Corporate social responsibility reporting: A comprehensive picture?

This study develops a content analysis framework that provides information on the comprehensiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, an important aspect of social and environmental accountability. Comprehensive reporting, as defined here, requires three types of information for each disclosed CSR item: (i) vision and goals, (ii) management approach, and (iii) performance indicators. The feasibility of the framework to assess the comprehensiveness of CSR reporting is demonstrated using the 2005 annual reports of a sample of publicly traded Belgian companies. The content analysis reveals a low level of comprehensive reporting. This finding complements those of prior studies on the completeness of CSR reporting and, therefore, feeds the debate regarding the extent to which CSR reporting can be considered a mechanism for discharging social and environmental accountability.     

Vision 20/20: Preparing today for tomorrow's challenges

This special issue includes five of the best papers presented at the 20th IPSERA conference. This conference was organized by Maastricht University and took place in Maastricht, The Netherlands. The conference theme was: ‘Vision 20/20: Preparing today for tomorrow's challenges’. In this editorial we discuss the future challenges in Purchasing and Supply Management and how one can prepare for these today. We make use of the concept of weak signals to detect a number of emerging future trends. All abstracts of the 110 conference papers were analysed using text mining and tag clouds. Also we introduce the five papers that were selected by the conference reviewers and track chairs as the best papers of the conference.     

Time-varying integration,interdependence and contagion

Bekaert et al. (2005) define contagion as “correlation over and above what one would expect from economic fundamentals”. Based on a two-factor asset pricing specification to model fundamentally-driven linkages between markets, they define contagion as correlation among the model residuals, and develop a corresponding test procedure. In this paper, we investigate to what extent conclusions from this contagion test depend upon the specification of the time-varying factor exposures. We develop a two-factor model with global and regional market shocks as factors. We make the global and regional market exposures conditional upon both a latent regime variable and three structural instruments, and find that, for a set of 14 European countries, this model outperforms more restricted versions. The structurally-driven increase in global (regional) market exposures and correlations suggest that market integration has increased substantially over the last three decades. Using our optimal model, we do not find evidence that further integration has come at the cost of contagion. We do find evidence for contagion, however, when more restricted versions of the factor specifications are used. We conclude that the specification of the global and regional market exposures is an important issue in any test for contagion.     

The determinants of increasing equity market comovement: economic or financial integration?

This paper investigates to what extent the substantial increase in exposures of local European equity market returns to global shocks is mainly due to a convergence in cash flows (“economic integration”), to a convergence in discount rates (“financial integration”), or to both. We find that this increased exposure is nearly entirely due to increasing discount-rate betas. This finding is robust to alternative ways of calculating discount-rate and cash-flow shocks.     

Rethinking determinants of ICT acceptance: Towards an integrated and comprehensive overview

In the contemporary ICT environment, we are confronted with a growing number of failing innovations. New technological innovations often fail because too much attention is still given to (technical) product-related features without taking into account the most important parameters of user acceptance. In addition, suppliers of ICT products often lack accurate insight into the distinguished profiles of their (potential) target audience. In this article theoretical considerations and empirical results on this matter are highlighted. First of all, an approach is proposed in which more traditional and often scattered vision(s) on adoption determinants are broadened into an integrated framework. The approach provides a stronger base for better targeting of (new) users of technologies. Secondly, the authors elaborate on this by rethinking these determinants with regard to later adopters. Later adopters (or even non-adopters/users) are often ignored in technology acceptance research. However, especially for policy purposes, the understanding of why people do not adopt or do not use ICT is strongly relevant in the light of the development of an inclusive information society. Both approaches are illustrated by case studies starting from a common list of nineteen ICT appropriation determinants. This framework enables to better profile both earlier and later adopters as well as it allows to formulate recommendations how to bring innovations in the market. Summarizing, this contribution offers an integrated approach on technology acceptance research by bridging the gap between a market and a policy-oriented point of view.     

Purchasing internationalisation on both sides of the Atlantic

This article focuses on similarities and differences in the perception of companies in the United States (7 cases in New York State) and Europe (5 cases from Belgium) on global purchasing opportunities and on how they react to these. It addresses two questions. First, what forces drive companies to engage in international purchasing? Seemingly basic issues such as price, quality and availability appear to be the three most important elements in this respect. Second, how do organisations organise for international purchasing in terms of configuration of actors and activities and their use of intermediaries such as brokers or agents? Findings indicate that the ways companies are organised run parallel on both sides of the Atlantic. However, we find that the New York State cases rely much more on intermediaries for their international purchasing activities than Belgian companies do.