Sustainability winners and losers in business-biased cocoa sustainability programmes in West Africa

In cocoa farming forestland is a production factor. Cocoa planting is easiest and production costs are lowest in tropical forest. Historically, therefore, once forestland has been exhausted in a given geographical area planters tend to diversify into other production systems to avoid the poverty (induced by increasing factor cost) of post-forest cultivation. In modern times however cocoa planters exist in a value chain and post-forest diversification could threaten multinational companies relying on rural planters for their raw material. In 2014 ten of the world’s largest chocolate multinationals combined, with more than $500 million in funding, to introduce a cocoa sustainability scheme called CocoaAction. In principle, CocoaAction and similar sustainability schemes sponsored by western multinational chocolate companies are interventions to empower cocoa planters and planting communities in West African countries. But in practice, as this article will show, these schemes are a response to diminishing returns in cocoa-producing communities and the prospect of diversification, and the resulting projection of a shortage in raw material. There are signs that diversification away from cocoa will be beneficial to cocoa planters and their communities. Cocoa sustainability schemes are therefore designed for the benefit of multinational chocolate companies and at the expense of diversification in West African countries.     

Asymmetric effects of housing wealth on college enrolment

We investigate the impact of housing wealth, credit availability and financial distress on college enrolment decisions. We find that housing wealth is negatively related to enrolment in public schools and positively related to enrolment in private schools. This evidence suggests that, on average, students substituted away from private schools towards public institutions during the recent financial crisis.     

Understanding innovation

While innovation has become a pervasive term, many of today’s organizations still find innovation elusive. One reason may be that much of what is being said about innovation contributes to misunderstanding. To truly manifest innovation and reap its benefits, one must recognize that innovation is three different things: innovation is an outcome, innovation is a process, and innovation is a mindset. Innovation as an outcome emphasizes what output is sought, including product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, business model innovation, supply chain innovation, and organizational innovation. Innovation as a process attends to the way in which innovation should be organized so that outcomes can come to fruition; this includes an overall innovation process and a new product development process. Innovation as a mindset addresses the internalization of innovation by individual members of the organization where innovation is instilled and ingrained along with the creation of a supportive organizational culture that allows innovation to flourish. Such an understanding defines necessary elements, considerations, and vernacular surrounding the term so that better decisions can be made, thereby enabling innovation and having a greater propensity to succeed.     

Data-based mechanistic modelling and forecasting globally averaged surface temperature

The main objective of this paper it to model the dynamic relationship between global averaged measures of Total Radiative Forcing (RTF) and surface temperature, measured by the Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA), and then use this model to forecast the GTA. The analysis utilizes the Data-Based Mechanistic (DBM) approach to the modelling and forecasting where, in this application, the unobserved component model includes a novel hybrid Box-Jenkins stochastic model in which the relationship between RTF and GTA is based on a continuous time transfer function (differential equation) model. This model then provides the basis for short term, inter-annual to decadal, forecasting of the GTA, using a transfer function form of the Kalman Filter, which produces a good prediction of the ‘pause’ or ‘levelling’ in the temperature rise over the period 2000 to 2011. This derives in part from the effects of a quasi-periodic component that is modelled and forecast by a Dynamic Harmonic Regression (DHR) relationship and is shown to be correlated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index.     

When trade unions turn to litigation: ‘getting all the ducks in a row’

Driven by their members' demands and the need to adopt more combative legal strategies in order to oppose the deterioration of working and employment conditions, British trade unions have developed in‐house legal expertise and supported many individual and multiple claims. This article investigates the variation in unions' legal practices and examines their organisational responses to law and the role of compliance professionals in the regulation of employment litigation. It provides a nuanced account of the influence of legal rationality on the framing of union strategies and shows that, under certain conditions, trade unions are able to build multi‐pronged tactics by using litigation as a complement to other forms of action.     

Academic leadership and commercial activities at research institutes: German evidence

This paper focuses on entrepreneurship by academic leaders. With the use of patents, inventions, and spin‐offs to measure commercialization, and directors, research group leaders, and business owners as academic leaders, results, using a sample of more than 2,500 German researchers, show differences across academic leaders and commercialization. Findings for spin‐offs are different from those for patents and inventions. Academic leaders in sciences were more likely to commercialize. Doctoral degrees helped patents by business owners and spin‐offs by group leaders, whereas female business owners and female group leaders faced challenges patenting and inventing, respectively. For business owners, age increased the likelihood of patenting but lowered spin‐offs.     

Advance selling of new products to strategic consumers on flash sale platforms*

Flash sale (FS) is a new business model that offers discounted products in limited numbers over a short period. In this paper we discuss the impact of strategic consumers on advance selling (AS) of new products on FS platforms. We first study the impact of strategic consumers on competing retailers adopting AS to sell a homogeneous new product. And find that the retailers’ AS profits and inventory quantities decrease with the strategic customers’ valuation and valuation decreasing rate. Then we analyse whether FS can mitigate the impact of strategic customers on retailers adopting AS for new products. We consider a newsvendor model involving only one retailer adopting AS to sell a new product. We derive the results by comparing this model with two counterpart models, namely the classical newsvendor model with no strategic customers and a newsvendor model with strategic customers where the retailer does not use FS under AS.