Social enterprise push or corporate social responsibility pull? The mainstreaming of fair trade

Social enterprise organizations and activities combine market-oriented approaches with social aspirations, whereas corporate social responsibility strategies seek to integrate social aspects into core business strategies. The rise in social enterprise activity at the business end of the spectrum raises questions about how, where, and why social enterprise and corporate social responsibility might overlap. Through a review of literature, we demonstrate how the mainstreaming or corporatization of fair trade activity provides an example of this overlap. The tensions between the push of social aspirations within fair trade and the pull of commercial imperatives are highlighted. From a marketing viewpoint, a social enterprise push strategy is shown as typically undertaken from an organization perspective, whereas pull strategies in marketing are typically customer driven. We demonstrate that influences from both social enterprise and corporate social responsibility are evident in fair trade mainstreaming processes, although the extent to which each “pushes” or “pulls” varies across circumstances and interpretations.     

Modern Slavery and the Discursive Construction of a Propertied Freedom: Evidence from Australian Business

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper examines the ethics of the Australian business community’s responses to the phenomenon of modern slavery. Engaging a critical discourse approach, we...     

The emergence of next generation internet users

The Internet is central to the new media, but the Internet is itself a dynamic technology that is constantly evolving as users adopt and reject new features, devices and applications and use them in ways that are often unanticipated. This article is anchored in longitudinal survey data on how Britons use the Internet, which illuminates the emergence of new patterns of accessing the Internet over multiple devices—some of which are portable—in everyday life and work. We call those who adopt this new approach ‘next generation users’. In contrast, first generation users remain anchored to one or more personal computers in the household or workplace for accessing the Internet. The analysis shows how this emerging pattern of access is reshaping the use and impact of the Internet, such as in supporting the production of user generated content. The analysis also shows how next generation access is socially distributed; creating a new digital divide that reinforces socioeconomic inequalities. Future research needs to move beyond the study of access to the Internet to track the diffusion of next generation access and its implications across a wider array of nations.     

Determinants of tax haven utilization: evidence from Australian firms

This paper examines the major determinants of tax haven utilization based on a sample of 200 publicly listed Australian firms, over the 2006–2010 period (1,000 firm‐years). Our regression results show that variables relating to transfer pricing, intangible assets, an interaction term between transfer pricing and intangible assets, withholding taxes, performance‐based management remuneration and multinationality are positively associated with tax haven utilization. We also find that corporate governance structures are negatively associated with tax haven utilization. The magnitude and significance of the regression coefficients indicate that transfer pricing, withholding taxes, intangible assets, an interaction term between transfer pricing and intangible assets, corporate governance and multinationality are the most important drivers of tax haven utilization.     

Long‐run Effect of the Global Financial Crisis on Singapore's Tourism and the Economy

This study employs recent Singaporean tourism survey data, the updated Singaporean input–output tables and a computable general equilibrium model to gauge the long‐run effects of the 2008 global financial crisis and selected policy responses. The simulation results suggest that the global financial crisis has had mild negative long‐run effects on the overall development of Singapore's economy, and that the GST deduction policy ought to offset this negative effect.     

The relevance of shopper logistics for consumers of store-based retail formats

This paper discusses and empirically evaluates the relevance of shopping-related logistics for consumers of store-based retail formats. Based on a literature review a conceptual model was developed and subsequently tested using a survey of more than six hundred consumers in the grocery retail sector. Respondents were those primarily responsible for grocery shopping in their households located in a highly concentrated European urban retail market. Variance based structural equation modelling reveals that shopper logistics has a major impact on the convenience of store-based shopping and partly influence consumers' perceptions of shopping related costs. Nevertheless, shopper logistics does not affect consumer behaviour in terms of the share of visits of a store. These results are moderated by age, hedonic shopping orientation, shopping frequency, average spending per trip and store format preference. We conclude that shopper logistics is relevant for consumers of grocery stores but its relevance varies between different shopper groups.     

Value in business and industrial marketing: Past,present, and future

This article offers an overview of research on the ‘value’ that businesses and industrial marketers analyze, create, and deliver. First, value literature (up to and around 2005 and post 2005) is discussed. This review highlights the changes in our notions of value and helps to identify seven areas for consideration that should drive future research: value proposition, relationship form, capabilities management, value metrics, temporal horizon, innovation imperative, and tactical focus. Following this depiction of value analysis, value creation, and value delivery, we present a process model for value orchestration in business and industrial marketing. Three activities collectively form the basis of value orchestration, namely structuring activities, bundling activities, and leveraging of resources.     

Determinants of transfer pricing aggressiveness: Empirical evidence from Australian firms

This study examines the major determinants of transfer pricing aggressiveness. Based on a hand-collected sample of 183 publicly-listed Australian firms for the 2009 year, our regression results show that firm size, profitability, leverage, intangible assets, and multinationality are significantly positively associated with transfer pricing aggressiveness after controlling for industry-sector effects. Our additional regression results also indicate that firms augment their transfer pricing aggressiveness through the joint effects of intangible assets and multinationality.     

Equally-distributed equivalent utility,ex post egalitarianism and utilitarianism

We provide an axiomatization of expected equally-distributed equivalent-utility social welfare functions in the context of Harsanyi?s impartial observer theorem. For this family of social welfare functions, we show what additional axiom is necessary and sufficient for the observer to exhibit aversion to ex post inequality. We also relate this axiomatization to our axiomatization in a companion paper of generalized utilitarian social welfare functions. Given certain richness assumptions, the only social welfare functions that belong to both families are the utilitarian.