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

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

ethical investment processes and outcomes there is a growing body of literature on ethical or socially responsible investment across a range of disciplines this paper highlights the key themes in the field and identifies some of the major theoretical and practical challenges facing both scholars and practitioners one of these challenges is understanding better the complexity of the relationship between such investment practices and corporate behaviour noting that ethical investment is seldom characterised by agreement about what it actully constitutes and that much of the extant research focuses on a narrow set of issues the paper argues that there are benefits associated with examining ethical investment as a process

what will consumers pay for social product features the importance of ethical consumerism to many companies worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years ethical consumerism encompasses the importance of non traditional and social components of a company s products and business process to strategic success such as environmental protectionism child labor practices and so on the present paper utilizes a random utility theoretic experimental design to provide estimates of the relative value selected consumers place on the social features of products

pricing of fluctuations in electricity markets abstract in an electric power system demand fluctuations may result in significant ancillary cost to suppliers furthermore in the near future deep penetration of volatile renewable electricity generation is expected to exacerbate the variability of demand on conventional thermal generating units we address this issue by explicitly modeling the ancillary cost associated with demand variability we argue that a time varying price equal to the suppliers instantaneous marginal cost may not achieve social optimality and that consumer demand fluctuations should be properly priced we propose a dynamic pricing mechanism that explicitly encourages consumers to adapt their consumption so as to offset the variability of demand on conventional units through a dynamic game theoretic formulation we show that under suitable convexity assumptions the proposed pricing mechanism achieves social optimality asymptotically as the number of consumers increases to infinity numerical results demonstrate that compared with marginal cost pricing the proposed mechanism creates a stronger incentive for consumers to shift their peak load and therefore has the potential to reduce the need for long term investment in peaking plants

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

a note on sequential auctions this note provides an explanation for the declining price anomaly in sequential second price auctions we illustrate how the average winning bids of risk neutral agents bidding for objects with valuations drawn from independent identical distributions are lower in later auctions than in earlier auctions when the objects are not identical we determine the optimal order in which they should be auctioned

consumer research for consumers this article outlines a consumer focused approach for the study of consumer behavior i argue that much of the existing literature by developing knowledge that focuses on the determinants of consumer purchasing is implicitly biased toward a marketing perspective of consumer behavior in contrast i propose the need for a consumer focused approach that would advance knowledge aimed at helping consumers make wiser purchases this approach should address the most important and challenging consumer decisions describe consumer behavior in a manner that leads to prescriptions consider the actions of other parties in the marketplace and identify biases unique to or exacerbated by the consumer context this article then illustrates what such a consumer focused approach would imply for consumer research in three areas negotiations financial services and auctions

occupations and the evolution of gender differences in intergenerational socioeconomic mobility this paper analyzes intergenerational mobility experiences of daughters and sons with respect to their fathers occupational status and documents changes in gender differences over time while women have been in occupations with lower overall earnings potential men are more likely to be in occupations characterized by long hours and low returns the mobility gap in earnings has been closing and a mobility advantage with respect to education has been emerging

responsible retailing the practice of csr in banana plantations in costa rica during the last 10 years or so a number of corporate social responsibility csr initiatives have been introduced in global supply chains which aim to improve the conditions of workers engaged in producing goods for export this article discusses the observations of csr in practice in the costa rican united kingdom uk banana chain the banana chain makes for an interesting case study because there are dominant corporate actors at each end who are in a position to influence the conditions experienced by workers on banana plantations at the top of the chain there are four major uk supermarket groups who control access to the retail market and as self appointed guardians of consumer interest are demanding that producers adopt more socially responsible practices at the other end banana production is highly integrated and controlled by three large north american agri businesses who have developed their own social and environmental certification programmes costa rica also makes for an interesting country to locate the study as it has a tradition of state led policies to protect worker rights yet in spite of csr commitments made by both supermarkets and producers that emphasise health and safety and the country s established labour law this article shows that there are problems for workers when they are forced to meet demanding production schedules furthermore it suggests that whilst supermarkets continue to drive down consumer prices and put pressure on producers to reduce costs a downward spiral of working conditions is created regardless of the csr policies in place however this article also identifies that changes to supermarket behaviour is possible when consumer trust is at stake

the importance of consumer trust for the emergence of a market for green products the case of organic food consumer trust is a key prerequisite for establishing a market for credence goods such as green products especially when they are premium priced this article reports research on exactly how and how much trust influences consumer decisions to buy new green products it identifies consumer trust as a distinct volition factor influencing the likelihood that consumers will act on green intentions and strongly emphasizes the needs to manage consumer trust as a prerequisite for the development of a market for green products specifically based on a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods it is found that lack of consumer trust is a barrier for the development of a market for organic food in thailand two focus groups and ten in depth interviews revealed low knowledge about and low trust in organic food certification control and labeling further a mall intercept survey n 177 revealed that lack of especially system trust reduces consumer expectations about benefits of buying organic food and it makes them less likely to buy organic food mistrust in the control system and in the authenticity of food sold as organic has a significant negative impact on self reported buying behavior implications for policy and future research are discussed

interorganizational favour exchange and the relationship between doing well and doing good this article examines whether ethical business practice enhances financial performance with respect to interorganizational favour exchange we argue that the link between the ethicality and economic utility of interorganizational favour exchange is governed by 1 organizational individual interest alignment conflict and 2 the fairness or justifiability of favour exchanges from the perspective of third parties we classify interorganizational io favour exchange into four types business personal personal business personal personal and business business favour exchange our analysis shows that the first three types of favour exchange are unethical as they involve conflicts between organizational and individual interests in one or both participating organizations that negatively affect organizational value creation the last type of favour exchange involves organizational individual interest alignment in both participating organizations and positively affects the capacity of those involved in the exchange to create value favour exchanges of this fourth variety are ethically justifiable unless they unfairly damage the legitimate interests of third parties in the latter case these favour exchanges create the risk of negative third party reactions which in turn affect the sustainability of the benefits of the favour exchanges to the focal group the dyad our research results advance understanding of the ethical and economic implications of io favour exchange counter the prejudice against this behaviour in organizations provide ethical guidance for management and business practice and have implications for the relationship between doing well and doing good

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

the impact of external parties on brand name capital the 1982 tylenol poisonings and subsequent cases an examination of the 1982 tylenol poisonings reveals stock market losses to johnson johnson that far exceed direct costs and losses shared with other pain reliever producers this evidence provides support for the klein and leffler 1981 theory of brand names as quality assuring mechanisms of the subsequent cases only the 1986 tylenol poisonings were associated with significant stock market losses prior to the 1982 and 1986 tylenol poisonings tylenol was the number one pain reliever whereas the other pain relievers that were poisoned had a much lower level of brand name capital to lose

supply chain specific understanding the patchy success of ethical sourcing initiatives as a number of high profile companies have found to their cost corporate reputations can be significantly affected by firms management of sustainability issue including those that are outside their direct control such as the environmental and social impacts of their supply networks this paper begins by examining the relationship between corporate social responsibility reputation and supply network conditions it then looks at the effectiveness of one tool for managing supply network sustainability issues ethical sourcing codes of conduct by examining how the characteristics of three supply networks branded clothes diy wood products and branded confectionary affects the implementation ethical sourcing codes of conduct it ends by setting out conclusions on why implementation of such codes has been so much more successful in some sectors than others and recommendations on effective approaches to managing sustainability issues in supply networks

the ethics of consumer sovereignty in an age of high tech we argue that consumer sovereignty in an increasingly high tech world is more of a fiction than a fact we show how the principle of consumer sovereignty that governs the societal impact of economic competition is no longer valid the world of high tech is increasingly responsible for changes in the opportunity ability and motivation of business firms to compete furthermore the world of high tech is increasingly responsible for changes in the opportunity ability and motivation of consumers to engage in rational decision making we conclude that we cannot rely on consumer sovereignty to maintain a thriving economy instead we need to develop performance standards designed to meet the demands of the various stakeholders of the organization

improving social responsibility in rmg industries through a new governance approach in laws developing countries need to reform legislation to ensure the global supply firms in ready made garment rmg industry is adequately addressing obligations of social responsibility literature typically focuses on strategies for raising responsible standards in global buying firms within the rmg industry but fails to focus on implementing strategies for suppliers in developing countries this article addresses this gap by specifically focusing on the rmg industry in bangladesh the home of the third largest rmg supplier in the world it concentrates on analysing how and to what extent the law can assist in developing social responsibility performance of the rmg manufacturing firms in developing countries it ultimately concludes that a new governance approach in laws can effectively increase the social responsibility practice standards of an industry where global buying firms are profit driven and governmental agencies are either inadequate or corrupt

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

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

a resource based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability drawing on the resource based view of the firm we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship with the returns to environmental performance higher in high growth industries we tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 finns over two years using independently developed environmental ratings results indicate that it pays to be green and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth we conclude by highlighting the study s academic and managerial implications making special reference to the social issues in management literature

additional evidence on the information based contagion effects of bank failures abstract recent theoretical models addressed the question of the nature of bank runs and what triggers them two competing hypotheses emerged pure panic and information based contagion this study provides additional evidence consistent with the latter hypothesis three observable bank characteristics are examined as proxy measures for the interim private information used by rational depositors in assessing the riskiness of a bank s long lived assets that may trigger bank runs the three factors are 1 the distance of the solvent banks headquarters from the headquarters of each failed bank 2 the size of the solvent banks and 3 the capital ratio as a proxy for their solvency the analysis is conducted in the context of the five large bank failures that occurred in the southwest region of the us during the mid 1980s weekly abnormal returns of 33 southwestern bhcs in ten critical failure related event dates are regressed on the three observable bank characteristics our findings suggest that distance and capital adequacy are negatively related to the magnitude of the contagion effect whereas size is positively related

corporate social responsibility in garment sourcing networks factory management perspectives on ethical trade in sri lanka with complex buyer driven global production networks and a labour intensive manufacturing process the fashion industry has become a focal point for debates on the social responsibility of business utilising an interview methodology with influential actors from seven export garment manufacturers in sri lanka we explore the situated knowledge at one nodal point of the production network we conceptualise factory management perspectives on the implementation of corporate social responsibility csr in terms of the strategic balancing of ethical considerations against the commercial pressures of cost and lead time factory managers framed csr in terms of compliance rather than going above and beyond regulatory requirements seeing it as a strategic competitive imperative and less a developmental mechanism sri lankan manufacturers maintain that they have benefitted from a unique combination of factors including strict national labour laws an educated workforce the characteristics of the garments produced industrial upgrading and long term non adversarial buyer supplier relationships which they argue has supported the establishment and maintenance of csr practices the paper thus provides managerial implications that relate csr activities to csr outcomes which include both reputational and production benefits such insights will be of strategic relevance for lead retail buyers as well as apparel producers keen to invest in csr to partly mitigate against increasing price based competition

corporate transparency and green management how can firms support their customers collaborative social responsibility initiatives and especially pro environmental firm customer collaborations does corporate transparency affect customers willingness to undertake pro environmental collaborative programs this study addresses these questions in relation to the us residential electricity market it focuses on the impact of customers perceptions of the utility s degree of transparency and on the willingness to engage in pro environmental behavior peb related to electricity consumption the responses of 1257 interviewees from us households to questions related to their electricity suppliers are analyzed through structural equation models sems using latent variables results show that customers perceptions of an electricity utility s transparency affect their willingness to collaborate in environmental programs and that the degree of perceived transparency of the utility is related to customers environmental awareness

virtuous nexus between corporate social performance and financial performance a study of construction enterprises in china abstract although business and society are thought in a vicious relationship for diminishing trust among stakeholders a few studies indicate the existence of a reciprocal nexus between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance known as the virtuous cycle despite of some empirical studies in developed countries little research has been conducted concerning the assumption in emerging markets where large companies have more responsibilities to create positive and sustainable shared values this paper aims to explore the nexus between social performance and financial performance of chinese companies for their global influential social and environmental impacts together with increasing awareness of corporate social responsibility csr a two step longitudinal design including cross lagged correlation analyses and longitudinal path analyses is applied to examine the overall and decomposed links it is found the virtuous cycle does exist in the overall and in most decomposed links within the context of large construction companies in china these findings are beneficial for interested policy makers corporate managers and the public to create shared value on csr and therefore contribute to csr improvements analysis results indicate a one year time lag to be appropriate for examining the lead lag relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance the research also inspires a potential generalisation of the virtuous cycle by similarly examining it in other industries or other countries with diverse csr contexts

business ethics from the internal point of view the notion that the firm and economic activity in general is inherently amoral is a central feature of positive economics that is also widely accepted in business ethics theories as disparate as stockholder and stakeholder theory both leave this central assumption unchallenged each theory argues for a different set of external ethical restrictions but neither adequately provides an internal connection between business and the ethical rules business people are obliged to follow this paper attempts to make this connection by arguing that the purpose of business is to produce a good or service for trade trade involves both a respect for individual autonomy and property rights and squarely places moral norms internal to the practice of business trade is not a contingent activity of business it is a practice rule which also provides the common sense boundary between business and charity on the one hand and crime on the other business and those who engage in it are from the internal point of view bound by the purpose of trade and not just the laws of the land

whether and to what extent consumers demand fair pricing behavior for its own sake this article contributes to scholarly understanding of the significance of procedural fairness in pricing contexts it has been widely recognized that price fairness judgments concern both the outcome fair price and the procedure leading to the outcome fair pricing however extant research has traditionally viewed procedural fairness as a means to outcome fairness according to this instrumental view procedural fairness is a component or antecedent of outcome fairness but has no direct effects on consumers responses to prices building on the relational perspective on fairness we develop and test a model of price procedural fairness as an end in itself in three lab studies we show that 1 when information regarding outcome an unfavorable price difference and procedure the pricing practice underlying the price difference is available simultaneously and unambiguously procedural fairness has direct and stronger effects than outcome fairness on consumers responses and 2 procedural fairness mediates the effects of pricing practices on these responses in all three studies adding procedural fairness as a direct predictor of consumers responses increases the explanatory power of a model of price fairness significantly our model can explain peculiar real world cases in which consumers reacted very strongly over relatively small price differences the research findings point to the significance of the non instrumental aspect of consumer s demand for ethical fair pricing behavior and the need for companies to assess the fairness of their pricing practices from the consumer perspective

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 real time price elasticity of electricity the real time price elasticity of electricity contains important information on the demand response of consumers to the volatility of peak prices despite the importance empirical estimates of the real time elasticity are hardly available this paper provides a quantification of the real time relationship between total peak demand and spot market prices we find a low value for the real time price elasticity which may partly be explained from the fact that not all users observe the spot market price if we correct for this phenomenon we find the elasticity to be fairly low for consumers currently active in the spot market if this conclusion applies to all users this would imply a limited scope for government intervention in supply security issues

balancing power and variable renewables three links abstract balancing power is used to quickly restore the supply demand balance in power systems the need for this tends to be increased by the use of variable renewable energy sources vre such as wind and solar power this paper reviews three channels through which vre and balancing systems interact the impact of vre forecast errors on balancing reserve requirements the supply of balancing services by vre generators and the incentives to improve forecasting provided by imbalance charges the paper reviews the literature provides stylized facts from german market data and suggests policy options surprisingly while german wind and solar capacity has tripled since 2008 balancing reserves have been reduced by 15 and costs by 50

a normative argument for independent voice and labor unions the paper argues that an ethical firm has cause to realize and to respect in good faith the decision of workers regarding labor unions and proceeds along the following lines first the employer is due appropriate deference the bounds of which should be determined in conjunction with employees as they are the most closely affected party second employee preferences for defining the employment relation and appropriate deference are best reflected through autonomous voice third autonomous voice is assured by the right to free association and generally achieved through labor unions fourth because employment is so important to a dignified existence an economically just system of employment requires respect for workers choice regarding labor unions and fifth there are concerns and contradictions that arise from labor union operations but they do not justify impeding a morally valid prerogative

responsive regulation and developing economies summary developing states with limited regulatory capacity might benefit from a responsive approach to regulation responsive regulation is a democratic ideal incorporating notions of deliberative democracy and restorative justice responsive regulation conducted by regulatory networks of governmental and non governmental actors allows for networking around capacity deficits ngos play a vital role in this kind of regulation by utilizing ngos and local social pressure developing countries might develop a regulatory society model bypassing the regulatory state where capacity remains limited private bounty hunting such as fees for successful private prosecutions may become an appealing tool for achieving certain regulatory objectives

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

price volatility in commodity markets with restricted participation abstract in commodity markets price volatility may rise significantly if the product granularity increases to gain insights into the underlying drivers we analyze price volatility based on the example of german electricity markets we develop a theoretical model to reproduce the price formation in the day ahead and intraday auction which are sequential short term electricity markets with 60 minute and 15 minute products as cross border trade is allowed in the day ahead but not in the intraday auction the model accounts for the impact of restricted market participation the theoretical model is then transferred into an empirical analysis to first validate the modeling approach and second to comparatively assess the impact of increasing product granularity and restricted market participation the empirical results indicate that the disproportional rise in quarter hourly price volatility is mainly triggered by limited market participation and not only by the high volatility of renewable supply and demand since restricted market participation refers to a lack of market coupling we derive a proxy for efficiency losses ranging from eur 55 million to eur 108 million that may be reduced if markets are coupled

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

a rich concept of wealth creation beyond profit maximization and adding value the purpose of this article is to take a fresh look at the concept of wealth creation that is urgently needed given the huge gap between the global importance of wealth creation and the attention paid to it it is argued that its notion we encounter is often very simple as in making money or extremely vague as in adding value in the first section need for a fresh look at the creation of wealth the need for a fresh look is highlighted by pointing to three concerns about globalization and the roles and responsibilities of corporations in the second section conceptual clarifications what is the creation of wealth a rich concept of wealth creation is developed that includes physical financial human and social capital encompasses private and public wealth accounts for its production and distribution recognizes its material and spiritual side and places wealth in the time horizon of sustainability moreover creating wealth as making something new and better is distinguished from possessing and acquiring and different motivations required for wealth creation are explored the third section challenges for business ethics discusses several challenges of this rich concept for the understanding of business ethics

dynamics of supply chain networks with corporate social responsibility through integrated environmental decision making in this paper we develop a dynamic framework for the modeling and analysis of supply chain networks with corporate social responsibility through integrated environmental decision making through a multilevel supply chain network we model the multicriteria decision making behavior of the various decision makers manufacturers retailers and consumers which includes the maximization of profit the minimization of emission waste and the minimization of risk we explore the dynamic evolution of the product flows the associated product prices as well as the levels of social responsibility activities on the network until an equilibrium pattern is achieved we provide some qualitative properties of the dynamic trajectories under suitable assumptions and propose a discrete time algorithm which is then applied to track the evolution of the levels of social responsibility activities product flows and prices over time we illustrate the model and computational procedure with several numerical examples

econometric analysis of 15 minute intraday electricity prices abstract the trading activity in the german intraday electricity market has increased significantly over the last years this is partially due to an increasing share of renewable energy wind and photovoltaic which requires power generators to balance out the forecasting errors in their production we investigate the bidding behaviour in the intraday market by looking at both last prices and continuous bidding in the context of a reduced form econometric analysis a unique data set of 15 minute intraday prices and intraday updated forecasts of wind and photovoltaic has been employed price bids are explained by prior information on renewables forecasts and demand supply market specific exogenous variables we show that intraday prices adjust asymmetrically to both forecasting errors in renewables and to the volume of trades dependent on the threshold variable demand quote which reflects the expected demand covered by the planned traditional capacity in the day ahead market the location of the threshold can be used by market participants to adjust their bids accordingly given the latest updates in the wind and photovoltaic forecasting errors and the forecasts of the control area balances

matching and sorting in online dating using data on user attributes and interactions from an online dating site we estimate mate preferences and use the gale shapley algorithm to predict sta ble matches the predicted matches are similar to the actual matches achieved by the dating site and the actual matches are approximately efficient outof sample predictions of offline matches i e marriages exhibit assortative mating patterns similar to those observed in actual marriages thus mate pref erences without resort to search frictions can generate sorting in marriages however we underpredict some of the correlation patterns search frictions may play a role in explaining the discrepancy

multi trait matching and gender differentials in intergenerational mobility we describe a model of multi trait matching and inheritance in which individuals attractiveness in the marriage market depends on their market and non market characteristics gender differences in social mobility can arise if market characteristics are relatively more important in determining marriage outcomes for men than they are for women and if they are more persistent across generations than non market characteristics a reduction in gender based discrimination in the labor market increases homogamy in the marriage market and lowers social mobility for both genders

oil and energy price volatility it is commonly believed that since the 1973 oil crisis oil and energy prices have been more volatile than other commodity prices this study examines monthly producer prices for thousands of products over the period january 1945 through august 2005 the results show that crude oil refined petroleum and natural gas prices are more volatile than prices for about 95 of products sold by domestic producers relative to crude commodities however crude oil prices are currently more volatile than about 65 of other products and oil price volatility first exceeded the median for crude commodities following the 1986 drop in oil prices

choice under uncertainty problems solved and unsolved ffifteen years ago the theory of choice under uncertainty could be considered one of the success stories of economic analysis it rested on solid axiomatic foundations it had seen important breakthroughs in the analytics of risk risk aversion and their applications to economic issues and it stood ready to provide the theoretical underpinnings for the newly emerging information revolution in economics 1 today choice under uncertainty is a field in flux the standard theory is being challenged on several grounds from both within and outside economics the nature of these challenges and of our profession s responses to them is the topic of this paper

business codes of multinational firms what do they say business codes are an oft cited management instrument but how common are codes among multinationals and what is their content in an unprecedented study the codes of the largest corporations in the world have been collected and thoroughly analyzed this paper presents the results of that study of the 200 largest companies in the world 52 5 have a code more than half f these codes describe company responsibilities regarding quality of products and services 67 adherence to local laws and regulations 57 and the protection of the natural environment 56 many codes make reference to principles governing stake holder relations e g transparency 55 honesty 50 and fairness 45 corporate core values e g teamwork 43 appropriate conduct among employees e g discrimination 44 and intimidation 43 and treatment of company property by employees e g conflict of interests 52 corruption 46 and fraud 45 monitoring compliance with the code is addressed in 52 of the codes based on this content study three types of codes are distinguished the stakeholder statute 72 the values statement 49 and the code of conduct 46 the results of this inquiry present a benchmark for the evaluation and development of both individual and international business codes

corporate governance and codes of ethics as a result of recent corporate scandals several rules have focused on the role played by boards of directors on the planning and monitoring of corporate codes of ethics in theory outside directors are in a better position than insiders to protect and further the interests of all stakeholders because of their experience and their sense of moral and legal obligations female directors also tend to be more sensitive to ethics according to several past studies which explain this affirmation by early gender socialization the fact that women are thought to place a greater emphasis on harmonious relations and the fact that men and women use different ethical frameworks in their judgments the goal of this paper is to determine the influence of these characteristics of the board in terms of promoting and hindering the creation of a code of ethics our findings show that a greater number of female directors does not necessarily lead to more ethical companies moreover within europe as a continent board ownership leads to an entrenchment of upper level management generating a divergence between the ethical interests of owners and managers in light of this situation the presence of independent directors is necessary to reduce such conflicts

integrating the ethical dimension into the analytical framework for the reform of state owned enterprises in china s socialist market economy a proposal the discussions about the reform of state owned enterprises are so far dominated by economic and legal considerations while the ethical dimension of this highly complex problem is being barely addressed explicitly much less developed systematically and integrated into a broader analytical framework for companies in china this paper is a proposal to introduce this kind of ethical considerations first the main features of the reform of state owned enterprises are briefly summarized and a number of critical issues are identified second the balanced concept of the firm is presented and compared with other approaches to corporate ethics in chiefly western literature discussions on corporate social responsibility the stakeholder approach and social contract theories finally the relevance of this balanced concept of the firm for the reform of state owned enterprises is briefly discussed

developing social capital in buyer supplier relationships the contingent effect of relationship specific adaptations abstract strategic buyer supplier relationships are increasingly viewed in both the scholarly and practitioner literatures as key drivers of sustainable competitive advantage in particular relationship specific adaptations the extent to which exchange members make tangible or intangible adaptations for a partner are acknowledged as one of the central issues such adaptations need to be examined in context taking into consideration the social ties that connect a firm and its suppliers using the lens of social capital we examine the contingent effect of buyer and supplier relationship adaptations and structural and cognitive capital on the development of relational capital a sample of 163 buyer supplier relationships within uk manufacturing firms is used to test a series of three way moderated regressions the data indicate that the relationship between structural and cognitive forms of social capital and the level of relational capital is moderated by the extent of the relationship adaptations made by each firm and its supplier contrary to expectations the relationship between cognitive capital and relational capital was significantly negative when high levels of buyer adaptations and supplier adaptations were present indicating a substitution effect between cognitive capital and relationship adaptations structural capital was found to be most strongly related to relational capital when adaptations were reciprocated by both actors however unilateral adaptations by either actor resulted in significantly lower levels of relational capital as structural capital increased implications for theory and managers are discussed relating to the impact of different combinations of relationship specific adaptations on social capital components in a buyer supplier relationship

stakeholder learning dialogues how to preserve ethical responsibility in networks the shift in corporate strategy from vertical integration to strategic alliances has developed hand in hand with the evolution of organizational structure from the vertically integrated firm to the network organization the result has been the elimination of boundaries more flexible organizations and a greater interaction among individuals and organizations on the negative side the specialization of firms on single areas of competence has resulted in the disaggregation of the value chain and in the disaggregation of ethical and legal responsibility to illustrate this point the paper considers some cases such as the case of the beer girls of southeast asia who are used unethically by distributors to sell beer and liquor to deal with the problem of the disaggregation of ethical responsibility managers can use organizational culture and ethical values to control the performance of employees and of other organizations contemporary developments in business ethics also offer tools for dealing with the problem for example global corporate citizenship integrated social contracting theory and stakeholder learning dialogues provide ways of integrating the interests of all stakeholders the task is now to use these new approaches to create a governance process that incorporates the voices of all stakeholders especially the voices of those stakeholders that have legitimate and urgent moral claims but lack the power to establish those claims

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

determinants of social disclosure quality in taiwan an application of stakeholder theory this study adopts a stakeholder theory framework to examine determinants of social reporting quality and empirically test the ability of the theory to explain disclosure quality in an emerging economy using a sample of 246 listed companies and a hand collected dataset that included 2 years of data based on survey questions reflecting international disclosure trends we apply an aggregate measure of quality with five facets to a variety of corporate social responsibility areas the results support the application and demonstrate that measures of stakeholder power strategic posture economic resources firm size and media visibility are related to social disclosure quality this paper adds to the scarce evidence on social reporting in taiwan and provides a useful method for evaluating disclosure quality it also illustrates the impact of two dominant foreign stakeholder groups on social disclosures in taiwan 1 organizational buyers in the global supply chain and 2 listing and social rating agencies in international capital markets

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

ethical sourcing codes of large uk based corporations prevalence content limitations codes of conduct have become the perhaps most often used tool to manage corporate social responsibility csr researchers have primarily analysed such documents at company wide or trans company levels whereas there is a dearth of studies into the use of codes for particular corporate functions hence this article will examine one particular group of sub company level codes namely codes of conduct that stipulate csr criteria for suppliers examining such ethical sourcing policies adopted by the ftse100 corporations the article draws out what environmental social and economic issues large corporations perceive to be important in the management of their supply chains at an aggregate level the coverage of csr issues is rather extensive yet at the level of the individual corporation a degree of selectivity in the issues that are addressed becomes noticeable the code content analysis furthermore confirms the business case and public pressure to be the most important drivers of csr finally the study highlights the role of isomorphic processes in the adoption of csr tools

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

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

towards an intellectual capital based view of the firm origins and nature economic and social activities are undergoing radical changes which can be labelled as knowledge economy and or society in this sense intellectual capital ic or knowledge assets as the fourth factor of production is replacing the other ones job land and capital this article tries to offer the origins and nature of the firm s ic that can be labelled as an intellectual capital based view of the firm competition this framework tries to highlight the strategic role of different intangible assets like talented and committed workers cultural values or long term relationships among the firm and its stakeholders customers allies suppliers and society in general in gaining and sustaining competitive advantages being the management of ic a key issue in the management agenda