Sustainability and the False Sense of Legitimacy: How Institutional Distance Augments Risk in Global Supply Chains

Supply chain scholars have begun to recognize the institutional influences on supply chains, yet scarce attention has been directed toward the fact that global supply chains often comprise different institutions. This omission represents a severe shortcoming because the understanding of what constitutes legitimate behavior may vary substantially between contexts. This conceptual study employs the institutional distance concept to the case of supply chain sustainability risks. It focuses initially on paradoxical situations in which both the buyer and the supplier fully comply with stakeholder expectations within their own legitimacy contexts, yet the buyer's stakeholders still withdraw legitimacy from and harm the buyer. The study analyzes the causal microfoundations of how and why such paradoxical risks manifest, drawing on stakeholder theory and institutional theory. The analysis shows that accounting for the differing legitimacy contexts is necessary for explaining these risks, thereby substantiating our initial claim that institutional distance matters to global supply chains. The study yields important implications for corporate practice in that it highlights an inherent trade‐off in many global supply chains.     

Die Finanzierung der Hochschulbildung in Deutschland

Hochschulbildung wird in der Regel aus ?ffentlichen und privaten Quellen finanziert. Die Studienf?rderung umfasst dabei h?ufig mehr Leistungsarten, als auf den ersten Blick zu erkennen ist. Wie ist die deutsche Finanzierung der Hochschulbildung im internationalen Vergleich zu bewerten? Inwieweit sollte sie verbessert werden?     

Business and Human Rights in South Africa: An Analysis of Antecedents of Human Rights Due Diligence

The purpose of the present article is to analyse South African listed companies’ public reporting in order to contribute to our understanding of how and why companies consider human rights. The empirical analysis is placed in the context of the increasing prominence of human rights as a business issue, premised in part on the activities of the United Nations (UN) Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) on human rights and business. On the basis of a content analysis of the public reports of the top 100 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), we test hypotheses focused on the antecedents of companies’ demonstrated human rights due diligence, with particular reference to assumptions or findings of the SRSG and institutional theory. Some of our results are unexpected: there is little influence exerted by the sector and size of companies in our sample, and there is also an unexpectedly insignificant impact of company participation in the UN Global Compact and the JSE Socially Responsible Investment Index. On the other hand, a key predictor of human rights due diligence is an explicit leadership commitment, and important roles are also played by government regulations and stock exchange listing rules.     

Towards a Performance Measurement Framework for Community Development Finance Institutions in the UK

Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) are publicly funded organisations that provide small loans to people in financially underserved areas of the UK. Policy makers have repeatedly sought to understand and measure the performance of CDFIs to ensure the efficient use of public funds, but have struggled to identify an appropriate way of doing so. In this article, we empirically derive a framework that measures the performance of CDFIs through an analysis of their stakeholder relationships. Based on qualitative data from 20 English CDFIs, we develop a typology of CDFIs according to three dimensions: organisational structure, type of lending and type of market served. Following on from this, we derive several propositions that consider how these dimensions relate to the financial and social performance of CDFIs, and provide the basis for a performance measurement framework.      

Downward nominal wage rigidity in Europe: an analysis of European micro data from the ECHP 1994–2001

This paper substantially extends the available evidence on downward nominal wage rigidity in the European Union (EU) and the Euro Area. We develop an econometric multi-country model based on Kahn’s (Am Econ Rev 87(5):993–1008, 1997) histogram-location approach and apply it to employee micro data from the European Community Household Panel for 12 of the EU’s member states. Our estimates for the degree of downward nominal wage rigidity on the national as well as the EU-wide level point to substantial downward nominal wage rigidity within the EU. A detailed comparison with other cross-national studies reveals an emerging consensus about which countries can be characterized as high or low rigidity countries, although the status of some countries remains unclear. The variation in national degrees of downward nominal wage rigidity cannot convincingly be explained by institutional variables.      

Market structure and competition in transition: results from a spatial analysis

The present article provides first microlevel (indirect) empirical evidence on changes in entry barriers, the determinants of firm profitability as well as the nature of competition for a transition economy. We estimate size thresholds required to support different numbers of firms for several retail and professional service industries in a large number of geographic markets in Slovakia. The 3 time periods in the analysis (1995, 2001 and 2010) characterize different stages of the transition process. Specific emphasis is given to spatial spill-over effects between local markets. Estimation results obtained from a spatial ordered probit model suggest that entry barriers have declined considerably (except for restaurants) and that the intensity of competition has increased on average. We further find that demand spill-overs and/or the effects associated with a positive correlation in unobservable explanatory variables seem to outweigh negative spill-over effects caused by competitive forces between neighbouring cities and villages. The importance of these spatial spill-over effects differs across industries.     

The fit between product market strategy and business model: implications for firm performance

We examine the fit between a firm's product market strategy and its business model. We develop a formal model in order to analyze the contingent effects of product market strategy and business model choices on firm performance. We investigate a unique, manually collected dataset, and find that novelty‐centered business models—coupled with product market strategies that emphasize differentiation, cost leadership, or early market entry—can enhance firm performance. Our data suggest that business model and product market strategy are complements, not substitutes. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consumers and the conflict of laws in Dutch legal practice

Kaffeefahrt is the keyword for a survey of the situation of the consumer when it comes to the practice of conflict of laws in the Netherlands.The number of international consumer conflict of law cases that are met in Dutch legal practice seems to be quite low. However, the factual circumstances ofKaffeefahrten are similar to the sale of time-sharing developments in Southern Europe. This seems to be the most common example of internationalKaffeefahrt cases.

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Konsumenten und Rechtskonflikte in der hollÄndischen Rechtssprechung

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag gibt unter dem StichwortKaffeefahrt einen überblick über die Situation des niederlÄndischen Konsumenten in FÄllen, die durch zwei beteiligte Staaten rechtlich unterschiedlich geregelt werden. Der Autor behandelt zunÄchst einige wenige FÄlle von Rechtsstreitigkeiten nach einer Kaffeefahrt, wo Konsumenten in ein Nachbarland gefahren werden und dort bei einer Tasse Kaffee zum Abschlu\ irgendeines Kaufvertrages aufgefordert werden. Der Autor übertrÄgt seine überlegungen zu der Frage, welches Recht anzuwenden ist, auf die hÄufiger werdenden FÄlle von kaffeefahrtartiger Anbahnung von VertrÄgen über die Teilzeitnutzung von Ferienwohnungen in alpinen oder mediterranen LÄndern.