Extinction accounting and accountability: Empirical evidence from the west European tissue industry

Recently, human activities are more and more invasive with respect to biodiversity. Several studies highlighted the key role played by accountants in contributing to the development of tools able to support company in assessing, reporting, and disseminating, as well as accomplishing, the preservation of natural species and ecosystems (King and Atkins, 2016). Corporate reporting of environmental information might increase the credibility of forest certifications, given that some scholars argued that certified forests are not often run, in a sustainable way. Moreover, certifications sometimes cover harmful forest practices (Elad, 2014) and do not ensure a good quality of environmental reporting and performance. The research question therefore intends to explore how extinction accounting and accountability (EAA) is able to reflect ex post the company's business strategy and, at the same time, influence ex ante its formulation by easing the prevention of deforestation risk and addressing the issue of credibility through specific actions. In more detail, the “Emancipatory Framework for Extinction Accounting and Accountability” (EFEAA) (Atkins and Maroun, 2018) was tested using content and interpretative analyses based on the reports inherent to top four companies working in West Europe in the tissue industry, where the preservation of forest heritage is a “compulsory route” for assuring the business sustainability, in terms of both raw material renewal and brand reputation. The findings highlighted the first attempt to carry out a qualitative research over the management of forest issues. In our study, companies tend to report advantages arising from the use of forest, but this kind of disclosure is too generic without providing evidence over the ecosystem services forests produce. Moreover, firm size affects the quantity and the quality of disclosure. At last, managerial implications and future research avenues are outlined and discussed.     

市政工程施工中的安全管理与质量控制

如今,国内城市化进程正在加速。同时,市政项目变得越来越突出。可以说,市政工程的建设效果可以无形地干扰城镇的日常运转,与人民的生活质量息息相关。市政建设活动的安全性和质量一直是有关部门高度重视的一部分。在此基础上,本文以市政工程为出发点,首先探讨了实施安全质量控制的关键意义,然后分析了目前工作中存在的困难和常见不足,最后提出了一些安全质量管理建议。不同层次的管控工作有效路径,可供参考。     

Cross-national differences in stakeholder management: Applying institutional theory and comparative capitalism framework

Drawing upon the research in institutional theory and comparative capitalism, the present study investigates how cross-national differences in the political, business, and economic institutional contexts of the United States, Italy, and Japan are associated with the ways in which companies in each of these countries prioritize and engage in their stakeholder engagement activities (SEAs). Using Porter and Kramer's framework, which classifies corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities as falling into four categories (good citizenship, mitigating harm from value chain, transforming value chain activities, and strategic philanthropy), we investigate how companies in the United States, Japan, and Italy prioritize and engage in these four SEAs. An analysis of data collected from 340 companies across these countries reveals that while companies in each of these three countries undertake the four types of SEAs, the prioritization and prevalence of the four types of SEAs vary from one country to the other, in ways that align with the prevailing institutional contexts of each country. The results contribute to a more nuanced understanding of why and how companies' approaches to CSR differ across countries. From a practitioner's perspective, the findings highlight the cultural specificity of CSR, implying that despite the global nature of CSR, the implementation of CSR needs to be tailored to a country's context.     

A study on factors affecting privacy risk tolerance to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in South Korea

South Korea has been evaluated as a country that is responding well to COVID-19. The Government of the Republic of Korea discloses where, when, and by which means of transportation people confirmed to have the virus have visited. Although disclosure of movement has contributed to flattening the curve and providing timely medical service, concerns about privacy infringement have also been raised. This article determines what factors influence privacy risk tolerance, looking specifically at threat severity, vulnerability, response efficacy, and response cost. We also provide implications for the preparation of better countermeasures for the government to implement.     

The mechanism of credit risk contagion among internet P2P lending platforms based on a SEIR model with time-lag

The credit risk contagion of Internet peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms is an important part of Internet financial risk management and supervision. This study analyzes the contagion path of credit risk in Internet P2P lending. Based on complex network theory and the theory of infectious disease dynamics, the characteristics of Internet P2P lending development are combined to construct a SEIR model of credit risk transmission among Internet P2P lending platforms with time lag, and the robustness of the model is analyzed and proven. The influence of platform correlations, the susceptible immune rate, the platform elimination rate, contagion latency, the saturation coefficient, and the susceptibility input rate on credit risk contagion behavior among Internet P2P lending platforms is analyzed, using the equilibrium point and threshold value. The impact of each variable is analyzed by simulation. Corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are proposed to prevent and control credit risk contagion among these platforms.     

The impact of COVID-19 on the stock market crash risk in China

This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the stock market crash risk in China. For this purpose, we first estimated the conditional skewness of the return distribution from a GARCH with skewness (GARCH-S) model as the proxy for the equity market crash risk of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. We then constructed a fear index for COVID-19 using data from the Baidu Index. Based on the findings, conditional skewness reacts negatively to daily growth in total confirmed cases, indicating that the pandemic increases stock market crash risk. Moreover, the fear sentiment exacerbates such risk, especially with regard to the impact of COVID-19. In other words, when the fear sentiment is high, the stock market crash risk is more strongly affected by the pandemic. Our evidence is robust for the number of daily deaths and global cases.     

基于BIM技术的工程造价精细化管理研究

为实现工程造价精细化管理目标,需要各个环节的相互配合来达到资源优化配置。BIM技术依托虚拟建模技术,实现了对工程项目的数字化建造管理。实践证明,将BIM技术融入项目工程造价管理体系中,有助于提升工程造价管理的整体质量。论文立足工程造价精细化管理的内涵,剖析了BIM技术在工程造价精细化管理中的应用价值,并提出了BIM技术在工程造价精细化管理中的具体应用策略。     

Relief aid stocking decisions under bilateral agency cooperation

We aim to quantify the benefits of cooperation between humanitarian relief agencies in terms of stocking decisions. We consider two agencies that stock the same type of relief item at different locations prone to individual disaster risks and agree to transship the shortage amount from available stocks in case of a disaster. We incorporate the disaster risk to the Newsvendor model by conditioning the stock quantity decisions on the event that a major disaster occurs within the lifetime of the stocked relief item. We optimize the stock quantity for each agency in response to the other's quantity and compute a Nash Equilibrium solution numerically. We apply this game theoretic approach to the case of earthquake preparedness in Istanbul to optimize the stocking decisions of an agency for shelter units in cooperation with another agency. We investigate the characteristics of the solutions under various parameter settings and identify cases in which cooperation may be beneficial to one or both of the agencies.     

从土地资源优势区配置到主体功能区管理：一个国土空间治理的逻辑框架

研究目的:以土地资源配置方式遵从优势区开发原则到服从主体功能区分工协作规则演进规律,解释现行中国治理模式下国土空间管理逻辑。研究方法:文献分析法和理论分析法。研究结果:传统优势区开发理念为早期区域发展带来了集聚与规模经济效益,但其内部仍存在生产、生活、生态空间结构失衡等问题,降低了土地资源空间配置效率。主体功能区战略是传统优势区土地资源空间配置理念转型,是中国特定时期具有国家特色的经济发展模式,关键在于明确地方土地资源空间配置核心定位,应以法律规范"央地"土地关系、差别化实施政策制度安排、引导公众参与规划决策、创新生态(经济)补偿机制。研究结论:不同分区土地资源空间配置关系协调是世界性问题,转型时期中国国土空间优化和规制治理重点在于厘清中央与地方事权关系,精准落地县域主体功能区建设,健全主体功能配套政策体系。     

Sustainable supply chain management and partner engagement to manage climate change information

Climate change poses significant new risks and challenges for businesses and their supply chains. Additionally, in many sectors, Scope 3 indirect greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the sourcing and distribution of goods and services are larger than firms' own carbon footprints. Here we study how firms engage their key stakeholders in their supply chains in obtaining, processing, and transferring relevant climate change‐related information designed to overcome information asymmetry and drive sustainable development. Grounded in organisational information‐processing theory (OIPT), we draw on data from the Carbon Disclosure Project's Climate Change Supply Chain initiative for a qualitative content analysis of a large sample of global firms. Consistent with OIPT, we find that although firms primarily engage their supply chain partners in a variety of ways to reduce information uncertainty around indirect emissions data, effectively interpreting and managing broader sustainability information equivocality becomes a growing priority. Our findings further suggest that firms engage suppliers, customers, and other supply chain partners through basic, transactional, and collaborative types of engagement. We contribute to literatures on interorganisational information processing and sustainable supply chain management by providing a more detailed understanding of how firms engage supply chain partners in the context of climate change.