corporate philanthropy ownership type and financial transparency drawing on stakeholder theory and the concept of enlightened self interest we argue that firms that actively engage in corporate philanthropic giving also tend to demonstrate greater concern for investors interests by providing more transparent financial information and avoiding corporate misconduct moreover the relationships between corporate giving financial information transparency and corporate misconduct vary significantly according to the firm s ownership type which affects the fundamental motivations for corporate philanthropy in a sample of chinese publicly listed firms from the 2003 2009 period we find a positive relationship between corporate giving and financial transparency and note that the relationship is stronger for non state owned enterprises non soes we also find a significantly negative association between corporate giving and corporate misconduct for non soes but not for soes taken together these findings suggest that responsibility to both stakeholders and shareholders is a vital part of building trust and reputations in china s non soe sector

corporate social performance firm valuation and industrial difference evidence from hong kong this study addresses two issues first does corporate social performance matter in hong kong second if yes is it relevant to some industries more than others to answer these questions we develop a corporate social performance index csp to measure the quality of corporate social performance of major hong kong listed firms the criteria are based on the oecd principles of corporate governance using the 3 year period from 2002 to 2005 we find that firm valuation is positive and significantly associated with csp interestingly this relation matters less in china related firms and firms with a concentrated ownership structure the results also show that csp impacts firm valuation more positively when the firm is in the service sector we further find that csp is positively related to the market valuation of the subsequent year

using extremeness aversion to fight obesity policy implications of context dependent demand this article illustrates how the compromise effect alters consumers selection of soft drinks using three within subject studies we show that extremeness aversion and price insensitivity cause consumers to increase their consumption when the smallest drink size is dropped or when a larger drink size is added to a set as a result rational firms find it best to drop the smaller sizes and add a larger size thus increasing overall consumption after estimating each individual s demand as a function of price and drink size availability policy experiments demonstrate how it is possible to reduce soft drink consumption without additional taxation

comparing virtue consequentialist and deontological ethics based corporate social responsibility mitigating microfinance risk in institutional voids due to the nature of lending practices and support services offered to the poor in developing countries portfolio risk is a growing concern for the microfinance industry though previous research highlights the importance of risk for microfinance organizations not much is known about how microfinance organizations can mitigate risks incurred from providing loans to the poor in developing countries further though many microfinance organizations practice corporate social responsibility csr to help create economic and social wealth in developing countries the impact of such csr practices remains an underdeveloped area of inquiry we use a normative ethics lens to develop an ethics based csr theory that differentiates between three forms of ethics based csr virtue consequentialist and deontological we argue that while all three forms can help mitigate risk virtue ethics based csr is potentially the most useful form of csr toward mitigating microfinance portfolio risk we test our hypotheses using a sample of microfinance organizations from across the world our findings suggest that virtue ethics based csr is not just an important philosophical paradigm it can actually help mitigate microfinance portfolio risk when implemented in practice

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

the collapse of purchasing power parities during the 1970 s one of the striking facts concerning the relationship beiveen prices and exchange rates during the 1970 s has been the dismal performance of the predictions of the simple versions of the purchasing power parity doctrine ppp that doctrine in its absolute version states that the equilibrium exchange rate between domestic and foreign currencies equals the ratio of domestic to foreign price levels the relative version of the doctrine relates equilibrium changes in exchange rates to changes in the ratio of domestic to foreign prices during the 1970 s short run changes in exchange rates bore little relationship to short run differentials in national inflation rates and frequently divergences from purchasing power parities have been cumulative this paper reviews and analyzes the empirical record of exchange rates and prices during the 1970 s and the analysis is based on the experience of the dollar pound the dollar frecch franc and the dollar dm exchange rates section 2 presents the evidence on ppp during the 1970 s and contrasts it with the evidence from the 1920 s a period during which the doctrine held up reasonably well this analysis is relevant for assessing whether the flexible exchange rate system was successful in providing national economies with an added degree of insulation from foreign shocks and whether it provided policymakers with an added instrument for the conduct of macroeconomic policy the evidence regarding devia tions from purchasing power parities is also relevant for determining whether there is a case for managed float section 3 attempts to explain what went wrong with

asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage given incomplete factor markets appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets that is critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in strategic factor markets barney barney j 1986 strategic factor markets expectations luck and business strategy management sci october 1231 1241 sustainability of a firm s asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process time compression diseconomies asset mass efficiencies inter connectedness asset erosion and causal ambiguity

compensating outside directors with stock the impact on non primary stakeholders two obvious trends in corporate governance include broadening board accountability beyond shareholders interests and paying outside directors with equity compensation stock and stock options by integrating common agency and instrumental stakeholder theories we examine the effect of stock compensation on secondary stakeholders and a firm s participation in social issues two areas where interests are less aligned with shareholder value consistent with our predictions we found that while stock compensation may be an effective way to align directors goals to those of shareholders it has adverse effects on important non shareholder constituencies in the company s operating environment

non libertarianism and shareholder theory a reply to schaefer libertarianism and the shareholder model of corporate responsibility have long been thought of as natural bedfellows in a recent contribution to the journal of business ethics brian schaefer goes so far as to suggest that a proponent of shareholder theory cannot coherently and consistently embrace any moral position other than philosophical libertarianism the view that managers have a fiduciary obligation to advance the interests of shareholders exclusively is depicted as fundamentally incompatible with the acknowledgement of natural positive duties duties to aid others that have not been acquired by some prior commitment or transaction i argue that schaefer is mistaken positive duties are incompatible with the shareholder model only if we must contribute to their fulfilment in the corporate context only if we have some reason to think that it is not possible or not permissible to discharge these obligations entirely in our private lives or through our various other roles and capacities but we have no good reason to accept this i argue that individuals are presumptively free to decide how and when to discharge their positive duties and that buying shares does not cause this presumption to lapse hence a non libertarian moral theory can be held without incoherence by a proponent of the shareholder model

purchasing power parity in the short and long run a reappraisal of the post 1973 evidence in this paper an attempt is made to separate the short run and long run aspects of the purchasing power parity ppp relationship using the techniques of band spectral regression and cointegration for eight industrialized countries the long run ppp is first tested for all the eight countries with reference to their nominal bilateral exchange rates vis a visthe us dollar for five european currencies the analysis is repeated with respect to the deutschmark with a separate consideration of the post ems period in the concluding sections possible reasons for ppp deviations are examined

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

conventional resource based theory and its radical alternative a less materialist individualist approach to strategy management scholars practitioners and policy makers alike have sought to develop a deeper understanding of recent business crises including corporate scandals the collapse of financial institutions and deep recession in order to prevent their recurrence among the culprits that have been identified is conventional management theory based upon a moral point of view founded on assumptions of materialism and individualism there have been calls to move beyond the dominant profit maximization paradigm and think about other potentially more compelling corporate objectives hamel 2009 in this article we respond to those calls and seek to develop what we call radical resource based theory rbt which draws from and contrasts with the highly influential conventional rbt radical rbt defines the value of resources more broadly than profit maximization rarity as an occasion for stewardship inimitability as an opportunity for teaching and non substitutability as an opportunity to meet a panoply of human needs this augmentation of rbt promises to help managers and scholars address a myriad of problems that are insoluble under conventional assumptions more generally it shows the value of broadening management theory to a radical perspective by relaxing assumptions of self interest and materialism

the signaling effect of corporate social responsibility in emerging economies what signals do firms in emerging economies send to stakeholders when they adopt corporate social responsibility csr practices we argue that in emerging economies firms that adopt csr practices positively signal investors that their firms have superior capabilities for filling institutional voids from an institution based view we hypothesize that the institutional environment moderates the signaling effect of csr on a firm s financial performance based on a sample of firms from ten asian emerging economies we find a positive relationship between csr practices and financial performance this positive relationship is stronger in the less developed capital market than in the more developed one the financial benefits of csr practices are also more salient in the low information diffusion market than in the high one we emphasize that signaling theory and the institution based view can jointly contribute to the csr literature

employee well being firm leverage and bankruptcy risk employees of liquidating firms are likely to lose income and non pecuniary benefits of working for the firm which makes bankruptcy costly for employees this paper examines whether firms take these costs into account when deciding on the optimal amount of leverage we find that firms with leading track records in employee well being significantly reduce the probability of bankruptcy by operating with lower debt ratios moreover we observe that firms with better employee track records have better credit ratings even when we control for differences in firm leverage

constructive consumer choice processes consumer decision making has been a focal interest in consumer research and consideration of current marketplace trends e g technological change an information explosion indicates that this topic will continue to be critically important we argue that consumer choice is inherently constructive due to limited processing capacity consumers often do not have well defined existing preferences but construct them using a variety of strategies contingent on task demands after describing constructive choice consumer decision tasks and decision strategies we provide an integrative framework for understanding constructive choice review evidence for constructive consumer choice in light of that framework and identify knowledge gaps that suggest opportunities for additional research

what do unions and employers negotiate under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility comparative evidence from the italian metal and chemical industries the corporate social responsibility csr and industrial relations ir studies have evolved mostly in parallel in this paper we integrate the ir with the csr perspective highlighting their similarities and differences in particular the study adopts a framework which includes a wide set of csr related issues to explore what unions and companies negotiate under the umbrella of csr it analyses and compares the national sectoral agreements of two key industries in the italian economy i e metal and chemical we find that these two sectors exhibit differences because the csr related issues covered by the two contracts are formally labelled as csr in the chemical contract and not labelled as csr in the metal contract we also find similarities regarding the csr related issues covered and not covered by the national contracts and the binding processes centrally negotiated for their implementation we interpret the similarities in light of the specificities of the italian ir system and the differences in light of the negotiation traditions of the two sectors under study which induce the actors in the metal sector traditionally with more conflictual ir relations to focus more on what differentiates the csr and ir perspectives and the actors in the chemical sector traditionally with more cooperative ir relations to focus more on what the csr and ir perspectives share

clarifying the epistemology of corporate sustainability abstract business research is placing increasing focus on the relationship between the natural environment and the political concept of sustainable development within this nexus one area labelled corporate sustainability emphasizes the interactions between economic environmental and social values the need to consider multiple values has contributed to a blur in the conceptual landscape this is partly due to the fact that authors often address epistemological challenges on an implicit level moreover hidden ideologies e g the profit maximization paradigm can explain the conceptual obscurity the contribution of this article is twofold firstly a conceptual framework is developed based on the dichotomy of positivism and constructivism a relation is established between these epistemological positions and the analytic treatment of environmental and social values the framework can be applied to increase transparency on epistemological challenges and thereby strengthening construct validity in the field secondly an analysis of the most influential literature from the last 50 years shows that there is a trend of clustering theoretical positions and value constructs without any critical awareness of their philosophical assumptions the authors hope that acknowledgement of a multi paradigmatic approach can help to clarify the epistemology of the research area by establishing pluralism as an explicit position

exploring the curvature of the relationship between hrm csr and corporate financial performance this article contributes to the general literature on the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance as well as to the emerging hrm csr literature by exploring the curvature of the relationship between hrm csp and cfp we advance conceptual arguments in favor of an inverted u shaped relationship our results demonstrate a significant quadratic relationship between hrm csp and cfp we provide evidence that this relationship is not linear or s shaped but rather inverted u shaped

nutrition information in the supermarket lists of nutrition information posted in supermarkets were designed to reduce the information processing costs of comparing alternative foods in experiment 1 lists of vitamins and minerals increased nutrition knowledge but had no influence on actual purchases in experiment 2 a list of added sugar a negative component of food increased the market share of low sugar breakfast cereals at the expense of high sugar brands we conclude that effort reducing displays are a successful technique for increasing information use especially for the more highly valued negative nutrients

doing well while doing bad csr in controversial industry sectors in this article we examine the empirical association between firm value and csr engagement for firms in sinful industries such as tobacco gambling and alcohol as well as industries involved with emerging environmental social or ethical issues i e weapon oil cement and biotech we develop and test three hypotheses the window dressing hypothesis the value enhancement hypothesis and the value irrelevance hypothesis using an extensive us sample from 1995 to 2009 we find that csr engagement of firms in controversial industries positively affects firm value after controlling for various firm characteristics to address the potential endogeneity problem we further estimate a system of equations and change regression and continue to find a positive relation between csr engagement and firm value our findings support the value enhancement hypothesis and are consistent with the premise that the top management of us firms in controversial industries in general considers social responsibility important even though their products are harmful to human being society or environment

the effects of top management team integrative complexity and decentralized decision making on corporate social performance we examine the influence of top management teams tmts integrative complexity and decentralization of decision making on corporate social performance we argue that both factors increase tmt ability to gather information on and attend to stakeholder needs thereby yielding higher corporate social performance we further predict that decentralization moderates the relationship between integrative complexity and corporate social performance in such a way that the relationship is stronger under conditions of centralization using a q sort methodology which translates complex qualitative observations into quantitative metrics we examined integrative complexity and decentralization in 61 fortune 500 firms and found support for our predictions in the wake of numerous corporate scandals corporate social performance has garnered much attention from business practitioners and academics alike corporate social performance refers to a business organization s configuration of principles of social responsibility processes of social responsiveness and policies programs and observable outcomes as they relate to the firm s societal relationships wood 1991 693 the dominant perspective taken in evaluating a firm s corporate social performance is the stakeholder approach according to which firms act in a socially responsible manner when they take the interests of multiple stakeholders e g customers employees into account mcguire dow argheyd 2003 ruf muralidhar brown janney paul 2001

the roles of stakeholder support and procedure oriented management on asset recovery abstract as the management of returned products is fast becoming a business trend caused by pressure for compliance asset recovery is increasingly viewed as a fertile area for firms to reduce cost and improve quality environmental management is a viable approach for chinese manufacturers to respond to the escalating international quest for conserving the environment to tackle the problem of rising raw material costs and to improve product quality by analyzing returned products to reach the goals of cost reduction and product quality improvement manufacturers need to understand how asset recovery can be leveraged through procedure based practices and stakeholder support to enhance performance product type characterized by different levels of demand uncertainty and time to market may affect the outcomes of asset recovery adoption and should also be taken into account drawing on the environmental management and business logistics literature we provide empirical insights on asset recovery adoption using survey data collected from export oriented chinese manufacturers we find that asset recovery and stakeholder support are complementary in strengthening manufacturers financial performance regardless of product type in addition the performance impact of asset recovery can be substantial when manufacturers environmental management practices are less procedural allowing flexibility in the logistics management of product flows

the effect of forced choice on choice abstract whereas most academic and industry studies of consumer preferences and decision making involve forced choice i e participants are told to choose one of the presented product or service alternatives buyers usually also have the option not to select any alternative an implicit assumption in the experimental practice of forcing choice is that the no choice option draws proportionately from the various available alternatives such that the qualitative conclusions are unaffected however the authors propose that the no choice option competes most directly with alternatives that buyers tend to select when they are uncertain about their preferences building on this general proposition the authors show that the introduction of the no choice option strengthens the attraction effect weakens the compromise effect and decreases the relative share of an option that is average on all dimensions they also examine the mechanisms underlying the impact of having the option not to choose and the condi

the close but adversarial model of supplier relations in the u s auto industry while cooperative buyer supplier relations are an important source of sustainable competitive advantage noncooperative behavior persists widely this paper tests a model incorporating noncooperative behavior within a context of formal commitment using data from the u s auto industry this close but adversarial model appears to be reasonably well supported by the data suggesting that even within professed cooperative buyer supplier relationships adversarial behavior persists in contrast a small but significant minority of the relationships were found to be characterized by high levels of trust as well as informal commitment the results suggest specific strategies for developing cooperative supplier relations 1998 john wiley sons ltd

does social performance really lead to financial performance accounting for endogeneity the empirical relationship between a firm s social performance and its financial performance is still not well established in the literature despite more than 30 years of research and more than 100 empirical studies on the issue the results are still mixed we argue that the heterogeneous results found in previous studies are not due exclusively to problems related with the measurement instruments or the samples used instead we posit that a more fundamental problem related with the endogeneity of social strategic decisions could be driving most of the empirical findings we show that using a panel data of 658 firms from 1991 to 2005 how some of the results found in previous research change and some are even reversed when endogeneity is properly taken into account

real exchange rate variability and the choice of exchange rate regime by developing countries abstract this paper draws together two distinct strands of the exchange rate literature it proposes that real exchange rate variability and the choice of exchange rate regime are jointly determined i test this claim by estimating a simultaneous limited dependent variable model with data from a cross section of developing countries during the recent floating period drawing on the relevant exchange rate literature the paper examines a number of exogenous determinants of exchange rate variability and the choice of exchange rate regime

super size me product size as a signal of status this research proposes that consumers preference for supersized food and drinks may have roots in the status signaling value of larger options an initial experiment found that consumers view larger sized options within a set as having greater status because low power consumers desire status we manipulated power to test our core propositions whether induced in the lab or in the field states of powerlessness led individuals to disproportionately choose larger food options from an assortment furthermore this preference for larger sized options was enhanced when consumption was public reversed when the size to status relationship was negative i e smaller was equated with greater status and mediated by consumers need for status this research demonstrates that choosing a product on the basis of its relative size allows consumers to signal status illustrates the consequences of such a choice for consumers food consumption and highlights the central role of a product category s size to status r

trade concentration openness and deviations from purchasing power parity abstract economists have often explained deviations from ppp in terms of random relative price changes while all countries are subject to such real shock empirical studies indicate that ppp seems to hold closer for some countries than others this paper emphasizes two major reasons why we should expect systematic differences across countries in deviations from ppp a the concentration of trade and b openness the more diversified trade the less susceptible the country to random shocks affecting individual goods so that shifts in the ppp ratio are lower the more open the economy the greater the weight of traded goods in the overall price indices so that if exchange rates are determined by traded goods prices yet empirical tests of ppp use national price indices ppp should hold better in more open economies

for a few cents more why supersize unhealthy food health care experts believe that increases in portion sizes served by food vendors contribute to the obesity epidemic this paper shows that food vendors can profit handsomely by using supersizing strategies where regular portion sizes are priced sufficiently high to discourage price conscious consumers from selecting them and the prices for enlarging food portions are set so low that these customers are tempted to order the larger portion sizes and overeat setting aside the impact of obesity on health care costs we show that using supersizing to steer customers toward consuming excessive amounts of food can destroy value from a social perspective thus this social value destruction trap adds another justification for pressuring food vendors to reduce supersizing for unhealthy food as a public policy response we consider how moderating policies may counter these effects through measures designed specifically to encourage eating in moderation by applying supersizing bans taxes and warnings

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

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

does the real exchange rate follow a random walk the pacific basin perspective abstract in this paper we present evidence that dispels the view that ppp has broken down during the 1970s and 1980s evidence from unit root tests of the real exchange rate indicate that ppp held as a long run equilibrium condition for eight pacific basin countries over the period 1974 to 1987 in contrast we find the nominal exchange rates to be non stationary additional evidence however shows that strong trend components bind the nominal exchange rates of that set of countries together jel f31

a rational reconstruction of the compromise effect using market data to infer utilities this article explores the possibility that consumers use market data to make inferences about product utilities the argument is made by means of an example based on the compromise effect found in extant experimental data this phenomenon is generally looked at as a manifestation of deviations from rationality in choice however assuming full rationality i describe a decision rule that is based on consumers inferences about their personal valuation of alternatives from the portfolio of market offerings and some information about their own relative tastes through a number of examples i will argue that consumers often use this or similar decision rules to make inferences about utility i then show that the decision rule may generate compromise effects in experiments and that it may be sustainable the compromise effect could therefore be seen as preliminary evidence that consumers make such inferences

choice based on reasons the case of attraction and compromise effects building on previous research this article proposes that choice behavior under preference uncertainty may be easier to explain by assuming that consumers select the alternative supported by the best reasons this approach provides an explanation for the so called attraction effect and leads to the prediction of a compromise effect consistent with the hypotheses the results indicate that 1 brands tend to gain share when they become compromise alternatives in a choice set 2 attraction and compromise effects tend to be stronger among subjects who expect to justify their decisions to others and 3 selections of dominating and compromise brands are associated with more elaborate and difficult decisions

reviewing the business case for corporate social responsibility new evidence and analysis this study complements previous empirical research on the business case for corporate social responsibility csr by employing hitherto unused data on corporate social performance csp and proposing statistical analyses to account for bi directional causality between social and financial performance by allowing for differences in the importance of single components of csp between industries the data in this study overcome certain limitations of the databases used in earlier studies the econometrics employed offer a rigorous way of addressing the problem of endogeneity due to simultaneous causality although the study s results provide no evidence that there is a generic or universal business case for csr they indicate that there is a strong link between single stakeholder related issues of csr and financial performance however the analysis does not establish causality within these relationships

dyadic compromise effect existing research on the compromise effect has focused exclusively on the individual this paper investigates compromise effects in a setting that involves multiple individuals making a choice we study whether the dyadic compromise effect dce exists the association between dyadic and individual compromise effects and strategies to mitigate the dce we build a statistical model of dyadic choice that formally incorporates dce we conduct two studies to test our proposed models empirically in study 1 we begin with an investigation of the dce with student subjects in study 2 we test for the presence of dce among married couples when making retirement investment choices in both studies model free and model based evidence provides strong support for the presence of dce a model that incorporates dce provides a better fit than models that do not evidence in support of dce is shown to be robust to alternative compromise effect model specifications and utility aggregation methods we find that the indi

enlightened shareholder maximization is this strategy achievable the role of a corporation is often debated as a mutually exclusive choice between economic responsibility to shareholders and social responsibility to society an evolving viewpoint embraces an integrated approach focused on long term value creation for shareholders which benefits other stakeholders maximizing long term shareholder value as a corporate objective can be compatible with stakeholder theory when an enlightened shareholder maximization strategy is embraced firms implementing an enlightened shareholder maximization strategy are expected to make decisions and use resources which achieve long term value creating outcomes however critics of enlightened shareholder maximization as a corporate goal contend this strategy conflicts with maximizing shareholder value this study explores whether firms which embrace a balanced enlightened shareholder maximization strategy indeed create long term value which does not sacrifice shareholder wealth

predicting stakeholder orientation in the multinational enterprise a mid range theory as the reach of corporations increasingly extends across borders a key research question is whether overseas subsidiaries adopt a shareholder centric orientation centered on maximizing shareholder wealth or a stakeholder centric orientation centered on creating value for a broader range of stakeholders existing theories addressing the corporate level of analysis focus on forces exogenous to the firm local resource pressures and institutional norms using a combination of induction and fuzzy set analysis i draw on documentary evidence and 298 interviews with managers and stakeholders to build theory about the conditions that shape subsidiaries stakeholder orientations two major findings emerge first although theory emphasizes external stakeholders control over resources internal control through the corporate parent can crowd out the voices of local stakeholders second although institutional theory proposes isomorphism with local norms and standards some corporations are subject to scrutiny by global stakeholders and their subsidiaries face higher requirements for social engagement than their peers these findings are the foundation of a mid range theory that combines conventional explanations focused on environmental factors and an internal stakeholder perspective based around the roles of the parent corporation as owner and resource provider to predict stakeholder orientation

market reactions to corporate environmental performance related events a meta analytic consolidation of the empirical evidence research on the relationship between corporate environmental performance cep and corporate financial performance cfp has consistently grown and is gaining widespread attention given the vast body of cep cfp studies recently scholars have begun to take stock of the cumulative results however no study so far has meta analyzed the findings yielded by event studies assessing the stock market reactions to corporate environmental performance related events cep related events this paper sets out to close this gap by synthesizing previous empirical results regarding the stock market impact of positive and negative cep related events results indicate a positive relationship across studies in terms of positive market reactions to positive events and negative reactions to negative events furthermore the findings show that the market reactions are stronger for negative events than for positive events i e asymmetry in the stock market reaction finally this study examines whether methodological artifacts i e differences in the study designs may explain the differences in the findings of the analyzed event studies

real dollar exchange rate under the bretton woods and floating exchange rate regimes abstract the focus of the paper is on real exchange rates for the dollar over the period 1957 to 1985 most such exchange rates followed an almost steplike pattern showing relatively little movement in the late 1950s and 1960s falling abruptly and then remaining low in the 1970s and finally in the 1980s rising back to levels close to those that prevailed initially contrary to much recent commentary therefore the period that appears different is not the last five years but the decade that preceded them an important factor underlying this pattern of exchange rate movement according to results presented in the paper was the behavior of monetary policy and hence inflation in the united states what remains to be established is the precise mechanism linking money and real exchange rates and the relative strength of those links

why firms should not always maximize profits though corporate social responsibility csr is on the agenda of most major corporations corporate executives still largely support the view that corporations should maximize the returns to their owners there are two lines of defence for this position one is the friedmanian view that maximizing owner returns is the social responsibility of corporations the other is a position voiced by many executives that csr and profits go together this article argues that the first position is ethically untenable while the latter is not supported by empirical evidence the implication is that there may be good reason for firms to deviate from a maxim of profit maximization

cutting calories the preference for lower caloric density versus smaller quantities among restrained and unrestrained eaters the marketplace includes many attractive high calorie indulgent food offerings despite their appeal consumers may often be prompted to consider lower calorie package offerings instead e g 100

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