The Relevance of Nationality and Industry for Stakeholder Salience: An Investigation Through Integrated Reports

The aim of this research is to investigate the web of business-stakeholder relationships emerging from first integrated reports. Drawn from the stakeholder salience theory, the analysis focuses on some factors that may cause specific stakeholders to be crucial for some organizations and their ability to create value over time. More precisely, findings highlight the importance of industry membership, while entities’ nationality seems not to be a differentiating element. This study contributes to the corporate disclosure literature by analyzing an emerging reporting tool, the integrated report, and demonstrating that the link between some business characteristics and stakeholder salience seems fundamental for the representation of the impact of corporate social and environmental responsibilities on the economic performance. From a practical point of view, the impact of industry membership on corporate disclosures encourages the drafting of differentiated reporting standards across sectors, in order to improve comparability, materiality, and reliability of information.     

The U-shaped relationship between happiness and age: evidence using world values survey data

The paper retests the U-shaped relationship between happiness and age using the cross-classified multilevel regression procedure and the World Values Survey data. The analysis accounts for period and cohort effects. The results reconfirm the pattern that happiness is U-shaped in the life course. That is, happiness decreases from a high-point in young adulthood, reaches a low-point in midlife, and thereafter increases to arrive at another high-point in old age. The results show that the high-point of happiness in old age is lower than the high-point of happiness in young adulthood. That happiness does not return to its initial high-point after it drops to a low-point in midlife is perhaps another stylized fact in the relationship between happiness and age.     

State of the art in business analytics: themes and collaborations

In this study, we illustrate the most recent stage in the scholarly development of the field of Business Analytics. Using around 23,000 research publications collected from the Web of Science, we network-analyzed four types of dataset that include keywords, titles, institutions, and countries. It is noteworthy that we found a thematic cluster focusing on analytical techniques and tools, particular with the rapid dissemination of “big data”-related studies. It is not surprising that universities and institutions in advanced countries in the West still occupy the central position of the collaboration network. However, we can discern a global shift toward certain developing and transitional economies in the world science base.     

Stochastic non-smooth envelopment of data for multi-dimensional output

The proposed method of Stochastic Non-smooth Envelopment of Data (StoNED) for measuring efficiency has to date mainly found application in the analysis of production systems which have exactly one output. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to examine the applicability of StoNED when a ray production function models a production technology with multi-dimensional input and output. In addition to a general analysis of properties required by a ray production function for StoNED to be applicable, we conduct a Monte Carlo simulation in order to evaluate the quality of the frontier and efficiencies estimated by StoNED. The results are compared with those derived via Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We show that StoNED provides competitive estimates in regard to other methods and especially in regard to the real functional form and efficiency.     

Integrated bio-economic models as tools to support land-use decision making: a review of potential and limitations

Bio-economic modelling has become a useful tool for anticipating the outcomes of policies and technologies before their implementation. Advances in mathematical programming have made it possible to build more comprehensive models. In an overview of recent studies about bio-economic models applied to land-use problems in agriculture and forestry, we evaluated how aspects such as uncertainty, multiple objective functions, system dynamics and time have been incorporated into models. We found that single objective models were more frequently applied at the farm level, while multiple objective modelling has been applied to meet concerns at the landscape level. Among the objectives, social aspects are seldom represented in all models, when being compared to economic and environmental aspects. The integration of uncertainty is occasionally a topic, while stochastic approaches are more frequently applied than non-stochastic robust methods. Most multiple-objective models do not integrate uncertainty or sequential decision making. Static approaches continue to be more recurrent than truly dynamic models. Even though integrating multiple aspects may enhance our understanding of a system; it involves a tradeoff between complexity and robustness of the results obtained. Land-use models have to address this balance between complexity and robustness in order to evolve towards robust multiple-objective spatial optimization as a prerequisite to achieve sustainability goals.     

Sweatshop Regulation and Workers’ Choices

The choice argument against sweatshop regulations states that public officials should not prohibit workers from accepting jobs that require long hours, low pay, and poor working conditions, because enforcing such regulations would be disrespectful to the workers who choose to work in sweatshops. Critics of the choice argument reply that these regulations can be justified when workers only choose to work in sweatshops because they lack acceptable alternatives and are unable to coordinate to achieve better conditions for all workers. My thesis is that the presence of unacceptable alternatives to sweatshop labor or barriers to coordination cannot justify sweatshop regulations such as minimum wage and maximum hour laws. Although officials should promote alternatives to difficult and dangerous sweatshop labor, they should not do so by limiting workers’ and employers’ options through coercive regulation. And the fact that sweatshop workers may face coordination problems does not undermine the claim that sweatshop workers choose to work in sweatshops, just as other workers face coordination problems but nevertheless make occupational choices. Furthermore, efforts to restrict sweatshop workers’ choices are morally risky and may not promote workers’ wellbeing or wellbeing in general.