Reference points for measuring social performance: Case study of a social business venture

We present a longitudinal qualitative case study to elaborate on how a social venture forms reference points for social performance. Although organizations increasingly use various social performance targets to direct their operations, the scholarly knowledge on social performance reference points remains limited. We make use of the prior accounting literature and draw on the idea of compromising accounts to discuss how provisional and performative metrics can have a significant role in how organizations develop new ways to evaluate their social performance. Given that the social performance reference point criteria are ambiguous and the corresponding referents malleable, performative accounts are helpful as they can intervene in the organizational life by making particular things visible, providing space for interpretations, and facilitating discussion, thus creating temporary settlements and enabling opportunities for productive compromises between different organizational groups and evaluative principles. The recursive feedback loops between reference point referents, criteria and accounting artefacts help the organization to make sense of its own social performance and interpret the associated performance feedback, and thereby provide ground for organizational decisions on further action. Moreover, we discuss how imperfect accounts can be useful for social businesses in their pursuit of developing their activities and achieving social impact.     

Does educational diversity of managers matter for the performance of team‐managed funds?

We study the effect of the educational diversity of managers on the performance of team‐managed mutual funds using a large sample of U.S. equity funds from 1994 to 2013. We consider diversity in terms of both final educational degree and field of educational specialisation. We find that, in general, both types of diversity have a positive impact on fund performance, and our results are robust over a wide range of performance metrics and changes in market conditions.     

Nonfinancial Considerations in Eco-Innovation Decisions: The Role of Family Ownership and Reputation Concerns

Societal pressures for greater sustainability can encourage firms to target part of their innovation activities at ecological initiatives (i.e., eco-innovation). Yet, depending on their value function, firms can respond differently to such pressures and exhibit variance in their eco-innovation activities. In this paper, we investigate the idea that a firm’s ownership structure may play a significant role in determining its engagement in eco-innovation. Specifically, we propose that ownership by family blockholders increases the value attached to the company’s reputation and that this, in turn, stimulates higher levels of eco-innovation. In other words, we model the company reputation motive as a key mediator in the relationship between family ownership and firm-level eco-innovation. To account for family firm heterogeneity, we also model the moderating role of owners’ intention to pass the business on to the next family generation (transgenerational intentions) and of the extent to which these owners reside in the firm’s local community (local embeddedness). As theoretical backdrop, our study builds on institutional theory and the mixed gamble logic. To test our hypotheses, we use a large sample of German firms and nonlinear moderated mediation regression analysis. Results reveal that family ownership is positively related to the introduction of eco-innovations by firms, in part because of the stronger emphasis being placed on the company’s reputation. We find that this effect is strongest when the owning-family has transgenerational intentions. As such, this study advances our understanding of firm-level drivers of eco-innovation. In view of the prevalence of family-owned firms and the mounting importance of ecological sustainability, it is valuable to extend knowledge on the contingent and indirect effect of family ownership on eco-innovation.     

Missing the Popular Vote: Pitfalls in US Democracy and Reform Proposals

Intereconomics - Only a few years ago, it was a widespread belief that globalisation would trigger processes of democratisation worldwide. However, even old and established democracies such as the...     

Is the Retail Gasoline Market Local or National?

This paper studies the effect of station density on prices in the retail gasoline market in the Czech Republic. We estimate the impact of the number of competing stations in various driving-distance ranges around each station on prices. We find that station density has a negative effect on prices; the effect decreases with distance and is statistically significant up to six kilometers. This suggests that the retail gasoline market is local rather than national.     

Introduction to symposium: Smallholders in communist and postcommunist societies

The primary contributions of smallholders during the communist and early postcommunist periods have been food production and labour for large farms. Those conditions are changing, however, as modern farms require less labour and food supply may be imported. For most smallholders in Central and Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries, the postcommunist neoliberal environment has not brought significant improvement, and strong arguments can be made that land grabbing, social and economic exclusion, and rural poverty are worse than regime bias during the communist period. Cooperatives, which have empowered smallholders in other parts of the world, have not been as well developed in postcommunist nations.     

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.     

Cost comparison of continued anticoagulation with rivaroxaban versus placebo based on the 1-year EINSTEIN-Extension trial efficacy and safety results

Aims: The EINSTEIN-Extension trial (EINSTEIN-EXT) found that continued treatment with rivaroxaban for an additional 6 or 12 months (vs placebo) after 6–12 months of initial anticoagulation significantly reduced the risk of recurrent venous thromboembolism (VTE) with a small non-significant increased risk of major bleeding (none fatal or in critical site). This study aimed to compare total healthcare cost between rivaroxaban and placebo, based on the EINSTEIN-EXT event rates.

Methods: Total healthcare cost was calculated as the sum of treatment and clinical event costs from a US managed care perspective. Treatment duration and event rates were obtained from the EINSTEIN-EXT study. Adjustment on treatment duration was made by assuming a 10% non-adherence rate. Drug costs were based on wholesale acquisition costs. Cost estimates for clinical events (i.e. recurrent deep vein thrombosis [DVT], recurrent pulmonary embolism, major bleeding, clinically relevant non-major bleeding) were determined from the literature. Results were examined over a ±20% range of each cost component and over 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of event rate differences in deterministic (one-way) and probabilistic sensitivity analyses (PSA).

Results: Total healthcare cost was $1,454 lower for rivaroxaban-treated (vs placebo-treated) patients in the base-case, with a lower clinical event cost fully offsetting drug cost. The cost savings of recurrent DVT alone (–$3,102) was greater than drug cost ($2,723). Total healthcare cost remained lower for rivaroxaban in the majority (73%) of PSA (cost difference [95% CI]?=?–$1,454 [–$2,396, $1,231]).

Limitations: This study was conducted over the 1-year observation period of the EINSTEIN-EXT trial, which limited “real-world” applicability and examination of long-term economic impact. Assumptions on drug and clinical event costs were US-based and, thus, not applicable to other healthcare systems.

Conclusions: Total healthcare costs were estimated to be lower for patients continuing rivaroxaban therapy compared to those receiving placebo in VTE patients who had completed 6–12 months of VTE treatment.     

Contagion of network products in small-world networks

We formulate a model in which agents embedded in an exogenous social network decide whether to adopt a new network product or not. In the theoretical part of the paper, we characterize the stochastically stable equilibria for complete networks and cycles. For an arbitrary network structure, we develop a novel graph decomposition method to characterize the set of recurrent communication states, which is a superset of stochastically stable equilibria of the adoption game presented in our model. In the simulation part, we study the contagion process of a network product in small-world networks that systematically represent social networks. We simulate a generalization of the Morris (Rev Econ Stud 67(1):57–78, 2000) Contagion model that can explain the chasm between early adopters and early majority. Our numerical analysis shows that the failure of a new network product is less likely in a highly cliquish network. In addition, the contagion process reaches to steady state faster in random networks than in highly cliquish networks. It turns out that marketers should work with mixed marketing strategies, which will result in a full contagion of a network product and faster contagion rates with a higher probability.