corporate environmental responsiveness in india lessons from a developing country abstract we examine corporate environmental responsiveness in business organizations in india based on theoretically informed case analysis we operationalize corporate environmental responsiveness as a two order construct we find that level one the lower level responsiveness is driven by pressures arising out of powerful supply chain customers and institutional pressures resulting from internationalization the drivers for organizations at level two the higher level responsiveness are associated with organizational identities and cultures rooted in a long history of social responsiveness

heterogeneity tournaments and hierarchies tournament contracts are characterized that simultaneously elicit first best efficient effort levels and self selection of risk neutral heterogeneous workers into ability specific contracts comparisons across self selected ability types are shown to be sometimes necessary to attain efficiency rationales are explored for not commonly observing such contracts in hierarchical organizations

promotions and incentives in partnerships evidence from major u s law firms this paper develops a model of promotions in partnerships and estimates the model using cross sectional data on major u s law firms promotions to partner screen associates for firm specific skills and they generate tournament incentives among associates competing for promotions the key parameters of the model are estimated by imposing the equilibrium restriction that firms offer equal utility to incoming associates the incentive component of compensation is found to be statistically significant and a nested model without promotion

how do scholars approach the circular economy a systematic literature review abstract circular economy ce aims to overcome the take make dispose linear pattern of production and consumption proposing a circular system in which the value of products materials and resources is maintained in the economy as long as possible in recent years there has been a proliferation of scholars publications on the topic this study presents the results of a systematic literature review exploring the state of the art of academic research on ce the paper examines the ce body of literature with a systematic approach to provide an exhaustive analysis of the phenomenon with rigorous and reproducible research criteria the revisited material consists of 565 articles collected through the web of science and scopus databases and has been evaluated using specific structural dimensions to group literature into analytical categories starting from being a concept studied in connection with industrial ecology ce has slowly acquired its independent role in academic research framed mainly into environmental sustainability related studies as a result of policies implementation academic production is mainly concentrated in china and europe employing tools and methods for modelling processes and supporting decision making for ce implementation e g life cycle assessment and material flow analysis ce studies follow three main lines of action the first aims to change the social and economic dynamics at macro and administrative level the second to support firms in circular processes implementation at micro level to spread new forms of consumption and product design the third developed at meso level discusses industrial symbiosis experiences ce is associated with a variety of concepts and waste management emerges as the most relevant sub sector ce is also strongly connected with the concept of sustainability proposing ways to operationalize its implementation at the environmental and economic level while scholars only marginally consider social and institutional implications the most explored practices are those related to cleaner production aiming at reducing environmental impact and waste production along the life cycle of a product and optimizing the performance and efficiency of processes conversely studies on ce may devote greater attention to strategies for social and institutional changes able to transform the upstream process of production and consumption considering business model strategies scholars mainly focus on studying closing material loops strategy while slowing the loops which requires a radical change of consumption and production patterns is only marginally included with respect to ce implementation this study s findings highlight ce as an evolving concept that still requires development to consolidate its definition boundaries principles and associated practices

buyback subsidies the time consistency problem and the itq alternative this paper deals with the time consistency problem associated with buyback schemes arising from the fact that the schemes may be anticipated by vessel owners after reviewing and elaborating upon the key results of our recently published article on buybacks and limited entry programs we discuss the consequences of combining buybacks with itq schemes or the equivalent instead of limited entry programs we conclude that substituting itq schemes for limited entry programs cannot be relied upon to eliminate fully the time consistency problem we suggest that what may be required is a management program that combines rights based schemes with taxes

creating integrated business and environmental value within the context of china s circular economy and ecological modernization abstract this paper investigates the challenges and opportunities of how firms and organizations can and will be able to strike a better balance between economic growth and environmental stewardship in the context of china s emerging circular economy policy paradigm and based on ecological modernization theoretic approaches based on three company case studies in the information technology and electronic industries in china we identify and demonstrate how a blended business and environmental value can be created from adopting a sustainable supply chain management approach the adoption of a sustainable supply chain management approach is rapidly becoming a key business challenge and opportunity in china and other large emerging economies around the world where our greatest environmental management challenges currently reside and will continue to exist for many years to come the value creation framework proposed in research focuses on evaluating three case study companies who appear in various stages of an electronic industry supply chain value creation within a supply chain can provide the impetus for organizations to adopt circular economy sustainable supply chain practices for competitive reasons in addition we describe how a value proposition can be evaluated at two levels of analysis a more specific micro level and a more general meso level of analysis the four major business value dimensions include cost reduction revenue generation resiliency and legitimacy and image the initial findings are that a variety of opportunities exist for electronic firms in emerging and developing countries while results from this study provide an important scholarly foundation to develop and refine sustainable supply chain management practices in emerging and developing economies

incentivizing r d prize or subsidies abstract this paper studies the optimal design of r d contests a sponsor e g the us department of defense or the world health organization wants to improve the quality of the winning products to do so it partitions its budget between two schemes an inducement prize and efficiency enhancing subsidies to the firms competing in the contest prizes and subsidies have different functions and they provide complementary incentives in the optimally designed contest subsidies increase while the prize decreases if the innovation process is more challenging further sensible conditions are identified under which the optimal contest implements either a handicapping scheme by preferentially subsidizing the underdog or a national champion scheme by favoring the favorite our analysis yields a number of useful implications and sheds light on an array of r d incentive schemes such as the dod s design competitions and vaccine development incentives

managerial incentive problems a dynamic perspective the paper studies how a person s concern for a future career may influence his or her incentives to put in effort or make decisions on the job in the model the person s productive abilities are revealed over time through observations of performance there are no explicit output contingent contracts but since the wage in each period is based on expected output and expected output depends on assessed ability an implicit contract links today s performance to future wages an incentive problem arises from the person s ability and desire to influence the learning process and therefore the wage process by taking unobserved actions that affect today s performance the fundamental incongruity in preferences is between the individual s concern for human capital returns and the firm s concern for financial returns the two need be only weakly related it is shown that career motives can be beneficial as well as detrimental depending on how well the two kinds of capital returns are aligned it is well understood by now that informational externalities may place special demands on the organization of economic exchange simple price mediated markets will frequently fail in the presence of asymmetric information in that case more elaborate contractual arrangements have to be used as substitutes for the price system lately considerable effort has been devoted to the analysis of contracting under incomplete information with the objective to understand the range of economic institutions that emerge in response to the failure of the price system the analysis of moral hazard has played a prominent role in this development moral hazard problems arise when for some reason or another transacting parties cannot contract contingent on the delivery of the good for instance in buying labour services it may be that the amount of labour supplied is not directly observable precluding a simple exchange of wage for labour as a partial remedy to this problem an imperfect mutually observed signal about the supply of labour can be used as a proxy in the contract frequently output is taken as such a proxy the drawback is that output is often influenced by other factors than labour input which induce undesirable risk into the contract one is therefore faced with a tradeoff between allocating risk associated with incomplete observability and providing incentives for a proper supply of labour gaining insight into this tradeoff is important not only for understanding contracting in the small e g managerial incentive schemes but also because it is closely related to the fundamental tension between equity and efficiency in the society as a whole while our understanding of moral hazard has advanced a lot in past years it is clear that much work remains an important question that has received little attention until

eco innovation in the transition to a circular economy an analytical literature review abstract in the ongoing sustainability debate the circular economy ce has been steadily gaining ground as a new paradigm at the same time eco innovation ei has been recognised as a key element in carrying out the transition from a linear to a circular system of production and consumption however little information can be found concerning whether and how ei can actually facilitate the change to a ce while extensive literature on ei and a growing body of research exploring the ce already exist there is as yet no comprehensive understanding concerning the connections between these two concepts drawing on academic contributions from the fields of ei and ce this analysis seeks to clarify and synthesise findings at the intersection of these two fields the aim is threefold derive literature based working definitions of ce and ei review the role of ei at ce s macro meso and micro levels and characterise ce inducing ei in terms of targets mechanisms and impacts our literature review shows that an ei driven techno economic transition to a ce requires specific solutions i e different forms of ei driven clean congruence at distinct levels of operation generally speaking movement toward a ce is found to be contingent on systemic ei that is not only intense in technology but also involving dynamic and holistic combinations of service innovations and novel organisational set ups

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

buyback programs in commercial fisheries effciency versus transfers a cournot model of investment is used to characterize the pre and post buyback investment equilibrium for vessels operating in a total allowable catch regulated fishery welfare effects the net welfare gains or losses and the distributional e ects that may be expected from vessel buyback programs are identifed net welfare effects depend on the ability of remaining vessels to replace buyback capital the speed of capital replacement and capital investment irreversibility net welfare effects are likely to be positive only under exceptional technological and capital market conditions a brief review of the british columbia pacific salmon revitalization plan is presented to anchor the theoretical model jel classification q28 d24 les auteurs utilisent un modele d qgainvestissement a la cournot pour analyser la situation d qga equilibre d investissement avant et apres le rachat de vaisseaux operant dans des peches ou le total des prises permises est reglemente les effets de bien etre les effets nets de gains ou de pertes et les effets de redistribution qu qgaon peut anticiper de programmes de rachats de vaisseaux sont identifies les effets nets de bien etre dependent de la capacite des vaisseaux qui restent en service a remplacer le capital rachete de la vitesse avec laquelle le capital est remplace et de l irreversibilite de la capitalisation les effets nets de bien etre sont susceptibles d etre positifs seulement dans des conditions exceptionnelles sur le plan technologique et pour ce qui est du marche du capital les auteurs examinent le plan de revitalisation du saumon du pacifique de la colombie britannique pour donner un point d qgaancrage au modele theorique

an extreme value model of concept testing we model concept testing in new product development as a search for the most profitable solution to a design problem when allocating resources developers must balance the cost of testing multiple designs against the potential profits that may result we propose extreme value theory as a mathematical abstraction of the concept testing process we investigate the trade off between the benefits and costs of parallel concept testing and derive closed form solutions for the case of profits that follow extreme value distributions we analyze the roles of the scale and tail shape parameters of the profit distribution as well as the cost of testing in determining the optimal number of tests and total budget for the concept phase of npd using an example we illustrate how to estimate and interpret the scale and tail shape parameters we find that the impact of declining concept testing costs on expected profits the number of concepts tested and total spending depend on the scale cost ratio and tail shape parameter of the profit distribution

career concerns contracts and effort distortions a two period career concerns model with symmetric information but uncertainty about each worker s ability is analyzed contracts are unobservable but incomes are observable it is shown that effort is distorted upward by contracts being unobservable and that the distortion depends positively on turnover

the optimal allocation of prizes in contests we study a contest with multiple not necessarily equal prizes contestants have private information about an ability parameter that affects their costs of bidding the contestant with the highest bid wins the first prize the contestant with the second highest bid wins the second prize and so on until all the prizes are allocated all contestants incur their respective costs of bidding the contest s designer maximizes the expected sum of bids our main results are 1 we display bidding equlibria for any number of contestants having linear convex or concave cost functions and for any distribution of abilities 2 if the cost functions are linear or concave then no matter what the distribution of abilities is it is optimal for the designer to allocate the entire prize sum to a single first prize 3 we give a necessary and sufficient conditions ensuring that several prizes are optimal if contestants have a convex cost function

towards a consensus on the circular economy abstract the growing importance of the concept of the circular economy as a way to attain sustainable development has encouraged scholars to propose different ways to understand it given the large number of studies done on the circular economy their differing approaches and their multiple applications this paper attempts to propose a consensus view of the basic notions of the circular economy framework and highlight its relationship with eco innovation to that end this study carried out a systematic literature review that resulted in four main outputs a knowledge map of the circular economy an analysis of the main notions of the concept principles and determinants of a circular economy finally this study brings to light some remarkable examples of eco innovations developed for implementation in the circular economy

investment tournaments when should a rational agent put all eggs in one basket we study investment tournaments a class of decision problems involving gradual allocation of investment among several alternatives whose values are subject to shocks the decision maker s payoff is determined by the final values of the alternatives an important example of such tournaments is the career choice problem since a person typically starts by investing in learning several professions we show that in many cases it is optimal for the decision maker to allocate all resources to the most promising alternative in each time period we also show that in promotion tournaments the workers optimally exert higher efforts at an early stage in order to capture a larger share of employer s investment such as mentoring

fisheries management with stock growth uncertainty and costly capital adjustment we develop a dynamic model of a fishery which simultaneously incorporates random stock growth and costly capital adjustment numerical techniques are used to solve for the resource rent maximizing harvest and capital investment policies capital rigidities bring diminishing marginal returns to the current period harvest and introduce an incentive to smooth the catch over time with density dependent stock growth however catch smoothing increases stock variability resulting in reduced average yields the optimal management policy balances the catch smoothing benefits against yield loss we calibrate the model to the alaskan pacific halibut fishery to demonstrate the main insights

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

general equilibrium tragedy of the commons many poor economies depend on open access resources for their livelihoods households in resource based economies allocate their time and other factors between resource extraction and other activities as a result factors may shift from one sector to another as marginal returns change this has two important implications first it implies potentially strong linkages between resource and non resource sectors second it means that unmanaged resources cause inefficient allocations of inputs across all sectors and the effects of resource management spill into other sectors we construct a local general equilibrium model that accounts for inputs that over allocate to an open access resource and create a general equilibrium tragedy of the commons this model describes resource rent dissipation more adequately in economies with mobile factors than a model with slowly dissipating rents perfectly mobile factors dissipate rent in every period but endogenous wages cause labor and capital allocations to change with the resource stock we use the model to illustrate medium run impacts of a limit on capital in an artisanal fishery in honduras simulation results reveal that fishery management has economy wide impacts on prices and wages managers in developing countries thus should consider these linkages when implementing policies to conserve fish stocks

international and domestic pressures and responses of chinese firms to greening abstract organizational responses to international and domestic institutional pressures may help proactive corporate environmental practices and routines diffuse to chinese organizations who are key participants in global product chains using the 2006 survey data on 377 chinese manufacturers in six major industrial groups in suzhou dalian and tianjin cities we propose and test a relationship between normative coercive and mimetic international institutional pressures and the adoption of three important proactive corporate environmental practices routines iso 14001 tqem total quality environmental management and eco auditing by chinese firms we also argue for and find that this relationship is greater than that arising from corresponding normative coercive and mimetic internal domestic pressures finally we find a positive effect of international parenting or partnering on the adoption of proactive corporate environmental practices and routines these findings have important implications as chinese organizations continue to go global and international organizations seek global product supply chain partners within china

resource duration as a managerial indicator for circular economy performance abstract this paper provides a new indicator for environmental assessment performance linked to circular economy almost all existing techniques evaluate resource use based on their burden relative to value while the central point of circular economy is to create value through material retention the existing burden orientated techniques are therefore unsuitable for guiding managers in relation to circular economy objectives this paper presents a new performance metric the longevity indicator which measures contribution to material retention based on the amount of time a resource is kept in use the measure is composed of three generic components initial lifetime earned refurbished lifetime and earned recycled lifetime management of these components can be used for decision making and performance assessment in the circular economy the example of precious metals in mobile phone handsets is used to illustrate the general application and suitability of this indicator findings show that for materials to be retained managers should encourage longer lifetime use increase product return levels for initial use and refurbished phones and select the most effective recycling processes available this paper advances performance indicators for circular economy and provides a tool which can be applied at managerial and organizational levels to measure the impact of business decisions on the longevity of precious materials

subsidies buybacks and sustainable fisheries abstract most fisheries subsidies which on a worldwide scale are immense are probably detrimental to resource conservation however payments used to buy out excess fishing capacity are often represented as useful subsidies on the grounds that overcapacity encourages overfishing and causes economic waste some commentators on the other hand assert that most buyback subsidies are ineffective because additional capacity tends to seep back into the fishery over time in this paper we take the latter argument further and demonstrate that buyback subsidies if they come to be anticipated by fishermen will generally have a negative effect on economic performance and resource conservation consequently buyback subsidies are perhaps over rated as a management tool

the history and current applications of the circular economy concept abstract the challenges of balancing industrial development environmental and human health and economic growth in china and elsewhere in the world are drivers for recent resource use and low carbon development strategies that include the application of the circular economy ce concept a central theme of the ce concept is the valuation of materials within a closed looped system with the aim to allow for natural resource use while reducing pollution or avoiding resource constraints and sustaining economic growth the objectives of this study are 1 to review the history of the ce concept to provide a context for 2 a critical examination of how it is applied currently thematic categories are used to organize the literature review results including policy instruments and approaches value chains material flows and products and technology organizational and social innovation the literature review illustrates the variability in ce project success and failure over time and by region ce successes key challenges and research gaps are identified the literature review results provide useful information for researchers as well as multi stakeholder groups who seek to define the ce concept in practical terms and to consider potential challenges and opportunities it presents when implemented

executive compensation and tournament theory empirical tests on danish data this article adds to the empirical literature on tournament theory as a theory of executive compensation i test several propositions of tournament models on a rich data set containing information about 2 600 executives in 210 danish firms during a 4 year period i ask are pay differentials between job levels consistent with relative compensation is pay dispersion between levels higher in noisy environments is the dispersion affected by the number of tournament participants is average pay lower in firms with more compressed pay structures does wider pay dispersion enhance firm performance most of the predictions gain support in the data

buybacks with costly participation abstract posted price offers and first price auctions along with the multi unit discriminatory auction extension are two widely used mechanisms for allocating conservation contracts the choice between the two typically hinges on the trade off between the posted price s simplicity and the potential revenue gains of the auction in this paper we introduce a novel mechanism that attempts to bridge the gap between the performance of posted price offers and auctions a two price and lottery schedule combines the simplicity of the former with some of the flexibility of the latter using a model that incorporates agents cognitive and information costs of bidding we analyze how the ranking of allocative efficiency and cost effectiveness between the mechanisms varies as the wedge of participation costs increases when the number of bidders is endogenously determined by participation costs bid shading associated with a lack of competition in the auction compromises its cost effectiveness vis a vis the posted price and the lottery schedule we use data from three recent buybacks for fishing licenses conducted in maryland to calibrate our model and identify conditions under which the two price schedule outperforms the other mechanisms

estimating the impacts of eliminating fisheries subsidies on the small island economy of the azores abstract a major problem affecting world fisheries today is overcapacity of which overfishing is both a cause and a consequence there is a general consensus that fisheries subsidies cause great harm to the resource by exacerbating the problems resulting from the common resource issues of fisheries leading to overexploitation of the resource through a new set of perverse incentives many now advocate that subsidies should gradually be terminated and that capacity enhancing and fuel subsidies should be terminated immediately on account of the global fisheries crises highly subsidised fisheries and the anticipated reforms of the european union s common fisheries policy this study aimed to estimate the impact of eliminating fisheries subsidies on various macro and micro economic variables pertaining to the regional economy of the azores using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model based on a social accounting matrix the simulation results suggest that reduction and in particular elimination of fisheries subsidies would have a substantial effect on the region however the negative social and economic effects would be largely confined to the fishing sector conversely the augmentation of fishery subsidies would benefit the fishing sector with an overall adverse effect on the rest of the economy

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

to bid or not to bid the role of participation rates in conservation auction outcomes in this article i jointly analyze stated willingness to accept values with revealed auction bids from fishing license buybacks in the chesapeake bay blue crab fishery in order to better understand the link between participation decisions and conservation outcomes in contrast with theoretical expectations i find individuals with the lowest willingness to accept participated in these reverse auctions at lower rates than other eligible individuals all else being equal this suggests that who bids in an auction plays an important role in the success of conservation outcomes these results indicate that market design should expand to consider how and whether the economic incentives underlying auction participation align with desired conservation outcomes both within fisheries and in natural resource management more broadly

the role of policy labels keywords and framing in transitioning waste policy abstract the last decade has seen a new wave of ambitious policies in order to address the mounting ecological damage caused by high levels of consumerism and the depletion of resources to manufacture short life cycle products in this paper zero waste and sustainable materials management are examined as prominent labels of an evolving waste policy discourse towards waste prevention and reduction and material cycles using discourse analysis key documents are comparatively assessed presenting the origins of these two concepts and how they entered the waste policy domain the different framing tactics and governance models are then presented the findings demonstrate that the different discourse paradigms around the concept of waste and materials influences what policy initiatives measurement tools and outcomes are pursued although zero waste and sustainable materials management are gaining popularity as indicators of shifting waste policy towards sustainable production and consumption policy particularly with increasing discussion and application of circular economy governance models in europe and china a distinction still exists between the conceptualisation and implementation within and across the two concepts it is in this transition towards a circular economy that it is valuable to review the role of policy labels keywords and framing context in waste policy and the ability of enhanced waste management to assist in the development of more sustainable and environmentally acceptable economic and social behaviour models

rat race redux adverse selection in the determination of work hours in law firms this paper describes an organizational setting in which professional employees are required to work inefficiently long hours the focus of the authors investigation is large law firms the income sharing that characterizes legal partnerships creates incentives to promote associates who have a propensity to work very hard law firms use indicators of this propensity especially an associate s record of billable hours in promotion decisions reliance upon work hours as an indicator leads to a rat race equilibrium in which associates work too many hours the authors find evidence in support of this conclusion with data they collected from two large law firms copyright 1996 by american economic association

digging for golden carrots an analysis of research tournaments contracting for research is often infeasible because research inputs are unobservable and research outcomes cannot be verified by a court sponsoring a research tournament can resolve these problems a model is presented in which contestants compete to find the innovation of highest value to the tournament sponsor the winner receives a prespecified prize the tournament game has a unique subgame perfect equilibrium free entry is not optimal because equilibrium effort by each researcher decreases in the number of contestants an optimally designed research tournament balances the probability of overshooting the first best quality level against the probability of falling short copyright 1995 by american economic association