Engaging Stakeholders in Emerging Economies: The Case of Multilatinas

Stakeholder engagement is central to organizations’ social impact. Engagement activities rely on mechanisms whose complexity increases for multinational corporations (MNCs). This study explores the boundary conditions of our Western/Northern-based knowledge of stakeholder engagement mechanisms through the examination of such practices in multinational companies founded in Latin America (Multilatinas—MLs). Based on previous studies on the identification of organizational stakeholders in the region, we aim to understand the specific engagement mechanisms MLs use. To this end, we analyze qualitatively 28 corporate sustainability reports by relevant firms. Our findings show that the community includes silent (or non-visible) stakeholders composed of subgroups not listed as organizational stakeholders but mentioned in the report as engaged by the company or a subsidiary. MLs in our sample use four main mechanisms to engage these subgroups: (a) strong, visible commitments to local social organizations; (b) continuous dialogue with members of the community; (c) networks of volunteers to help perform the social activities of the companies; and (d) creation of social infrastructure institutions. We end by detailing the theoretical implications for stakeholder engagement among emerging economies multinational companies (EMNCs) and for MNCs in general.     

Consumers’ Behaviors and Attitudes toward Doggy Bags: Identifying Barriers and Benefits to Promoting Behavior Change

ABSTRACT

This study identifies barriers and benefits of consumers’ current doggy bag behaviors and provides the information required to run an effective community-based social marketing campaign encouraging consumers to take their uneaten restaurant and café food home. This is done by applying a two-stage methodology, including quantitatively analyzing existing survey data and qualitatively investigating focus group discussion. Multiple barriers to widespread doggy bag participation were common and varied for different individuals and included both convenience and social stigma-related factors. The rational appeal of “saving money” was found to be the most effective motivator for encouraging doggy bag usage, especially for women, young people, students/unemployed, and low-income earners. Social marketing strategies and behavior change tools can be developed to remove the barriers and enhance the benefits of using doggy bags, such as developing positive social norms around using doggy bags and highlighting the financial incentive of using them. This research contributes to a limited but growing literature on out-of-home food waste and provides practicable insights for both public policy and for the food service sector for future initiatives aiming to reduce food waste.     

Content Analysis of the ‘Clean Your Plate Campaign’ on Sina Weibo

ABSTRACT

At the beginning of 2013, a Beijing non-profit group launched a ‘Clean Your Plate Campaign’ on Sina Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like microblogging site, with aims to reduce food waste. This paper examines social media users’ reactions during two periods of the first three years of the campaign. Upon examination of topic content, supporting participation was the most popular topic in January 2013 and showcasing individual achievement was the most frequently discussed topic in March 2016, with socialising as the common purpose for posting in both months. Users mentioning the campaign most in January 2013 belonged to private organisations, with posts from ordinary people becoming more predominant by March 2016. This study sheds light on the use of social media to raise public awareness regarding food waste in China. The findings will help campaigns aiming to promote food waste reductions or other social movements that use social media as a platform for citizen involvement.     

Entrepreneurship as the structuration of individual and opportunity: A response using a critical realist perspective : Comment on Sarason,Dean and Dillard

Sarason et al. [Sarason, Y., Dean, T., Dillard, J.F., 2006. Entrepreneurship as the nexus of individual and opportunity: a structuration view. J. Bus. Venturing, 21, 286-305] build upon Shane and Venkataraman’s [Shane, S., Venkataraman, S., 2000. The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. Acad. Manage. Rev., 25, 217–226] framework of the interrelationship between opportunity and the entrepreneur, by proposing Giddens’ structuration theory as the ‘lens through which to view the entrepreneurial process’ (2006: 286). In this comment we make four points. Although we agree that the nexus of entrepreneur and opportunity is one that requires understanding within the context of social structure and the individual agency. Our view of structure differs substantially from Giddens and by implication Sarason et al. (2006). We discuss the implications. Second, since strata in social reality have different ontologies we propose it follows that they are viewed as a dualism. Third, agents have causal power, and ultimate concerns which they try to fallibly to put into practice. We propose entrepreneurship as the study of the interplay between the structures of a society and the agents within it, the implications of fallibility is made explicit. Finally, we take issue with Sarason et al.’s argument for an interpretist epistemology.     

Organisational capabilities and transaction costs in the analysis of activities and their externalisation: implications for the service industry

Transaction cost theory and the organisational capability view are complementary in the analysis of the firm and in examining the decision to integrate or externalise activities. This article discusses the essential contributions of both theories to understanding the core aspects of the internal organisation of the firm, and goes onto address the key questions of why activities are organised internally or why certain components or services are obtained from suppliers or distributors; and finally looks at the cases in which firms make decisions with regard to supply, distribution or retail sales.     

National labor markets, international factor mobility and macroeconomic instability

We consider a standard two-country environment, where one of the two countries has a rigid labor market, and analyze how global economic integration affects the economies with respect to expectations-driven cycles and steady state welfare. We show that by allowing free capital mobility, equilibrium indeterminacy is exported from the rigid wage country to the world economy. If further liberalization is permitted, by allowing free movements of labor, the scope for indeterminacy is reduced and open labor markets may produce a stabilizing effect on the global macro-economy. Whether this also implies higher welfare in the long run depends on differentials in average firm size across countries, which determines the direction of migration flows.     

Long-term debt and overinvestment agency problem

We investigate the role of long-term debt in influencing overinvestments by analyzing the pattern of abnormal investments around a new debt offering by unlevered firms. Before being levered when the disciplining role of debt is missing, firms retain excessive amounts of cash. The introduction of debt leads to a dramatic decline in cash ratios and the relation is stronger for firms classified as having poor investment opportunities. For the sub-sample of firms that overinvest in real assets, issuing debt leads to a reduction in abnormal capital expenditures. The decline in overinvestments is explained by debt service obligations that reduce discretionary funds under managerial control. Further, the reduction in overinvestments has a positive impact on equity value. These conclusions hold in other settings where there is a dramatic change in firms’ capital structures providing strong support for the hypothesis that debt reduces overinvestments.     

The resource-based theory and human resources

This paper applies the resource-based theory on human resources and analyzes its effect on human resource management. This focus considers that each firm is heterogeneous, and it can keep that heterogeneity for a long period of time. A resource is a kind of production factor which is at the firms' disposal, that is, each one is controlled by the firm in spite of having no property right to it. Additionally, any resource is able to create a competitive advantage if it has certain features. This paper will analyze whether human resources can be considered strategic. The answer will be positive because employees are able to create a sustainable competitive advantage, making human resource management a key function. Finally, some practices of human resource management will be named that could make it possible to attain a higher position than a competitor.     

The role of motivation in visitor satisfaction: Empirical evidence in rural tourism

Motivation and satisfaction are two concepts widely studied in tourism literature; the relevance of these constructs being derived from their impact on tourist behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between motivation and visitor satisfaction. A survey questionnaire was distributed to visitors at a rural destination in Spain and the data analysed by ANOVA, factor and cluster analyses. The results verified our hypothesis that motivation is a determinant of the visit assessment criteria and, as a direct consequence, of the level of satisfaction (specific factors) of the visitor. However, this investigation also detected the existence of certain elements, which are independent of the reasons that motivated the journey (general factors), but which affect general satisfaction. Based on our findings, implications for management and marketing are presented.     

Cocoa pricing options and their implications for poverty and industrialization in Ghana

This study establishes the cocoa pricing subsidization options that will stabilize processors’ throughput while meeting the multiple, but possibly conflicting, public policy objectives of maximizing government revenue and reducing poverty among Ghanaian cocoa beans producers. To evaluate these options, we construct and numerically simulate a structural dynamic stochastic model of a representative cocoa processor who maximizes the present value of current and expected future profits, given prevailing market conditions and cocoa pricing policies. Our results indicate that, given current processing capacity, the Ghana Cocoa Board would have to offer a 92% discount to processors on main‐crop beans in order to achieve the industrial goal of locally processing 40% of annual production. This would cause light‐crop beans used in processing to be completely displaced by main‐crop beans carried over as inventory. It would also increase mean processor revenues by 167%, but cause the Ghana Cocoa Board to operate at a significant deficit, implying that the stated goal could only be achieved through massive government subsidies.