consumer ethics in japan an economic reconstruction of moral agency of japanese firms qualitative insights from grocery retail markets the article reconstructs in economic terms managerial business ethics perceptions in the japanese consumer market for fast moving daily consumption products an economic three level model of moral agency was applied that distinguishes unintentional moral agency passive intentional moral agency and active intentional moral agency the study took a qualitative approach and utilized as empirical research design an interview procedure the study found that moral agency of japanese firms mostly extended up to unintentional and intentional passive moral agency certain myopic managerial views were found to affect active moral agency this leaves room for business ethics program that aim at the development of active moral agency

fuel demand elasticities for energy and environmental policies indian sample survey evidence india has been running large scale interventions in the energy sector over the last decades still there is a dearth of reliable and readily available price and income elasticities of demand to base these on especially for domestic use of traditional fuels this study uses the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids using micro data of more than 100 000 households sampled across india the la aids model is expanded by specifying the intercept as a linear function of household characteristics marshallian and hicksian price and expenditure elasticities of demand for four main fuels are estimated for both urban and rural areas by different income groups these can be used to evaluate recent and current energy policies the results can also be used for energy projections and carbon dioxide simulations given different growth rates for different segments of the indian population

household fuelwood demand and supply in nepal s tarai and mid hills choice between cash outlays and labor opportunity abstract subsistence households are a leading source of deforestation and their consumption of fuelwood in particular is important in many developing countries yet the empirical economic examinations of fuelwood consumption are sparse particularly for rural areas where the deforestation occurs and we would argue that forest policy is often designed without a good understanding of the potential responses of subsistence households to the new policy this paper addresses these issues with household evidence from the two major populated regions of nepal market prices labor opportunities the availability of substitutes and measure of access to the basic resource are the most reliable predictive variables for fuelwood consumption and production there are however regional differences and important distinctions between the elasticities of fuelwood collecting or purchasing households with respect to these predictive variables the difference between collecting and purchasing households is notable it recommends forestry policies that target the labor opportunity and the physical resource in regions where collecting households dominate and policies that affect the fuelwood market itself in regions where purchasing households are important a second interesting finding is that fuelwood is relatively scarcer prices are higher in the mid hills and both collecting and purchasing households in this region are beginning to respond to deforestation by using their own land for fuelwood production

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

the constitution of economic policy one of the most exciting intellectual moments of my career was my 1984 discovery of knut wicksell s unknown and untranslated dissertation finanztheoretische untersuchungen buried in the dusty stacks of chicago s old harper library only the immediate post dissertation leisure of an academic novice allowed for the browsing that produced my own dramatic example of learning by serendipity wicksell s new principle of justice in taxation gave me a tremendous surge of self confidence wicksell who was an established figure in the history of economic ideas challenged the orthodoxy of public finance theory along lines that were congenial with my own developing stream of critical consciousness from that moment in chicago i took on the determination to make wicksell s contribution known to a wider audience and i commenced immediately a translation effort that took some time and considerable help from elizabeth henderson before final publication this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

equity externalities and energy subsidies the case of kerosine in indonesia abstract this paper examines two arguments used to justify the subsidy provided kerosine the primary commercial fuel of indonesian households one argument holds that the subsidy reduces deforestation externalities resulting from wood gathering econometric analysis of a large cross section of households finds that firewood kerosene substitution is very limited in java where the deforestation problem is most severe so that kerosene subsidy is not an effective means of alleviating the problem the second argument holds that social equity requires the subsidization of basic needs such as kerosene it is found that the kerosene subsidy disproportionately benefits urban and wealthier households

u s ceos of sbus in luxury goods organizations a mixed methods comparison of ethical decision making profiles this study involved using a mixed method research design to examine the moral philosophy difference between the ethical decision making process of ceos in u s led and non u s led within the luxury goods industry the study employed a manova to compare the ethical profiles between the two leader types us and non us led and a phenomenological qualitative process to locate themes that give indication as to the compatibility of the luxury strategy values and practices with the principles and concepts of responsible leadership and conscious capitalism as the luxury goods industry is facing the first slowdown since 2000 pressure to achieve sales targets in the u s to make up for losses in other markets will place these ceos under extreme pressure from their headquarters these leaders must possess the ethical decision making capability to balance legal and moral dilemmas unique to multinational luxury goods organizations while delivering business results in a challenging environment results of the study show no evidence of difference in the ethical decision making profiles between the two groups of leaders the themes and emergent findings resulting from the qualitative analysis indicate a profound incompatibility between the values informing decision makers using the luxury strategy and those employed by leaders operating within the principles and parameters of responsible leadership and conscious capitalism recommendations for future research include replicating the study with a larger sample within a different geographic region or comparing leaders using the luxury strategy to those using conscious capitalism

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

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

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

subjectivist economics and ethical business a number of business ethics theorist have highlighted the potential for economics to contribute to the advancement of business ethics in response this article emphasizes the insights of a particular area of economics that could provide such expansion and development subjectivist economics may yet provide an effective analytical framework through which to investigate and evaluate business decision making and hence the ethics of business integrating the concepts of uncertainty time and imagination subjectivist economic theory contributes to a greater appreciation of economic choice and behaviour while such notions are often effectively omitted from modern economic analysis to aid formal representation business ethicists could utilize such concepts more effectively than their colleagues in economic theory significantly the well known economists who have championed the insights of subjectivist economics have themselves recommended its extension to an analysis of ethics

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

nepali fuelwood production and consumption regional and household distinctions substitution and successful intervention this article uses household data from nepal s two major populated regions and 27 of 59 districts within those regions to examine fuelwood consumption and production in contrast with a purely market assessment household analysis includes production which is consumed in the producing household the household regressions yield coefficients and elasticities that are very different from and more reliable than a comparable assessment of market demand and supply household results generally support the hypotheses that expenditures on fuelwood are a small share of total household activity and that fuelwood is not sufficiently scarce to alter household behaviour fuelwood is sufficiently scarce however to alter behaviour for those households in the hill region that do not participate in market exchange these households may be the best targets for public market interventions designed to alter fuelwood supply and deforestation

the fuelwood crisis and the environment problems policies and instruments the paper defines the third world fuelwood crisis in a broad development context in terms of the implications of fuelwood scarcity and environmental damage for private and public choice it shows how the identification of the nature of the policy problems underlying the crisis influences the objectives and instruments of energy policy the paper concludes that to get energy policy to try to be responsible for rather than to take account of the wider context is likely to make policy ineffective

joint production and consumption in traditional households fuelwood and crop residues in two districts in nepal forest conversion by agricultural households is the leading cause of deforestation yet we know little about agricultural household use of forest and tree products this article measures household production of and demand for fuelwood and fuel substitutes in two districts in nepal women play a larger role in collection in the district dependant on production from common forestlands men and agricultural capital are more important inputs in the district dependant on production from private lands the article also measures demand elasticities for fuelwood combustible agricultural residues and improved stoves a technological substitute each by household income group all price and income demand elasticities are less than one the substitution elasticities between residues and fuelwood are less than one residues are more important substitutes for low income households and improved stoves are more important substitutes for high income households

willingness to pay for forest property rights and the value of increased property rights security this paper studies the willingness to pay wtp for forest property rights in viet nam we do so by asking respondents to estimate the value of two different forest property rights regimes where only the level of property security differs and all other forest plot characteristics are constant we use this information to identify the value of the property rights security our results reveal that a significant number of individuals are willing to pay for an additional area of forestland but that the amount offered appears to be inadequate to compensate sellers as very few land market transactions actually take place the results further indicate that income relates positively to wtp irrespective of forest property regime wealth age and ethnicity also have an impact on the amount households are willing to pay as expected there was a significant mark up on the more secure right econometric estimates of the difference between the wtp for secure and insecure property rights show that a higher level of female education and household age decrease the difference between the two wtp measures while the difference tends to increase as income improves this has important policy implications as it indicates that households tend to evaluate the property rights institutions differently

the role of ethical leadership versus institutional constraints a simulation study of financial misreporting by ceos this article examines the proposition that a major cause of the major financial accounting scandals that received much publicity around the world was unethical leadership in the companies and compares the role of unethical leaders in a variety of scenarios through the use of computer simulation models it shows how a combination of ceo s narcissism financial incentive shareholders expectations and subordinate silence as well as ceo s dishonesty can do much to explain some of the findings highlighted in recent high profile financial accounting scandals furthermore it shows that the nature and impact of ethical leadership depends greatly on the institutional setting and can be expected to vary greatly by country and culture in certain circumstances ethical leadership can have either a negligible or even opposite effect to that expected

the environmental impact of poverty evidence from firewood collection in rural nepal abstract we investigate determinants of household firewood collection in rural nepal using 1995 96 and 2002 3 world bank living standards measurement survey lsms data we incorporate village fixed effects endogenous censoring measurement error in living standards and heterogeneous effects of different household assets we find no evidence in favor of the poverty environment hypothesis the evidence for the environmental kuznets curve depends on the precise measure of living standards and time period studied firewood collections fall with a transition to modern occupations and rise with increasing population and household division the local interhousehold collection externality is negligible indicating that policy interventions are justified only by ecological considerations or nonlocal spillovers

effect of fuelwood scarcity and socio economic factors on household bio based energy use and energy substitution in rural ethiopia abstract in ethiopia biomass is predominantly utilized for household energy needs often using inefficient rudimentary stoves which cause adverse environmental and welfare effects this paper examined the contribution of biomass resources to rural household energy use and energy substitution the analysis applied the ordinary least square in the final stage estimation of fuelwood and overall biomass energy consumption by using predicted shadow prices the paper used tobit model to estimate charcoal and agricultural fuel consumption due to the presence of censoring an increase in fuelwood shadow price was associated with reduced household fuelwood consumption with price elasticity of 0 38 the cross price elasticity between fuelwood and agricultural fuels revealed no evidence of energy substitution which conforms to the findings of previous studies household access to electricity was associated with lower household biomass energy utilization but kerosene was not fuelwood substitute household energy use conformed to the fuel stacking or multiple fuel use concept but households preferred modern energy options as welfare increased in areas where modern energy is available this suggests that there is a promising prospect for fuel transition but access to modern energy and economic growth have key roles the findings suggest that a concerted policy effort is required that would help diversify rural livelihoods improve living standards and encourage economic growth encourage inter fuel substitution through improved modern energy access and afforestation to increase biomass supply

an economic approach to business ethics moral agency of the firm and the enabling and constraining effects of economic institutions and interactions in a market economy the paper maps out an alternative to a behavioural economic approach to business ethics special attention is paid to the fundamental philosophical principle that any moral ought implies a practical can which the paper interprets with regard to the economic viability of moral agency of the firm under the conditions of the market economy in particular competition the paper details an economic understanding of business ethics with regard to classical and neo classical views on the one hand and institutional libertarian thought on the other hand implications are derived regarding unintentional and passive intentional moral agency of the firm the paper moves on to suggest that moral agency can be economically viable in competitive market interactions which is conventionally disputed by classical neo classical and institutional libertarian economics the paper here conceptualises active moral agency of the firm as the utilisation of ethical capital in firm stakeholder interactions this yields a reinterpretation of instrumental stakeholder theory

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

woodfuels livelihoods and policy interventions changing perspectives in the 1970s it appeared that fuelwood use was growing rapidly and this could have major adverse impacts on the resource and poor users by the mid 1980s revised assessments indicated that there was less of a problem than had been foreseen and much less of a need for forestry interventions to maintain supplies as a result many of the latter were sharply scaled back additional information and analysis that has become available since the 1980s support the view that there is no need for large scale interventions devoted just to provision of fuelwood however declining access to supplies or markets can raise significant problems in some areas and for particular categories of user growing urban demand for charcoal can also cause local problems in particular in africa the potentials for appropriate forms of intervention are discussed

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

bioenergy consumption in rural china evidence from a survey in three provinces abstract biomass in the form of crop residues and firewood is a major energy source for rural households in china a survey conducted in the provinces of shanxi zhejiang and guizhou shows that 37 percent of rural households use bioenergy for heating and cooking and that bioenergy accounts for 18 percent of their total energy consumption most of the biomass used for energy is burned in traditional stoves contributing to indoor air pollution in rural homes crop residues also are commonly burned in the fields contributing to the high level of outdoor air pollution in china our econometric analysis of the key determinants of bioenergy use shows that bioenergy consumption falls modestly with income growth increased time required for biomass collection and less farmland hence open burning of some biomass is an optimal choice and is likely to become more of a problem without policy intervention these findings suggest that a more sustainable use of biomass requires policies that promote cleaner more efficient bioenergy combustion technologies and increase the economic value of biomass such that local households can benefit from biomass collection

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

food versus fuel examining tradeoffs in the allocation of biomass energy sources to domestic and productive uses in ethiopia rural households in ethiopia have limited options to meet their domestic energy needs because they lack access to modern fuels and technologies domestic use of certain fuel sources such as cow dung can hinder agricultural outcomes and productivity this article explores the tradeoffs between domestic and productive uses of biomass energy sources in the nile basin of ethiopia using a nonseparable farm household model where labor allocation to energy collection and farming are analyzed simultaneously we estimate a system of five structural equations using three stage least squares and find that the use of dung as a domestic fuel source has negative implications for the value of harvested crops while use of on farm fuelwood is associated with increased value of agricultural output on farm production of fuelwood appears to increase the value of crop output and provide labor savings by making fuelwood collection more convenient for households policy interventions to support the expansion of agroforestry and increase access to new energy efficient technologies are needed to ensure that agricultural productivity can be both increased and sustained

moral agency profits and the firm economic revisions to the friedman theorem the paper reconstructs in economic terms friedman s theorem that the only social responsibility of firms is to increase their profits while staying within legal and ethical rules a model of three levels of moral conduct is attributed to the firm 1 self interested engagement in the market process itself which reflects according to classical and neoclassical economics an ethical ideal 2 the obeying of the rules of the game largely legal ones and 3 the creation of ethical capital which allows moral conduct to enter the market process beyond the rules of the game points 1 and 2 position the friedman theorem in economic terms while point 3 develops an economic revision of the theorem which was not seen by friedman implications are spelled out for an instrumental stakeholder theory of the firm

nobel lecture the economic way of looking at behavior an important step in extending the traditional theory of individual rational choice to analyze social issues beyond those usually considered by economists is to incorporate into the theory a much richer class of attitudes preferences and calculations while this approach to behavior builds on an expanded theory of individual choice it is not mainly concerned with individuals it uses theory at the micro level as a powerful tool to derive implications at the group or macro level the lecture describes the approach and illustrates it with examples drawn from my past and current work

socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies on heterogeneous agricultural households nepal has a long history of returning public forests to local people as part of its community forestry programme in principle the community forestry programme is designed to address both environmental quality and poverty alleviation however concern has been expressed that forest policies emphasise environmental conservation and that this has a detrimental impact on the use of community forests in rural nepal where households require access to public forest products to sustain livelihoods to study the effect of government policies on forest use an economic model of a typical small community of economically heterogeneous households in nepal was developed the model incorporates a link between private agriculture and public forest resources and uses this link to assess the socioeconomic impacts of forest policies on the use of public forests socioeconomic impacts were measured in terms of household income employment and income inequality the results show that some forest policies have a negative economic impact and the impacts are more serious than those reported by other studies this study shows that existing forest policies reduce household income and employment and widen income inequalities within communities compared to alternative policies certain forest policies even constrain the poorest households ability to meet survival needs the findings indicate that the socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies may be underestimated in developing countries unless household economic heterogeneity and forestry s contribution to production are accounted for the study also demonstrates that alternative policies for managing common property resources would reduce income inequalities in rural nepalese communities and lift incomes and employment to a level where even the poorest households could meet their basic needs