Exploring the Relationship between Sustainability Reporting and Sustainability Management Practices

There has been a dramatic uptake of sustainability reporting (SR) and sustainability management practices over the last two decades, in turn raising questions about the relationship between external disclosure and internal practice of corporate sustainability. Previous literature has emphasized the role of external pressures in driving SR adoption. However, as recent practitioner surveys also identify the existence of internal motives for SR, a more comprehensive analysis of this relationship is needed. In order to address this issue, we develop a framework accounting for four company‐level SR configurations, resulting from different levels of importance of external and internal motives for SR. Then, four exploratory cases serve to illustrate these configurations and to describe the respective roles of SR at the company level. As considerable diversity among these SR practices is found, our findings point to the relevance of both external and internal motives in understanding SR contribution to corporate sustainability. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Effects of One-Way Spillovers on Market Shares, Industry Price, Welfare, and R & D Cooperation

With one-way spillovers, the standard symmetric two-period R&D model leads to an asymmetric equilibrium only, with endogeneous innovator and imitator roles. We show how R&D decisions and measures of firm heterogeneity—market shares, R&D shares, and profits—depend on spillovers and on R&D costs. While a joint lab always improves on consumer welfare, it yields higher profits, cost reductions, and social welfare only under extra assumptions, beyond those required with multidirectional spillovers. Finally, the novel issue of optimal R&D cartels is addressed. We show an optimal R&D cartel may seek to minimize R&D spillovers between its members.     

宝丽来之战略标准化管理模型:10项行动原则

摄影业回望 摄影业(photographic indus-try)已经被重新定义为"影像"业("imaging"industry),其组成也不再仅限于照相机、卤化银感光材料.在今天的美国,影像业已经发展成为了包含许多门类、税收高达1550亿美元的重要产业.除了业余和专业的摄影外,影像业还包括复印产品(copying products)和服务、形象艺术(graphic arts)、桌面出版系统(desktop publish-ing)、计算机辅助图像设计、医学诊断、显微镜方法、印刷以及消费者视频(consumer video)等等.     

Measurement Bias in the HICP: What do we know and What do we need to know?

Abstract. The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is the primary measure of inflation in the euro area, and plays a central role in the policy deliberations of the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB defines its Treaty mandate of price stability as '… a year‐on‐year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area of below 2%[…] to be maintained over the medium term.' Among the rationales given for defining price stability as prevailing at some positive measured inflation rate is the possibility that the HICP as published incorporates measurement errors of one sort or another that may cause it to systematically overstate the true rate of inflation in the euro area. This paper reviews what currently is known about the scope of measurement error in the HICP. We conclude that given the vague conceptual framework of the HICP, the scant research on price measurement issues in the EU and the ongoing improvements in the HICP, there is very little scientific basis at this time for a point (or even an interval) estimate of a positive bias in the HICP.     

Valuing nature: From environmental impacts to natural capital

Economic valuation of natural and environmental assets is now a well established practice. Economic analysis provides several methods for discovering the impact on social welfare associated with changes in the ability of these assets to provide different goods and services. In general terms, these valuation exercises have been performed in the framework of Environmental Impact Assessment or, more generally, Cost Benefit Analysis. There is, however, an increasing demand nowadays to go beyond this framework and to value natural capital (natural resource stocks, land and ecosystems) as such. There are two main reasons for this new demand. On the one hand, sustainability requires that proper account should be taken of capital depreciation and, therefore, there is a need to value natural capital changes. This valuation process, nevertheless, only makes sense when some kind of substitution between natural and other forms of capital is allowed. On the other hand, there is also an increasing tendency to demand that the stock of natural capital present in a given territory be valued, either to discover one of the main components of social wealth or to help adequately plan changes in land use. Yet, whereas conventional valuation methods are probably adequate to fulfill the first task, this is less true in the case of the second, while even more difficulties arise in connection with the third one. Even if at first sight the process appears conceptually identical, these tasks are of a different order of magnitude, as the experience of both the World Bank and the Statistics Division of the United Nations in this respect clearly shows.     

Elections and strategic positioning games

We formalize the interplay between expected voting behavior and strategic positioning behavior of candidates as a common agency problem in which the candidates (i.e., the principals) compete for voters (i.e., agents) via the issues they choose and the positions they take. A political situation is defined as a feasible combination of candidate positions and expected political payoffs to the candidates. Taking this approach, we are led naturally to a particular formalization of the candidates' positioning game, called a political situation game. Within the context of this game, we define the notion of farsighted stability (introduced in an abstract setting by Chwe 1994) and apply Chwe's result to obtain existence of farsightedly stable outcomes. We compute the farsightedly stable sets for several examples of political situations games, with outcomes that conform to real-world observations.Received: 18 May 2001, Accepted: 22 January 2002, JEL Classification: C7, D7, D8Myrna H. Wooders: http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/Economics/wooders/An earlier version of this paper was completed while the first author was visiting the Department of Economics, University of Exeter. The first author gratefully acknowledges Exeter's support and hospitality. Similarly, the second author gratefully acknowledges the support and hospitality of the Centre for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) of the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium and of the University of Cergy-Pontoise, France. Both authors are indebted to Amrita Dhillon, John Duggan and Gilat Levy for helpful comments about references. Both authors thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

Microfinance at a Crossroads

In this essay, we summarize the main features of Yunus' economic thought and discuss whether it is possible to conclude, as seems straightforward according to Yunus (1997) , that microfinance is good for the poor and that it exemplifies a typical activity of social enterprise. To do this, we review some of the contents of the 2006 World Bank/Brookings Institution conference on microfinance as summarized by Barr et al. (2007) .     

Social isolation and its relationship to multidimensional poverty

While the multidimensionality of poverty is well-recognised, one dimension of poverty which has been often overlooked is weak social connectedness. This paper draws on conceptual, participatory and measurement literatures to show that social connectedness appears to be an important missing ingredient of multidimensional poverty analyses, with social isolation being a feature which exacerbates the condition of poor persons. To provide contextual detail as to its impact on persons in marginalized communities, we present qualitative primary data from South Africa and Mozambique and review pertinent studies of the First Nations of Canada and among persons with disability. A policy challenge for social isolation is that it is often seen as stemming from an individuals’ capacity rather than resulting from the broader social context. The closing section outlines areas for policy.     

Business and management in China: A review of empirical research in leading international journals

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - China’s growing economic importance has led to a significant increase in the volume of empirical research about business and management in this country...