Toward Dynamic Corporate Stakeholder Responsibility

Today, sustainable relations with a broad range of key stakeholders are not only important from a normative business ethics perspective, but also from an entrepreneurial viewpoint to allow and support the long-term survival of a firm. We will argue that the traditional conception of a firm’s corporate social responsibility does not reflect this view and that a comprehensive and dynamic conception of a firm’s responsibilities is necessary to map the reality of business practice and to manage the challenges implied by sustainability. We think that distributive justice, that is the way in which firms involve their stakeholders in their wealth creation and dissemination processes, provides a comprehensive understanding of corporate responsibilities. Concerning procedural justice, we will discuss how firms involve stakeholders in their strategic processes according to their contribution to wealth creation. In the course of the article, we will propose a framework along with three design principles that can be used for shaping dynamic and comprehensive corporate responsibilities, and which thereby allow a sustainable procedure for changing business and non-business environments.     

Dissecting Between-Plant and Within-Plant Wage Dispersion: Evidence from Germany

Using rich linked employer–employee data for (West) Germany between 1996 and 2014, we conduct a decomposition analysis based on recentered influence function (RIF) regressions to analyze the relative contributions of various plant and worker characteristics to the rise in German wage dispersion. Moreover, we separately investigate the sources of between-plant and within-plant wage dispersion. We find that industry effects and the collective bargaining regime contribute the most to rising wage inequality. In the case of collective bargaining, both the decline in collective bargaining coverage and the increase in wage dispersion among the group of covered plants have played important roles.     

A rationale for science-policy interfaces

This paper aims at a better understanding of the justifications for science-policy interfaces, of the reasons for their growing importance in environmental governance, and of the theoretical and epistemological challenges they pose. I look at the intersections between science and policy to highlight that science and policy, far from being mutually exclusive and hermetic categories, are intersecting domains of human activity which are in co-evolution. Science-policy interfaces are defined as social processes which encompass relations between scientists and other actors in the policy process, and which allow for exchanges, co-evolution, and joint construction of knowledge with the aim of enriching decision-making. They are implemented to manage the intersection between science and policy. The theoretical questions which arise at this intersection are then explored, which allows for the identification of a series of 15 normative requirements for science-policy interfaces. The conclusion suggests that this normative content may provide guidance for the design, implementation, and evaluation of real-life science-policy interfaces, and identifies key methodological issues which need further theoretical research as well as practical experimentation.     

THE RELEVANCE OF THE COOPERATIVE MODEL IN THE FIELD OF RENEWABLE ENERGY

While ‘traditional’ cooperatives operating for a long time in fields such as banking, agriculture, or retail, have received important attention in the cooperative literature, much work still needs to be done to understand why and how cooperatives emerge either in fields in which they have not traditionally been widespread (such as health and care, services, etc.), or in ‘new’ fields or sub‐fields (such as fair trade, microfinance or renewable energy). Research is even more needed insofar as ‘new’ cooperatives tend to differ from traditional ones in several ways, for instance through the involvement of multiple stakeholders (rather than a dominant one such as producers, consumers or workers) or through a stronger orientation towards general interest goals (beyond traditional mutual interest at the basis of most cooperatives). In this article, we analyze the emergence of cooperatives in the field of renewable energy. This emergence has raised a lot of enthusiasm among the supporters of cooperatives and citizen‐based renewable energy as well as questions regarding the viability and the replicability of this model. On the one hand, the assets of the cooperative model enable us to understand why this form has been adopted by citizen groups and has developed, although to varying extents, in many countries. On the other hand, the limits or weaknesses of the model enable us to explain why cooperatives are still a minority in the field of renewable energy and why their development is constrained by several obstacles.     

Has the Euro changed business cycle synchronization? Evidence from the core and the periphery

Using a Bayesian dynamic factor model, I examine the comovement of output, investment and consumption growth among Euro area countries before and after the introduction of the Euro. For that purpose, I compare a pre-Euro period (1991–1998) to a Euro period (2000–2010) and identify a common Euro factor for each period separately. I find that the comovement of main macroeconomic variables and the common factor increases for core Eurozone countries from the first to the second period, while it decreases for most peripheral economies. This can be interpreted as a rise in business cycle synchronization for the core and a respective decline for the periphery. Different to the implications made by the endogeneity argument of currency areas (Frankel and Rose in Econ J 108(449):1009–1025, 1998), my evidence suggest that the introduction of the Euro has fostered imbalances between core and peripheral Eurozone countries.