Efficiency and Ethically Responsible Management

One common justification for the pursuit of profit by business firms within a market economy is that profit is not an end in itself but a means to more efficiently produce and allocate resources. Profit, in short, is a mechanism that serves the market’s purpose of producing Pareto superior outcomes for society. This discussion examines whether such a justification, if correct, requires business managers to remain attentive to how their firm’s operation impacts the market’s purpose. In particular, it is argued that the value of efficiency, despite views to the contrary, cannot be fully separated from the planning and intentions of business managers as long as those managers direct their firms in an ethically responsible fashion. This position is inspired by, and serves as a supportive clarification of Joseph Heath’s so-called “market failures approach” to business ethics.     

Multi-level and mixed-level <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-circulant supersaturated designs

Supersaturated designs (SSDs) constitute an important class of fractional factorial designs that could be extremely useful in factor screening experiments. Most of the existing studies have focused on balanced designs. This paper provides a new lower bound for the \(E(f_{NOD})\)-optimality measure of SSDs with general run sizes. This bound is a generalization of existing bounds since it is applicable to both balanced and unbalanced designs. Optimal multi and mixed-level, balanced and nearly balanced SSDs are constructed by applying a k-circulant type methodology. Necessary and sufficient conditions are introduced for the generator vectors, in order to pre-ensure the optimality of the constructed k-circulant SSDs. The provided lower bounds were used to measure the efficiency of the generated designs. The presented methodology leads to a number of new families of improved SSDs, providing tools for directly constructing optimal or nearly-optimal k-circulant designs by just checking the corresponding generator vector.     

Identifying Worldviews on Corporate Sustainability: A Content Analysis of Corporate Sustainability Reports

Companies commonly issue sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. This study seeks to understand worldviews of corporate sustainability, or the corporate message conveyed regarding what sustainability or CSR is and how to enact it. Content analysis of corporate sustainability reports is used to position each company report within stages of corporate sustainability. Results reveal that there are multiple coexisting worldviews of corporate sustainability, but the most dominant worldview is focused on the business case for sustainability, a position anchored in the weak sustainability paradigm. We contend that the business case and weak sustainability advanced in corporate sustainability reports and by the Global Reporting Initiative are poor representations of sustainability. Ecological embeddedness, or a locally responsive strategy that is sensitive to local ecosystems, may hold the key to improved ecological sensemaking, which in turn could lead to more mature levels of corporate sustainability worldviews that support strong sustainability and are rooted in environmental science. This must be supported by government regulation. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Can countries rely on foreign saving for investment and economic development?

Contrary to widespread presumption, a surprisingly large number of countries have been able to finance a significant fraction of their investment for extended periods using foreign finance. While many of these episodes are in countries where official finance is important, we also identify episodes where a substantial fraction of domestic investment is financed by private capital inflows. Although there is evidence of a positive growth effect of such inflows in the short run, that positive impact dissipates after 5 years and turns negative over longer horizons. Many such episodes end abruptly, with compression of the current account and sharp slowdowns in investment and growth. Summing over the inflow (current account deficit) episode and its aftermath, we find that growth is slower than when countries rely on domestic savings. The implication is that financing growth and investment out of foreign savings, while not impossible, is risky and too often counterproductive.     

Change within purchasing and supply management organisations – Assessing the claims from maturity models

It is a wide-held assumption that professional development and change within purchasing and supply management (PSM) organisations can be explained and guided by a maturity model. In this paper the guidance which the maturity model concept offers to understand a PSM organisation's performance is assessed. The methodology is based on the outcomes of a literature review of PSM maturity models, development of an organisational change framework and the learning from three qualitative case studies. An alternative understanding of the development of the PSM organisation is offered through an organisational change framework, composing 1) movement transitions, 2) scalability of change, 3) acceptability of change, and 4) the substantive element of change. The research found that extant PSM maturity models are too rigid for PSM managers to apply, and although maturity models are commonly accepted in PSM literature, in practice, they may produce the opposite effect of what is promised. The PSM maturity models suggest that their application will lead to increased status and influence of PSM within the organisation; expectations that may not be met. PSM organisations’ change processes are subjected to a range of situational and contextual power relations which must be considered in order to advance the specific PSM organisation roles and responsibilities.     

Fixed-Term Contracts and Labor Market Duality in France

The French labor market is segmented between permanent and temporary workers. The second category has difficulty in getting an open-ended contract. This paper aims at depicting workers on short-term contracts and shows the consequences on their professional career are negative and significant. A large part of the wage gap between permanent and temporary workers remains unexplained by observable characteristics. They receive less on-the-job training and their likelihood of obtaining a stable job is lower than 30% after 1 year and a half. They have also a higher probability of being the adjustment variable in case of an economic negative shock. These different findings show the importance of using public policies to encourage transitions from fixed-term to permanent employment and reducing labor-market duality.     

Der deutsche Konjunkturzyklus: Vermessung und Zusammenhang mit Investitionen

On average, the German business cycle is four to five years long. The cycle is quite pronounced and explains about 27 % of the variation in year on year GDP growth. For fluctuations with a duration of more than two years, there is a significant unidirectional Granger causality running from GDP growth to investment. A closer look reveals two things: first of all, that the Granger causality runs from GDP to investment in equipment and machinery, not investment in construction, and second, that it is lagged foreign demand (exports) rather than domestic demand that has predictive power for investment.