the fairwear campaign an ethical network in the australian garment industry in many parts of the world homework is a form of labour characterised by precariousness lack of regulation and invisibility and lack of protection of the workers who are often amongst the world s poorest and most exploited homework is spreading due to firm practices such as outsourcing the analysis and understanding of complex corporate networks may assist with the identification and protection of those most at risk within the supply chain network it can also expose some of the key ethical issues and dilemmas of supply chain management and corporate social responsibility csr based on a case study of the australian fairwear campaign fwc this article identifies an ethical network that aims to increase corporate accountability ca via greater transparency in corporate supply chains and improve work conditions for homeworkers and increase their recognition in the supply chain

racing to the bottom and racing to the top the crucial role of firm characteristics in foreign direct investment choices this study builds on the pollution haven and induced innovation arguments as explanations for firm behavior with regard to international environmental management and argues both need to be integrated this implies that foreign direct investment is capable of facilitating a race to the bottom and a race to the top simultaneously using novel and detailed data we test whether environmental capabilities and weaknesses and other characteristics affect us firms foreign direct investment choices in chinese provinces with more or less stringent environmental regulation this enables a more detailed analysis by allowing country regulation to vary spatially and over time our study finds that heterogeneity in capabilities and firm size jointly determine foreign direct investment and in doing so shows the simultaneity of a race to the bottom and to the top specifically firms with environmental capabilities invest in more stringently regulated regions and firms with weaknesses are less likely to target such regions these diverging effects are both moderated by firm size which further amplifies each of them our findings underscore the need to integrate pollution haven and induced innovation arguments in a joint analysis they furthermore show the relevance of methodological choices when testing hypotheses integrating the above arguments empirically

flexibility and security within european labor markets in this comparative qualitative study the authors examine how local bargaining shapes the trade off between labor flexibility and employment security policies in four multinational subsidiaries in belgium britain and germany they also consider whether and how union power to shape flexibility and security policies is affected by national institutions the way that multinationals organize their subsidiaries and local contextual factors findings support this multilevel interdependent framework trade offs are shaped by differences in workers structural power in specific local subsidiaries differences in inter subsidiary organizational configurations markets and technologies modify how unions can leverage collective resources to wield power in their relationship with management

being good when being international in an emerging economy the case of china the importance imposed on corporate social responsibility csr is greater in developed economies than in emerging markets the pressures from various stakeholder groups on the csr are expected to have substantial spillover impact on companies domiciled in emerging economies that obtain revenues from companies in developed economies based on the data from 1 330 listed companies in china the largest emerging economy in the world this study provides evidence that the csr performance of china firms is positively related to the degree of their internationalization and such a positive association is less pronounced for state owned enterprises our findings support the hypothesis that internationalized companies in emerging economies are motivated to improve their csr practices to address concerns from their importers or outsourcers in developed economies

escaping the iron cage liabilities of origin and csr reporting of emerging market multinational enterprises this article examines the link between the condition of institutional voids in emerging markets and the use of the practice of corporate social responsibility csr reporting by emerging market multinational enterprises em mnes based on neo institutional theory and in light of the specificity of emerging markets we propose a positive relationship between institutional voids and csr reporting home country institutional voids push companies to internationalize as a way to escape the institutional constraints and inefficiencies in their own markets but at the same time create legitimacy challenges for these companies abroad in particular em mnes from less institutionally developed countries are likely to face liabilities of origin negative perceptions in host countries about these firms willingness and ability to conduct legitimate business csr reporting is an effective strategy to overcome such liabilities and barriers to legitimation as it conveys to host countries and global stakeholders alignment with global meta norms and expectations internationalization listing on developed country stock exchanges and time further magnify em mnes legitimacy challenges and thus the use of csr reporting to mitigate them our hypotheses are supported in a longitudinal study of 157 of the largest em mnes ranked by the united nations conference on trade and development unctad between 2004 and 2011

stakeholder pressures as determinants of csr strategic choice why do firms choose symbolic versus substantive self regulatory codes of conduct to encourage corporations to contribute positively to the environment in which they operate voluntary self regulatory codes src have been enacted and refined over the past 15 years two of the most prominent are the united nations global compact and the global reporting initiative in this paper we explore the impact of different stakeholders pressures on the selection of strategic choices to join srcs our results show that corporations react differently to different sets of stakeholder pressures and that the src selection depends on the type and intensiveness of the stakeholder pressures as well as the resources at hand to respond to those pressures our contribution offers a more specific and finely variegated analysis of firm stakeholder interactions

an empirical analysis of the determination of house prices in the united kingdom between the first quarters of 1970 and 1980 the average price of new houses in the united kingdom increased five fold over the same period building societies grew to become major financial institutions attracting almost 50 per cent of the personal sector s holdings of liquid assets and responsible for more than 85 per cent of house purchase finance this paper sets out to examine the extent to which building societies have been responsible for the rapid acceleration of house prices and indicates the other main determinants of this phenomenon the analysis is extended to a discussion of recent econometric research into house price determination and arrives at a more general specification employing an error correction estimation methodology

what determines principle based standards implementation reporting on global compact adoption in spanish firms international accountability standards have proliferated in the last 20 years with the un global compact gc as the most widely accepted principle based standard catalyzing voluntary participation by firms this study aims to improve understanding about the factors that determine companies progress in adopting principle based standards drawing on the resource based view of the firm we examine the direct and combined influences of different organizational resources firm specific resources innovative capability length of participation and internationalization of the firm on standard implementation as perceived by 213 spanish gc signatories our results reveal that the level of firm specific resources has a positive effect on the extent of gc principles implementation and that innovative capability and length of gc participation strengthen this effect contrary to our expectations we find that the internationalization of firms does not have an effect on gc principles implementation we discuss the implications of these findings for scholars and practicing managers

being good while being bad social responsibility and the international diversification of us firms this paper contributes to the discussion on international diversification and corporate social responsibility csr by suggesting that firms can be simultaneously socially responsible and socially irresponsible to test our assertions we analyze data from 222 publicly traded us firms from 1993 to 2003 the findings support our hypotheses and have significant implications for the way in which we conceptualize csr

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

food security gender and occupational choice among urban low income households this paper examines an adaptive strategy using occupational choice that can be undertaken by household members in urban poor areas to help ensure their access to food our investigation focuses on self employed women and men in 14 predominantly slum communities in bolivia ecuador philippines and thailand results of our empirical analysis show that choice of business is associated with household vulnerability to food insecurity with women in vulnerable households likely to engage in food enterprises the findings suggest that urban low income households can mitigate the risk of food shortage through the selection of an enterprise activity that earns money income and is a direct source of food for consumption

valuation of the operating flexibility of multinational corporations the returns to multinationality are estimated as the value of operating flexibility empirical measures of the return of multinationality require a precise specification of the extensiveness of the mnc s transnational network to measure the degree of multinationality this precise empirically grounded definition of multinationality has been absent from the academic literature to date we address this omission and we find that two characteristics of the transnational network its breadth number of foreign countries in which the mnc has operations and depth the concentration of foreign subsidiaries in a few countries are significant in explaining the value of operating flexibility in particular we find that the returns to multinationality are maximized for firms with networks that have breadth but not depth the role of market intangibles such as r d and advertising on mnc market valuation is shown to depend on the flexibility regime

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

tax subsidies to owner occupied housing an asset market approach inflation reduces the effective cost of homeownership and raises the tax subsidy to owner occupation this paper presents an asset market model of the housing market and estimates how changes in the expected inflation rate affect the real price of houses and the equilibrium size of the housing capital stock simulation results suggest that the accelerating inflation of the 1970s which substantially reduced homeowners user costs could have accounted for as much as a 30 percent increase in real house prices persistent high inflation rates could lead ultimately to a sizable increase in the stock of owner occupied housing

the rise in house prices in china bubbles or fundamentals the dramatic rise of house prices in many cities of china has brought huge attention from both the governmental and academic circles there is a huge debate on whether the increasing house prices are driven by market fundamentals or just by speculation like levin and wright 1997a 1997b we decompose house prices in china into fundamental and non fundamental components we also consider potential nonlinear feedback from the historical growth rate of house prices on the current house prices and propose a semiparametric approach to estimate the speculative components in the model we demonstrate that the non fundamental part contributes a relatively small proportion of the rise of house prices in china su and jin thank the nsfc for research support under grant no 70501001 citation hu jianying liangjun su sainan jin and wanjun jiang 2006 the rise in house prices in china bubbles or fundamentals economics bulletin vol 3 no 7 pp 1 8 submitted march 20 2006 accepted march 28 2006 url http www economicsbulletin com 2006 volume3 eb 06c20006a pdf

speculation in the housing market this paper presents and tests a model of house price speculation the mechanisms by which price speculation may occur in the housing market are described and formalised a model of house prices is constructed that allows for speculation aspects of this model are tested using time series data for the uk and the greater london area 1969 95 overall the analysis presents some evidence of the process of speculation as a possible determinant of house prices in the london and uk wide housing markets

firm specific assets multinationality and financial performance a meta analytic review and theoretical integration through a meta analysis of 120 independent samples reported in 111 studies we test the predictions of internalization theory in the context of the multinationality performance relationship findin

new supply and price dynamics in the singapore housing market in this paper var models are employed to trace the price response of existing houses to the quantity of new units launched by homebuilders in singapore between 1996 and 2009 contrary to the competition hypothesis prediction of a negative reaction it is found that marginal supply granger cause existing house prices in a positive manner the effect is robust to the inclusion of exogenous demand factors as well as price interaction in the primary new houses and secondary existing houses market segments the contagion effect is consistent with the hypothesis that developers due to their ability to predict the market are price leaders in the housing market it is also found that homebuilders exhibit herding behaviour in mimicking each other s timing on when to market their new residential projects

a resource based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability drawing on the resource based view of the firm we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship with the returns to environmental performance higher in high growth industries we tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 finns over two years using independently developed environmental ratings results indicate that it pays to be green and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth we conclude by highlighting the study s academic and managerial implications making special reference to the social issues in management literature

strategy meets institutions the transformation of management labor relations at deutsche telekom and ntt this comparison of labor management relations at deutsche telekom dt and ntt group formerly nippon telephone and telegraph demonstrates the value of considering both institutions and strategic decision making to under stand the interaction between companies and unions as corporations diversify multi divisional or holding company structures emerge but the degree of diversity introduced in employment relations within the corporate group de pends on the interaction between corporate strategy and the strategy of orga nized labor the authors field research based on interviews with managers and labor leaders shows that despite a broadly similar corporate strategy of diversi fication by dt and ntt after the liberalization of telecommunication markets employment relations became more decentralized both for unions and for works councils within the dt group than within the ntt group this differ ence in outcomes is explained by the relative power and strategic choices of labor and management rather than by constraints and opportunities specific to the existing national institutions

votes and violence evidence from a field experiment in nigeria following the wave of democratization during the 1990s elections are now common in low income societies however these elections are frequently flawed we investigate the nigerian general election of 2007 which is to date the largest election held in africa and one seriously marred by violence we designed and conducted a nationwide field experiment based on randomized anti violence grassroots campaigning we find direct effects on violence outcomes from exploring both subject surveying and independent data sources crucially we establish that voter intimidation is effective in reducing voter turnout and that the violence was systematically dissociated from incumbents we suggest that incumbents have a comparative advantage in alternative strategies vote buying and ballot fraud voter intimidation may be a strategy of the weak analogous to terrorism

steady change the 200 largest us manufacturing firms throughout the 20th century this paper discusses the existence of structural change in business activity and technological competence among the 200 largest us manufacturing companies throughout the 20th century the data were taken from chandler scale and scope 1990 and fortune magazine the analysis of corporate evolution in used to assess continuity versus turbulence of business organizations in the context of the neo schumpeterian long wave hypothesis the empirical results show that the giants of the late 20th century are not the same as those at the beginning of that period persistence in the sample is very limited moreover turbulence is not smooth but rather occurs by impulses that affect specific industries and it has increased over time overall the pattern of corporate entry and industry development is very indicative of the new opportunities emerging with information and communication technologies this process of open ended continuous transformation supports the case for putting change at the centre of economic analysis

violence bribery and fraud the political economy of elections in sub saharan africa post soviet african democratization has introduced elections into contexts that often lack restraints upon the behavior of candidates resulting in the emergence of voter intimidation vote buying and ballot fraud we propose a model of electoral competition where although some voters oppose violence it is effective in intimidating swing voters we show that in equilibrium a weak challenger will use violence which corresponds to a terrorism strategy similarly a nationally weak incumbent will use repression however a stronger incumbent facing local competition will prefer to use bribery or ballot fraud we discuss the applicability of the model to several african elections

multinational corporations economic and human rights impacts on developing countries a review and research agenda developing countries are attracting a significant portion of global foreign direct investments governments of such countries often compete fiercely for attracting multinational corporations mncs in the expectation of the advantages they will bring to their economies often prioritising economic goals over fundamental human rights for a long time economists have analysed the economic impacts of mncs while a parallel strand of work in political science business ethics and international law investigates the repercussions of mnc operations on human rights despite the significant relatedness and complementarities these two bodies of literature have so far poorly interacted this paper addresses this limitation and systematically analyses and integrates existing micro level empirical evidence on the economic and human rights impacts of mncs on developing countries it provides a critical analysis of what is known and highlights what we do not know about the factors that mediate the positive and or negative impacts of mnc operations on host developing countries based on a critical analysis of the literature it discusses avenues for future research in this field and sets the grounds for a new interdisciplinary research agenda on this subject

what good does doing good do the effect of bond rating analysts corporate bias on investor reactions to changes in social responsibility in this study we explore how investors reconcile information on firms social responsibility with analysts assessments of future firm risk in the pricing of long term bonds we ask whether investors pay attention to small strides toward and or small slips away from socially responsible behavior arguing that analysts corporate bias toward gains and against losses influences investor reactions to corporate social responsibility we hypothesize that analysts notice and reward improvements in social responsibility yet excuse lapses we find support for this hypothesis using a unique dataset of long term bonds that combines lagged measures of firm level financial and social performance with bond specific data pertaining to risk of default and pricing the empirically robust asymmetry in investor responses to small but often cumulative increases versus decreases in corporate social responsibility reveals an under examined root cause of longer term larger scale distortions in financial market returns regarding corporate social performance our findings elaborate earlier behavioral research on how corporate bias influences analysts short term assessments of economic risk by theorizing why this corporate bias may influence long term assessments of social risk our work also motivates more critical scrutiny of the role analysts play in revising the future risk of today s social action versus inaction

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

can a corrupt ruling party win a re election through vote buying abstractin many developing countries it is common for electoral candidates to use embezzled money to buy votes we develop a dynamic model to analyse the trade off between economic performance and free handouts resulting from corruption on an incumbent party s chances of being re elected the results show because voters anticipate handouts from the politicians politicians engage in corrupt behaviour early in the election cycle while minimizing unemployment and maximizing vote buying at the end of the election cycle

chandlerism in post war europe strategic and structural change in france germany and the uk 1950 1993 this paper examines the chandlerian model of corporate development in the light of new data on the strategies and structures of large european firms in the post war period conglomerate strategies continue to spread but these are typically less stable than strategies of related diversification the divisional structure now predominates in europe suppressing more indigenous forms the paper discusses implications both for economic arguments around the resource based view of the firm and for institutionalist arguments around the spread of american management ideas the paper concludes that chandler s original model is remarkably robust to both change over time and differences across countries copyright 1999 by oxford university press

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

country level institutions firm value and the role of corporate social responsibility initiatives drawing on transaction cost theories and the resource based view of a firm we posit that the value of corporate social responsibility csr initiatives is greater in countries where an absence of market supporting institutions increases transaction costs and limits access to resources using a large sample of 11 672 firm year observations representing 2445 unique firms from 53 countries during 2003 2010 and controlling for firm level unobservable heterogeneity we find supportive evidence that csr is more positively related to firm value in countries with weaker market institutions we also provide evidence on the channels through which csr initiatives reduce transaction costs we find that csr is associated with improved access to financing in countries with weaker equity and credit markets greater investment and lower default risk in countries with more limited business freedom and longer trade credit period and higher future sales growth in countries with weaker legal institutions our findings provide new insights on non market mechanisms such as csr through which firms can compensate for institutional voids

vote buying general elections we examine the consequences of vote buying assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma two parties compete in a binary election and may purchase votes in a sequential bidding game via up front binding payments and or campaign promises platforms that are contingent on the outcome of the election we analyze the role of the parties and voters preferences in determining the winner and the payments to voters

the construct validity of the kinder lydenberg domini social performance ratings data carroll 1991 encouraged researchers in social issues management sim to continue to measure corporate social performance csp from a variety of different perspectives utilizing a variety of different measures in addition wolfe and aupperle 1991 and others have asserted that there is no single best way to measure csp and that multiple measures and perspectives help develop the field however pfeffer 1993 suggest that a lack of consistent measurement has constrained organization studies and by implication the field of social issues management in its development as a field it may be in the best interest of social issues management researchers to try to development a common body of measures and data recently kinder lydenberg and domini co kld a social choice investment advisory firm has made available their social performance database the kld data have potential to become a widely accepted set of csp measures the purpose of this paper is to present a construct validity study comparing the kld data to other measures of csp

corporate social responsibility product differentiation strategy and export performance this article argues that corporate social responsibility csr may contribute to product differentiation in export markets and thus improve export performance we test this argument by observing a period of decreasing export competitiveness in a leading emerging economy brazil using a large scale survey design with 252 questionnaires completed by medium and large sized brazilian exporters we used structural equations modelling to test our hypotheses the results suggest that csr product differentiation predicts export performance better than product quality differentiation and almost as well as product innovation differentiation multi group analysis further revealed that the positive and significant effect of csr product differentiation on export performance is likely to be contingent on the number and type developing vs developed of countries that are targeted our study contributes to the literature on csr and export performance by developing and empirically validating a model that explains under which conditions csr based product differentiation may lead to improved export performance

the influence of unrelated and related diversification on fraudulent reporting this study suggests that unrelated diversification has a positive influence on the probability of fraudulent reporting whereas related diversification has a negative influence on the probability of fraudulent reporting the strength of the influence of these corporate level strategies is contingent on the moral character of the firm unrelated diversification provides opportunity for financial innovation within the firm s internal capital market which can result in fraudulent reporting this is more likely when the moral character of the firm is driven by a conscienceless financial self interest motive as implied by the firm s contempt toward the larger community in terms of damage inflicted on the interests of people outside the firm in contrast related diversification where product divisions focus on mutual sharing and monitoring of operational activities can reduce the probability of fraudulent reporting this is more likely when constituents within the firm view themselves as moral citizens as implied by the firm s benevolence toward the larger community hence while unrelated diversification focuses the energies of managers within the firm on financial manipulation related diversification focuses these energies on productive purposes

the role of expatriates in the management of interdependence complexity and risk in multinational corporations a multilevel analysis of environmental country and organizational affiliate factors is used to explain the differential utilization rates of u s nationals in overseas professional positions of a major u s bank with 84 branches in 43 countries the research suggests that to the extent that the affiliates of a multinational corporation operate in environments with differing levels of political risk cultural distance and competition and have operations with different levels of complexity and interdependence a single staffing policy may be inappropriate

when the banks withdraw slum landlords take over the structuration of neighbourhood decline through redlining drug dealing speculation and immigrant exploitation rather than viewing neighbourhood decline as a natural process resulting from the in flow of low income households this study uses a socio spatial approach that looks at the structuration of neighbourhood decline by emphasising the power of agents actors linking the structure of the real estate industry to the development of the neighbourhood landlords and banks are not merely automata of the price mechanism that steer the natural operation of the market but should be seen as intentionally and unintentionally restructuring the local real estate market and thus possibly producing or contributing to processes of neighbourhood decline this paper presents the tarwewijk rotterdam the netherlands as a case study of neighbourhood decline attention is paid to the social and physical decline of the neighbourhood drug dealing undocumented immigrants and processes impacting the housing market such as speculation blockbusting milking and redlining it is argued that the retreat of formal actors such

influences on human resource management practices in multinational corporations a study of human resource management practices in 249 u s affiliates of foreign based multinational corporations mncs shows that in general affiliate hrm practices closely follow local practices with differences among specific practices the degree of similarity of local practices is significantly influenced by the method of founding dependence on local inputs the presence of expatriates and the extent of communication with the parent in addition sharp differences are revealed among affiliates of canadian japanese and european mncs suggesting strong country effects together these findings support the view of mncs as composed of differentiated practices which in turn are shaped by forces for local isomorphism and for internal consistency

the nature of international integration and human resource policies in multinational companies in this article we demonstrate that the literature concerning multinational companies mncs and employment relations has failed to develop a convincing explanation of variation in the extent to which mncs develop a global element to the management of their international workforces we argue that whether mncs have an incentive to develop international human resource policies is shaped by the extent and nature of international integration which we define as the commonalities and inter dependencies in the production process across borders in particular we identify three aspects of the integration of mncs that are crucial in this respect whether the firm pursues financial economies or synergistic linkages from its international operations whether it segments or replicates its operations across countries and whether it standardises or differentiates its product internationally copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

the impact of competitors firm power divergence on chinese smes environmental and financial performance competitor pressure is one of the major reasons that a sme engages in environmentally friendly or damaging activities extant research has argued that environmental strengths and concerns have mirror opposite relationships with stakeholder antecedents as well as with performance outcomes we suggest this argument does not reflect the reality building on stakeholder management and red queen theories we hypothesize that environmental strengths and concerns have differential relationships with competitors firm power exchange and financial performance for chinese smes results of ten interviews a pretest and a large scale field study indicate that competitors firm power divergence has a positive relationship with environmental strengths yet the link between this divergence and environmental concerns does not exist further environmental strengths mediate the relationship between competitors firm power divergence and financial performance of chinese smes

firms corporate social responsibility behavior an integration of institutional and profit maximization approaches understanding firms behavior across countries a key concern in the international business literature requires the joint consideration of both institutional influences and firms profit maximization goals in the corporate social responsibility csr area however researchers have utilized theories that take into account only one or the other institutional theory which explains csr as legitimacy seeking activities in line with national level institutions or economic based approaches that consider csr effects only in terms of firm profitability while an institutional argument implies convergence in csr behavior among firms in similar institutional contexts profit maximization logic treats csr as a firm specific behavior we integrate these perspectives by demonstrating the moderating effects of firms economic motivations for seeking legitimacy on the relationship between institutional environment and csr responsiveness we argue that variations in firms economic visibility and economic vulnerability can bring about differences in their need for societal goodwill and in turn their legitimacy seeking findings on a database of apparel firms employee related csr across 23 countries support this overall argument the integration of such fundamentally different theoretical perspectives allows us to contribute new theoretical insights to international business on the influence of national institutions on firms behavior

enhancing the obsolescing bargain theory a longitudinal study of foreign ownership of u s and european multinationals this research attempts to enhance the obsolescing bargain theory for manufacturing companies by statistically testing the effects of nine explanatory variables on the static and dynamic manifestations of bargaining success with longitudinal firm level data in order to highlight those effects it develops a conceptual framework that provides a broader context in which the primary variables operate it demonstrates that the obsolescing bargain took effect in india over a fifteen year period following restrictive legislation unlike previous research this study measures the effect of benefits received by multinationals from the host government in exchange for equity dilution american companies are found to retain a smaller share of their foreign ownership over time than british and other european multinationals some explanatory variables that have previously been found to influence level of foreign ownership static bargaining success are found to be less important or have a different effect in explaining proportion of foreign ownership retained dynamic bargaining success

reconciling the conflict between the pollution haven hypothesis and an emerging trajectory of international technology transfer abstract many developing countries have relied on technology transfer through foreign direct investment fdi from developed countries as a primary means of technology acquisition however recent increased global eco consciousness and linking of trade and investment with environmental issues has the potential of disrupting these investment flows this paper investigates the validity of the pollution haven hypothesis which claims that an open market regime will encourage the flow of generally low technology polluting industries to developing countries from a neo technology trade perspective in the process an emerging trajectory of international technology transfer favoring high technology industries is established this paper concludes that positive measures enhancing fdi is not only crucial for technology upgrading but at the same time brings about enhanced environmental welfare through transfer of eco friendly products and production processes

instrumental and integrative logics in business sustainability prior research on sustainability in business often assumes that decisions on social and environmental investments are made for instrumental reasons which points to causal relationships between corporate financial performance and corporate social and environmental commitment in other words social or environmental commitment should predict higher financial performance the theoretical premise of sustainability however is based on a systems perspective which implies a tighter integration between corporate financial performance and corporate commitment to social and environmental issues in this paper we describe the important theoretical differences between an instrumental and integrative logic in managing business sustainability we test the presence of each logic using data from 738 firms over 13 years and find evidence of integrative logic applied in business

a structural decomposition analysis of technological opportunity corporate survival and leadership this article considers corporate technological leadership and survival in the face of changing technological opportunities over the period 1930 1990 for firms selected from three broad industrial groups by using us patent data in a novel application of structural decomposition analysis it considers the extent to which selected firms positions of technological leadership benefited from a favorable change in the structure of their technological environment relative to changes caused through firm level choices copyright 2007 oxford university press

demographic change and the housing market evidence from a comparison of scotland and england this paper examines the impact of demographic change on the housing market more specifically a difference in differences methodology is used to explore the effect of population decline and population ageing on house prices in scotland and england wales the analysis suggests that population decline and population ageing put downward pressure on prices therefore the long run trend of rising real house prices can not be assumed to continue into the future particularly in scotland

the ending of mortgage rationing and its effects on the housing market a simulation study the uk mortgage market has undergone important structural changes in recent years a consequence has been that households are no longer generally subject to mortgage rationing in this paper we examine some of the results of this change for the housing market we first construct a simple theoretical model of the housing and mortgage markets and show as an illustration of the effect of exogenous changes in general how mortgage tax relief abolition would have different results under alternative regimes we then quantify these results using a fully estimated model

toward a cooperative view of mnc host government relations building blocks and performance implications this study examines cooperation based relations between mncs and host governments we theorize that resource commitment personal relations political accommodation and organizational credibility are four building blocks for improving an mnc s cooperative relationships with governments analysis of 131 mncs in china validates the importance of these blocks in shaping mnc government relations and the importance of these relations in shaping the performance of mnc subsidiaries

walking the walk or talking the talk corporate social responsibility decoupling in emerging market multinationals research shows that emerging market multinational enterprises em mnes increasingly use corporate social responsibility csr reporting as a global legitimation strategy less is known about when their csr reporting is decoupled from their csr performance drawing on neo institutional theory we argue that em mnes csr decoupling is shaped by their dual embeddedness in their home countries and the global institutional environment we then examine how em mnes home country institutional voids and degree of internationalization affect their tendency to engage in such decoupling our model receives partial support in a study of 93 mnes from 15 emerging markets between 2005 and 2012

corporate social responsibility and different stages of economic development singapore turkey and ethiopia the u s and u k models of corporate social responsibility csr are relatively well defined as the phenomenon of csr establishes itself more globally the question arises as to the nature of csr in other countries is a universal model of csr applicable across countries or is csr specific to country context this article uses integrative social contracts theory isct and four institutional factors firm ownership structure corporate governance openness of the economy to international investment and the role of civil society to examine csr in singapore turkey and ethiopia field research results illustrate variation across the institutional factors and suggest that csr is responsive to country differences research findings have implications for consideration of the tradeoff between global and local csr priorities and practices

liability of foreignness natural disasters and corporate philanthropy this study examines how philanthropy can mitigate liability of foreignness lof in the aftermath of a national disaster a major disaster restructures the social landscape creating an avenue for corporate contributions to play a role in recovery and relief efforts this social restructuring offers a valuable opportunity for multinational enterprises mnes to establish strong local ties in turn mne contributions at such times have a stronger impact on their local acceptance thus mnes can use these events to strengthen their position in the community and mitigate lof using the context of a national disaster in india i test these arguments with a sample of 190 mnes and 660 domestic firms i found that in the aftermath of the disaster the increase in mne contributions was much larger and less strongly tied to promotional activities than the increase in contributions from domestic firms and this difference persisted over time moreover the performance implication of post disaster philanthropy was stronger for mnes than for domestic firms these findings suggest that philanthropy plays a more strategic role for mnes in the aftermath of a disaster and it has a pronounced effect on mitigating lof

evidence of the fisher effect from u k indexed bonds newly available data from the u k market for indexed securities are used to test the fisher hypothesis for monthly observations of interest rates at 14 maturities the hypothesis that the after tax nominal interest rate is a constant plus anticipated inflation proves to be a reasonable approximation of reality for longer maturities the coefficients on the expected rate of inflation are approximately equal to one the mundell tobin effect is in evidence for shorter maturities the inverted fisher effect is in evidence for shorter maturities the inverted fisher effect is decisively rejected the evidence suggests that past difficulties encountered in trying to prove the fisher effect have been due to the lack of a direct measure of inflation expectations and real interest rates copyright 1992 by mit press

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