Environmental orientation and corporate performance: The mediation mechanism of green supply chain management and moderating effect of competitive intensity

This study proposes and empirically tests a model delineating the relationship among environmental orientation, green supply chain management (GSCM) activities (green purchase, customer cooperation and investment recovery) and corporate performance. Based on responses from 194 foreign invested enterprises operating in China, this study has generated several important findings. First, it demonstrates that while both internal and external environmental orientations exert a positive and significant influence on the practice of green purchase and customer cooperation, internal environmental orientation further serves as a significant driver for the practice of investment recovery. Second, it shows that the practice of these three major GSCM activities, in turn, significantly enhances corporate performance. Last, the study reveals that competitive intensity strengthens the positive influence of customer cooperation on corporate performance. Overall, the findings explicate the importance for firms, in particular those operating in a highly competitive market condition, to nurture a pro-environmental corporate culture and improve their sensitivity to salient external stakeholders' environmental demands so as to pursue greener supply chain management.     

Green marketing and its impact on supply chain management in industrial markets

Green marketing and green supply chain have been drawing the attention of both academics and practitioners in the recent decade. However, no holistic framework has been developed on how to build green industrial brands and industrial corporate brands. Whether or not sustainable/green supply chains can be integrated with green industrial marketing in building greener organizations and industrial brands is still unclear. In addition, little is known on the factors on green new industrial product development or how green new industrial products are adopted by organizations. Furthermore, we know little of whether and how green supply chain enables green new industrial product development. This special issue aims at reflecting the most recent advances on green industrial marketing, green/sustainable supply chains and their interplay in green industrial branding, and to explore future research directions. The guest editors hope that the solicited papers can provide insights on the impacts of sustainable or green supply chains on marketing theory in industrial and business-to-business markets.     

粮食物流节点的空间布局优化

以苏州市为研究案例,从分析苏州粮食物流现状与特征着手,建立评价指标体系,并采用定量和定性分析方法构建了苏州粮食物流节点的空间优化体系("物流园区-物流中心-配送节点"),探讨了苏州粮食物流节点的功能定位,对提高粮食物流的运行效率和保障粮食的安全供给具有一定的现实意义.     

Partial Industrialisation in Tourism: A New Model

Certain forms of human activity, such as sport, education and tourism, can be described as being partly industrialised; they are supported partly by organisations with industrial relationships to the particular activity (e.g. tourism industries, sports industries, and so on), and partly by other factors. The latter includes business organisations whose relationship to the activity might be direct and commercial but is non-strategic, non-industrial. Partial industrialisation in tourism (PIIT) has been explored by a handful of researchers interested in its nature, causes and implications. However, the diagrammatic model used in the exploratory studies is awkward, a defect that probably helps explain why PIIT has not become widely recognised in the community of tourism researchers. A new model enables clearer insight and should facilitate understanding and greater recognition. Using the new model, an empirical research project in a mass destination provided substantial evidence for PIIT. Implications arise for many issues, including how tourism is conceptualised, strategic business management, destination competitiveness, destination development and promotion, seasonality, environmental activism, employment numbers, vocational training, planning and government policy.     

Dynamic specification of demand functions: A cointegration approach

The single-equation approach has been commonly used in the studies of energy demand. However, as most of the data used in the energy demand model are unlikely to be stationary, this factor has to be taken into account when estimating the demand behavior. To overcome this problem, the authors have applied the cointegration and error-correction models to model Chinese coal consumption data. In order to contrast their performance with such traditional models as Hendry's general-to-specific approach, a forecast error comparison exercise has been conducted. In terms ofex post forecast errors, the Engle-Granger error correction model outperforms other chosen models. By using the Engle-Granger approach, it is possible to obtain important information about the behavior of coal demand in China.     

The influence of greening the suppliers and green innovation on environmental performance and competitive advantage in Taiwan

Recently, many companies have recognized the concepts of green supply chain management or supply chain environmental management. However, relatively little research attention has been devoted to the consideration of relations between greening the supply chain, green innovation, environmental performance and competitive advantage. Hence, this paper aims to bridge this gap by providing empirical evidence to encourage companies to implement green supply chain and green innovation in order to improve their environmental performance, and to enhance their competitive advantage in the global market. A model is constructed to link the aforementioned constructs. Data were collected through a questionnaire-based survey across 124 companies from eight industry sectors in Taiwan. The data are analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling and the results from the final measurement model are used to evaluate the structural model that verifies the significance of the proposed relationships. A prominent result of this study is that greening the supplier through green innovation contributes significant benefits to the environmental performance and competitive advantage of the firm.     

Bubbles detection for inter-war European hyperinflation: A threshold cointegration approach

This paper undertakes an empirical investigation into the existence of inflationary bubbles during the inter-war European hyperinflation for Germany, Hungary, Poland and Russia. Our Monte Carlo simulations show that the residual-based threshold cointegration methodology of Caner and Hansen (2001) is better able to detect periodically collapsing bubbles. Moreover, this methodology possesses greater power against nonlinear stationary alternatives in a finite sample than several commonly used cointegration tests that do not allow for multiple regime shifts. The empirical results of the threshold cointegration tests provide evidence of stationary, regimeswitching processes in money demand dynamics, but suggest that there are no inflationary bubbles in any of the countries.     

Assisting problem gamblers in the gaming venue: An assessment of practices and procedures followed by frontline hospitality staff

This study examined how frontline hospitality staff respond to patrons with gambling problems in gaming venues. Personal interviews with 48 staff in Queensland Australia yielded rich in-depth data. While overall, staff were confident they could identify signs of problem gambling and procedures to follow if patrons ask for assistance with a gambling problem, uncertainty and unresolved challenges persist over how to respond to problem gamblers who do not request assistance. While better training, systems and processes may improve staff interventions, continued reliance on human judgement and discretion are likely to see the vast majority of problem gamblers in venues ignored.