an empirical test of a cross national model of corporate social responsibility most models of corporate social responsibility revolve around the controversy as to whether business is a single dimensional entity of profit maximization or a multi dimensional entity serving greater societal interests furthermore the models are mostly descriptive in nature and are based on the experiences of western countries there has been little attempt to develop a model that accounts for corporate social responsibility in diverse environments with differing socio cultural and market settings in this paper an attempt has been made to fill this gap by developing a two dimensional model of corporate social responsibility and empirically testing its validity in the context of two dissimilar cultures australia and bangladesh the two dimensions are the span of corporate responsibility narrow to wider perspective and the range of outcomes of social commitments of businesses cost to benefit driven perspective the test results confirm the validity of the two dimensional model in the two environments the factor analysis revealed two leading dimensions cluster analysis pointed to two distinctive clusters of managers in both australia and bangladesh one consisting of managers with a broad contemporary concept of social responsibility and the other with a limited narrow view the paper concludes that corporate social responsibility is two dimensional and universal in nature and that differing cultural and market settings in which managers operate may have little impact on the ethical perceptions of corporate managers

responsible entrepreneurship in developing countries understanding the realities and complexities developing countries have recently experienced a burgeoning of small scale individual entrepreneurs sies who range from petty traders to personal service workers like small street vendors barbers and owners of small shops as a result of market based reforms rapid urbanisation unemployment landlessness and poverty while sies form a major part of the informal workforce in developing countries and contribute significantly to economic growth their potential is being undermined when they engage in irresponsible and deceptive business practices such as overpricing sale of underweight or substandard products or attempts to hoard goods to name a few despite the growing interest in corporate social responsibility csr initiatives of small businesses in developing countries the sies have received almost no attention to address this void in the literature we explore the reasons for the less than optimal level of social responsibility demonstrated by some sies in developing countries we do so by drawing upon the existing literature to develop a comprehensive framework of social responsibility of sies highlighting their unique characteristics and the different contextual factors that they encounter in developing countries based on this framework we then present a set of propositions specifying the influence of these contextual factors such as business environment cultural traditions socio economic conditions and both international and domestic pressures on the business practices of sies the framework offers an explanation for the lack of responsible entrepreneurship of sies and has important implications for promoting sustainable business practices in developing countries where businesses are striving hard to survive and compete

neoclassical labour market dynamics chaos and the real wage phillips curve abstract the relationship between wage inflation and unemployment has been extensively investigated since the early work of phillips phillips a w 1958 the relation between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates in the u k 1861 1957 economica 25 283 299 and lipsey lipsey r g 1960 the relation between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates in the u k 1861 1957 a further analysis economica 27 1 31 and it is still a matter of debate in this paper we study the dynamics of a standard neoclassical labour market under the simplest walrasian adjustment rule we show that when consumption and leisure are sufficiently low substitutes the unique walrasian equilibrium of the economy can be destabilised and regular or even chaotic fluctuations of wages and employment appear this leads to an interesting resurrection of a real wage phillips curve as a long term phenomenon

top managerial prestige and organizational bankruptcy this paper extends earlier work on an alternative view of bankruptcy suggesting that bankruptcy occurs when creditors withdraw then support from a firm s top management team it further proposes that support for the top team depends upon the team s prestige five characteristics measuring the relative status of top teams were tested for their association with bankruptcy three of the characteristics focused on items commonly associated with membership in economic elites elite educational backgrounds board memberships and previous employment as officers in other corporations the fourth and fifth characteristics focused on membership in political and military elites the results indicated that political and board connections were negatively associated with bankruptcy in the year of failure even when financial factors and cooptive board linkages were controlled the results also showed that failing firms attempted to improve their managerial prestige three to four years before they failed they were how

organizational inertia and momentum a dynamic model of strategic change this study provides an empirical test of hannan and freeman s theory of structural inertia we examined the changes organizations undertook in response to a major environmental change in addition

sustainable entrepreneurship is entrepreneurial will enough a north south comparison based on an analysis of 44 cases in canada tunisia and cameroon this research attempts to determine the fundaments of sustainable entrepreneurship se in an international perspective and to shed the light on the potential impact of economic institutional and cultural dimensions upon diverse levels of sustainability in small and medium size firms smes neo institutional and entrepreneurship theories were combined in an integrative conceptual model to fully embrace the meanings and practices of se and to question the culture free argument of some prescriptions as well as some international programs the analysis of the rationale behind entrepreneurs committed to sustainability in the three countries compared to less engaged firms shows that entrepreneurs individual values are crucial in all cases socio cultural specificities and institutional realities can however be more or less inductive to the adoption of sustainable practices in smes this study also demonstrates that external stimuli are needed in tunisia and cameroon to reach the same environmental involvement as found in canada moreover support programs to assist smes with the adoption of sustainable practices and communication about the issue have to be tailored to the entrepreneur s motives the firms levels of openness to sustainability the socio cultural practices already embedded and the countries priorities implications for policy management and research are also discussed

an ecosystem service dominant logic integrating the ecosystem service approach and the service dominant logic abstract natural and business ecosystems are complex and dynamic service systems that interact through the utilization of ecosystem service offerings for human well being currently natural and business sciences have not developed a shared and common set of service based terms or concepts for discussing ecosystem service offerings in the process of value co creation in this study the ecosystem service approach was compared with marketing science s service dominant logic the terminology and concepts were harmonized and the two approaches were then integrated into a service dominant value creation svc framework the incorporation of natural ecosystems includes accounting for the flow of positive and negative impacts through associated value networks therefore the term value in impact was proposed to describe these value flows a case study of the global forest based sector was then presented demonstrating how to discuss current research challenges using the proposed framework in conclusion a shared service dominant approach provides an opportunity for deeper inter disciplinary discussion between natural and business sciences this study represents a contribution towards the development of a holistic service science that includes consideration for natural ecosystems the svc framework also addresses many of the multidimensional challenges noted by previous sustainability frameworks

the development of commercial local area resource and emissions modelling navigating towards new perspectives and applications meeting near future uk greenhouse gas ghg emissions targets will require all parts of the uk economy to contribute and in particular significant changes in business practices are required at the local level from review it was found that there is a lack of detailed business accounting and reporting of ghg emissions at the local level especially concerning supply chain impacts and small and medium sized enterprises this paper presents a framework model to generate detailed benchmark estimates of ghgs both on site and supply chain related for individual businesses and all businesses of a sector within an area the model makes use of available economic and environmental data and with similar datasets existing in other parts of the world such models may be used elsewhere the framework model is applied to an empirical case study estimates from such a framework can be used in a step by step approach to move businesses and local areas towards improved accounting reporting and sustainability including procurement the model makes use of two different accounting perspectives the production perspective on site ghgs and the provision perspective supply chain ghgs attributable to purchased inputs of a business or sectors production the new provision perspective and its consequences are explored and explained

promotion of cleaner production investments international experience abstract cleaner production cp should be an essential part of any comprehensive environmental management system at an enterprise or national level in many cases the adoption of cp improvements can reduce or even eliminate the need for end of pipe investments and therefore can have both environmental and economic benefits experience shows that often companies having identified cost effective and technically feasible cp options may still not be able to make necessary cp investment to realise the financial benefits and environmental advantages financing of cp projects varies among countries and types of the projects domestic and international efforts to strengthen environmental financing still face a number of serious obstacles many of which are related to profound economic political and social problems the detailed evaluation of revolving fund establishment possibilities based on personal experience of the authors in lithuania zimbabwe and vietnam is presented in the paper

firm entry and exit in the canadian manufacturing sector 1970 1982 this paper measures the importance of entry and exit to the canadian manufacturing sector in the 1970s it focuses on the size of entrants as they move from a stage of infancy to adolescence the exit rates of births their length of life and the growth path of entrants are presented distinctions are made between greenfield and merger entry while entrants are small at birth the cumulative effect of successive cohorts of entrants in the 1970s adds up to a significant fraction of all firms and total sales by 1979

a theory of exit in duopoly we develop a duopoly model in which exit occurs because of the existence of fixed costs or opportunity costs each firm enters the market knowing its own cost but not that of its opponent as times goes on each firm becomes increasingly pessimistic about the cost of its remaining rival the time of exit is the only strategic variable so that our model is a war of attrition in contrast to the classic war of attrition however we assume that with positive probability each firm s costs may be low enough that staying in forever is a dominant strategy thus our model unlike the classic one has a unique equilibrium

the intra firm diffusion of new process technologies the study of intra firm diffusion has largely been neglected and the limited extant literature overwhelmingly relies upon uncertainty reduction via information spreading or epidemic learning as the main driver in this paper an alternative approach is taken whereby the intra firm diffusion of new process technologies reflects the profitability of new technology adoption as proxied by firm characteristics the approach is tested using data relating to the diffusion of computer numerically controlled machine tools within firms in the uk engineering and metalworking sectors the empirical analysis does not reject the hypothesis that profitability considerations are important with a number of firm characteristics being isolated as of special relevance including firm size and the use of complementary technologies and managerial techniques however there is little support for the traditional epidemic effect

disequilibrium dynamics with inventories and anticipatory price setting this paper studies the sequence of short run quantity constrained equilibria of a model with a single storable output labor and money the durability of output gives rise to inventory fluctuations which influence the course of the equilibria attained one special feature of interest is the assumption that prices are not at the level which would equilibrate all markets if there were no stochastic shocks to the economy with prices frozen at this level the nature of the realized shocks determines the type of disequilibrium realized and the unintended component of inventory change the analysis concentrates on two questions what is the statistical nature of the process governing the real wage output employment and inventories and is it possible to test this model against the alternative hypothesis that prices are continually flexible even after the shocks have disturbed the system we find that although these theories are similar in their qualitative structure tests can be developed we also show how the frequencies of different types of quantity constrained equilibria vary with the stochastic specification this may shed some insight on why it is commonly believed that some types of disequilibrium phenomena have not been observed this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

inventory fluctuations in a disequilibrium macro model as fig i shows this pattern continues to hold with remarkable fidelity over the postwar period as well notice that stock levels tend to peak during recessions shaded areas and to trough shortly after recessions while the stock sales ratio tends to peak during the latter part of recessions and to trough during expansions given the huge role played by stocks in business fluctuations 1 it is surprising that so little theoretical attention is directed toward improving our understanding of the timing of stock and stock sales ratio movements 2 the purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical model which is consistent with the observed cyclical behaviour of stocks and the stock sales ratio the present model has firms forming sales expectations and then producing enough output if possible to cover the expected sales and to maintain a given stock expected sales ratio trade takes place out of equilibrium and inaccurate sales expectations or capacity constraints give rise to involuntary stock changes we find that stock holding may or may not be destabilising if stocks are not destabilising the familiar keynesian multiplier will obtain though the path of output after a shock will differ from the keynesian path if stocks are destabilising the system is found to enter a cycle with stocks and output ultimately rising and falling in a pattern much like that observed in actual cycles

the sa8000 social certification standard literature review and theory based research agenda social accountability 8000 sa8000 was one of the first auditable social standards aimed at promoting labor rights for workers around the world this certification is currently considered the most important in the field of corporate social responsibility csr after approximately 15 years of research on sa8000 we provide the first literature review on this topic we analyze 56 scientific papers that address key issues concerning sa8000 including the advantages of the adoption of the ethical certification and the obstacles to adoption and management and provide a comparison with iso 9001 and iso 14001 standards and with other csr standards and codes of conduct papers are coded following a deductive inductive approach and classified by year of publication publication outlet research focus methodology underpinning theory if any unit of analysis sample size industry and country building on literature findings we identify various research gaps stemming from the scarcity of empirical research and the weakness of theoretical foundations in particular we highlight the lack of evidence on the impact of organizational level factors on the adoption of the standard on the extent of the trade off if any between positive and negative outcomes of sa8000 and the failure to identify moderators of the relation between antecedents and sa8000 adoption and or between adoption and outcomes finally we propose a theory based research agenda on sa8000 for om scholars based on transaction cost economics agency and neo institutional theories and focused on three classes of relevant problems governance structure under sa8000 risk sharing between buyers and suppliers and effects on operational performance

sustainability performance for brazilian electricity power industry an assessment integrating social economic and environmental issues the increased pressure on companies to address sustainability issues has resulted in the development of several voluntary corporate sustainability integration approaches the array of existing approaches is large and overwhelming resulting in companies not understanding what corporate sustainability really means for their businesses considering environmental economic and social issues this paper aims at assessing the performance of the brazilian electricity power industry in terms of its sustainability performance an analysis of global reporting initiative gri indicators for the energy sector lead to an assessment of its sustainability performance by applying data envelopment analysis dea specified with a directional distance function ddf five scenarios were created i flexible weights ii triple bottom line iii social issues iv economic issues and v environmental issues with considering i flexibility weights almost all companies are efficient we also found a significant difference when we compared i with the other four scenarios ii iii iv and v taking into account the triple bottom line scenario ii the results indicate that companies were less efficient when compared with the flexible weights scenario i taking into account the last three scenarios iii iv and v only four companies were considered as providing top benchmarks in sustainability performance

on the turnover of business firms and business managers this paper develops a model of small business failure and sale that is motivated by recent evidence concerning how the failure and sale of small businesses vary with the age of the business and the tenure of the manager this evidence motivates two key features of the model a match between the manager and the business and characteristics of businesses that survive beyond the current match the parameters of the model are estimated and the properties of this parametric model are studied this analysis results in a simple characterization of the workings of the small business sector

do organizations have to change to learn examining the effects of technological change and learning from failures in the natural gas distribution industry failures contain valuable information however organizations vary at learning from them i ask whether failures prompt organizations to make technological investments and whether these investments help boost performance beyond improvements gained through direct organizational learning i test hypotheses on natural gas distributors to determine whether they enhance their performance by learning directly by recognizing failures as prompts to invest in safer technologies or through a combination results suggest that distributors learn directly though firms which also invest in related technologies are able to gain some additional benefits copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

buffer stocks and naive expectations in a non walrasian dynamic macromodel stability cyclicity and chaos in their pioneering work honkapohja ito 1980 constructed a non walrasian macromodel with inventory dynamics some of their assumptions are modified in this paper e g the expected demand for goods is defined by previous rather than actual demand the modified model yields results which are both similar and dissimilar to those of honkapohja and ito for example the keynesian unemployment equilibrium remains invariant but the corresponding stability condition becomes milder the chaotic behavior of the unstable systems is also analyzed

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

erratum to how far the tbl concept of sustainable entrepreneurship extends beyond the various sustainability regulations can greek food manufacturing enterprises sustain their hybrid nature over time this study presents the design and selected results of a comprehensive research on measuring the concept of sustainable entrepreneurship we used the methodology of conjoint analysis and developed a hierarchical framework that lists all the multi attributes that exist in the triple bottom line concept in doing so we collected data from 150 greek food companies the multi attributes were categorized and ranked into the following four headings internal social values isv external social values esv environmental values env and economic values ecv specifically we found that the creation of values that improve the safety and hygiene issues of products to consumers is the most important attribute for the isv domain respectively the most important attribute for the esv domain is the creation of values that impact on the local economy accordingly the creation of values for minimizing environmental impacts was found as the most important attribute for the env domain and lastly the establishment of ecv that increase long run profitability was identified as the most important for the ecv dimension finally all the categorized values offer rich feedback for entrepreneurship scholars and parishioners and to that extent our findings are slightly different from those reported in previous researches to other contexts as we have managed to build an aggregated instrument that promotes the hybrid nature of food companies towards international development

inter linking issues and dimensions in sustainability reporting during the last decade sustainability reporting sr has been increasingly adopted by corporations worldwide this is evidenced by the adoption of several guidelines such as the iso 14000 series the social accountability 8000 standard and the gri sustainability guidelines sr shows promise to help corporate leaders and their employees to contribute towards achieving sustainable societies however most of the guidelines and standards address sustainability issues through comparmentalisation thereby leading to the separation of the economic environmental and social dimensions due to these divisive approaches holistic assessments of the effects of their efforts are seldom properly integrated into coporate decisions and procedures to make improvements for example through cleaner production worker health and safety consumer safety and reductions in the negative short and long term social and environmental impacts this paper analyses sr reports from three companies with the help of grounded theory s constant comparative analysis this analytical framework helped the authors to systematically assess the degree to which the companies addressed economic ecological and social issues separately or in an integrated and inter linked manner from the inter linkages found a new category is proposed to be added to future sr this new category can help corporate sr planners and researchers on sustainability reports to better understand how the company leaders understand their responsibilities with regard to sd these inter connectednesses are highly relevant in many short and long term dimensions of supply chain management global warming ecological disruption and societal equity issues especially with regard to the local national and global energy issues of fuels and oils the central themes of the conference at which this paper was originally presented it also plays a key role in real long term changes towards sustainability where the time dimension plays a key role in human survival on planet earth

determinants of environmental investments testing the structural model abstract the main purpose of this study is to provide the needed additional quantitative evidence regarding the introduction of environmental technologies and to increase the possibility for generalization and thus policy application of conclusions to achieve that purpose a conceptual model is developed and then tested on a large database of firms from various industries with the use of structural equation modeling the results show that policy measures past environmental investments the importance of environmental technologies for customers and the firm performance have a positive effect on environmental investments furthermore the results show that policy measures are a second order three factor construct

when does it pay to be good a contingency perspective on corporate social and financial performance would it work abstract the findings on corporate social and financial performance research has exposed the universal approach as tenuous and questionable so the current approach of corporate social and financial performance research has been subject to severe criticism instead of exploring a universal corporate social and financial performance link scholars have called for a contingency perspective in order to determine the conditions and context that catalyzes positive connections between the constructs this study systematically reviews the literature on the moderators exploited in corporate social and financial performance research and finds by and large that a positive corporate social and financial performance association dominates although the relationship is stronger in advanced economies and institutionalized contexts although research on the contingency perspective has progressed theoretical support for this relationship is thin and the lack of appropriate research design and stereotyped constructs thwart its positive implications a review of the literature shows that although organizational factors seem to moderating the corporate social and financial performance relationship strongly yet industry and country factors also tend to affect this association important consistencies included that a dynamic business environment reinforces the corporate social and financial performance relationship differentiation in social responsibility practices moderates the responsibility performance link but not often positively the effect of r d intensity is equivocal and advertising intensity did not strengthen this relationship across the level avenues for future research conclude our discussion

corporate social responsibility and family business in spain despite the economic relevance and distinctiveness of family firms little attention has been devoted to researching their nature and functioning traditionally family firms have been associated both to positive and negative features in their relationships with the stakeholders this can be linked to different orientations toward corporate social responsibility thus this research aims to identify the approaches that spanish family firms maintain about social responsibility based on the model developed by quazi and o brien journal of business ethics 25 33 51 2000 an empirical study carried out for 112 spanish family firms gives support to our initial assumption about these organizations not being a homogeneous group in terms of their orientation towards corporate social responsibility the differences in perceptions do not seem to be associated to biographical characteristics these results lead to some relevant academic and practical implications that suggest interesting lines for future research

credible entry threats into contestable markets a symmetric multi market model of contestability the theory of contestable markets emphasizes potential competition yet it is reticent on the identity of potential entrants recent literature discusses the im possibility of hit and run entry for several types of entrants r d cairns and d mahabir 1988 argue that existing firms in related markets are most likely to be capable of hit and run entry but unlikely to be motivated this paper expands their arguments by sketching a multimarket framework and by discussing a model that captures most of the current debate the model marks a first step into revising contestability theory along the lines of this debate copyright 1992 by the london school of economics and political science

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

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

linking environmental accounting to reward systems the case of the environmental profit and loss account abstract this article aims to analyse how environmental accounting instruments can be linked to corporate reward systems for motivating a company s employees to embrace more environmentally friendly behaviours to this aim the paper focuses on a specific instrument the environmental profit and loss account that grounds on the idea of complementing the traditional profit and loss account by including figurative revenues and costs associated to the environmental impact of business activities based on the empirical evidence derived from a multinational do it yourself retailing chain the paper discusses how key design choices in the process of development of the environmental profit and loss account should be carried out to use this instrument as an input for the reward system and what problems and criticisms this choice implies in so doing the paper contributes to fill a gap in the state of the art literature that so far has given limited attention to the problem of linking environmental accounting instruments to corporate reward systems based on the case analysis the paper concludes with some guidelines concerning the key aspects that should be taken into consideration for this prospect use alignment with the company s strategy definition of quantitative and common objectives integration with other human resource practices and possible connection to monetary rewards then for each aspect the paper discusses the rise of potential trade offs between completeness and controllability of the included items environmental and economic performance cost and precision of the system itself

performance evaluation and a flow allocation decision model for a sustainable supply chain of an apparel industry abstract there is a growing concern that business enterprises and their supply chains focus primarily on economic activities and ignore their impact on the environment and society this paper aims to help decision makers managers and practitioners to achieve economic growth societal development and environmental protection by developing sustainable supply chain performance measures and proposes a partner selection and flow allocation decision making model survey data from 278 business organizations from the indian apparel industry supply chain network were used and an integrated method of structural equation modeling fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and fuzzy multi objective linear programming was applied to the proposed model the results of the structural equation modeling analysis indicate that the survey respondents considered sustainable production performance to be of prime importance which thus indicates its significance in developing a sustainable supply chain for the apparel industry to illustrate the use of the proposed model for partner selection and flow allocation decision making real time data from an apparel manufacturer are presented optimal results were obtained for two strategies sustainability and cost saving to show a cost benefit trade off when developing a sustainable supply chain using comparative performance a decision maker can choose an appropriate strategy based on cost benefit analysis of the presented trade offs

how can responsible family ownership be sustained across generations a family social capital approach responsible family ownership rfo is a combination of the family s commitment to the family firm s ff s stakeholders in the long term and the explicit behaviour of the family members associated with the firm however families are not individuals but rather a system of relationships among family members in such a context misunderstandings in communication anachronistic mentalities and different value systems can block the intergenerational transmission of rfo consequently the responsibility of the family towards the ff s stakeholders may be damaged and the firm s socially responsible behaviour hindered this paper aims to identify how rfo is transferred across generations and to ascertain the role that family social capital fsc plays in preserving the transmission of rfo from generation to generation our research is based on three in depth case studies of mexican family owned small and medium sized enterprises first the paper identifies and contrasts a set of fsc specific factors and problems which play a relevant role in the transmission of rfo while recognizing the influence of the mutually reinforcing dynamics of fsc dimensions secondly the family s honourableness a lander in j bus ethics 116 4 751 767 2013 is identified as a key driver for sustaining the transmission of rfo finally the paper identifies rfo institutionalization required to face the intrinsic problems of transmitting rfo in growing families

a modified cournot model of the natural gas market in the european union mixed motives delegation in a politicized environment with gazprom gaining prominence as the major supplier of natural gas in the european union the european gas market becomes more politicized we assume that gazprom s interest as a state monopolist is not only to maximize profit but also to seek market power presumably because this contributes to the geopolitical power of russia at large we introduce a modeling tool so called strategic delegation games to analyze the implications of gazprom s operation in the eu by way of illustration we model the case where gazprom competes against two profit maximizing rivals algerian sonatrach and norwegian statoil we prove that if gazprom serves any of a comprehensive type of nonprofit objectives the outcome is beneficial for the eu s consumers as gazprom s behavior shifts volumes up and brings prices down

measuring corporate social responsibility for competitive success at a regional level abstract the relevance of corporate social responsibility in the business world is enhanced by its linkage with other variables of strategic nature in the firm s activity for this purpose the objective of the paper is to define an overall scale to cover their different dimensions social economic and environmental by analyzing the cause effect relations with performance and competitive success this under researched topic has been studied in a sample of 67 medium and big firms within a specific regional context a pioneer region in europe which is starting to promote responsible business behaviour by the regional government for that structural equation methodology based on partial least squares path modelling has been applied the results show the positive direct and significant effect of social responsibility orientation of firms to competitive success and the mediating effect of performance the established set of indicators that define corporate social responsibility provides a simple and useful guidance for responsible actions implementation to upgrade regional competitive success

does an unstable keynesian unemployment equilibrium in a non walrasian dynamic macroeconomic model imply chaos simonovits 1982 introduced a non walrasian dynamic macromodel which is based on the disequilibrium model with inventory dynamics due to honkapohja and ito 1980 this model describes transactions on two markets one market for labor and one market for goods and contains five parameters obviously there is an equilibrium which is the so called keynesian unemployment equilibrium point for suitable choices of the parameters this equilibrium point is locally stable and according to simonovits 1982 the keynesian unemployment equilibrium point is also globally stable i e the trajectories of all initial values converge to the equilibrium point for many parameter values the equilibrium point is unstable this is in fact the case when the product of the two eigenvalues at the equilibrium point is greater than 1 simonovits 1982 conjecture says if the keynesian unemployment equilibrium point is unstable then there is chaos first we recall some definitions of chaos we restrict our attention to systems whose trajectories are bounded a first definition is the following a system is chaotic if there exist infinitely many periodic points with different period and if there is an uncountable set of aperiodic points this kind of chaos is nowadays called li yorke chaos see li and yorke 1975 and diamond 1976 before turning to a second definition we need the notion of sensitive dependence on initial values a system may be said to have sensitive dependence on initial values if we can find with probability p where 0 p 1 a point x such that for every open neighborhood u of x there is a point y in u such that the trajectories of x and y will not be close

sustainability as it pertains to minerals and energy supply and demand a new interpretative perspective for assessing progress this paper addresses the pressing research gap that demands an overarching framework to assess the progress of mining minerals and energy supply and demand networks towards sustainable development the framework proposes a hierarchy from sustainable development which begins at the global scale to operating sustainably which begins at the level of unit operations the two concepts overlap in the middle with a focus upon regional economies guidance is provided to assess the performance of both dynamic dimensions sustainable development is assessed in terms of equity and operating sustainably is assessed in terms of the changing states of maturity of the activities being monitored the papers from this special volume were the input sample to assess the extent to which these performance dimensions were being addressed in analysing the progress towards sustainable development it was found that papers were mainly focussed on equity within supply countries but they provided little attention to the other three equity conditions proposed demand met at a reasonable price future needs met and profitable transfer agents the transition towards operating sustainably was promising with results that revealed progress along the proposed four stage maturity journey which includes 1 solely profit maximising 2 efficiency focussed 3 integrating by connecting and 4 adaptable resilient a comprehensive definition for operating sustainably is proposed for discussion and refinement it is suggested that the definition proposed can be used for selecting appropriate indicators for measuring and documenting progress

green chemistry and green engineering in china drivers policies and barriers to innovation with the world s largest population and consistently rapid rates of economic growth china faces a choice of whether it will move towards a more sustainable development trajectory this paper identifies the different factors driving innovation in the fields of green chemistry and green engineering in china which we find to be largely driven by energy efficiency policy increasingly strict enforcement of pollution regulations and national attention to cleaner production concepts such as circular economy we also identify seven key barriers to the development and implementation of green chemistry and engineering in china they are 1 competition between economic growth and environmental agendas 2 regulatory and bureaucratic barriers 3 availability of research funding 4 technical barriers 5 workforce training 6 industrial engineering capacity and 7 economic and financial barriers our analysis reveals that the most crucial barriers to green chemistry and engineering innovations in china appear to be those that arise from competing priorities of economic growth and environmental protection as well as the technical challenges that arise from possessing a smaller base of experienced human capital we find that there is a great deal of potential for both the development of the underlying science as well as its implementation throughout the chemical enterprise especially if investment occurs before problems of technological lock in and sunk costs emerge c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

further evidence on the asymmetric behavior of economic time series over the business cycle evidence has recently been presented by salih neftci to support the hypothesis that recessions in economic activity tend to be steeper and more short lived than recoveries in economic activity that evidence however was confined to the behavior of the unemployment rate in the united states in this paper it is shown that when neftci s methods are applied to analyze the behavior of real gross national product investment and productivity in the united states or when they are used to analyze industrial production abroad the asymmetry hypothesis seems to be less compelling

is integrated reporting determined by a country s legal system an exploratory study in recent years companies responsibilities towards society have expanded significantly and former business models have been revised in line with a more pluralist approach which takes stakeholders sustainability business ethics and transparency into account these considerations are increasingly reflected in corporate sustainability reporting i e statements reflecting the impact of business practices related to economic environmental and social perspectives however the data contained in such documents are reported independently of the financial aspects implying a disconnection between the three pillars of business strategy in order to avoid this shortcoming some leading companies have developed integrated reporting which expresses the interconnections between a firm s strategy governance performance and prospects as well as the contexts within which it operates the aim of this paper is to examine the influence of one of the most important institutional factors the legal system on the development of integrated reports the analysis of a non balanced sample of 750 international companies for the years 2008 2010 in which a logit methodology is applied to panel data reveals the impact of this institutional factor the results show that companies located in civil law countries and where indices of law and order are high are more likely to create and publish a broad range of integrated reports thus favouring decision taking by the different stakeholders on the basis of these findings two policy recommendations are proposed first it may be necessary to establish national laws and protection mechanisms to promote and ensure holistic transparency second managers must be able to decide on the appropriate disclosure practices in the context of their own legal environment in order to obtain maximum benefits from their decisions the results should be considered as having only preliminary value due to the limited number of firms that disclose this typology of reporting and because of the limitations of the data sample

plant closings and exit behaviour in declining industries the plant closing and exit strategies of firms operating in a declining industry are examined a dynamic game theoretic model is utilized the perfectness criterion is used to restrict the set of nash equilibria there are two key equilibrium results first when firms have the same number of plants high cost plants close before lower cost plants second a larger firm i e a firm operating more plants begins closing plants before a smaller firm as long as cost differences are not large copyright 1988 by the london school of economics and political science

entry deterrence in a finitely lived industry the ghemawat and nalebuff 1985 exit model is extended to include an entry stage demand is high at the time of entry but is expected to eventually decline it is shown that equilibrium entry decisions may be critically affected by the prospect of a future decline in demand even when the latter is scheduled to occur in the arbitrarily distant future or is expected to be of arbitrarily short duration in all cases a unique perfect equilibrium for the entry game exists this equilibrium exhibits counterintuitive features for example the incumbent s and sometimes even the industry s output may be larger if the incumbent is a monopoly than if faced with a potential entrant

dependability and organizational bankruptcy an application of agency and prospect theory this paper proposes and tests a new model of organizational bankruptcy based on agency and prospect theory the paper argues that debtors with unprestigious top managers low liquidity and high leverage signal that they will be undependable exchange partners the model proposes that survival is contingent on maintaining an acceptable minimum level of these financial and managerial assets if a firm falls below that threshold level it has a higher probability of bankruptcy because creditors withdraw their financial support from the debtor consistent with agency theory this implies that bankruptcy can be viewed as the legal resolution of severe shareholder creditor conflicts about the levels of financial and managerial assets that the debtor should maintain this new model proposes that maintaining a minimum level of these assets is a necessary but not sufficient condition for bankruptcy some undependable firms delay bankruptcy by using strategies that create the hope that they will become dependable in the future according to prospect theory these strategies work because creditors wish to avoid recognizing significant losses and thus take on more risk than they might otherwise assume

can socially responsible investment for cleaner production improve the financial performance of spanish pension plans abstract assets under management involved in socially responsible investing almost trebled from 2007 to 2011 in europe led by pension funds such growth has encouraged the implementation of socially responsible activities by companies which have improved their cleaner production methods in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions total water used energy consumption and waste generated among others integrating environmental social and governance policies for cleaner production into the investment strategy of pension plans could increase their cost deriving from the screening process and or increase the benefits because socially responsible companies in which pension funds invest might achieve a better financial performance than traditional companies which could in turn affect pension plans financial performance for this reason the aim of this paper is two fold firstly to examine the financial performance of spanish pension plans compared to market benchmarks taking into account the category to which they belong and the socially responsible business strategy implemented by the manager and secondly to analyze whether differences in financial performance exist between solidarity pension plans ethical pension plans and traditional pension plans to do this we have a sample of 651 individual system pension plans using these sample data we implement the robust random effects panel data methodology the results show that ethical pension plans which invest in companies that improve their cleaner production methods achieve a similar financial performance to conventional pension plans while solidarity pension plans significantly outperform conventional pension plans

an intertemporal model of industrial exit a finite horizon model of industrial exit is developed after an initial lag most exits are by young firms the duration of the lag is positively related to sunk entry costs but not due to the fallacy of sunk costs the conception of entry differs from previous research as a result not all entrants are identical and firm size affects the rate of learning on average larger new firms last longer entrepreneurs in declining firms act more lazily as the firm declines a number of empirical observations about declining firms are organized by the model

exploring the applications of carbon footprinting towards sustainability at a uk university reporting and decision making abstract campus greening is often the first step universities take towards sustainability in order to infer the current level of environmental performance and the progress being made it is imperative that universities measure and report their campus greening efforts this paper shows that sustainability reporting can be a simple task and is of significant value for directing sustainable campus operations to do this environmentally extended input output analysis was used to derive the carbon footprint for the university of leeds being driven by financial data which is readily available to universities the assessment is easy to conduct and maintain through time environmentally extended input output analysis provides complete coverage of the campus system and thus accounts for the majority of emissions sources accordingly it enables comparisons of environmental performance to be made between institutions the reliability of comparisons falters when organisational boundaries vary between carbon footprints and thus in the interest of methodological consistency a framework should be established that defines universal organisational boundaries which universities must adhere to interviews with university procurement staff showed that carbon footprints can provide a screening assessment which identifies emissions hotspots in supply chains such as assessment is currently lacking and provides evidence of win win situations where emissions and costs can be reduced simultaneously although carbon footprinting considers only the environmental dimension of the triple bottom line it is recommended that universities intensify its application for the institutions themselves the results will be of significant practical value for directing initiatives such as sustainable procurement and for enhancing stakeholder engagement with the sustainability agenda whilst an increased application will help build much needed momentum for sustainability reporting overall

bridging behavioral and economic theories of decline organizational inertia strategic competition and chronic failure this paper is another plea for bridging behavioral and economic approaches to the study of competition in markets and strategy making by firms the arguments focus on a specific case in point the behavioral theory of organizational decline and the economic modeling of immediate exit the arguments come in three steps first the literature on organizational decline is reviewed by organizing a framework that summarizes arguments from varying economic and organizational perspectives that have for the most part developed independently observations from empirical and theoretical studies are combined in order to investigate the causes conditions courses and consequences of organizational downturn second a theoretical argument is developed that explains voluntary exit and chronic failure by introducing a proxy of organizational inertia in a model of strategic cournot duopoly the key assumptions which have a behavioral flavour that seemingly contradicts orthodox economics are grounded in the theoretical and empirical literatures the results of the model support the claim that pure profit maximizing behavior may be at the expense of organizational survival d aveni 1990 p 135 third by formulating two hypotheses and presenting tentative evidence from the chemical industry the paper hopes to convincingly argue that such integrative models lead to empirical testing of interesting hypotheses a key finding here is that inefficient firms may outlast their efficient rivals cf d aveni 1989a

exit with multiplant firms using an extension of ghemawat and nalebuff s 1985 model i analyze the outcome of industry decline when firms have multiplant operations the analysis reveals that no natural generalization of their strong empirical prediction that the larger of two single plant duopolists exits first holds in a multiplant setting the results also highlight a number of factors that affect the pattern of capacity removal during industry decline and lead to a discussion of the strategic implications of firms plant size choices in general the factors determining the pattern of capacity reduction can be quite complex and prediction in such settings often requires intimate knowledge of industry structure

on addressing the dual and embedded nature of business and the route towards corporate sustainability abstract this article argues for greater attention to be paid to the dual and embedded nature of business we propose that a more inclusive systemic perspective is needed for the challenge of speeding up the application of inclusive corporate sustainability the key question is how an on going upward dynamic of transformative learning cycles can be achieved in practice the current practice of implementing sustainability management systems identifying key performance indicators reporting on sustainability policies and outcomes has a strong focus on the physical dynamics in companies and in the good cases in their value chain in many cases the three dimensions of issues time and place are only addressed partially we argue that the academic community needs to pay greater retro and prospective attention to the social intervention dynamics introducing checks on the assumed effects of social interventions in order to achieve a more balanced and inclusive corporate sustainability we need to link levels of the achievement of corporate sustainability goals more strongly with self assessment of the social dynamics in firms and their societal system

trends and determinants of corporate non financial disclosure in greece an increasing number of business organizations around the world engage in the accounting for and reporting on non financial aspects of performance mainly within the domains of social and environmental responsibility using a composite disclosure index this study investigates the status of the non financial disclosure practices of the top 100 companies operating in greece a number of determinants which potentially drive greek firms to publicly disclose such information are examined an investigation of the reporting practices of a subgroup of firms which is on the spotlight regarding their environmental performance is performed while overlapping perspectives for the greek case are outlined the analysis suggests that only a small group of leading greek firms appears to endorse a meaningful business and society dialogue as an instrument for stakeholder communication and the discharging of organizational accountability most other corporations still tend to treat such practices superficially and in an imprecise manner

environmental respect ethics or simply business a study in the small and medium enterprise sme context in recent years there have been ever growing concerns regarding environmental decline causing some companies to focus on the implementation of environmentally friendly supply production and distribution systems such concern may stem either from the set of beliefs and values of the company s management or from certain pressure exerted by the market consumers and institutions in the belief that an environmentally respectful management policy will contribute to the transmission of a positive image of the company and its products sometimes however ethics and market rules are not enough to deal with this situation and specific laws must be considered this is the case when companies base their activity on the ethics of self interest concentrating their efforts on projecting an adequate image e g environmental respect rather than fundamentally behaving in environmentally respectful ways this article taking as reference the sme context discusses the reasons for implementing environmentally friendly systems both ethics and business seem to be relevant and therefore a certain balance between market and interventionism seems to be necessary

the marketing challenge towards being profitable and socially responsible this article reviews the history of marketing thought in relation to social responsibility and business ethics the main objective of the article is to show that business can be profitable and socially responsible at the same time by practising the societal marketing concept more specifically it presents the development of a marketing philosophy discusses the influence of consumerism on the marketing concept and deals with ethics and social responsibility in marketing it is argued that organisations who adopt the societal marketing concept will be the ones most likely to make long run profits as well as be beneficial to society as a whole

general wisdom concerning the factors affecting the adoption of cleaner technologies a survey 1990 2007 abstract cleaner technologies ct have recently received much attention in diverse media and policy agendas this comes out of the clear role they play in environmental protection and sustainability and the large potential to contribute to economic growth and competitiveness the realization of both potentials depends on the level diffusion and exploitation achieved today very low this article presents a selective survey of papers that today represent the general wisdom concerning the factors affecting adoption as a primary condition to diffusion and exploitation of ct the paper helps to clarify the challenges facing diffusion modelers and policy makers when dealing with policy design assessing the levels of diffusion achieved as well as the factors affecting diffusion of a particular technology the paper ends outlining further research need in the field

entry and exit on the competitive fringe microeconomic theories of industry evolution reserve key roles for the entry and exit of firms competitive models of industry supply often assume that individual firms have ushaped long run average cost curves in consequence an industry s output adjustment in movement from one long run equilibrium to another is entirely accomplished through the entry and exit of firms rather than through changes in long run equilibrium output of individual firms in empirical applications the speed of movement to new equilibrium levels of output and price measured by the time it takes for profits to return to competitive levels following a demand shock clearly depends upon the ease of entry and exit however the simplest competitive models have a clear theoretical weakness abundant evidence against u shaped long run average cost curves precludes a simple identification of entry with industry expansion and exit with industry contraction expansion of industry supply can be met either by incumbents or entrants and we have little empirical evidence of the division entry conditions are also a staple of oligopoly and monopoly models potential entry constrains the pricing options open to industry leaders and actual entry of new firms and new products erodes at varying rates the market power of incumbent firms if actual entry responds rapidly to profit opportunities then the persistent exercise of monopoly power will be rare however analyses of monopoly and oligopoly models typically approach entry indirectly by inferring that persistent profit differentials reflect high barriers to entry there are few direct tests of the effects of such barriers on actual entry despite their importance very few empirical studies of entry and exit exist severe data limitations restrict both the number of studies and the scope of extant analyses the research reported in this paper provides measures of entry and exit in 46 food manufacturing industries during the 1976 82 period measures of incidence the number of firms as well as extent the size of firms are provided the analysis also distinguishes between diversified firms and specialist producers entry and exit rates vary considerably across industries and the paper reports the results of statistical analyses that account for industry differences in entry and exit rates by specialist firms

technology diffusion in metal industries driving forces and barriers in the german aluminium smelting sector abstract it is the objective of this paper to explain the driving forces of and barriers to technology diffusion in the metal industries with application to the german aluminium smelting industry the developed economic model concentrates solely on the process of modernising existing smelters because in germany due to the unfavourable production conditions for primary aluminium high labour and power tariffs the construction of new smelters is not a realistic option the scenario calculations show the great significance of different factors such as technological potential or the prices of main inputs in particular electricity on technology diffusion in the metal industries they predict a further reduction in the average level of specific power consumption because of the ongoing process of plant modernisation and the closing down of smaller less competitive smelters the optimisation of pot control and the implementation of wettable cathodes seem to be the most attractive modernisation options for the future furthermore the calculations clarify the particular situation of energy intensive industries in regions with comparably high energy prices and the ensuing problems for environmental policy strategies on the one hand there is already a huge incentive to implement energy saving technologies on the other hand the comparably high electricity tariffs endanger the continued existence of smelters a further worsening of production conditions could easily lead to a closing down of smelters and to a loss of employment and value added

the life cycle of a competitive industry firm numbers first rise then later fall as an industry evolves this nonmonotonicity is explained using a competitive model in which innovation opportunities fuel entry and relative failure to innovate prompts exit equilibrium time paths for price and quantity also share features of the data the model is estimated using data from the u s automobile tire industry a particularly dramatic example of the nonmonotonicity in firm numbers

assessing social risks of global supply chains a quantitative analytical approach and its application to supplier selection in the german automotive industry abstract risk management in supply chains has gained increasing attention over the last years at the same time the pressure to consider social issues in global and interconnected supply chains has risen as well these issues pose risk to supply chains since their occurrence may cause adverse stakeholder reaction through e g reputational losses despite the growing importance of supplier management as a key process within supply chains and the frequently articulated demand for a quantitative assessment of associated risks such approaches are missing so far thus the aim of this paper is to develop a model to efficiently estimate and assess social risks along global supply chains for this purpose leontief s input output model is combined with country risks and sector specific labour intensities in addition a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process is used to weigh the various considered social risks thereby the focus is on the upstream supply chain of actors in a supply chain the approach is developed generally opening the possibility of adaption to different types of input output data bases and using different social risks discussed in social life cycle assessment the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process facilitates the operational application in companies where different people with differing preferences are involved e g in procurement decisions the model is applied to a case study of a german premium car manufacturer to demonstrate and validate the approach it is shown how based on the developed model the assessment of supply chains risks can be carried out the approach allows an assessment of the supply chain as a whole i e considering all upstream tiers and of specific tiers furthermore a sensitivity analysis with regard to the obtained weights is conducted to verify the final aggregative risk values the results show that there are huge differences in the social risks associated with different suppliers as well as different risk structures along the n tier chain this helps prioritizing any projects with the aim to improve the living and working conditions in summary the model has a great benefit for practitioners in purchasing functions of focal companies and can be a helpful tool to support the efficient handling of social issues along supply chains at the same time its academic contributions lie in extending the life cycle sustainability analysis through a multi regional socially extended input output model seio for social risk assessment in sustainable supply chain management

entry and exit over the industry life cycle this article presents a theoretical model of the rivalry between two firms in a market that undergoes a life cycle of growth and eventual decline firms in this market have the option of exit and reentry in the equilibrium for the growth phase high entry costs can act like high exit costs thereby conveying a commitment advantage for some parameter configurations this advantage is sufficient to enable a high costfirm to preempt its lower cost rival during the decline phase the smaller duopolist is able to outlast its rival provided that the smaller firm s reentry costs are positive

moving forward balancing the financial and emotional costs of business failure why do owner managers delay business failure when it is financially costly to do so in this paper we acknowledge that delaying business failure can be financially costly to the owner manager and the more costly the delay the more difficult the recovery but we complement this financial perspective by introducing the notion of anticipatory grief as a mechanism for reducing the level of grief triggered by the failure event which reduces the emotional costs of business failure we propose that under some circumstances delaying business failure can help balance the financial and emotional costs of business failure to enhance an owner manager s overall recovery some persistence may be beneficial to recovery and promote subsequent entrepreneurial action

inventories in a dynamic macro model with flexible prices this paper presents a disequilibrium macro model with inventories rational expectations and flexible prices it is found that less than full employment equilibria are possible even highly likely in the intermediate term and that wage reductions will cause employment to drop increasing aggregate demand will raise employment only if it is done gradually on a technical level we have multiple switching lines disconnected regimes and a connected equilibrium set which borders on a switching iline and otherwise lies in a single region

corporate social responsibility for supply chain management a literature review and bibliometric analysis corporate social responsibility csr in supply chain management scm has gained an increasing research attention in recent years extant studies have discussed stakeholder interests performance evaluation ethical sourcing and sustainable production the purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic study quantitatively depicting the knowledge structure and the intellectual progress of csr for scm this research adopts bibliometric analysis in conjunction with network analysis to systematically evaluate the csr related publications for scm the analysis involves 628 peer reviewed articles identified with careful selection of influential work data analytic techniques including citation analysis co citation analysis and co word analysis are used key findings for researchers include 1 an analytical discussion of the five sub fields that constitute the intellectual structure of csr for scm 2 theoretical and conceptual research significantly dominate in this field 3 the topics of sustainable development and economic and social effects are more frequently discussed among scholars 4 key research gaps include lacking of practical and normative modeling research and considering from the supplier perspectives in emerging economies the findings suggest that future research would emerge a greater depth of practical and modeling analysis to enrich the theories

within country product diversification and foreign subsidiary performance we examine the product diversification of a multinational firm within each of its host country markets based on a sample of 12 992 foreign subsidiaries of japanese multinational firms we find that higher levels of within country product diversity led to higher subsidiary performance where the institutional strength of the local market was weak and where a firm s corporate product diversity level was high our study highlights the importance of examining a multinational firm s strategy in its individual host country markets as influenced by the institutional characteristics of a host country market and the corporate level strategy of the multinational firm

cost differences and survival in declining industries a case for picking winners abstract in this paper we examine the relationship between firms cost structures and the order of exit from declining industries we distinguish between two fundamental causes of demand decline namely a shrinkage of the consumer base and a decrease in consumers willingness to pay we show that it is not necessarily best to be small and flexible the order of exit in a market driven outcome depends on the manner in which demand shrinks we find that from a welfare perspective the order of exit determined by market forces is not necessarily desirable however simple rules for picking winners based on current unit cost profitability or productive efficiency do not provide sound guidance for policy

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

cycles and chaos in a socialist economy abstract this paper deals with the dynamics of a continuous piecewise linear model of a socialist economy the model has hicksian type nonlinearities it is a linear model with ceilings and floors although the model is quite simple it produces a variety of different new phenomena in addition to stable cycles appearing in simonovits 1991b we demonstrate chaotic and quasi periodic behavior we investigate how the dynamics of the model depends on the control parameters and encounter border crossing bifurcations a rather new type of local bifurcation

new approaches to cleaner production applying the sasi method to micro tanneries in colombia the literature on micro and small sized enterprises in developing countries shows their existential difficulties this is particularly true for those in marginal areas with multiple challenges including pollution prevention environmental agencies tend to require capital intensive end of pipe solutions or regulatory measures that close down polluting enterprises both knowledge of and interest in how to make poor micro enterprises more sustainable are needed this paper addresses this by a developing a problem driven and context oriented systematic approach to social inclusion sasi method and b applying it successfully in the context of micro tanneries in villapinzon colombia over a period of eight years the concept of cleaner production was systematically integrated into this method that was inspired by lewin s theory of change and insights from negotiation and conflict resolution the results show that cleaner production implementation needs comprehensive systemic policy mechanisms based on participatory approaches taking into account the socio economic constraints of the micro industries that combine supportive capacity building and command and control policies moreover rules encouraging cleaner production need to be sensitive to the regulatory context in which it is applied which in this case concerned land use planning and zoning regulations the sasi approach effectively encouraged micro tanners to make their industries more viable and clean while it simultaneously convinced the environmental agency to recognise and value these industries this paper argues that integrating cleaner production in sasi is a learning and socio technical change process urgently needed for micro industries

enacting ecological sustainability in the mnc a test of an adapted value belief norm framework undoubtedly multinational corporations must play a significant role in the advancement of global ecological ethics our research offers a glimpse into the process of how goals of ecological sustainability in one multinational corporation can trickle down through the organization via the sustainability support behaviors of supervisors we asked the question how do supervisors in a multinational corporation internalize their corporation s commitment to ecological sustainability and in turn behave in ways that convey this commitment to their subordinates in response we created a theoretical framework for supervisor sustainability support behavior based on stern et al human ecology review 6 2 81 97 1999 value belief norm vbn theory we then tested our framework by performing a survey based field study of supervisors in a multinational pharmaceutical company that has publicly professed a goal of ecological sustainability

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

are economic time series asymmetric over the business cycle it has long been argued that major cyclical variables such as the unemployment rate display an asymmetric behavior over various phases of the business cycle the paper provides a statistical test for this hypothesis using the framework of finite state markov processes i implement a test to see if the behavior of the unemployment rate is characterized by sudden jumps and slower drops it is argued that the framework provided in the paper can also be used to test other sample path properties of economic time series

strategic change in the turnaround process theory and empirical evidence early corporate turnaround theorists argued that strategic reorientations are central to the recovery process at many declining firms however subsequent large sample empirical studies have reported that performance turnarounds for declining firms are primarily associated with cutback actions that increase efficiency thus creating a gap between theory and empirical findings we close this gap by presenting and empirically supporting a model proposing that the extent of strategic change initiated in a successful turnaround varies systematically with a declining firm s need and capacity to reorient its strategy based on our model we offer explanations for why past large sample researchers were not able to verify the role of strategic change in the turnaround process and we reassert the adaptive role that strategic reorientations have in the turnaround attempts of declining firms with weak strategic positions 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

adaptive expectations and perfect foresight in a nonlinear metzlerian model of the inventory cycle it has long been known that the motions of aggregate inventory investment are an important facet of the business cycle see e g blinder and maccini 1991 some elementary insights into the dynamic feedback effects between inventories production and sales were provided by metzler 1941 in a small theoretical model the present note adopts his framework but seeks to overcome the limitation of its linear specifications our basic idea corresponds to the concept of a flexible inventory accelerator while metzler postulated that desired inventory investment in discrete time is equal to the gap between desired and actual stocks of inventories some later studies have introduced a constant proportionality factor for the adjustment of inventories here we go one step further and hypothesize a variable stock adjustment speed as it turns out fast adjustments in a vicinity of the stationary equilibrium cause local instability but if for

investment activity and the exit decision using level data from the u s steel industry this paper tests and finds support for the hypothesis that firms in a contracting industr y first disinvest from and then close their high cost plants an investment decision model is estimated using a panel data set composed of the major replacement investments made in forty three steel plants during the years 1960 81 the results indicate that the firms disinvested from those plants are least likely to remain profitable in an environment of strong competition from imports minimills and stagnating domestic demand copyright 1988 by mit press

taboo or technical issue an empirical assessment of taxation in sustainability reports abstract prior literature offers mixed evidence on the existence of a link between corporate taxation and corporate social responsibility csr this article contributes to this debate by examining the level of tax disclosure in sustainability reports by firms listed in the united states the united kingdom and germany from 2007 to 2012 the aim is to offer micro level evidence of whether firms themselves perceive corporate tax payments as being part of their csr on the basis of a hand collected 540 firm year dataset of ninety publicly listed firms the article shows that the level of tax disclosure was rather low however it did increase over time and was most prevalent in the united kingdom moreover the reports indicate considerable variation in attitudes toward taxation overall the widespread silence on tax issues and a non uniform treatment of taxation in sustainability reports underline the complex role of tax payments when it comes to csr examination of determinants of disclosure shows that firms with lower effective tax rates negative media coverage in tax matters and industry specific stakeholder pressure were generally more inclined to disclose tax information which is in line with predictions based on stakeholder and legitimacy theory finally the article discusses the importance of cultural and social norms when it comes to tax related sustainability reporting and provides theoretical as well as regulatory implications

entry exit and diffusion with learning by doing early entry has the advantage of higher revenues per unit of output early on late entry has the benefit of learning from the experience of earlier entrants and hence lower production costs the advantages are balanced off in a continuous time perfect foresight equilibrium competition generates s shaped diffusion and staggered entry and exit a monopolist will innovate less than a competitive industry but the innovation that he does do he will do sooner copyright 1989 by american economic association

exploring the effects of social responsibility on coordination and profit division in a supply chain abstract this paper explores channel coordination and profit division in a socially responsible manufacturer retailer chain through sub game perfect equilibrium and extended alternative offer bargaining the channel members jointly intend to swell stakeholder s welfare by exhibiting corporate social responsibility csr in a proportion it is found that i the channel s non profit maximizing motive through csr practice generates higher profit margin than would the profit maximizing objective ii the manufacturer s wholesale price is below its marginal cost or negative above some thresholds of csr and csr sharing fraction iii the csr and csr sharing fractions are key determining factors for the pure profits of the channel members because variations in choosing these two factors can lead to increment or decrement even negative pure profits on the other hand for the csr manufacturer the wholesale price is less than the marginal cost for csr practice above a threshold and is negative for heavy csr practice though always larger than the marginal cost for the csr retailer so the manufacturer s pure profit may be negative moreover a channel member always prefers the other s csr practice thus in cooperative environment equitable share of csr may be a compromise solution

assessing the degrowth discourse a review and analysis of academic degrowth policy proposals abstract debates on ecological and social limits to economic growth and new ways to deal with resource scarcity without compromising human well being have re emerged in the last few years central to many of these is a call for a degrowth approach in this paper a framework is developed to support a systematic analysis of degrowth in the academic literature this article attempts to present a clearer notion of what the academic degrowth literature explores by identifying organising and analysing a set of proposals for action retrieved from a selection of articles the framework is applied to classify proposals according to their alignment to ecological economics policy objectives sustainable scale fair distribution and efficient allocation type of approach top down versus bottom up and geographical focus local national or international a total of 128 peer reviewed articles focused on degrowth were reviewed and 54 that include proposals for action were analysed the proposals identified align with three broad goals 1 reduce the environmental impact of human activities 2 redistribute income and wealth both within and between countries and 3 promote the transition from a materialistic to a convivial and participatory society the findings indicate that the majority of degrowth proposals are national top down approaches focusing on government as a major driver of change rather than local bottom up approaches as advocated by many degrowth proponents the most emphasised aspects in the degrowth literature are related to social equity closely followed by environmental sustainability topics such as population growth and the implications of degrowth for developing nations are largely neglected and represent an important area for future research moreover there is a need for a deeper analysis of how degrowth proposals would act in combination

the devolution of declining industries in declining industries capacity must be reduced in order to restore profitability who bears this burden where production is all or nothing there is a unique subgame perfect equilibrium the largest firms exit first ghemawat and nalebuff 1985 in this paper firms continuously adjust capacity again there is a unique subgame perfect equilibrium all else equal large firms reduce capacity first and continue to do so until they shrink to the size of their formerly smaller rivals intuitively bigger firms have lower marginal revenue and correspondingly greater incentives to reduce capacity this prediction is supported by empirical findings

start up sustainability an insurmountable cost or a life giving investment abstract an outstanding question in the entrepreneurship literature reigns given recent emphases on sustainable business practices and corporate social responsibility if small start ups are generally stretched for time and resources does it enhance their chances for survival and success to be sustainable and socially responsible new firms can aid in rectifying pressing environmental and social issues by being more sustainable while many entrepreneurs like a sustainable business model and or mission investment may not follow so willingly this paper examines a sample of 300 start ups across thirty cities around the world to consider whether sustainability is rewarded by investors investors signal confidence in start ups when they infuse life extending investments into them this analysis also considers whether a more sustainable national context affects investor confidence and whether a sustainable firm within a sustainable national context gains more investor attention and investment results show that investors avoid sustainable firms particularly those that are environmentally sustainable moreover investors enjoy national contexts that are socially responsible but pay no attention to those that are environmentally conscious in addition firms that are sustainable in a sustainable national context are not better off for attracting investment insights for policy are that mainstream investors are attracted by national social policies but these investors are unlikely to be the main force behind sustainable venture growth under today s conditions

decomposing uncertainty and its effects on imitation in firm exit decisions this study examines the effects of different uncertainty types on interorganizational imitation in firm exit decisions we draw on herding models to conceptualize exit decisions as being based on a firm s private information which the firm updates with information inferred from observing the actions of others we posit that different types of uncertainty differentially affect this observational learning process in particular we propose that certain uncertainty types attenuate rather than foster observational learning and subsequent imitation we test this theory using a 29 year panel data set on the exit of private venture capital firms our results indicate that observational learning does influence imitation in firm exit decisions and they also suggest that a common belief that uncertainty enhances imitation does not apply to all types of uncertainty specifically we find that uncertainty fosters imitation only when it is idiosyncratic to the firm uncertainties that are common to all firms in contrast actually reduce reliance on observational learning by decomposing uncertainty into different types and explicating their effects on imitation we demonstrate that this relationship is more nuanced than previously assumed and in addition highlight the role of deliberate information processing in imitation

measuring corporate citizenship in two countries the case of the united states and france based on an extensive review of the literature and field surveys the paper proposes a conceptualization and operationalization of corporate citizenship meaningful in two countries the united states and france a survey of 210 american and 120 french managers provides support for the proposed definition of corporate citizenship as a construct including the four correlated factors of economic legal ethical and discretionary citizenship the managerial implications of the research and directions for future research are discussed

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