dealing with cultural differences in environmental management exploring the cep cfp relationship abstract despite numerous attempts to agree on the nature of the relationship between environmental and financial performance controversial results still exist in the literature this discrepancy suggests that we must enlarge the spectrum of analysis to understand when it pays to be green the way in which society takes a stance on environmental responsibility is deeply bounded to the cultural lenses through which it sets its priorities a cultural perspective can help explain the capacity for social phenomena to shape behaviour we consider how the contextual environment of culture thus far neglected might moderate the corporate environmental performance corporate financial performance relationship and thus influence firms capacity to offset the costs of environmental management by using a sample of 954 companies we contribute to the long running debate showing how the effect of cultural influence can overcome the hurdle of contrasting results and offer novel insights for both academia and practitioners

stakeholder defined corporate responsibility for a pre credit crunch financial service company lessons for how good reputations are won and lost this paper presents a study that identifies a stakeholder defined concept of corporate responsibility cr in the context of a uk financial service organisation in the immediate pre credit crunch era from qualitative analysis of interviews and focus groups with employees and customers we identify in a wide ranging stakeholder defined concept of cr six themes that together imply two necessary conditions for a firm to be regarded as responsible both corporate actions and character must be consonant with cr this provides both empirical support for a notable recent theoretical contribution by godfrey in acad manag rev 30 777 798 2005 and novel lessons for reputation management practice

the impact of institutional and social context on corporate environmental social and governance performance of companies committed to voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives abstract using a neo institutional framework this paper discusses the role of national specific social cultural legal regulatory and economic differences when determining the way that companies committed to a specific voluntary corporate social responsibility csr initiative operate in different sustainability dimensions the differences between companies environmental social and governance esg performance of the companies operating in the three countries with highest number of firms committed to the united nations global compact ungc spain france and japan is assessed through a multidimensional hj biplot technique which is a statistical technique that provides a joint graphical representation in a low dimensional euclidean space usually a plane of a multivariate data matrix this research contributes to the existing literature providing quantitative evidence of how different country specific social and institutional schemes influence companies esg performance the main results reveal the existence of two clusters of companies behaving in different ways with regard of sustainability issues first spanish and french companies exhibit similar levels of social and corporate governance performance higher than those of japanese firms second japanese firms seem more committed to environmental issues than spanish and french companies these results confirm that the different countries with different institutional backgrounds induce different priorities among their firms in terms of esg performance even under a common commitment to the same principles of adopted csr initiative

fund loyalty among socially responsible investors the importance of the economic and ethical domains the corporate social responsibility literature has emphasized the importance of both economic and ethical domains of corporate behavior analyzing unprecedented survey data from investors in a socially responsible sr mutual fund this article considers how economic and ethical concerns shape shareholder investment behavior in particular this article analyzes levels of investor fund loyalty defined as the continued investment in a mutual fund despite the belief that one is earning a lower return on investment building upon existing research that shows sr fund assets are more stable than conventional fund assets this article leverages within respondent comparisons to clarify that dual investors i e those who invest in both sr and conventional funds are more loyal to their sr fund than to their conventional fund this suggests that a corporation s ethical behavior attracts more patient investment capital an important consideration for any corporation that is deciding to what degree it should engage in corporate social responsibility in addition this article empirically demonstrates that economic motivations reduce sr fund loyalty and that ethical motivations induce sr fund loyalty this evidence that ethical motivation is associated with fund loyalty advances research on morality in the market by yielding empirical evidence to a largely theoretical debate

time consistency and bureaucratic budget competition high employment protection in the public sector results in strategic over employment if government divisions compete for budgets in a dynamic setting bureaucrats who are interested in maximising their divisions output employ excess labour since this induces the sponsor to provide complementary inputs in the future restrictions on hiring decisions in the public sector can be regarded as provisions to reduce strategic hiring we also provide evidence from a survey of decision makers in a public sector bureaucracy with very high employment protection the results confirm that decision makers are aware of the strategic effects of their hiring decisions on budget allocation 2008 the author s journal compilation royal economic society 2008

measurement error and misclassification a comparison of survey and administrative data we provide both a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relation between administrative and survey data by distinguishing between different sources of deviations between survey and administrative data we are able to reproduce several stylized facts we illustrate the implications of different error sources for estimation in simple econometric models and find potentially very substantial biases this article shows the sensitivity of some findings in the literature for the assumption that administrative data represent the truth in particular the common finding of substantial mean reversion in survey data largely goes away once we allow for a richer error structure

rebuilding trust ireland s csr plan in the light of caritas in veritate this paper seeks to contribute to the discussion on national corporate social responsibility csr plans from the perspectives of the three logics as articulated in caritas in veritate by using the irish national csr plan as an example good for business good for the community ireland s national plan on corporate social responsibility 2014 2016 maintains that csr activities can enable organisations to build relationships and trust with communities one of the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis was the decrease in trust in banking systems and in business more broadly it is well recognised that relationships of trust are essential to the life of the market the state and civil society pope emeritus benedict xvi s caritas in veritate contends that corresponding to the life of the market the state and civil society are three logics the logic of exchange i e giving to acquire the logic of public obligation i e giving through duty and the logic of gift i e giving due to solidarity this paper proposes that the normative framework of the three logics of caritas in veritate can be read into the irish national csr plan this paper argues that the examples of csr initiatives proffered by the plan could point organisations in the direction of the logic of gift and therefore enable the rebuilding of relationships of trust with citizens and communities

an empirical analysis of the daily labor supply of stadium venors this paper analyzes the daily labor supply behavior of food and beverage vendors at a single stadium over an entire baseball season this labor market is attractive for the study of labor supply both because ofvendors unilateraly decide whether to participate on each game date and because canges in product demand conditions across days are large and highly predictable generating exogenous game to game variation in the vendor wage i exploit the observable shift in product demand conditions across games to esumate the labor supply participation elasticity of stadium vendors estimates that recognize that demand conditions and vendor labor supply decisions simultancously determine the venofdor wage always find substantial labor supply elasticities typically in the 55 65 range in contract estimates that ignore the endoreneity of the ties these results highlight the imporatance of using demand shift markets

implications of mean reverting measurement error for longitudinal studies of wages and employment this paper examines the implications of mean reverting measurement error for two influential literatures based on longitudinal survey data 1 the literature on real wage variation over the business cycle and 2 the literature on intertemporal substitution in labor supply accounting for mean reverting measurement error suggests that real wages may be even more procyclical than indicated by recent longitudinal studies we also find that the instrumental variables estimator commonly used in intertemporal substitution studies is inconsistent if changes in earnings and hours of work are measured with different degrees of mean reversion but the magnitude of the resulting inconsistency appears to be small

corporate social performance and economic cycles do firms respond to changes in economic growth by altering their corporate social responsibility programs if they do respond are their responses simply neglect of areas associated with corporate social performance csp or do they also cut back on positive programs such as profit sharing public private housing programs or charitable contributions in this paper we argue that because csp related actions and programs tend to be discretionary they are likely to receive less attention during tough economic times a result of cost cutting efforts however the various csp performance areas vary in terms of their resource requirements and their influence on financial performance short and long term which suggests that firms may respond differently depending on area consequently in addition to examining csp concerns separately from positive actions and programs csp strengths we also examine the influence of economic growth across the five areas of diversity employee relations the environment product quality safety and the community based on data from 837 firms over 15 years our results suggest that firms neglect some areas associated with csp during economic downturns resulting in increased concerns about community and employee relations product safety quality and the environment however this relationship does not apply to positive actions and programs instead firms tend to increase their positive csp programs in areas such as diversity employee relations and the environment during periods of slow economic growth and reduce them when the economy picks up we offer potential explanations for our findings and discuss their importance to research on csp

incumbent employees resistance to implementing privatization policy abstract the recent anti privatization trend in latin america france and south africa is a reminder that employees resist privatization because pre privatization firms tend to be over manned and to pay excessive wages we study the effect of employees resistance on the successful implementation of privatization in a stylized model in which the government interacts with employees of an unknown type the analysis clarifies some of the difficulties associated with the implementation process furthermore although common sense dictates that the government negotiates with the employees before finding an outside buyer we show that sometimes it is better off contacting an investor first

an empirical model of labor supply in a life cycle setting this paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labor supply using theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behavior a two step empirical analysis yields estimates of intertemporal and uncompensated substitution effects which provide the information needed to predict the response of hours of work to life cycle wage growth and shifts in the lifetime wage path

the labor supply response to mismeasured but predictable wage changes most panel data studies of intertemporal labor supply assume classical measurement error recent validation studies refute this assumption in this study i address nonclassical measurement error explicitly i use data on males from the panel study of income dynamics validation study to purge measurement error from the panel study of income dynamics i find a large amount of predictable wage variation in the data even after allowing for measurement error however there is almost no labor supply response to these predictable wage changes therefore failure to control for nonclassical measurement error cannot explain the low estimated labor supply elasticities in other papers

corporate social responsibility a strategic advantage or a strategic necessity for many firms a focus on corporate social responsibility csr is an indication to stakeholders that the firm is concerned about social and environmental issues however these same firms may engage in csr activities with the expectation that these activities will increase their bottom line a relevant and highly researched question is the relationship between csr and performance the findings are inconclusive indicating a need to consider other explanations several authors have drawn on the resource based view of the firm to suggest that csr can give a firm a competitive advantage in this article we draw on and further develop this research by focusing on four outcomes of csr initiatives strategic disadvantage strategic necessity temporary strategic advantage and strategic advantage we exemplify this with two cases the article contributes to the literature by developing a set of possible outcomes by recognizing several issues which result in strategic necessity and by suggesting movement between the outcomes

real wages over the business cycle evidence from panel data one topic on which keynes did not disagree with classical economists was the cyclical behavior of real wages keynes 1936 as well as various classical writers predicted that real wages should move countercyclically quoting the general theory p 17 in general an increase in employment can only occur through the accompaniment of a decline in real wages thus i am not disputing this vital fact which the classical economists have rightly asserted as indefeasible this prediction is based on the premise of competition and a given short run capital stock increases in employment then correspond to more intensive use of capital and through diminishing product lower real wages for this reason evidence by dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 that real wages move procyclically was viewed as paradoxical both dunlop and tarshis based their findings on an observed positive correlation between real and money wages which given the procyclical movement of money wages implies a positive correlation between

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

estimation of poverty transition matrices with noisy data summary this paper investigates measurement error biases in estimated poverty transition matrices we compare transition matrices based on survey expenditure data to transition matrices based on measurement error free simulated expenditure the simulation model uses estimates that correct for measurement error in expenditure we find that time varying measurement error in expenditure data magnifies economic mobility roughly 45 of households initially in poverty at time t 1 are found to be out of poverty at time t using data from the korean labor and income panel study when measurement error is removed this drops to between 26 and 31 of households initially in poverty copyright 2016 john wiley sons ltd

shareholder value stakeholder management and social issues what s the bottom line we test the relationship between shareholder value stakeholder management and social issue participation building better relations with primary stakeholders like employees customers suppliers and communities could lead to increased shareholder wealth by helping firms develop intangible valuable assets which can be sources of competitive advantage on the other hand using corporate resources for social issues not related to primary stakeholders may not create value for shareholders we test these propositions with data from s p 500 firms and find evidence that stakeholder management leads to improved shareholder value while social issue participation is negatively associated with shareholder value copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

evidence on the validity of cross sectional and longitudinal labor market data this article investigates error properties of survey reports of labor market variables we use the panel study of income dynamics psid validation study a two wave panel survey of workers employed by a large firm that shared its detailed payroll records individuals reports of annual earnings are fairly accurate errors are negatively related to true earnings reducing bias due to measurement error when earnings are used as an independent variable biases are moderately larger for changes in earnings earnings per hour are less reliably reported than annual earnings biases in estimating earnings functions are relatively small but those in labor supply functions may be important

do sustainable companies have a better financial performance a study on brazilian public companies abstract increasingly companies are taking initiatives to mitigate the negative social and environmental impacts to address the emerging needs of society in the financial realm stock markets created indices to offer investors the option to prioritize sustainable companies in brazil the initiative came from the sao paulo stock exchange by releasing the corporate sustainability index in this paper we analyze the financial and economic performance of companies listed in the corporate sustainability index in comparison with the performance of companies listed in the sao paulo stock exchange index for that profitability and liquidity ratios were calculated and statistical tests specifically cluster and nonparametric analysis were performed to validate possible trends similarities or differences observed in each group of companies based on our analysis we found no evidence of economic and financial performance differences between companies from each of the studied indices in fact our findings show that other characteristics such as sectorial classification have more influence on firms economic and financial performance than their investments in sustainable initiatives the research contributes to the body of knowledge in the field of corporate sustainability by utilizing a different methodology than similar studies have used incorporating different accounting ratios and new statistical analyses of data from the emerging brazilian market

finite sample bias in iv estimation of intertemporal labor supply models is the intertemporal substitution elasticity really small the empirical literature on intertemporal labor supply behavior documents that the intertemporal elasticity of substitution of labor supply is very low with a plausible range of zero to 0 2 drawing upon the literature on the distribution of instrumental variables iv estimators this paper demonstrates that this conventional wisdom is erroneous because it does not take into account the severe finite sample bias in these estimates that arise from weak instruments this paper adopts several approaches to adjust for the problems induced by these weak instruments the empirical results show that when uncorrected for finite sample bias the two stage least squares 2sls estimate of the elasticity is essentially zero as in most of the previous studies with its valid confidence interval being open ended however when corrected for finite sample bias the estimate becomes approximately 0 5 with a much tighter confidence interval

sustainable business model adoption among s p 500 firms a longitudinal content analysis study in this study we examine the diversity of sustainable business models adopted by the largest global corporations those listed in the s p 500 index over the period 2005 2014 we examine press release communications during this period which represent public data about business relevant events we expect that examining this communication can reveal longitudinal patterns in the adoption of sustainable business activities and models empirically we utilize academic and practitioner expert panels to build a set of keywords across nine sustainable business model archetypes and utilize automated content analysis to examine the breadth and nature of a firm s sustainable business activities and practices we find evidence of the increasing prominence of different types of sustainable business models over time in particular the results show that large capitalized firms have mostly adopted the environmentally oriented archetypes and to much lesser extent the societal and organizational ones

a resource based view of the socially responsible firm stakeholder interdependence ethical awareness and issue responsiveness as strategic assets in recent years the resource based view of the firm has made significant headway in explaining differences in interfirm performance however this perspective has not considered the social and ethical dimensions of organizational resources this paper seeks to provide such an integration using kuhn s three stage model of adaptive behavior the resource worthiness of stakeholder management business ethics and issues management are explored the paper concludes by drawing on prospect theory to understand the reasons for this conceptual lacuna

does equity ownership matter for corporate social responsibility a literature review of theories and recent empirical findings based on the concept of shareholder primacy many scholars have argued that it is more important for businesses to earn profits for their shareholders than to provide benefits to society at large corporate social responsibility csr is often regarded as an investment that comes at the expense of shareholders in contrast research analyzing the connections between the equity ownership structure of a company and its level of csr engagement suggests that csr offers benefits to shareholders that go beyond direct financial returns from investments this study provides a comprehensive review and systematic assessment of theoretical considerations and approaches regarding different forms of equity ownership and their relationships to csr and it discusses the relevant benefits and motivations of shareholders the perceived value of these csr benefits varies among different types of shareholders as they assign unequal values to short term financial or to rather long term csr benefits based on a literature sample of 146 publications this review demonstrates central problems inherent in previous analyses given the ambiguous and partially contradictory findings of prior research this study identifies potential moderating influences that help clarify empirical evidence a contingency approach is suggested in future research as this can help resolve the problem of contradictory empirical findings and theoretical arguments

corporate environmental citizenship variation in developing countries an institutional framework this study focuses on why some companies in developing countries go beyond environmental regulations when implementing their corporate environmental social responsibilities or citizenship behavior drawing mainly upon the new institutional theory this study develops a conceptual framework to explain three institutional factors companies market orientations industrial characteristics and corporate identities accordingly we suggest that companies from developing countries that are oriented to markets in developed countries operate in highly concentrated industries and have missionary identities adopt corporate environmental citizenship behavior by going beyond environmental regulations the study also discusses the theoretical policy and managerial implications of the conceptual framework

ecology driven real options an investment framework for incorporating uncertainties in the context of the natural environment the role of uncertainty within an organization s environment features prominently in the business ethics and management literature but how corporate investment decisions should proceed in the face of uncertainties relating to the natural environment is less discussed from the perspective of ecological economics the salience of ecology induced issues challenges management to address new types of uncertainties these pertain to constraints within the natural environment as well as to institutional action aimed at conserving the natural environment we derive six areas of ecology induced uncertainties and propose ecology driven real options as a conceptual approach for systematically incorporating these uncertainties into strategic management we combine our results in an integrative investment framework and illustrate its application with the case of carbon constraints

the emergence of corporate social responsibility in chile the importance of authenticity and social networks little is known about how and why corporate social responsibility csr emerged in lesser developed countries in order to address this knowledge gap we used chile as a test case and conducted a series of in depth interviews with leaders of csr initiatives we also did an internet and literature search to help provide support for the findings that emerged from our data we discovered that while there are similarities in the drivers of csr in developed countries there are distinct differences as well in particular we found that different sectors drive csr in chile in contrast to other geographies where consumer demand and government regulation provided the impetus for csr efforts multinational companies mncs and non governmental organizations ngos are key actors in chile mncs imported their csr beliefs skills and processes into chile their efforts resulted in a virtuous cycle once large domestic firms felt pressured by their mnc rivals they too adopted csr initiatives the ability to manage relationships with multiple stakeholders and perceptions of authenticity were also critical to the success of csr in chile using network theory as a lens we suggest that network density and centrality largely determine whether csr efforts will be authentic based on these contentions we suggest avenues for future research

responsible management incentive systems and productivity a disconnect remains between theories about responsible management and application in real life organizations part of the reason is due to the complexity and holistic nature of the field and the fact that many of the benefits of aligning business objectives with changing societal conditions are of an intangible nature human resource management is an increasingly important part of the field with benefits including talent retention higher levels of motivation and improvements in organizational cohesion this paper sets out an experiment run at a large spanish university to try to analyze the impact on worker productivity of a responsible management stance by an employer based on the corporate social performance model the paper examines the issue from the point of view of responsibilities responsiveness and outcomes and considers the cost benefit effect of incorporating a social responsibility variable into the wage structure to measure the impact on productivity

corporate environmental responsibility in polluting industries does religion matter using a sample of chinese listed firms in polluting industries for the period of 2008 2010 we empirically investigate whether and how buddhism china s most influential religion affects corporate environmental responsibility cer in this study we measure buddhist variables as the number of buddhist monasteries within a certain radius around chinese listed firms registered addresses in addition we hand collect corporate environmental disclosure scores based on the global reporting initiative gri sustainability reporting guidelines using hand collected buddhism data and corporate environmental disclosure scores we provide strong and robust evidence that buddhism is significantly positively associated with cer this finding is consistent with the following view buddhism can serve as social norms to evoke the consciousness of social responsibility and thereof strengthen cer our findings also reveal that the positive association between buddhism and cer is attenuated for firms with higher law enforcement index the results are robust to various measures of buddhism and a variety of sensitivity tests

determinants of corporate social disclosure in spanish local governments this paper contributes to previous country level analyses of non financial reporting in the public sector by studying public transparency in relation to sustainability as well as by assessing the determinants of sustainability disclosure practices in spanish municipalities we have carried out a content analysis of the websites of 102 spanish local governments subsequently we have employed different statistical techniques biplots and dependence models to analyse the extent of disclosure and to determine the impact of certain contextual and political factors on transparency in matters of sustainability when compared to the amount of information that is revealed concerning financial issues disclosure practices regarding social and environmental information are rather scarce we have also observed that several political factors more specifically the presence of conservative governments and political rivalry may become genuine barriers to municipal transparency based on these findings we can make two policy recommendations first it seems necessary to establish national policies laws or recommendations that generate similar levels of transparency among local governments in order to avoid social dilemmas in this sense similar accountability processes limit non sustainable behaviours playing a similar role to that of markets for the private sector second accountability processes should focus on the addition of information concerning social and environmental actions and on informing of the effects of municipalities on them going beyond the strictly economic dimension

deconstructing the relationship between corporate social and financial performance for four decades research on the role and responsibilities of business in society has centered on the business case for corporate social responsibility csr and an increasing number of studies on the corporate social performance csp corporate financial performance cfp link emerged leading to controversial results heeding the call for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms linking certain csr efforts to certain performance outcomes this study provides a stakeholder based organizing framework rooted in an extensive review of existing literature on the link between csp and cfp in so doing we aim at guiding research and practice toward less simplistic understandings of the csp cfp connection thus advancing the debate over the consequences of voluntary integrating csr into business operations and into relationships with stakeholders by disentangling specific drivers and outcomes of the csp cfp link we underline the importance of setting clear boundaries and specifying levels of analysis to generate comparable results

the corporate social responsibility of pharmaceutical product recalls an empirical examination of u s and u k markets the pressure on companies to practice corporate social responsibility csr has gained momentum in recent times as a means of sustaining competitive advantage in business the pharmaceutical industry has been acutely affected by this trend while pharmaceutical product recalls have become rampant and increased dramatically in recent years no comprehensive study has been conducted to study the effects of announcements of recalls on the shareholder returns of pharmaceutical companies as product recalls could significantly damage a company s reputation profitability and brand integrity this paper investigates the effect on shareholder wealth and the extent to which the adoption of csr practices by pharmaceutical companies in the united kingdom u k and the united states u s the two largest markets for pharmaceutical products in the world affected market reactions surrounding product recall announcements the analysis of product recall announcements from 1998 to 2004 compiled from the pharmaceutical journal and u s food and drug administration enforcement reports revealed marked differences in the way market participants in the two countries responded to news of product recalls u s investors penalised firms according to the severity of product defects while u k investors were indifferent while u k investors rewarded product recalls by firms which were not usually csr active u s investors punished non csr active firms that performed recalls these observations could pose strategic challenges to pharmaceutical firms operating in both countries

corporate social responsibility in the multinational enterprise strategic and institutional approaches what is the relationship of global and local country specific corporate social responsibility csr to international organizational strategy applying the strategic logic of the bartlett and ghoshal typology to the realm of csr multinational firms should respond to pressures for integration and responsiveness from salient stakeholders however an institutional logic would suggest that multinational firms will simply replicate the existing product market organizational strategy multidomestic transnational global in their management of csr these alternative approaches are tested with a survey instrument sent to mnes operating in mexico the results of this study are consistent with the proposition that institutional pressures rather than strategic analysis of social issues and stakeholders are guiding decision making with respect to csr we develop implications for mne management and research as well as public policy

the relevance of stakeholder theory and social capital theory in the context of csr in smes an australian perspective the concept of business responsibility usually termed as corporate social responsibility csr originated in the early 1930s after the wall street crash of 1929 exposed corporate irresponsibility in large organisations the understanding of csr has evolved since then and its scope has now broadened from mere compliance to corporate laws to active alignment of internal business goals with externally set societal aspirations unfortunately the significance of this multidimensional concept within the small and medium enterprise sme sector has continued to be overshadowed by its application in large and multinational organisations more importantly this has led to the practice of judging smes which are experiencing increasing pressure to engage in social activities as if they are no different from their larger counterparts this study therefore investigates csr from the perspective of smes in australia without any theoretical presumptions and then comments on the relevance and applicability of the two theories that have been commonly used to investigate business responsibility namely stakeholder theory st and social capital theory sct the research findings indicate that csr within the sme sector is more aligned to the fundamentals of sct mainly owing to the unique resource and survival challenges that they face and which are arguably not so pronounced in large organisations

scoring firms codes of ethics an explorative study of quality drivers research in the field of management has increasingly focused on strategies and tools related to corporate sustainability of the tools examined codes of ethics have been found to play a primary role many studies have investigated the content of such codes as well as their capacity to condition the behaviour of people within organizations however few studies have considered the intrinsic quality of codes of ethics this study aims to investigate the impact that specific factors firm size degree of internationalization and industry effect can have on the quality of codes of ethics based on a sample of 248 listed italian companies the results of the empirical analysis show that the quality standard is particularly high in larger companies and in those firms operating in industries in which relationships established with critical stakeholders and disclosure to those stakeholders play a crucial role these results have interesting implications for both researchers and practitioners

dealing with uncertainties when governing csr policies as corporate social responsibility involves a voluntary business endeavour to address social and environmental issues beyond legal compliance governments cannot fall back on hierarchical command and control policies to support it as such it is complementary with the increasing popularity of public policies known as new governance policies where the government is engaged in a horizontal inter organizational network of societal actors and where public policy is both formed and executed by the interacting and voluntary efforts from a multitude of stakeholders however such policies are known to generate substantive uncertainty about the content of csr and its related issues strategic uncertainty regarding the behavior of the actors involved and institutional uncertainty related to the interaction process involved in the institutional change we explore new governance policy instruments to address these uncertainties in the context csr and discuss the experiences with these methods in the european union

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

the role of infomediaries csr in the business press during 2000 2009 given the important role that business media play in corporate life scarce attention has been paid to the role of media in the construction and popularization of corporate social responsibility c

consumption volatility liquidity constraints and household welfare we evaluate the impact of increased income uncertainty and financial liberalisation in the us on consumption volatility and household welfare we estimate euler equations and measure the volatility of unpredictable changes in consumption as the squared residuals we directly control for liquidity constraints using survey of consumer finances data on access to credit and document that despite the increase in household debt between 1983 and 2007 there was no decline in the proportion of liquidity constrained households consumption volatility increased significantly over this period especially for liquidity constrained households indicating substantial welfare losses

fluidity of regulation csr nexus the multinational corporate corruption example corporate social responsibility csr is a relatively undeveloped concept despite its increasing importance to corporations one difficulty is the possible inexactness of csr another is the apparent reluctance by regulatory authorities and policy makers to intervene in the area this is largely a result of inhibitions created by traditional approaches to company law with emphasis on shareholder protection and financial disclosure the consequence is the stultification of independent development of csr by tying social issues to financial performance this attitude might not be unconnected to the theoretical and practical challenges in justifying csr and defining its scope the underlying impediment is a factual and theoretical failure to distinguish instrumental and pure ethical csr this article demonstrates that ethical csr highlights the role of regulation and a principal stance is that regulation is neither incompatible nor irreconcilable with ethical csr the article argues that cognizance of the intrinsic moral justification of pure csr is required for delineating the scope of csr as well as for clarifying the desirability and extent of its regulation it argues that the dynamic history and visage of multinational corporate corruption illuminates the fluidity of the regulation csr relationship the current and widening backlash against transnational corporate corruption is arguably a demonstration of the position that regulation and csr are not mutually exclusive and absolute concepts this article submits that recognition and application of this ethical and instrumental csr distinction is fundamental to the development of csr and resolution of connected questions of regulation

intertemporal substitution in labor supply evidence from micro data the sensitivity of the supply of labor to intertemporal variation in the wage is an important issue in macroeconomics the analysis of social security and pensions and the study of life cycle patterns of work this paper explores two approaches to the measurement of intertemporal substitution that have appeared in the literature the first approach is to use consumption to control for wealth and unobserved expectations about future wages in the labor supply equation the second approach is to estimate a first difference equation for hours in which labor supply from the previous period serves as a control for wealth and wage expectations the results indicate that intertemporal substitution elasticity for married men is positive but small

privatization labor and social safety nets privatization promotes economic efficiency and growth thereby reinforcing macroeconomic adjustment in the short run however it can lead to job losses and wage cuts for workers this paper discusses these adverse impacts of privatization in terms of various methods of privatization and surveys the existing empirical evidence it finds that public sales and auctions can have stronger negative effects on workers but maximize the government s revenue policymakers options for mitigating the social impact of privatization are surveyed copyright 2001 by blackwell publishers ltd

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

consumer reactions to corporate tax strategies effects on corporate reputation and purchasing behavior on the basis of an interdisciplinary approach linking taxation marketing and corporate social responsibility the present research investigates the effects of media reports on aggressive and responsible corporate tax strategies ctss on corporate success with consumers by means of two laboratory experiments n 150 360 we analyze the effects of the ctss on corporate reputation consumer purchase intention and the consumer s willingness to pay our results suggest that aggressive ctss diminish corporate success with consumers whereas responsible ctss enhance it nevertheless consumers are not willing to pay a price premium for products sold by responsible tax planning companies but rather punish aggressive tax planning companies through a slightly lower willingness to pay finally consumers tax morale and their attitude toward tax avoidance are important moderating variables given the growing level of media interest in taxation our findings are crucial for assessing consumer related non tax costs and the benefits of different ctss

corporations and ngos when accountability leads to co optation interactions between corporations and nonprofits are on the rise frequently driven by a corporate interest in establishing credentials for corporate social responsibility csr in this article we show how increasing demands for accountability directed at both businesses and ngos can have the unintended effect of compromising the autonomy of nonprofits and fostering their co optation greater scrutiny of ngo spending driven by self appointed watchdogs of the nonprofit sector and a prevalence of strategic notions of csr advanced by corporate actors weaken the ability of civil society actors to change the business practices of their partners in the commercial sector to counter this trend we argue that corporations should embrace a political notion of csr and should actively encourage ngos to strengthen downward accountability mechanisms even if this creates more tensions in corporate ngo partnerships rather than seeing ngos as tools in a competition for a comparative advantage in the market place corporations should actively support ngo independence and critical capacity

opening the black box of csr decision making a policy capturing study of charitable donation decisions in china this policy capturing study conducted in china investigated the cognitive basis of managerial decisions to make a corporate charitable donation a global issue in the context of corporate social responsibility csr research and practice participants n 376 responded to a series of scenarios manipulating pressure from the five stakeholders government customers competitors employees and shareholders most commonly addressed by csr research the independent variables examined included organizational factors industry ownership previous company donation firm size firm age and perceived ceo attitudes toward charity and the participants personal values results indicate a large positive effect of shareholder and governmental pressure on the decision with lesser positive effects from customers and competitors surprisingly employee pressure had a negative effect on the decision to make a charitable donation further personal values and perceived ceo attitudes toward charity were significantly related to the decisions participants made in line with our theorizing the findings indicate that a combination of personal organizational and institutional factors was salient in the minds of decision makers

an analysis of cause related marketing implementation strategies through social alliance partnership conditions and strategic objectives cause related marketing crm is an effective marketing tool for promoting corporate social responsibility csr activities and the bulk of campaigns are designed and delivered through collaborative social alliances with non profit organisations npos the authors seek to uncover some of the factors that explain how firms and npos choose their potential partners in the development of their crm strategy the rationales for the observed patterns are investigated through semi structured interviews conducted with managers employed by the uk based firms and npos the authors find that each party has specific preferences when choosing the particular crm implementation strategies in different situations as well as different initial positions when negotiating the formation of the social alliance this article contributes to our understanding of the crm implementation strategies and both the company s and the npo s behaviours toward each of the strategies

small business owner managers perceptions of business ethics and csr related concepts recent academic articles point to an increased vagueness and overlap in concepts related to business ethics and corporate responsibility further the perception of these notions can differ in the small business world from the original academic definitions this article focuses on the cognition of small business owner managers given the impact of small business owner managers on their ventures corporate responsibility and ethical issues can take a different route in smes the small business owner manager is able to shape the corporate culture and to enact values other than profit adopting a cognitive perspective we have identified how the small business owner manager makes sense of notions linked to corporate social responsibility csr and business ethics the concept of sensemaking has recently been applied to csr basu and pallazzo 2008 cramer et al 2006 applying a cognitive perspective to small business owners may help in explaining specific phenomena found within small business ownership for this research the repertory grid technique rgt is used a method that has not previously been widely applied in the business and society field

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

philanthropy integration or innovation exploring the financial and societal outcomes of different types of corporate responsibility this article argues that previous research on the outcomes of corporate responsibility should be refined in two ways first although there is abundant research that addresses the link between corporate responsibility cr and financial performance hardly any studies scrutinize whether the type of corporate responsibility makes a difference to this link second while the majority of cr research conducted within business studies concentrates on the financial outcomes for the firm the societal outcomes of cr are left largely unexplored to tackle these two deficiencies this article extends the different conceptualizations of corporate responsibility and elaborates both the financial and the societal outcomes of different types of cr

real wage cyclicality in the eurozone before and during the great recession evidence from micro data we study the response of real wages to the business cycle in eight major eurozone countries before and during the great recession average real wages are found to be acyclical but this reflects in large part the effect of changes in the composition of the labour force related to unemployment variations over the cycle using longitudinal micro data from the echp and silc panels to control for composition effects we estimate the elasticities of real wage growth to unemployment increases between 0 6 and 1 over the period 1994 2011 composition effects have been particularly large since 2008 and they explain most of the stagnation or increase in the average wage observed in some countries from 2008 to 2011 in contrast at a constant labour force composition in terms of education and experience the figures indicate a significant decrease in average wages during the downturn particularly in countries most affected by the crisis overall there is no evidence of downward nominal wage rigidity during the great recession in most countries in our sample

are u s cities underpoliced theory and evidence we document the extent of measurement errors in the basic data set on police used in the literature on the effect of police on crime analyzing medium to large u s cities over 1960 to 2010 we obt

individual dynamic managerial capabilities influence over environmental and social commitment under a gender perspective abstract the current business market is characterized by rapid and continuous changes companies should adapt to new situations to guarantee sustainable development managers need to have capabilities to understand the new environment s requirements managers individual dynamic capabilities idc help them face these unpredictable changes in the market however few authors have analysed individual dynamic capabilities to ensure business sustainability this study aims to shed light on the relationship between a manager s idc and business sustainability from a gender perspective a survey of 339 managers was conducted and structural equation modelling sem was applied to study the impact of the relationship the results show that managers individual dynamic capabilities help them detect changes in the market earlier and promote a greater social and environmental commitment from those managers in addition significant differences in the environmental and social commitment between men and women were found therefore this paper first provides advice for developing business sustainability to provide an advantage for organizations second individual dynamic managerial capabilities appear to be important for promoting sustainability finally another step in the construction of gender and sustainability is provided thus this paper provides useful empirical evidence for managerial practice from a strategic management viewpoint

using propensity matching estimators to evaluate the impact of privatization on wages whether the transfer of ownership rights to the private sector leads to a decline or increase in wage growth is theoretically ambiguous given that the outcome depends on the uncertain interaction between firms and workers using propensity matching techniques this article investigates the effects of privatization on wages in the portuguese banking industry the empirical results obtained from quadros de pessoal for the period between 1989 and 1997 generally show a negative positive short run long run effect of privatization on relative wage growth for both men and women retained in the privatized firms moreover the results show that the most educated and experienced oldest workers as well as those in the high skill occupational categories were more likely to experience a negative wage effect

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

measurement error and earnings dynamics some estimates from the psid validation study previous empirical work on measurement error in survey earnings data has shown that the variance of the measurement error is roughly constant over time it is negatively correlated with true earnings and it is autocorrelated with previous measurement errors this article proposes a simple model in which the measurement error stems from underreporting of transitory earnings fluctuations and a white noise component the model fits well to data from the panel study of income dynamics validation study the results imply that autocorrelations in the changes of earnings can be estimated relatively accurately despite the presence of measurement error

the icelandic banking crisis a reason to rethink csr in the fall of 2008 the three largest banks in iceland collapsed with severe and lasting consequences for the icelandic economy this article discusses the icelandic banking crisis in relation to the notion of corporate social responsibility csr it explores some conceptual arguments for the position that the icelandic banking crisis illustrates the broad problem of the indeterminacy of the scope and content of the duties that csr is supposed to address in particular it is suggested that the way the banks in question conceived of csr i e largely in terms of strategic philanthropy was gravely inadequate it concludes by proposing that the case of the icelandic banking crisis gives us a reason to rethink csr

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