Do investors actually value sustainability? New evidence from investor reactions to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI)

Research Summary: Research exploring investor reactions to sustainability has substantial empirical limitations, which we address with a large‐scale longitudinal financial event study of the first global sustainability index, DJSI World. We examine investor reactions to firms from 27 countries over 17 years that are added, deleted, or continue on the index. We find that once relevant controls and comparisons to observationally equivalent firms beyond the index are included, DJSI events have only limited significance and/or materiality. Nonetheless, investors' valuation of sustainability around the world has evolved over time, involving diminishing reactions to U.S. firms and increasing benefits, particularly of continuation on the index, over time. The study highlights the importance of careful analysis and longitudinal global samples in making inferences about the financial effects of social performance. Managerial Summary: The debate about how investors perceive corporate social responsibility (CSR) predates Milton Friedman's famous statement that the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits. Although extensive research has studied whether sustainability contributes to financial performance, we have yet to understand whether investors believe it pays off. This financial event study of reactions to the addition, continuation, and deletion from DJSI World, the first global sustainability index, shows that investors care little about DJSI announcements. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that global assessments of sustainability are converging and that investors may increasingly be valuing continuation on the DJSI, suggesting that firms may gain at least limited benefits from reliable sustainability activities.     

Smart city networks' governance: The Spanish smart city network case study

The governance of smart city networks emerges as a new research area intersecting smart governance and public networks studies. This work aims to contribute to the literature on smart cities governance by studying councillor's governance in complex networks and on network performance. To carry out this analysis, the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (RECI), one of the first of its kind and an international reference for city networks, is reviewed as a case study, with the main objective of establishing a theory on its global innovation capacity and operations, together with the local level spurring influenced on its members. A PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analysis was carried out in order to assess the impact of the smart city network both at local, national and international level. This research was completed with a consultation carried out among some of RECI's municipalities. The analysis of the results shows how RECI can be considered an example of a well organised network with quantifiable savings for its members, capable of configuring future policies in local administration, necessarily related to efficiency, digitalization and citizen-centricity and with key topics to build the future. The study also suggests recommendations oriented to potential improvements that smart city networks could undertake.     

Tourism trails as tools for cross-border integration: A best practice case study of the Vennbahn cycling route

This paper evaluates which processes determine the leverage of cycling tourism trails for mainstreaming cross-border contact and ‘soft’ region-building. Reflecting on the Vennbahn between Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg, the paper shows that the influence of routes on cross-border integration depends on the trail’s strength as a tourism product, its cross-border institutionalization, and the geography and scale of the trail and the involved destinations. Tourism trails could contribute to cross-border integration, vindicating the substantial money spent on such projects in INTERREG programmes. However, border-related barriers remain robust even for tourism projects that are best practices of cross-border cooperation. As such, there is an unfulfilled potential of tourism trails in their contribution to cross-border communication and social cohesion in many European borderlands.     

Supplier Development Practices for Sustainability: A Multi‐Stakeholder Perspective

Supplier development for sustainability is a critical element of sustainable supply chain management and requires extensive multi‐stakeholder collaboration. This article establishes a conceptual four‐stage framework to analyse the collaborative mechanisms of supplier development practices, and presents an exploratory, qualitative analysis to identify the major contributors of sustainable supplier development practices, such as NGOs, industrial associations, consulting firms etc. Based on semi‐structured interviews about 63 organizations from different regions and industries, this article identifies three types of contributor: drivers, facilitators and inspectors. Instead of traditional stakeholder engagement processes, these contributors actively collaborate with buying firms and suppliers to design, implement and evaluate sustainable supplier development programs. The article then provides a matrix to describe the supply chain coverage and supplier performance of supplier development practices, given the absence or positive involvement of facilitators and inspectors. We conclude our study by suggesting future research directions as well as discussing managerial implications. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

中国城镇化包容性发展中的公共投资支持影响研究

本文通过构建城镇化包容性发展指标体系，测度出中国2003—2015年30个省级区域的城镇化包容性发展指数，经莫兰指数检验发现其具有显著的空间正相关性。进而采用空间计量模型，基于户籍制度改革背景，从生产性公共投资、社会性公共投资与环保性公共投资三个方面研究公共投资对城镇化包容性发展的影响。研究结果表明，生产性公共投资与社会性公共投资对城镇化包容性发展均存在显著的正向支持作用，且户籍制度改革变量与二者产生了正向的交互作用，说明随着对人口流动限制的放松，生产性公共投资与社会性公共投资对城镇化包容性发展的支持作用有所增强，但环保性公共投资未能表现出显著的支持作用。在未来城镇化进程中，应当优化调整中国公共投资的行业结构与区域结构，从而更好地提升城镇化包容性发展水平。     

Co-creation with clients of hotel services: the moderating role of top management support

Hotels can strengthen their competitiveness by expanding their innovation process beyond the boundaries of the firm to exploit the valuable knowledge and skills of their customers. This study examines the effects of new service (NS) co-creation with customers in the hotel industry on NS performance, as well as the moderating role of top management support. The research also explores the main barriers faced by hotels to co-create service innovations. Partial least squares structural equation modelling results indicate that Customer co-creation exerts a direct impact on NS market outcomes and NS development (NSD) speed, which in turn favours NS quality. NS quality translates into better NS customer-related outcomes as well as in improved NS market outcomes. Top management support enhances the effect of Customer co-creation on the NSD speed. The main barrier to NS co-creation in hotels is to find customers interested in devoting time to this activity or with the appropriate knowledge and experience.     

Opportunities and pitfalls for researchers to contribute to the design of evidence-based agricultural policies: lessons from Uganda

Agricultural policies in sub-Saharan Africa have paid insufficient attention to sustainable intensification. In Uganda, agricultural productivity has stagnated with aggregate increases in crop production being attributed to expansion of cultivated land area. To enhance sustainable crop intensification, the Ugandan Government collaborated with stakeholders to develop agricultural policies using an evidence-based approach. Previously, evidence-based decision-making tended to focus on the evidence base rather than evidence and its interactions within the broader policy context. We identify opportunities and pitfalls to strengthen science engagement in agricultural policy design by analysing the types of evidence required, and how it was shared and used during policy development. Qualitative tools captured stakeholders' perspectives of agricultural policies and their status in the policy cycle. Subsequent multi-level studies identified crop growth constraints and quantified yield gaps which were used to compute the economic analyses of policy options that subsequently contributed to sub-national program planning. The study identified a need to generate relevant evidence within a short time 'window' to influence policy design, power influence by different stakeholders and quality of stakeholder interaction. Opportunities for evidence integration surfaced at random phases of policy development due to researchers’ ’embededness’ within co-management and coordination structures.     

The Role of Green Collaborative Strategies in Improving Environmental Sustainability in Supply Chains: Insights from a Case Study

This article aims to quantify to what extent collaborative strategies are more effective than internal or organization‐level actions to green supply chains. In this regard, the impact of decisions made at different stages of a supply chain in a product's carbon footprint is quantified. Organizational and product carbon footprints are calculated using the Compound Method Based on Financial Accounts (MC3). The results underline that concentrating reduction efforts in some stages of the supply chain is more effective than implementing individual actions by the participants. Collaboration among the participants is needed to decide what practices are implemented, at what stage they are needed and how they are to be implemented. This article adds to the literature on supply chains and sustainability. Previous research suggests that collaborative strategies have great potential for reducing the carbon footprint of products, while indicating the need for empirical research to support this statement. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Matching food security and malnutrition indicators: evidence from Southeast Asia

This article aims to understand the relation between household food security and individual undernutrition. The multitude of indicators available raises the question which aspects of food security are captured by the respective indicator. In our analysis, we first assess the relation between the dimensions of food security and households’ socioeconomic characteristics. Second, we examine whether household indicators detect undernutrition in children. Finally, we investigate the role of individual‐specific characteristics for child undernutrition. The analysis is based on a novel data set of 1,200 rural households from Cambodia and Lao PDR, which combines household‐ and individual‐level data. We capture household food security by three indicators including a dietary diversity score, a consumption behavior measure, and an experiential measure. Individual nutrition status is measured via anthropometric indicators. Our results show that different household‐level indicators capture fundamentally different aspects of food security. Moreover, household food security fails to explain stunting for children under five. Dietary diversity indicators, however, explain underweight in children to a small extent. We call for more research on intrahousehold allocation of food and stress the implications of our research for the design and targeting of food and nutrition support programs.     

Fijian culture and the environment: a focus on the ecological and social interconnectedness of tourism development

Understanding the complex and adaptive nature of Pacific Island communities is a growing yet relatively unexplored area in the context of tourism development. Taking an ethnographic research approach, this study examines how over 40 years of tourism development have led to complex and multi-scale changes within an Indigenous Fijian village. The study establishes that tourism development has brought a range of ecological shifts that have, over time, spurred far-reaching changes within the embedded sociocultural constructs of the community. The development of the Naviti Resort, a water catchment dam, a causeway and a man-made island have created substantial changes in totemic associations, livelihood approaches, and traditional knowledge structures within Vatuolalai village. The emergence of internal adaptive cycles, and new behaviours, practices and values that redefine the cultural landscape will be discussed. This paper demonstrates the interconnectivity of nature, society and culture within Indigenous communal systems and asserts that ecological changes introduced in one part of a community stimulate complex, non-linear responses in other elements of the socio-ecological system of a Fijian village.