterprise 1976 on research in international business ib earlier work concentrated on ownership specific advantages or locational determinants rather than the central concept of internalization the few exceptions were incomplete or not well known internalization as applied to the mne spread rapidly because of the appeal to ib researchers of an analytically powerful idea that was based on institutional economics and involved an accessible methodology the spread was also helped by the parallel growth of transaction costs in the domestic theory of the firm and the publication activity of the authors and their associates

cryptocurrencies and business ethics cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin setlcoin ether solar coin or liberty reserve exist since 2009 because of their decentralized control they are often considered a threat or alternative to the conventional centralized banking system while the technological implication of some such currencies especially of bitcoin has attracted much attention so far there is little discussion about the entire field of cryptocurrencies and very little academic literature addressing its ethical significance in this article we thus address the impact of blockchain technology on the nature of financial transactions from a business ethics perspective we begin with a survey on relevant literature from neighboring disciplines next we work towards a 3 3 framework for current debates on the ethics of cryptocurrencies see table 1 we combine the micro meso and macro levels of business and society with assessments of the potential ethical impact of cryptocurrencies as morally beneficial detrimental and ambiguous in addition we highlight possible avenues for future research such as the changing roles of the miners and regulators the prosocial use of cryptocurrencies the antisocial use for shadow banking and transactions in the dark net and cryptocurrencies effect on inflation and deflation

the effect of national corporate responsibility environment on japanese foreign direct investment we examine the relationship between japanese foreign direct investment fdi and the national corporate responsibility ncr environment in host countries using corporate social responsibility and international business theories based on data from the japanese government s ministry of finance accountability and other sources we find that the level of ncr has a positive relationship with fdi inflow for developing countries the relationship for developed countries is negative but not statistically significant the underlying host country development stage moderates the relationship the results can help deepen understanding of fdi behaviors and have practical implications for host countries in terms of attracting fdi

when do institutions bite historical institutionalism and the politics of institutional change historical institutionalist theories of endogenous change have enhanced our understanding of institutional development by providing a theoretical vocabulary for analyzing how institutions may be renegotiated over the long run by social and political actors in these theories however the causal impact of institutions themselves on political outcomes including their own change and reform is less developed a significant problem for an institutional research program this paper addresses this problem by proposing strategies that integrate historical institutionalism s insights into endogenous institutional change with a systematic analysis of the institutional conditions under which bottom up processes of gradual change are likely to be counteracted in particular the institutionalization of cultural categories and the allocation of power over the timing of reform within institutional and policy configurations are important variables for understanding how pre existing institutions may enable institutional incumbents to channel delay or prevent institutional change

kyoto and carbon leakage an empirical analysis of the carbon content of bilateral trade abstract has the kyoto protocol induced carbon leakage we conduct the first empirical ex post evaluation of the protocol we derive a theoretical gravity equation for the carbon dioxide content of trade which accounts for intermediate inputs both domestic and imported the structure of our new panel database of the carbon content of sectoral bilateral trade flows allows controlling for the endogenous selection of countries into the kyoto protocol binding commitments under kyoto have increased committed countries embodied carbon imports from noncommitted countries by around 8 and the emission intensity of their imports by about 3 hence kyoto has indeed led to leakage

growing green money mapping community currencies for sustainable development abstract parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non governmental organisations ngos informed by ecological economics perspectives on development value economic scale and growth and responding to the unsustainability of current global financial systems these parallel systems of exchange or community currencies are designed to promote sustainable development by localising economic development building social capital and substituting for material consumption valuing work which is marginalised in conventional labour markets and challenging the growth based monetary system however this international movement towards community based ecological economic practices is under researched this paper presents new empirical evidence from the first international study of the scope and character of community currencies it identifies the diversity scale geography and development trajectory of these initiatives discusses the implications of these findings for efforts to achieve sustainable development and identifies future research needs to help harness the sustainability potential of these initiatives

the stakeholder theory and the common good the theory of the social responsibility of the firm oscillates between two extremes one that reduces the firm s responsibility to the obtainment of the greatest possible profit for its shareholders and another that extends the firm s responsibility to include a wide range of actors with an interest or stake in the firm the stakeholder theory of the social responsibility of business is more appealing from an ethical point of view and yet it lacks a solid foundation that would be acceptable to a variety of schools of thought in this paper i argue that the stakeholder theory could be founded on the concept of the common good first i explain the foundations of the theory of the common good the concept itself how it relates to the individual good and its role in the firm following that i explain how the theory of the common good could be applied to the stakeholder theory finally i draw some conclusions

selective spatial closure and local economic development what do we learn from the argentine local currency systems summary this paper discusses local currency systems as an instrument of selective spatial closure to mitigate impacts of externally induced changes and to promote endogenous local economic development drawing on data collected in argentina it was found that local currency systems provided relatively protected economic spaces thus enabling poor households and especially women to launch micro enterprises and diversify income sources they also supported existing enterprises by offering an emergency market outlet and when combined with other measures by building local trading and production networks following recent theory on local economic development the argentine case represents an example of local economic regeneration

a review of theories of the firm and their contributions to corporate sustainability corporate sustainability has arisen as an alternative to traditional short term profit oriented ap proaches to managing the firm by holistically balancing economic environmental and social issues in the present generation and for future ones although a number of theories of the firm have been pro posed within recent decades their application to corporate sustainability has been limited this paper presents an overview of the most widely used theories of the firm such as the stockholder theory the aggregate theory the contractual theory the resource based view and the stakeholder theory and analyses their contributions to corporate sustainability from an interpretative perspective the discus sion highlights the point that each of the theories on its own is limited in addressing sustainability s four dimensions i e the economic environmental social and time nonetheless each theory or group of theories has a particular perspective or principles that can contribute to one or more of the four dimensions the authors of this paper propose a sustainability oriented theory of the firm which is built upon elements of those theories as they relate to corporate sustainability this new theory can be useful in providing the firm s leaders and all of its stakeholders with a more complete vision of its ob ligations opportunities relations and processes that the firm should address as it engages in helping to make societies become more equitable and sustainable in the short and long terms

dynamic capabilities what are they this paper focuses on dynamic capabilities and more generally the resource based view of the firm we argue that dynamic capabilities are a set of specific and identifiable processes such as product development strategic decision making and alliancing they are neither vague nor tautological although dynamic capabilities are idiosyncratic in their details and path dependent in their emergence they have significant commonalities across firms popularly termed best practice this suggests that they are more homogeneous fungible equifinal and substitutable than is usually assumed in moderately dynamic markets dynamic capabilities resemble the traditional conception of routines they are detailed analytic stable processes with predictable outcomes in contrast in high velocity markets they are simple highly experiential and fragile processes with unpredictable outcomes finally well known learning mechanisms guide the evolution of dynamic capabilities in moderately dynamic markets the evolutionary emphasis is on variation in high velocity markets it is on selection at the level of rbv we conclude that traditional rbv misidentifies the locus of long term competitive advantage in dynamic markets overemphasizes the strategic logic of leverage and reaches a boundary condition in high velocity markets copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

the governance of corporate sustainability empirical insights into the development leadership and implementation of responsible business strategy this article explores how corporate governance processes and structures are being used in large australian companies to develop lead and implement corporate responsibility strategies it presents an empirical analysis of the governance of sustainability in fifty large listed companies based on each company s disclosures in annual and sustainability reports we find that significant progress is being made by large listed australian companies towards integrating sustainability into core business operations there is evidence of leadership structures being put in place to ensure that board and senior management are involved in sustainability strategy development and are then incentivised to monitor and ensure implementation of that strategy through financial rewards there is evidence of a willingness to engage and communicate clearly the results of these strategies to interested stakeholders overall there appears to be a developing acceptance amongst large corporations that efforts towards improved corporate sustainability are not only expected but are of value to the business we suggest that this is evidence of a managerial shift away from an orthodox shareholder primacy understanding of the corporation towards a more enlightened shareholder value approach often encompassing a stakeholder orientated view of business strategy however strong underlying tensions remain due to the insistent market emphasis on shareholder value

money and the commons an investigation of complementary currencies and their ethical implications the commons is a concept increasingly used with the promise of creating new collective wealth in the aftermath of the economic and financial crises finance and money have been criticized and redesigned to serve the collective interest in this article we analyze three types of complementary currency cc systems community currencies inter enterprise currencies and cryptocurrencies we investigate whether these systems can be considered as commons to address this question we use two main theoretical frameworks that are usually separate the new commons in organization studies and the common good in business ethics our findings show that these monetary systems and organizations may be considered as commons under the common good framework since they promote the common interest by creating new communities nevertheless according to the new commons framework only systems relying on collective action and self management can be said to form commons this allows us to suggest two new categories of commons the social commons which fit into both the new commons and the common good frameworks and the commercial commons which fit the common good but not the new commons framework this research advances a new conceptualization of the commons and of the ethical implications of ccs

bitcoin and the legitimacy crisis of money the virtual currency and payment project bitcoin intends to challenge the current monetary and payment system that finds itself in a legitimacy crisis in the aftermath of the financial market turmoil of 2008 in examining the governance of the bitcoin system i try to assess its potential to create input and output legitimacy as a payment system and as a monetary system in comparison with current practice

motivators of mobilization although the possibility that a firm s stakeholders may take damaging measures against it in response to its activities has been an underlying assumption of stakeholder theory from inception the conditions that predispose stakeholders to act against firms remain largely unexplored in the literature based on work in equity theory expectancy theory and resource dependence theory we present and test hypotheses concerning stakeholders propensities to impose sanctions upon or to support firms using a vignette based experiment we found strong confirmation of the criticality of fairness in the firm stakeholder relationship stakeholder equity perceptions were unequivocally associated with the proclivity to sanction the firm or to engage in prosocial behaviours of benefit to it stakeholder expectancy perceptions and resource dependence were related to only certain forms of stakeholder action indicating that researchers should take care to differentiate between types of stakeholder response when investigating questions surrounding stakeholder mobilization our results also suggest specific avenues for stakeholder dialogue that could help firms mitigate the likelihood of stakeholders taking damaging action against them

business responses to climate change regulation in canada and germany lessons for mncs from emerging economies this article proposes a novel mapping of the complex relationship between business ethics and regulation by suggesting five distinct ways in which business ethics and regulation may intersect the framework is applied to a comparative case study of business responses to climate change regulation in canada and germany both signatories to the kyoto protocol both countries represent distinctly different approaches which yield significant lessons for emerging economies we also analyze the specific role of large multinational corporations in this process

business codes of multinational firms what do they say business codes are an oft cited management instrument but how common are codes among multinationals and what is their content in an unprecedented study the codes of the largest corporations in the world have been collected and thoroughly analyzed this paper presents the results of that study of the 200 largest companies in the world 52 5 have a code more than half f these codes describe company responsibilities regarding quality of products and services 67 adherence to local laws and regulations 57 and the protection of the natural environment 56 many codes make reference to principles governing stake holder relations e g transparency 55 honesty 50 and fairness 45 corporate core values e g teamwork 43 appropriate conduct among employees e g discrimination 44 and intimidation 43 and treatment of company property by employees e g conflict of interests 52 corruption 46 and fraud 45 monitoring compliance with the code is addressed in 52 of the codes based on this content study three types of codes are distinguished the stakeholder statute 72 the values statement 49 and the code of conduct 46 the results of this inquiry present a benchmark for the evaluation and development of both individual and international business codes

corporate governance and codes of ethics as a result of recent corporate scandals several rules have focused on the role played by boards of directors on the planning and monitoring of corporate codes of ethics in theory outside directors are in a better position than insiders to protect and further the interests of all stakeholders because of their experience and their sense of moral and legal obligations female directors also tend to be more sensitive to ethics according to several past studies which explain this affirmation by early gender socialization the fact that women are thought to place a greater emphasis on harmonious relations and the fact that men and women use different ethical frameworks in their judgments the goal of this paper is to determine the influence of these characteristics of the board in terms of promoting and hindering the creation of a code of ethics our findings show that a greater number of female directors does not necessarily lead to more ethical companies moreover within europe as a continent board ownership leads to an entrenchment of upper level management generating a divergence between the ethical interests of owners and managers in light of this situation the presence of independent directors is necessary to reduce such conflicts

virtuous professionalism in accountants to avoid fraud and to restore financial reporting over the past decade a number of accounting and financial reporting frauds have led to lost stock wealth destroyed public trust and a worldwide recession that called for necessary reform regulatory responses and systemic reforms quickly followed and we show that while necessary these reforms are insufficient the purpose of this paper is to forward virtuous professionalism as a necessary path toward restoring financial reporting systems we take the position of external observer and analyze the accounting profession over time to assess what has transpired within our financial reporting systems our analysis reveals that the combined influence of commercialism and regulatory response has led to a systemic decline in accounting s professional ideals and as a result an erosion of public trust we then propose virtuous professionalism as a necessary process for restoring financial reporting systems based on sociological professional and philosophical theories we argue that virtuous professionalism is necessary for restoring the public servant identity of the accounting professional we conclude that efforts to restore financial reporting systems should begin with reforms that restore professional identity shaped by virtues

institutional development through policy making a case study of the brazilian central bank a number of contemporary studies rightly emphasize the notion that policy outcomes result from institutional determinants but as a growing literature on institutional development notes these institutions are themselves impermanent sometimes in crisis moments institutions are replaced wholesale more frequently institutions evolve gradually over time using the brazilian central bank as a case study this article illustrates that the policy making process itself can be a central driver of gradual institutional development with institutions evolving through the accumulation of policy choices made over many years and under different policymakers in response to contemporaneous events and unforeseeable economic and political challenges

what global emission regulations should corporations support in their role as political actors and lobbyists corporations have responsibilities to help determine the existence and content of global regulations of pollutants the ethical nature of those responsibilities is highly sensitive to the assumed normative framework this paper compares several frameworks by modeling them as differently weighted versions of utilitarianism under a strict neoclassical approach corporations have a narrow obligation to maximize profits which generally entails opposing emission regulations in contrast a stakeholder approach as well as marxian and common ethics approaches suggest that firms have an obligation to actively support sustainable emission regulations with the following properties major restrictions would be global rather than local global restrictions would apply in all cases of persistent emissions global restrictions would apply to non persistent emissions as well unless they have been affirmatively shown to be safe using reasonably persuasive scientific evidence safety thresholds would be set fairly restrictively based on administrative models and rules of thumb in light of existing scientific knowledge but without requiring full scientific justification long run goals would include zero emission of persistent unsafe substances

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

economy of mutuality merging financial and social sustainability the article posits the concept of economy of mutuality as an intellectual mediation space for shifts in emphasis between market and social structures within economic theory and practice economy of mutuality it is contended provides an alternative frame of reference to the dichotomy of market economy and social economy for inquiry about what business is for and what values it presupposes and creates the article centers around the objective of gaining a broadened understanding of business so as to include not just market economy but social enterprise and social economy in pursuit of this objective a range of various archetypes of business enterprise are considered in light of higher ends of economic life the highest telos of business encompassing all such archetypes it is argued is founded on reciprocity and integral human development the article concludes that compared to market economy per se economy of mutuality provides a better conceptual framework for business in undertaking the challenges of sustainability

bringing income distribution in from the cold the title of this presidential address is chosen to highlight the way in which the subject of income distribution has in the past been marginalised for much of this century it has been very much out in the cold there are signs that in the 1990s it is being welcomed back and i shall be referring to recent research but i would like to use this occasion to give further impetus to the re incorporation of income distribution into the main body of economic analysis this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

international investment location decisions abstract in international location tournaments governments compete for foreign investment with tax and other short run incentives such tournaments can be won if agglomeration economies are sufficiently powerful to overcome investors desire to spread investments as a hedge against risk we focus on manufacturing investments by u s multinationals in the 1980s our econometric results suggest that agglomeration economies are indeed the dominant influence on investor calculations paradoxically short run incentives have limited apparent impact on location choice we conclude that high cost tournament play is unnecessary for countries with good infrastructure development specialized input suppliers and an expanding domestic market

innovation and the international diffusion of environmentally responsive technology abstract new evidence is presented on environmental innovation and diffusion over the 1970s and 1980s at a global level a substantial amount of innovations occurred in the united states japan and germany the share of environmental patents in all patents varied between 0 6 and 3 and as such was higher than the corresponding share of pollution abatement expenditure in gdp japanese environmental innovation rates were consistently high certain plausible connections between environmental regulation and innovation also emerge across these three countries and over time innovation responded to pollution abatement expenditure an indicator of the severity of environmental regulations environmental patenting rates in developing countries were also high reaching 2 in many years in brazil developing country innovators obtained a non trivial number of patents most of which appear geared towards adapting imported technologies to local conditions however domestic innovation was only one path to new technologies imports of disembodied environmental technologies foreign patents registered in developing countries were substantial foreign patents were typically important or generic patents evidence also suggests that such patents protected intellectual property in equipment exported developing countries especially in east asia often chose to obtain technologies embodied in pollution abatement equipment

do corporate codes of ethics reflect national character evidence from europe and the united states this paper analyses the usage and contents of corporate codes of ethics the results from a sample of 600 large european companies are contrasted with findings reported for similar u s firms the comparison reveals that significantly fewer european than u s firms adopted codes of ethics in europe the large majority of codes have been introduced only very recently and there are indications that codes made their way into europe via subsidiaries of u s firms however there are striking differences in content between u s and european codes of ethics pointing to the existence of a distinctly european approach to codifying ethics

from chain liability to chain responsibility this article examines whether the involvement of stakeholders in the design of corporate codes of conduct leads to a higher implementation likelihood of the code the empirical focus is on occupational safety and health osh the article compares the inclusion of osh issues in the codes of conduct of 30 companies involved in international framework agreements ifas agreed upon by trade unions and multinational enterprises with those of a benchmark sample of 38 leading multinational enterprises in comparable industries it is found that codes of the ifa group have a higher implementation likelihood in osh than the codes of the benchmark group further european firms culturally more used to stakeholder involvement score higher than their us and japanese competitors and hence are more capable of addressing the safety and health issues in international supply chains the implementation likelihood of codes seems closely related to the type of corporate csr approach

evaluating stakeholder theory this paper is the third in a series of four that is directed at understanding and assessing stakeholder theory for the purposes of business ethics it addresses the suitability and viability of the theory rejecting objections of a moral and efficiency sort based respectively on claims about property rights and the economic superiority of the alternative stockholder approach but accepting that implementation problems require limiting both the number of groupings admitted to stakeholder status and the degree of responsibility towards them the conclusion looks forward to the construction of a suitably limited version of the stakeholder approach in a fourth paper drawing upon this one and the previous two

the corporate social performance financial performance link strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management rather than traditional arenas of strategic management using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance corporate social performance csp is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance supporting the theory that slack resource availability and csp are positively related csp is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance supporting the theory that good management and csp are positively related 1997 by john wiley sons ltd