Linking Environmental Management to Environmental Performance: The Interactive Role of Industry Context

In the past, corporate sustainability scholars advocated that, for many firms, environmental management could turn into a valuable capability conferring a competitive advantage. However, little attention has been paid to the role of the industry context and its influence on the relationship between environmental management and organizational performance. In this study, we examine the effect on this relationship of three contextual variables: munificence, dynamism and complexity. Drawing on longitudinal data from 336 firms representing 30 industries, we find that munificence enhances the degree to which a firm can leverage its environmental management capabilities to improve environmental performance. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The dynamics of privilege: How employees of a multinational corporation construct and contest the privileging effects of English proficiency

In this article we analyze how privilege is dynamically constructed as well as contested. A positioning analysis of interviews with employees of a multinational organization reveals the construction of a hierarchy of privilege. As this hierarchy is based on English proficiency along with other diversity dimensions, privilege is multifaceted. Furthermore, privilege is also contested. Contesting English-proficiency–related privilege is connected to the speaker's position in the hierarchy of privilege. The analysis shows that both category membership and specific competences and skills cumulate to produce privileging effects, but also the possibilities for contesting privilege. At the same time, although the privilege gained by English proficiency is not invisible and is regularly contested, it is nevertheless silenced by those in advantage.     

Macroeconomic Effects of an Ageing Population in Mauritius

The economic literature focuses mostly on faster ageing of population among developed countries; however, many developing countries experience even more dramatic pace of this process. Mauritius, with the median age of population higher than the world average since 1990s, represents a prominent example of such a case. In this paper, we analyse demographic developments in Mauritius and discuss their macroeconomic implications using an open-economy OLG model with demographic shocks. We project that a decline in the Mauritian interest rate and net foreign assets to GDP resulting from ageing will be accompanied by a temporary increase in GDP, consumption and investment.     

Employee shareholders in two privatised utilities

This article draws on a survey of over 400 employees in two privatised companies. It examines the relationship between the depth of share ownership and social class and prior political orientations, and suggests that employee attitudes are best understood as a function of these standard sociological factors.     

Duration of unemployment in the Dutch youth labour market

Summary This paper is concerned with the specification and estimation of a one-state proportional hazard model to explain the duration of unemployment in the Dutch youth labour market. Special attention is given explaining the unequal distribution of unemployment experiences among young labour force participants. The model is estimated using data from a 1984 national random sample of young people unemployed in May and interviewed in October/November. It is found that the replacement ratio has no significant effect. The predicted youth wage on the other hand is significant. The paper also presents and compares different functional forms for modelling duration dependence and heterogeneity.A more extensive version of this paper was published by the Organisation for Strategic Labour Market Research (OSA) in The Hague as working paper nr. 14, 1985. We wish to thank this organisation for its encouragement and for its financial support. We also wish to thank M. Bom, J. Hartog, T. Manders, E. de Regt and G. Ridder for their comments and help.     

Strategic pattern recognition—experimental evidence

The repeated play of an asymmetric Battle of the Sexes is analyzed from the perspective of “strategic pattern recognition.” Convergence to equilibrium patterns (in finite histories) and related concepts like breaking-an-equilibrium-pattern are defined and applied to the data. More than half of 202 pairs of subjects are characterized as weakly converging to a fixed equilibrium pattern. The results also show that subjects tend to break their best pattern in cases where their partners' payoffs are relatively low and that convergence initiation does not pay off. While female subjects frequently reject the males' best equilibrium with anonymous matching, behavior gets more cooperative when pairs are introduced to each other before the beginning of the game.     

Creating infographics to enhance student engagement and communication in health economics

In this article, the authors discuss and describe the implementation of and lessons learned from a course project centered on the creation of an infographic in a health economics course and an introduction to health research course. Students were asked to create a simple infographic about a particular topic, after researching and gathering data on that topic. The instructors observed how students synthesized information and data to tell a visual story with their infographic. This article adds to the limited literature regarding infographics in undergraduate instruction. An infographic offers faculty an opportunity to apply active learning strategies to enhance student engagement, retention of information, and communication skills.