dealing with cultural differences in environmental management exploring the cep cfp relationship abstract despite numerous attempts to agree on the nature of the relationship between environmental and financial performance controversial results still exist in the literature this discrepancy suggests that we must enlarge the spectrum of analysis to understand when it pays to be green the way in which society takes a stance on environmental responsibility is deeply bounded to the cultural lenses through which it sets its priorities a cultural perspective can help explain the capacity for social phenomena to shape behaviour we consider how the contextual environment of culture thus far neglected might moderate the corporate environmental performance corporate financial performance relationship and thus influence firms capacity to offset the costs of environmental management by using a sample of 954 companies we contribute to the long running debate showing how the effect of cultural influence can overcome the hurdle of contrasting results and offer novel insights for both academia and practitioners

the economics of favors abstract this paper examines the favors people perform for each other using a stochastic version of the infinitely repeated prisoner s dilemma rpd it is shown that the socially efficient outcome may not be consistent with an equilibrium because some favors are too expensive to perform on the other hand it is possible for some socially inefficient favors to be performed even so favor exchange relationships must be strictly pareto improving the model is also able to address situations in which there are market alternatives to the services being exchanged and when favors are exchanged among members of large groups or hierarchies

offset carbon emissions or pay a price premium for avoiding them a cross country analysis of motives for climate protection activities abstractthis article contributes to the economic literature on pure and impure public goods by considering two alternatives for contributing to the public good climate protection offsetting carbon emissions from conventional consumption or paying higher prices for climate friendly products we empirically examine a wide range of motives and their impact on individuals choice in favour of these two alternatives relying on data from representative international surveys our results indicate that environmental awareness warm glow motives and the desire to set a good example have the most robust effects on both climate protection activities in germany and the united states however some motives differ considerably between both alternatives and the two countries a green identity enhances the willingness to pay a price premium for climate friendly goods or services in germany while social norms seem to be of much higher relevance in the united states our results further suggest that the choice of climate

the impact of institutional and social context on corporate environmental social and governance performance of companies committed to voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives abstract using a neo institutional framework this paper discusses the role of national specific social cultural legal regulatory and economic differences when determining the way that companies committed to a specific voluntary corporate social responsibility csr initiative operate in different sustainability dimensions the differences between companies environmental social and governance esg performance of the companies operating in the three countries with highest number of firms committed to the united nations global compact ungc spain france and japan is assessed through a multidimensional hj biplot technique which is a statistical technique that provides a joint graphical representation in a low dimensional euclidean space usually a plane of a multivariate data matrix this research contributes to the existing literature providing quantitative evidence of how different country specific social and institutional schemes influence companies esg performance the main results reveal the existence of two clusters of companies behaving in different ways with regard of sustainability issues first spanish and french companies exhibit similar levels of social and corporate governance performance higher than those of japanese firms second japanese firms seem more committed to environmental issues than spanish and french companies these results confirm that the different countries with different institutional backgrounds induce different priorities among their firms in terms of esg performance even under a common commitment to the same principles of adopted csr initiative

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

the influence of collective action on the demand for voluntary climate change mitigation in hypothetical and real situations in this experiment we investigate determinants of the individual demand for voluntary climate change mitigation subjects decide between a cash prize and an allowance from the eu emissions trading scheme for one ton of co2 that will be deleted afterwards we vary the incentives of the decision situation in which we distinguish between real monetary incentives and a hypothetical decision situation with and without a cheap talk script furthermore decisions were implemented either as purely individual or as a collective action using majority voting we observe a significant hypothetical bias in the demand for voluntary climate change mitigation in case of the individual decision situation this bias is caused solely by subjects with low income collective decision making affects demand positively in the hypothetical decision situation only

consumer trust social marketing and ethics of welfare exchange the global corporate scandals such as enron worldcom and global crossing have raised fundamental issues of business ethics as well as economic social and anthropological questions concerning the nature of business competition and global capitalism the purpose of this conceptual paper is to introduce the concept of welfare exchange to the existing notions of economic social and anthropological notions of business and exchange in markets and society in the 21st century global competition and business success in the 21st century continue to raise the nature of economic value and the interaction among diverse actors in international markets institutions and society we believe that the nature of such exchange between consumers and organizations which can also be termed social marketing need to increasingly take into account a welfare and ethical component in this paper we introduce our concept of welfare exchange to emphasize the importance of such welfare and ethical issues in the global business environment of the 21st century

social network utility and the economics of risk the case of hiv abstract since hiv transmission is embedded in a pattern of risk some economists argue that the fact that aids shortens the life expectancy of the chronically indigent amounts to an economic if not an ethical boon a cost containment mechanism for social welfare expenditures e g philipson and posner 1993 we consider a rational model where the needs of the hiv population are met by individual resources public resources and network resources family and friendship contributions in this model impoverishment of altruistic network members leads to an increase in risky behaviors and a further spread of aids

rebuilding trust ireland s csr plan in the light of caritas in veritate this paper seeks to contribute to the discussion on national corporate social responsibility csr plans from the perspectives of the three logics as articulated in caritas in veritate by using the irish national csr plan as an example good for business good for the community ireland s national plan on corporate social responsibility 2014 2016 maintains that csr activities can enable organisations to build relationships and trust with communities one of the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis was the decrease in trust in banking systems and in business more broadly it is well recognised that relationships of trust are essential to the life of the market the state and civil society pope emeritus benedict xvi s caritas in veritate contends that corresponding to the life of the market the state and civil society are three logics the logic of exchange i e giving to acquire the logic of public obligation i e giving through duty and the logic of gift i e giving due to solidarity this paper proposes that the normative framework of the three logics of caritas in veritate can be read into the irish national csr plan this paper argues that the examples of csr initiatives proffered by the plan could point organisations in the direction of the logic of gift and therefore enable the rebuilding of relationships of trust with citizens and communities

why do people volunteer an experimental analysis of preferences for time donations why do individuals volunteer their time even when recipients receive far less value than the donor s opportunity cost previous models of altruism that focus on the overall impact of a gift cannot rationalize this behavior despite its prevalence we develop a model that allows for differential warm glow depending on the form of the donation in a series of laboratory experiments that control for other aspects of volunteering such as its signaling value subjects demonstrate behavior consistent with the theoretical assumption that gifts of time produce greater utility than the same transfers in the form of money subjects perform an effort task accruing earnings at potentially different wage rates for themselves or a charity of their choice with the ability to transfer any of their personal earnings to charity at the end of the experiment subjects exhibit strong preferences for donating time even when differential wage rates make it costly to do so the results provide new insights on the nature of vo

a balanced concept of the firm and the measurement of its long term planning and performance this paper offers a new concept of the firm that aims at balancing the corporate economic social and environmental responsibilities and goes beyond the stakeholder approach it intends to provide a conceptual and operationalizable basis to fairly assess corporate conduct from both inside and outside the companies to a large extent these different responsibilities may overlap and reinforce each other however if they conflict they should be clearly evaluated for their own sake and in terms of wealth creation only then can a balanced approach be realized section 1 briefly discusses some general aspects of the relationship between concepts and measurement in section 2 a concept of the firm is developed that is based on the notion of responsibility and balances economic social and environmental responsibilities according to these concepts different ways of measuring corporate planning and performance are examined in section 3 followed up by a summary and conclusions

why do people give testing pure and impure altruism abstract researchers measure crowd out around one level of charity output to identify whether giving is motivated by altruism and or warm glow however crowd out depends on output implying first that the power to reject pure altruism varies and second that a single measurement of incomplete crowd out can be rationalized by many different preferences by instead measuring crowd out at different output levels we allow both for identification and for a novel and direct test of impure altruism using a new experimental design we present the first empirical evidence that consistent with impure altruism crowd out decreases with output jel d64 l31

identity utility and cooperative behaviour an evolutionary perspective this paper provides an argument for the advantage of a preference for identity consistent behaviour from an evolutionary point of view within a stylized model of social interaction it is shown that the development of cooperative social norms is greatly facilitated if the agents possess a preference for identity consistent behaviour as compliance with cooperative norms in the long run has a positive effect on the agents pay offs it is argued that such a preference is evolutionarily advantageous notably the argument which assumes that agents always act in accordance with their preferences also accounts for the cost of those features that are crucial for the selection process

altruistic versus egoistic behavior in a public good game this paper analyzes an evolutionary version of the public good game in which boundedly rational agents can use imitation and best reply decision rules several possibilities for both decision rules to be present in the population are considered i show that altruistic behavior might survive if switching between the decision rules occurs less often than the probabilities of errors in choosing a strategy and if local neighborhoods are not too small or too large

shaping intergenerational relationships the demonstration effect abstract according to the demonstration effect theory parents make intergenerational transfers to their elders in order to elicit a symmetric future behavior from their children in this paper we show that upstream transfers are expected to increase with low returns from alternative financial assets and with the donor s life expectancy the latter effect creates a greater incentive for daughters to care for parents

corporate social responsibility a strategic advantage or a strategic necessity for many firms a focus on corporate social responsibility csr is an indication to stakeholders that the firm is concerned about social and environmental issues however these same firms may engage in csr activities with the expectation that these activities will increase their bottom line a relevant and highly researched question is the relationship between csr and performance the findings are inconclusive indicating a need to consider other explanations several authors have drawn on the resource based view of the firm to suggest that csr can give a firm a competitive advantage in this article we draw on and further develop this research by focusing on four outcomes of csr initiatives strategic disadvantage strategic necessity temporary strategic advantage and strategic advantage we exemplify this with two cases the article contributes to the literature by developing a set of possible outcomes by recognizing several issues which result in strategic necessity and by suggesting movement between the outcomes

corporate social responsibility theories mapping the territory the corporate social responsibility csr field presents not only a landscape of theories but also a proliferation of approaches which are controversial complex and unclear this article tries to clarify the sit uation mapping the territory by classifying the main csr theories and related approaches in four groups 1 instrumental theories in which the corporation is seen as only an instrument for wealth creation and its social activities are only a means to achieve economic results 2 political theories which concern themselves with the power of corporations in society and a responsible use of this power in the political arena 3 integrative theories in which the corporation is focused on the satisfaction of social demands and 4 ethical theories based on ethical responsibilities of corporations to society in practice each csr theory presents four dimensions related to profits political performance social demands and ethical values the findings suggest the necessity to develop a new theory on the business and society relationship which should integrate these four dimensions

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

warm glow giving earned money and the option to take giving in dictator games has been shown to vary with the nature of the endowment earned vs house money and the action space give only vs the option to give or take this article is the first to test if these factors similarly affect warm glow giving alone there is no reason that one would expect the same outcomes given that the motivations for warm glow giving are different from the motivations for total warm glow plus purely altruistic giving we find that warm glow giving to charity or philanthropic institutions in a real donation experiment increases when the endowment is earned the option to take does reduce warm glow giving to charity but significant giving remains our results suggest that donating earned income creates greater utility than donating an equal amount from a windfall gain and that warm glow comes not merely from the act of giving but also from the characteristics of the recipient jel c90 d64 h41

siblings strangers and the surge of altruism abstract we demonstrate how altruism can surge in a population of nonaltruists we assume that each individual plays a one shot prisoner s dilemma game with his or her sibling or with a stranger and that the probability that an individual survives to reproduce is proportional to his or her payoff in this game we model the formation of couples and the rule of imitation of parents and of nonparents we then ask what happens to the proportion of altruists in the population we specify a case where the unique and stable equilibrium is one in which the entire population will consist of altruists

does the government crowd out private donations new evidence from a sample of non profit firms abstract during the 1980s government grants to non profit organizations declined dramatically and the price of private donations increased given there are different costs associated with government grants and private donations to non profits it is important to study the relationship between these two sources and determine whether government grants crowd out private donations i take a fresh look at the issue of crowd out and improve upon the literature by exploiting a panel data set that links private donations to non profit firms with the government grants they received i study 430 non profit shelter human services and other similar types of organizations that were in operation between 1982 and 1992 i find private donations to these non profits effectively do not change with changes in government grants after controlling for firm heterogeneity and political and economic factors under an ols specification in a 2sls specification after controlling for possible endogeneity of the government grants the estimated crowd out is significantly different from zero and one dollar on average the estimated crowd out is 50 cents

how giving affects giving a long term analysis of donations social preferences theories suggest that at least some people show altruistic behaviour however this philanthropic behaviour ranges from pure altruistic preferences to reluctant altruists the fa

a theory of impact philanthropy this article develops a new model of altruism called impact philanthropy an impact philanthropist is someone who wants to personally make a difference while that motive is straightforward its logical implications are significantly different from other models of philanthropy for example the contributions of other donors can reduce an impact philanthropist s charitable fulfillment as a result cooperation among impact philanthropists can reduce aggregate giving in addition impact philanthropy can lead to a codependent relationship between givers and receivers in which both benefit from the other finally the model suggests a conflict between charitable organizations and its donors concerning the allocation of charitable gifts in particular a charitable organization prefers to spread a donor s contribution across many goods whereas a donor prefers to target his or her contribution at a specific good d 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

cross sectional seasonalities in international government bond returns abstract we are the first to document the cross sectional return seasonality effect in international government bonds using a variety of tests we examine fixed income securities from 22 countries for the years 1980 2018 the bonds with high low returns in the same calendar month in the past continue to overperform underperform in the future the effect is robust to many considerations including controlling for established predictors of bond returns our results support the behavioural story of the anomaly demonstrating its highest profitability in the periods of elevated investor sentiment and in the market segments of strong limits to arbitrage nonetheless investment application of bond seasonality might be challenging due to high trading costs and the required short holding periods

pareto optimal redistribution and private charity abstract when private charity exists and is motivated by utility interdependence a non pareto optimal outcome the free rider problem typically arises nevertheless incremental fiscal redistribution cannot achieve a paretian welfare improvement so long as private charity continues at positive levels donors respond to incremental fiscal redistribution by reducing their voluntary contributions by exactly a dollar for every dollar transferred in this way no net transfer is achieved unless incremental fiscal redistribution is pursued to the point where private contributions have been driven to zero alternatively a net transfer may be achieved by fiscal measures which affect donors marginal incentives to donate

consequences opportunities and generalized consequentialism and non consequentialism abstract in a recent paper published in journal of economic theory 101 2001 423 436 by suzumura and xu an analytical framework was developed which allowed us to characterize the concept of consequentialism and non consequentialism to simplify matters however the treatment in that paper was confined only to the cases where no trade off exists between consequential considerations which reflect the individual s preferences over alternatives and non consequential considerations which reflect the individual s concern over richness of opportunities from which alternatives are chosen the present paper represents a generalization of our previous framework which can now accommodate the situations where consequential considerations and non consequential considerations actively interact the analysis covers both the cases of finite and infinite number of alternatives

ethical business and investment a model for business and society two key questions lie at the heart of the business challenge for business ethics is it possible for business and investors to do well while doing good and if so how can this be achieved this paper adopts an international investment perspective to address these questions it demonstrates that it is possible for business and investors to achieve a triple bottom line of environmental social and financial performance

a critical analysis of the intellectual capital measuring managing and reporting practices in the non profit sector lessons learnt from a case study in management literature intellectual capital ic is considered the key driver of the competitive advantage of the third millennium enterprise firm consequently measuring managing and reporting ic has become a critical issue frameworks addressed to measure and report ic have proliferated nevertheless the adoption of these frameworks is not so widespread in practice the strong call for critically investigating ic practices has been raised by several leading authors in the area doing a critical and performative ic research means empirically researching ic organisational practices in specific contexts in order to increase the understanding of the ic dynamics by critically analysing the ic practices of anpas piemonte an italian non profit organisation chosen for its long standing experience in issuing audited ic reports from 2003 to 2011 the article contributes to the knowledge of how and why ic is measured and reported in a specific outstanding npo disclosing ic moreover the case study analysis contributes to shed lights on the levers and barriers that should be faced by other managers intending to implement and effectively use an ic measurement management and reporting system within organisation

an experimental test of the under annuitization puzzle with smooth ambiguity and charitable giving abstract in a life cycle model with a bequest motive we study the impact of smooth ambiguity aversion to uncertain survival probabilities on the optimal demand for annuities we implement a theory driven laboratory experiment first a subject s ambiguity attitude is elicited in a simple experimental setting able to make the smooth ambiguity model operational then in a two period annuity bequest decision problem the subject s bequest in the second period is presented as a donation to a previously chosen charity contingent to the subject being active after the first period in line with the theoretical predictions we find that ambiguity averse resp loving subjects invest less resp more in annuities than ambiguity neutral ones furthermore subjects contingent donation to the chosen charity increases in their investment in annuities only for sufficiently high levels of warm glow altruism

responsible management incentive systems and productivity a disconnect remains between theories about responsible management and application in real life organizations part of the reason is due to the complexity and holistic nature of the field and the fact that many of the benefits of aligning business objectives with changing societal conditions are of an intangible nature human resource management is an increasingly important part of the field with benefits including talent retention higher levels of motivation and improvements in organizational cohesion this paper sets out an experiment run at a large spanish university to try to analyze the impact on worker productivity of a responsible management stance by an employer based on the corporate social performance model the paper examines the issue from the point of view of responsibilities responsiveness and outcomes and considers the cost benefit effect of incorporating a social responsibility variable into the wage structure to measure the impact on productivity

sustainable business model adoption among s p 500 firms a longitudinal content analysis study in this study we examine the diversity of sustainable business models adopted by the largest global corporations those listed in the s p 500 index over the period 2005 2014 we examine press release communications during this period which represent public data about business relevant events we expect that examining this communication can reveal longitudinal patterns in the adoption of sustainable business activities and models empirically we utilize academic and practitioner expert panels to build a set of keywords across nine sustainable business model archetypes and utilize automated content analysis to examine the breadth and nature of a firm s sustainable business activities and practices we find evidence of the increasing prominence of different types of sustainable business models over time in particular the results show that large capitalized firms have mostly adopted the environmentally oriented archetypes and to much lesser extent the societal and organizational ones

the price elasticity of warm glow giving abstract we examine the charitable giving behavior of warm glow givers in response to the same donation incentive structure but with formally different schemes at this aim we implement a large online survey n 1655 using the amazon mechanical turk platform first we elicit and measure warm glow giving then we employ a between subjects design in which each warm glow donor n 881 is randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups that differ for the subsidy rebate or matching and is asked to make a series of allocation decisions between himself and a charity of his choice the results show that contributions are significantly more responsive to matching 1 15 than to rebate subsidies 0 17 moreover we provide evidence that under rebate price elasticity decreases as the warm glow magnitude increases for weak warm glow givers price elasticity is double that for strong warm glow donors

does equity ownership matter for corporate social responsibility a literature review of theories and recent empirical findings based on the concept of shareholder primacy many scholars have argued that it is more important for businesses to earn profits for their shareholders than to provide benefits to society at large corporate social responsibility csr is often regarded as an investment that comes at the expense of shareholders in contrast research analyzing the connections between the equity ownership structure of a company and its level of csr engagement suggests that csr offers benefits to shareholders that go beyond direct financial returns from investments this study provides a comprehensive review and systematic assessment of theoretical considerations and approaches regarding different forms of equity ownership and their relationships to csr and it discusses the relevant benefits and motivations of shareholders the perceived value of these csr benefits varies among different types of shareholders as they assign unequal values to short term financial or to rather long term csr benefits based on a literature sample of 146 publications this review demonstrates central problems inherent in previous analyses given the ambiguous and partially contradictory findings of prior research this study identifies potential moderating influences that help clarify empirical evidence a contingency approach is suggested in future research as this can help resolve the problem of contradictory empirical findings and theoretical arguments

a resource based view of the socially responsible firm stakeholder interdependence ethical awareness and issue responsiveness as strategic assets in recent years the resource based view of the firm has made significant headway in explaining differences in interfirm performance however this perspective has not considered the social and ethical dimensions of organizational resources this paper seeks to provide such an integration using kuhn s three stage model of adaptive behavior the resource worthiness of stakeholder management business ethics and issues management are explored the paper concludes by drawing on prospect theory to understand the reasons for this conceptual lacuna

corporate environmental citizenship variation in developing countries an institutional framework this study focuses on why some companies in developing countries go beyond environmental regulations when implementing their corporate environmental social responsibilities or citizenship behavior drawing mainly upon the new institutional theory this study develops a conceptual framework to explain three institutional factors companies market orientations industrial characteristics and corporate identities accordingly we suggest that companies from developing countries that are oriented to markets in developed countries operate in highly concentrated industries and have missionary identities adopt corporate environmental citizenship behavior by going beyond environmental regulations the study also discusses the theoretical policy and managerial implications of the conceptual framework

csr practices and corporate strategy evidence from a longitudinal case study this paper aims to contribute to the present debate about business ethics and corporate social responsibility csr that the journal of business ethics is hosting numerous contributions argued theoretical frameworks and taxonomies of csr practices the authors want to ground in this knowledge and provide further evidence about how companies adopt csr practices to address stakeholders claims and consolidate their trust evidence was provided by a longitudinal case study about an italian food company that is one of the largest producers of baby food this company reshaped its corporate strategy along three decades through the adoption of csr practices in order to win stakeholders trust about food safety and supply chain behaviour the empirical exercise was informed by a literature review of the relevant contributions in terms of csr business practices and levels of efforts to adopt them in light of this review the authors adopted for the research framework the taxonomy of business practices proposed by spiller 2000 ethical business and investment a model for business and society journal of business ethics27 149 160 and the levels of commitment towards csr proposed by stahl and grigsby 1997 strategic management total quality global competition blackwell oxford the main findings are discussed in order to argue theoretical implications and identify further areas of research and debate

the corporate social responsibility of pharmaceutical product recalls an empirical examination of u s and u k markets the pressure on companies to practice corporate social responsibility csr has gained momentum in recent times as a means of sustaining competitive advantage in business the pharmaceutical industry has been acutely affected by this trend while pharmaceutical product recalls have become rampant and increased dramatically in recent years no comprehensive study has been conducted to study the effects of announcements of recalls on the shareholder returns of pharmaceutical companies as product recalls could significantly damage a company s reputation profitability and brand integrity this paper investigates the effect on shareholder wealth and the extent to which the adoption of csr practices by pharmaceutical companies in the united kingdom u k and the united states u s the two largest markets for pharmaceutical products in the world affected market reactions surrounding product recall announcements the analysis of product recall announcements from 1998 to 2004 compiled from the pharmaceutical journal and u s food and drug administration enforcement reports revealed marked differences in the way market participants in the two countries responded to news of product recalls u s investors penalised firms according to the severity of product defects while u k investors were indifferent while u k investors rewarded product recalls by firms which were not usually csr active u s investors punished non csr active firms that performed recalls these observations could pose strategic challenges to pharmaceutical firms operating in both countries

the relevance of stakeholder theory and social capital theory in the context of csr in smes an australian perspective the concept of business responsibility usually termed as corporate social responsibility csr originated in the early 1930s after the wall street crash of 1929 exposed corporate irresponsibility in large organisations the understanding of csr has evolved since then and its scope has now broadened from mere compliance to corporate laws to active alignment of internal business goals with externally set societal aspirations unfortunately the significance of this multidimensional concept within the small and medium enterprise sme sector has continued to be overshadowed by its application in large and multinational organisations more importantly this has led to the practice of judging smes which are experiencing increasing pressure to engage in social activities as if they are no different from their larger counterparts this study therefore investigates csr from the perspective of smes in australia without any theoretical presumptions and then comments on the relevance and applicability of the two theories that have been commonly used to investigate business responsibility namely stakeholder theory st and social capital theory sct the research findings indicate that csr within the sme sector is more aligned to the fundamentals of sct mainly owing to the unique resource and survival challenges that they face and which are arguably not so pronounced in large organisations

scoring firms codes of ethics an explorative study of quality drivers research in the field of management has increasingly focused on strategies and tools related to corporate sustainability of the tools examined codes of ethics have been found to play a primary role many studies have investigated the content of such codes as well as their capacity to condition the behaviour of people within organizations however few studies have considered the intrinsic quality of codes of ethics this study aims to investigate the impact that specific factors firm size degree of internationalization and industry effect can have on the quality of codes of ethics based on a sample of 248 listed italian companies the results of the empirical analysis show that the quality standard is particularly high in larger companies and in those firms operating in industries in which relationships established with critical stakeholders and disclosure to those stakeholders play a crucial role these results have interesting implications for both researchers and practitioners

nosy preferences benevolence and efficiency author affiliation chetan dave cdave nyu edustefan dodds sdodds uwinnipeg ca acknowledgment we would like to thank ingela alger sheryl ball nathan berg tarek coury rachel croson frances woolley participants at the 2008 canadian economics association meetings seminar participants at queen s university and two anonymous referees for valuable comments all errors are those of the authors 1 introductionthe pareto principle declares that if everyone in a society prefers some social state of the world x to another state y then the aggregated social ranking should reflect this as well minimal liberalism requires that no individual s preference relation between social states say z and w be violated in the social choice provided that the position of other individuals is unaffected across states z and w both of these principles can be appealing to economists as they evaluate the normative features of various policies however the liberal paradox of sen 1970 demonstrates that the pareto principle and minimal liberalism are potentially at odds with one another the paradox shows that if individuals possess nosy preferences that is they hold opinions about what others should do even though their own material well being is unaffected by others actions then it is in general impossible to arrive at a unique social choice that jointly satisfies these two axioms 1 as an elegant proof by contradiction the paradox adds to the list of social choice impossibilities 2sen s paradox highlights the tension between freedom of choice and efficiency with nosiness as the key ingredient in this article we re examine this tension by using recent insights from behavioral economics the idea that individuals may have concern for others namely altruism is well established in the behavioral economics literature becker 1974 however the concept of nosy preferences and what they imply for collective choice environments has not been extensively studied from a behavioral perspective here we provide such a study to do so we recast nosiness as a new form of social preference in a strategic setting this insight stems from the analysis of segal and sobel 2007 who consider a model where players in a game possess preferences over both outcomes and strategies employed by all players we embed our version of nosiness into a more general model of social preferences individuals in the model derive utility from three sources intrinsic payoffs from the outcomes of strategic choice nosy payoffs based on specific actions taken by other individuals to generate such outcomes and unconditionally altruistic or benevolent payoffs positively related to the extended utilities of other individuals this framework allows us to analyze strategic environments in which there exist interdependent preferences over utilities and actions or just one of these features we apply this particular model of preferences to two environments the first was suggested by aldrich 1977 who sought to provide a game theoretic interpretation of sen s paradox for this environment we are interested in the efficiency of equilibria and to what extent inefficiency depends on particular forms of social preferences we thus offer a new behavioral interpretation of sen s paradox following the behavioral theme we show that when individuals exhibit loss aversion over their own actions the paradox may be robust to schemes that attempt to generate efficiency by restricting action sets ex ante the second environment we consider is that of relative consumption concerns we show that applying our particular model of interdependent preferences to this environment allows us to find cases where individuals will voluntarily restrict consumption to mitigate the negative externality arising from nosy concerns about what others consume

an accurate measurement of the crowd out effect income effect and price effect for charitable contributions in the past empirical research on charitable contributions has focused on two issues estimating the income and price elasticities of contributions and estimating the extent to which government funding crowded out private contributions the two fundamental problems in all these studies are the differences in the underlying conceptual models and the use of imperfect data for empirical analysis this paper addresses both of these problems

charity donations in the uk new evidence based on panel data abstract this paper presents a set of panel data estimates for 159 of the most prominent uk charities for the period 1983 1990 in evaluating alternative specifications we settle on a fixed effects estimation social welfare charities are shown to fund raise short of the point at which net revenues are maximized whereas health and overseas charities are found to net revenue maximize religious charities maximize total revenues estimates of price and fund raising elasticities are presented for charities overall and for four cohorts for alternative income sources no evidence of crowding out is found

dealing with uncertainties when governing csr policies as corporate social responsibility involves a voluntary business endeavour to address social and environmental issues beyond legal compliance governments cannot fall back on hierarchical command and control policies to support it as such it is complementary with the increasing popularity of public policies known as new governance policies where the government is engaged in a horizontal inter organizational network of societal actors and where public policy is both formed and executed by the interacting and voluntary efforts from a multitude of stakeholders however such policies are known to generate substantive uncertainty about the content of csr and its related issues strategic uncertainty regarding the behavior of the actors involved and institutional uncertainty related to the interaction process involved in the institutional change we explore new governance policy instruments to address these uncertainties in the context csr and discuss the experiences with these methods in the european union

fluidity of regulation csr nexus the multinational corporate corruption example corporate social responsibility csr is a relatively undeveloped concept despite its increasing importance to corporations one difficulty is the possible inexactness of csr another is the apparent reluctance by regulatory authorities and policy makers to intervene in the area this is largely a result of inhibitions created by traditional approaches to company law with emphasis on shareholder protection and financial disclosure the consequence is the stultification of independent development of csr by tying social issues to financial performance this attitude might not be unconnected to the theoretical and practical challenges in justifying csr and defining its scope the underlying impediment is a factual and theoretical failure to distinguish instrumental and pure ethical csr this article demonstrates that ethical csr highlights the role of regulation and a principal stance is that regulation is neither incompatible nor irreconcilable with ethical csr the article argues that cognizance of the intrinsic moral justification of pure csr is required for delineating the scope of csr as well as for clarifying the desirability and extent of its regulation it argues that the dynamic history and visage of multinational corporate corruption illuminates the fluidity of the regulation csr relationship the current and widening backlash against transnational corporate corruption is arguably a demonstration of the position that regulation and csr are not mutually exclusive and absolute concepts this article submits that recognition and application of this ethical and instrumental csr distinction is fundamental to the development of csr and resolution of connected questions of regulation

an evolutionary explanation for rotten kids we explore how natural selection acts upon genes for cooperation altruism and selfishness in an prisoner s dilemma played by family members a key parameter determining behavior is that parents and children have different expectations of future offspring examining asexual and sexually reproducing populations we show that which strategy of cooperation and defection proves be stable depends on the relative reproduction potential of the players and what proportion of the population is young rotten kids with altruistic parents can be a stable outcome where reproductive success is the goal and natural selection may lead individuals to care about their unborn progeny jel d10 h31

the stakeholder theory and the common good the theory of the social responsibility of the firm oscillates between two extremes one that reduces the firm s responsibility to the obtainment of the greatest possible profit for its shareholders and another that extends the firm s responsibility to include a wide range of actors with an interest or stake in the firm the stakeholder theory of the social responsibility of business is more appealing from an ethical point of view and yet it lacks a solid foundation that would be acceptable to a variety of schools of thought in this paper i argue that the stakeholder theory could be founded on the concept of the common good first i explain the foundations of the theory of the common good the concept itself how it relates to the individual good and its role in the firm following that i explain how the theory of the common good could be applied to the stakeholder theory finally i draw some conclusions

social responsibility and incentives in the lab why do agents exert more effort when principals donate abstract we test experimentally whether and why principals charitable giving affects agents efforts we study a simple principal agent setting in the lab where a principal decides whether to donate a fixed amount to a charity and in the next step an agent chooses his effort we argue there are three potential mechanisms that can trigger a higher effort after a donation in this setting distributional concerns reciprocal altruism and shared warm glow utility we find agents choose higher efforts when principals donate with respect to the mechanisms we find evidence for reciprocal altruism and distributional concerns as drivers of agents performance reactions in the lab

private intergenerational contact in france and the demonstration effect this study analyses motives for intergenerational contact from adult children to their middle aged parents if these transfers may be explained either by altruism or by exchange we mainly focus on the demonstration effect where households take care of their own parents in order to elicit a future support from their children we test the model using a cross sectional survey from 1992 about private transfers in france according to the data the presence of children increases the amount of visits that respondents provide to their parents and the econometric results still hold after controlling for unobserved familial heterogeneity using fixed effects although this empirical evidence is consistent with the demonstration effect we suggest an alternative interpretation for the positive correlation based on the care of grandchildren

an experimental test of warm glow giving abstract this paper reports the results of an experimental test of the warm glow hypothesis a participant is presented with the opportunity to contribute from her own endowment to a charity of choice the experiment is designed so that a pure altruist has no incentive to donate the amount the designated charity will receive is preset any contribution by the participant crowds out dollar for dollar giving by the proctor we find that participants on average donated 20 of their endowments and that approximately 57 of the participants made a donation

rights welfarism and social choice the purpose of this paper is to outline a formal analytical framework that can accommodate considerations of individual rights as well as the more familiar ethical concerns of conventional welfare economics the failure to accommodate such fundamental values as rights has been at the heart of amartya k sen s 1979 criticism of welfarism which is inherent in much of welfare economics and social choice theory however the roots of the problem seem to lie quite deep even if one discards neutrality and similar properties which are regarded as capturing the essence of welfarism the very concept of a social decision function itself so widely used in socialchoice theory turns out to be too restrictive a vehicle for articulating our intuition about rights we propose an extension of the standard framework of social choice theory which can overcome some of these difficulties and enables us to discuss individual rights and other social values in one integrated framework

charitable giving in the german welfare state fiscal incentives and crowding out there are two ways that government activities influence private charitable giving 1 government spending on the provision of public goods may cause crowding out of private charitable contributions and 2 tax incentives may boost private charitable giving from a sample of german income tax returns we estimate the elasticity of charitable giving relative to tax incentives income and government spending using censored quantile regression analysis we derive results for different points of the underlying distribution of charitable giving evaluating overall treasury efficiency the tax deductibility of charitable donations fosters enough private giving to offset foregone tax revenues

strategic thinking in public goods games with teams abstract we experimentally investigate team behavior in repeated public goods games and use team chat logs to study motives for contribution subjects are matched into two person teams and each team makes a joint decision in each period we compare teams with individuals and find similar overall contributions however initial contribution is higher and endgame effects are more pronounced for teams we examine strategic discussions within teams and find strong evidence of concern for repeated game effects and limited backward induction we also find evidence of confusion and explore its potential sources

corporations and ngos when accountability leads to co optation interactions between corporations and nonprofits are on the rise frequently driven by a corporate interest in establishing credentials for corporate social responsibility csr in this article we show how increasing demands for accountability directed at both businesses and ngos can have the unintended effect of compromising the autonomy of nonprofits and fostering their co optation greater scrutiny of ngo spending driven by self appointed watchdogs of the nonprofit sector and a prevalence of strategic notions of csr advanced by corporate actors weaken the ability of civil society actors to change the business practices of their partners in the commercial sector to counter this trend we argue that corporations should embrace a political notion of csr and should actively encourage ngos to strengthen downward accountability mechanisms even if this creates more tensions in corporate ngo partnerships rather than seeing ngos as tools in a competition for a comparative advantage in the market place corporations should actively support ngo independence and critical capacity

the icelandic banking crisis a reason to rethink csr in the fall of 2008 the three largest banks in iceland collapsed with severe and lasting consequences for the icelandic economy this article discusses the icelandic banking crisis in relation to the notion of corporate social responsibility csr it explores some conceptual arguments for the position that the icelandic banking crisis illustrates the broad problem of the indeterminacy of the scope and content of the duties that csr is supposed to address in particular it is suggested that the way the banks in question conceived of csr i e largely in terms of strategic philanthropy was gravely inadequate it concludes by proposing that the case of the icelandic banking crisis gives us a reason to rethink csr

another look on bond market seasonally a note abstract this note provides evidence that there exists business cycle effects on the monthly returns of long term government bond and low grade corporate bond in addition the results of the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch models suggest that the returns series exhibit significant autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity

partners in giving the crowding in effects of uk government grants abstract this study examines the determinants of voluntary donations to uk charities using empirical specifications that combine error component and simultaneous equations methods in a series of tests we identify the one way fixed effects endogenous representation for government grants as the best empirical model when this endogeneity is taken into account government grants cause significant crowding in for the full sample and the two largest cohorts price coefficients are negative and fund raising coefficients are positive religion charities are net revenue maximizers whereas other charity cohorts fund raise short of net revenue maximization

reformulating the foundations of consumer choice theory and environmental valuation abstract the burgeoning field of environmental valuation has raised serious doubts about the fundamental axioms of consumer choice theory the general validity of the walrasian system and methodological individualism this paper examines these aspects of consumer choice theory paying particular attention to the pioneering contributions of georgescu roegen we argue that evidence from psychology game theory anthropology and contingent valuation surveys reveals a more complex pattern of decision making than that described by neoclassical utility theory we discuss the notions of the invariance of preferences non satiation the principle of complementarity lexicographic preferences and the hierarchy of wants with reference to environmental valuation we also discuss the notion of marginal utility of money the validity of the walrasian system and methodological individualism using scaling concept in hierarchy theory we then address the conflict between theory and reality by introducing a probabilistic binary choice scheme under uncertainty about environmental attributes we argue that these extensions are necessary to account for consumer choices revealed in environmental valuation surveys we conclude with the hope that a reformulation of consumer choice theory based on realistic models of human behavior can be the basis for a viable alternative to neoclassical welfare economics

impure altruism in dictators giving abstract we design an experiment to test whether incomplete crowding out in dictator games can be rationalized by the impurely altruistic preferences by giving the recipients an endowment of varying levels we create an environment in which crowding out may occur we find that the behavior of 66 of the dictators can be rationalized by the impurely altruistic utility function

characterizations of consequentialism and nonconsequentialism abstract by allowing for the possibility that individuals recognize the intrinsic value of choice along with the instrumental value thereof we suppose that individuals express extended preference orderings of the following type choosing an alternative x from an opportunity set a is better than choosing an alternative y from an opportunity set b within this framework we identify a consequentialist and a nonconsequentialist who show contrasting attiduces toward alternatives vis a vis opportunities this paper characterizes these attitudes in terms of some axioms whereas the companion paper explores the implication of these concepts in the context of social choice theory a la arrow journal of economic literature classification numbers d00 d60 d63 d71

an analysis of cause related marketing implementation strategies through social alliance partnership conditions and strategic objectives cause related marketing crm is an effective marketing tool for promoting corporate social responsibility csr activities and the bulk of campaigns are designed and delivered through collaborative social alliances with non profit organisations npos the authors seek to uncover some of the factors that explain how firms and npos choose their potential partners in the development of their crm strategy the rationales for the observed patterns are investigated through semi structured interviews conducted with managers employed by the uk based firms and npos the authors find that each party has specific preferences when choosing the particular crm implementation strategies in different situations as well as different initial positions when negotiating the formation of the social alliance this article contributes to our understanding of the crm implementation strategies and both the company s and the npo s behaviours toward each of the strategies

the governance of corporate sustainability empirical insights into the development leadership and implementation of responsible business strategy this article explores how corporate governance processes and structures are being used in large australian companies to develop lead and implement corporate responsibility strategies it presents an empirical analysis of the governance of sustainability in fifty large listed companies based on each company s disclosures in annual and sustainability reports we find that significant progress is being made by large listed australian companies towards integrating sustainability into core business operations there is evidence of leadership structures being put in place to ensure that board and senior management are involved in sustainability strategy development and are then incentivised to monitor and ensure implementation of that strategy through financial rewards there is evidence of a willingness to engage and communicate clearly the results of these strategies to interested stakeholders overall there appears to be a developing acceptance amongst large corporations that efforts towards improved corporate sustainability are not only expected but are of value to the business we suggest that this is evidence of a managerial shift away from an orthodox shareholder primacy understanding of the corporation towards a more enlightened shareholder value approach often encompassing a stakeholder orientated view of business strategy however strong underlying tensions remain due to the insistent market emphasis on shareholder value

on the demand for grandchildren tied transfers and the demonstration effect it is argued that parents provide help with housing downpayments in order to encourage the production of grandchildren and that such a subsidization emanates from the bdemonstration effect q a child s propensity to furnish parents with attention and care can be conditioned by parental example parents who desire such transfers in the future have an incentive to make transfers to their own parents in order to instill appropriate preferences in their children this generates a derived demand for grandchildren since potential grandparents will be treated better by their adult children if the latter have their own children to whom to demonstrate the appropriate behavior empirical work indicates behavior consistent with subsidization of the production of grandchildren and the demonstration effect

preferences for power abstract power the ability to determine the outcomes of others usually comes with various benefits higher compensation public recognition etc we develop a new game the power game to demonstrate that a substantial fraction of individuals enjoy the intrinsic value of power they accept lower payoffs in exchange for power over others without any benefits to themselves these preferences exist independently of other components of decision rights cannot be explained by social preferences and are not driven by mistakes confusion or signaling intentions we further show that valuation of power i is higher when individuals directly determine outcomes of others ii depends on how much discretion one has over those outcomes and iii is tied to relationships between individuals we establish that ignoring preferences for power may have large welfare implications and consequently should be included in the study of political systems and labor contracts

cooperation secret handshakes and imitation in the prisoners dilemma building on a j robson 1990 j theoret biol 144 379 396 we introduce into the repeated prisoners dilemma mutants who have the ability to send a costly signal i e the secret handshake before each round of the game and to condition their actions on whether or not they observe the same signal from their opponent we show that as mutation probabilities approach zero in the limit cooperation occurs a positive fraction of the time using simulations to study the behavior of the system with nonzero mutation probabilities we obtain similar results surprisingly in some cases an increased payoff to unilateral defection actually raises the level of cooperation journal of economic literature classification numbers c70 c72 d60

how altruism can prevail in an evolutionary environment abstract we study environments in which an individual gets a higher payoff from defecting than from cooperating and where copies of an individual are more likely to appear the higher is the individual s payoff we demonstrate that even in single shot prisoner s dilemma models where cooperation benefits one s opponent at a cost to oneself evolution can sustain cooperative behavior between relatives or neighbors in addition we show that selfish individuals who conciously choose their actions may find it in their interest to be altruistic when there is some probability that their practices will be imitated both genetic and cultural inheritance appear to be blunt instruments that do not operate on individuals in isolation those who inherit a genetic tendency to cooperate are more likely than others to enjoy the benefits of cooperative siblings similarly with culturel inheritance altruism can prevail when individuals are likely to interact with others who share the same role model

rigidity of social systems the tendency for the members of a corporation or government to be resistant to change is explored in a model that encompasses two endemic features of such systems first the social system is modeled as a hierarchy and implicit within it is a selection process that determines who advances to higher levels second an agent s behavior is partially determined by imitating those who have risen in the ranks a behavioral norm of being rigid is found to be more prevalent and robust than one of being flexible a more volatile environment may also induce agents to be more resistant to change admirandi sed imitandi to be admired but not imitated st augustine

are dictators averse to inequality abstract we present the results of an experiment designed to identify more clearly the motivation underlying dictators behavior in the typical dictator game recipients are given no endowment we give an endowment to the recipient as well as the dictator this new dimension allows us to test directly for inequality aversion our results confirm that the inequality between dictator s and recipient s endowment is a key determinant of the dictator s giving as we increase the recipient s endowment from 0 to an amount equal to the dictator s endowment the mean amount passed drops from 30 percent to less than 12 percent of the dictator s endowment and the proportion of dictators who pass positive amounts falls from 75 percent to 26 percent thus the majority of dictators exhibit behavior consistent with inequality averse preferences on the other hand only 24 percent of dictators split payoffs equally suggesting that maximin preferences are less important drivers of dictators giving

governing corporate social responsibility an assessment of the contribution of the un global compact to csr strategies in the telecommunications industry csr has become an important element in the business strategy of a growing number of companies worldwide a large number of initiatives have been developed that aim to support companies in developing implementing and communicating about csr the global compact gc initiated by the united nations stands out since its launch in 2000 it has grown to about 2900 companies and 3800 members in total the gc combines several mechanisms to support csr strategies normative principles networks for learning and co operation and communication and transparency about csr activities however up to now only a few empirical evaluations of the contribution of the gc to csr strategies have been conducted that however have not differentiated between different types of companies regarding type of industry or regarding the maturity of csr this paper aims to partly fill this knowledge gap by a case study examination of three frontrunner companies in the telecommunications industry the results show that the gc is only one of the many initiatives that these companies employ in shaping implementing and reporting about their csr strategies and that its role is at most modest there are two important reasons one is that many of the csr issues that these companies deal with are industry specific and are hence addressed in specific networks the second reason is that the gc principles are perceived as minimum requirements that do not provide many incentives to the three case study companies to perform better a differentiation of norms for gc members is expected to enhance the contribution of the gc to csr strategy employment not only for frontrunner companies but as well for other categories of companies

assessment of leading apparel specialty retailers csr practices as communicated on corporate websites problems and opportunities despite the increased attention to corporate social responsibility csr and regulatory changes in recent years little is known about how apparel companies are implementing and communicating csr practices to their stakeholders to fill the gap this study investigated the range and strategies of leading apparel specialty retailers csr practices as communicated on their websites over a longitudinal period of 1 year in total 17 apparel specialty retailers were included in the analysis the companies websites were content analyzed in depth using the coding criteria focusing on labor and environmental issues developed for this study the initial data were collected in november 2011 and the study was replicated in december 2012 to examine any changes in the csr practices as of 2011 only nine companies addressed csr issues on their websites at different degrees despite their leadership positions in the industry environmental issues were addressed by only five companies with different ranges of practices in 2012 all 17 companies addressed labor issues on their websites with varying degrees of specificity in terms of environmental issues six companies an increase of one company from 2011 addressed environmental initiatives on their websites with wider ranges of practices discussed are problems and opportunities as well as the role of the government and stakeholders for the effective communications of csr policies and initiatives for the apparel industry

nonmarket transfers and altruism abstract we examine altruistically motivated consumption transfers in an effort to account for nonmarket transfers we find that altruistic linkages lead to autonomous negotiation free transfers and that such transfers positively respond to stronger altruism we also find that given fairly natural assumptions concerning the altruism parameters mutual altruism does not necessarily result in group social harmony even though its rise narrows the conflict range in spite of enhanced transfers prompted by such a rise both parties may end up worse off these results help explain why in some social environments a shift toward market oriented transfers and exchanges may be quicker than in others as the disadvantages decline in utility associated with intragroup altruistic linkages outweigh the advantages

corporate decisions about labelling genetically modified foods this paper considers whether individual companies have an ethical obligation to label their genetically modified gm foods gm foods and ingredients pervade grocery store shelves despite the fact that a majority of north americans have worries about eating those products the market as whole has largely failed to respond to consumer preference in this regard as have north american governments a number of consumer groups ngo s and activist organizations have urged corporations to label their gm products this paper asks whether in such a situation individual corporations can be ethically required to take such unilateral action we argue that they cannot given the lack of solid evidence for any risk to human health and the serious market disadvantage almost surely associated with costly unilateral action no individual company has an ethical obligation to label its gm foods

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