Mapping accessibility in Belgium: a tool for land-use and transport planning?

This paper compares the spatial structure of car accessibility to towns and to railway stations during peak and off-peak hours in Belgium for the country’s 2616 municipalities. A clustering method is applied. It is shown that in a highly urbanised country, the situation is far from being spatially equitable in terms of accessibility, and some areas are more favoured than others. Congestion increases spatial inequalities, differently according to absolute or relative measures of change. By means of examples, this paper shows that even simple accessibility indicators could be useful to support decisions taken by planners and politicians (e.g. as regards the development of residential, industrial and business park areas). Maps indicate the spatial inequalities in terms of accessibility to urban centres and transport nodes, and the impact of congestion on these inequalities. The absolute and relative time losses due to congestion affect different areas in different ways. The location of new developments further increases the congestion problem and the spatial disparities. This paper also insists on the caution that should be adopted when measuring and interpreting “accessibility”, its measurements, its inputs, its temporal changes in absolute and relative terms as well as the need for spatially disaggregated data.     

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility and Orphan Drug Development: Insights from the US and the EU Biopharmaceutical Industry

In recent years, the biopharmaceutical industry has seen an increase in the development of so-called orphan drugs for the treatment of rare and neglected diseases. This increase has been spurred on by legislation in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere designed to promote orphan drug development. In this article, we examine the drivers of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in orphan drug markets and the extent to which biopharmaceutical firms engage in these activities with a strategic orientation. The unique context of orphan drugs constitutes a research opportunity to test the applicability of existing theoretical perspectives on CSR and strategic CSR. Using Schwartz and Carroll’s (Bus Ethics Q, 13(4):503–530, 2003) three-domain approach to CSR and the literature on strategic CSR as a theoretical background, we employ a combination of semi-structured interviews and a quantitative website content analysis to study practices of biopharmaceutical firms in the United States and European Union. Our findings show that both US- and EU-based companies engaged in orphan drugs development perceive their involvement as a responsible business activity beyond the economic dimension of CSR. However, for the majority of these companies their CSR activities do not qualify as strategic according to the criteria established in the literature. We also find significant differences between larger and smaller firms in their use of CSR. Based on these findings, we make several suggestions regarding orphan drug legislation and other measures that might help firms exploit strategic CSR benefits.     

Shared Value and the Impartial Spectator Test

Growing inequality and its implications for democratic polity suggest that corporate social responsibility (CSR) has not proved itself in twenty-first century business, largely as it lacks clear criteria of demarcation for businesses to follow. Today the problem is viewed by many commentators as an ethical challenge to business itself. In response to this challenge, we begin by examining Porter and Kramer’s (Harv Bus Rev 89(January–February):64–77, 2011) call for a shift from a social responsibility to a shared value framework and the need to respond to the problem of the ‘separation thesis’ between business and ethics (Wicks, Bus Soc 35(1):89–118, 1996; Harris and Freeman, Bus Ethics Q 18(4):541–548, 2008). We identify the eighteenth century economist and philosopher Adam Smith in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments as a source for an ethical approach to business. Building on his central concept of ‘sympathy’, we introduce the idea of the Impartial Spectator Test, which we argue builds on traditional stakeholder perspectives and which provides an objective route to ethical criteria of demarcation. We conclude by assessing how this approach adds to the existing debate around social responsibility and shared value.     

Services Branding: Revealing the Rhetoric within Retail Banking

This paper presents key branding findings from a qualitative study of consumers and financial services practitioners and explores the current role, importance and challenges associated with branding within Irish retail financial services. Managerial and consumer research highlighted the limited role of branding and the growing gap between brand-based expectations and service brand execution. Key conclusions and implications are proposed in terms of developing an effective multidimensional brand strategy which is both profitable to suppliers and desirable to consumers. The paper recommends that financial services branding be focused upon the promotion of meaningful functional values, delivered through a customer-centred, process-driven approach.     

When do Non‐Family CEOs Outperform in Family Firms? Agency and Behavioural Agency Perspectives

Family firms represent a globally dominant form of organization, yet they confront a steep challenge of finding and managing competent leaders. Sometimes, these leaders cannot be found within the owning family. To date we know little about the governance contexts under which non‐family leaders thrive or founder. Guided by concepts from agency theory and behavioural agency theory, we examine the conditions of ownership and leadership that promote superior performance among non‐family CEOs of family firms. Our analysis of 893 Italian family firms demonstrates that these leaders outperform when they are monitored by multiple major family owners as opposed to a single owner; they also outperform when they are not required to share power with co‐CEOs who are family members, and who may be motivated by parochial family socioemotional priorities.     

Measuring Corporate Citizenship in Two Countries: The Case of the United States and France

Based on an extensive review of the literature and field surveys, the paper proposes a conceptualization and operationalization of corporate citizenship meaningful in two countries: the United States and France. A survey of 210 American and 120 French managers provides support for the proposed definition of corporate citizenship as a construct including the four correlated factors of economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary citizenship. The managerial implications of the research and directions for future research are discussed.     

Disability,social inclusion and the marketing of tourist attractions

The participation of persons with a disability (PWDs) in tourism has received growing academic interest in recent years. This paper contributes to a reflection on how accessible tourism relates to the sustainable development paradigm. To investigate this relationship, it goes beyond the question of PWDs’ access to tourism services, and adopts an inclusiveness perspective. Inclusion is examined in terms of legislation, marketing and imagery, and representations of PWDs as consumers embedded within social units – and families in particular. These dimensions are explored empirically in a study of visitor attractions in Cornwall (England) based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of brochures and websites. The study shows that the marketing materials of Cornish visitor attractions mainly focus on access, and the imagery used largely projects quasi invisibility or provides ambiguous messages. Communication with PWDs rarely addresses the family unit, making the family tourism experience intangible in the pre-trip phase. These results point at weaker implementation of inclusiveness, which corroborates previous findings of watered down definitions of rights to tourism under neo-liberal ideologies and economic crises. The paper discusses implications for social inclusion and highlights avenues for future research.     

PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZATION UNDER TRACKING ERROR AND WEIGHTS CONSTRAINTS

The performance of active portfolio managers who must comply with a weights constraint is often assessed against a benchmark. The weights constraint is common as the funds are committed by their own prospectus to a minimum (or maximum) portfolio concentration. We characterize the optimal asset allocation and analyze the implications of the weights constraint on the manager's performance and on the relevance of the information ratio. We obtain that because of the weights constraint, at the optimum, the information ratio often decreases when the manager is free to deviate more from the benchmark.