What makes businesses commit to nature conservation?

To halt the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, various actors including companies need to engage, but it is not yet clear what drives voluntary business commitments. We explore leverage points that might increase corporate action for conservation. We apply a structural equation model based on the theory of planned behaviour to analyse data from 618 German companies, collected through an online-survey in 2019. We show that a favourable attitude, driven by perceived business relevance and benefit prospects, fosters engagement. Perceived difficulties, such as lacking finances and knowledge, hinder the engagement. Customers, employees and the general public are presently the only stakeholder groups that drive corporate conservation engagement. Nevertheless, the expectation levels of virtually all stakeholders were found to be quite low and as such inadequate for the ecological crisis we face. We discuss how political will and goal setting can encourage more widespread business support for the natural environment.     

New product portfolio performance in family firms

This study investigates the relationship between top management team (TMT) innovation orientation and new product portfolio performance in small and medium-sized family firms by exploring two family firm-specific sources of TMT diversity as moderators: the number of generations involved in the TMT and the ratio of family members in the TMT. Results indicate that family-induced diversity in the TMT has opposing moderating effects. Although a positive relationship exists between TMT innovation orientation and new product portfolio performance when multiple generations are involved in the TMT, TMT innovation orientation and new product portfolio performance experience a negative relationship when the ratio of family members in the TMT is high. The study discusses theoretical and managerial implications of the findings and develops avenues for future research.     

Transparency, Integration, and the Cost of International Real Estate Investments

This paper investigates the importance of market institutions for the performance of international property investors during the 1996?C2007 period. The results show that international property companies underperform local property companies in the early years of the sample period. This underperformance is driven by the political environment, the level of economic integration, and the transparency of the real estate market in target countries. The underperformance of internationals disappears in the later years of the sample period, and so does the significance of the aforementioned factors in explaining performance differences among international companies. These findings suggest that the increased transparency of the global real estate industry has leveled the playing field for foreign property investors.     

Gains From Diversifying Into Real Estate: Three Decades of Portfolio Returns Based on the Dynamic Investment Model

This paper compares the investment policies and returns for portfolios of stocks and bonds with and without up to three categories of real estate. Both domestic and global settings are examined, with and without the possibility of leverage. The portfolios were generated via the dynamic investment model based on the empirical probability assessment approach applied to past (joint) realizations of returns, both with and without correction for "smoothing" in the real estate data series. Our principal findings are: (1) the gains from adding real estate, on a semi-passive (equal-weighted) basis, to portfolios of either U.S. or global financial assets were relatively modest; in contrast, (2) the gains from adding real estate to the universe of U.S. financial assets under an active strategy were rather large (in some cases highly statistically significant), especially for the very risk-averse strategies; (3) the gains from adding U.S. real estate to a universe of global financial assets under an active strategy were mixed, although generally favorable for the highly risk-averse strategies; (4) correcting for second-moment smoothing in the real estate returns series had a relatively small impact for the more risk-tolerant strategies; and (5) there was some evidence that desmoothing resulted in improved probability estimates.     

Prices vs. Quantities: The Irrelevance of Irreversibility*

We explore the efficacy of price and quantity controls in a dynamic setup in which the decisions of some agents are irreversible. The assumption of irreversibility is shown to improve the performance of a tax relative to that of a system of tradable quotas and significantly alter the equilibrium behavior of agents. We nevertheless conclude that taking into account the fact that agents’ decisions may be irreversible does not lead to policy implications significantly different from those reached in a simpler model in which irreversibility is ignored.     

Relationship Quality—Relationship Value and Power Balance in Business Relationships: Descriptives and Propositions

Purpose: The objective of this study is to develop understanding of the interplay between the perceptions of power balance, relationship value, and relationship quality between retail distributors and their suppliers.

Methodology: The authors applied a phenomenological approach in both qualitative and quantitative data collections and analyses. Key informants in 27 of the dominant retail distributors within 5 Norwegian industries and 50 of their most important suppliers were interviewed.

Findings: The power balance seems to favor the retail distributors. Retail distributors and suppliers tell of somewhat different characteristics pertaining to “best” and “worst” relationships relating to economic-, capability-, and integration-based values as perceived between retail distributors and their suppliers.

Research limitations/implications: The empirical findings indicate the complexity in assessing relationship quality and show a rich basis for further research, thereby contributing to knowledge and insights in characterizing relationship quality when power is asymmetrically distributed between distributors and their suppliers. However, personal interviews may reveal answers at rational, cognitive, and even emotional levels, thus complicating subjective analysis.

Practical implications: The results of the study are important for both researchers and practitioners on both sides of retail distributor–supplier relationships.

Originality/value: This study advances the work on what characterizes relationship quality in asymmetric power business relationships.