Modern Slavery Disclosure Regulation and Global Supply Chains: Insights from Stakeholder Narratives on the UK Modern Slavery Act

Journal of Business Ethics - The purpose of this article is to problematise a particular social transparency and disclosure regulation in the UK, that transcend national boundaries in order to...     

Expert and entrepreneur: the unique research domain of professional service entrepreneurs

Professionals are knowledge experts who create customized solutions for clients. Many professionals practice in the context of strong professional institutions that prescribe intense socialization and codes and norms. While some professionals work as employees, many start their own firms in order to practice. Firm start-up for professionals is more prevalent than for most other occupations. While professional institutions often constraint their activities, firm start-up for professional service entrepreneurs (PSEs) involves similar entrepreneurial activities as other entrepreneurs, creating an interesting paradox worth investigating. This paper explores the uniqueness of PSEs and the firms they start, and the distinctiveness and value of research in the context of PSEs and professional service firms.     

Corporate Finance and Sustainability: the Case of the Electric Utility Industry

The electric utility industry is in transition but needs to move even faster if the country is to meet its emissions goals. The industry has historically moved cautiously, but policies and regulatory approaches must avoid unintentionally reinforcing the status quo. Incentive‐oriented policies and redesigned regulations must balance environmental sustainability with economic sustainability. The authors draw on well‐established corporate finance principles to guide more effective policies. Shareholder‐focused utility executives must make investments conditioned by three elements: (1) the return on equity the utility can expect to make on each project; (2) the investors' required return on equity capital for each project; and (3) the size of the investment. The well‐established economic value added (EVA) model can assist policy analysis: V=(r‐k)I; where V is the shareholder value created, r is the return on equity, k is the return investors require if they are to invest in the stock, and I is the scale of the project. Any new incremental V translates into higher stock prices. All three elements of their model (i.e., risk, return, and scale) require attention by regulators and policymakers to create value for shareholders. The authors show how the right state policies could create powerful incentives for shareholder focused utility executives to support such transitions.     

What drives technology transitions? An integration of different approaches within transition studies

This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of transition drivers by reviewing four major strands of inquiry in transition studies: Multi Level Perspective (MLP); Strategic Niche Management (SNM); Transition Management (TM); Technological Innovation Systems (TIS). To the best of our knowledge, none of these contributions have so far provided a clear-cut classification of main drivers of transitions, as evidenced by the difficulty of practitioners in reaching goals as entrepreneurs, or policy makers in supporting economic growth. We believe that these theoretical streams share views relating the origin and drivers of transitions and that the analysis of the multi-level developments and systemic sub-processes by using the Integrative Propositional Analysis (IPA) allows for a more comprehensive identification of transition drivers. By mapping causal relationships within each perspective and by developing an integrative framework that takes in due account of overlaps between theories, we derived a new conceptual structure for the identification of transitions’ drivers.     

The European IFRS Endorsement Process – in Search of a Single Voice

We analyse the creation and development of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), a key part of the EU endorsement mechanism for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which was probably the first example of a dedicated IFRS endorsement system. We discuss the historical background to the EU approach and we analyse how EFRAG evolved over its early years up to the Maystadt reform. Our analysis addresses its remit, its operational structure and financing and the key decisions made in the endorsement process over this period. We find that while national standard-setters had a limited role in the early stages, and EFRAG had limited resources, over time the pressure to find more resources and to try to achieve a unified voice in the creating of international standards have resulted in national standard-setters playing an ever-greater role. Nonetheless, a single voice for Europe is not likely to be attained     

Career mentoring in context: A multilevel study on differentiated career mentoring and career mentoring climate

This study explores how supervisor career mentoring contributes to contemporary organizational career development, which strives to foster employees' promotability while strengthening their intention to stay. Specifically, we focus on the implications of career mentoring in team contexts. Applying a multilevel framework, we distinguish between individual‐level differentiated mentoring (i.e., an employee's mentoring perceptions as compared to those of other team members) and group‐level career mentoring climate (i.e., the average perception across all group members). In a workplace setting, we collected data from vocational job starters (N ranged from 230 to 290) and their company supervisors (N ranged from 56 to 68). We find that career mentoring climate positively relates to promotability, more so than differentiated career mentoring. Both career mentoring climate and differentiated career mentoring are positively related to the intention to stay. At the individual level, this relationship is mediated by job satisfaction. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of differentiated and group‐level mentoring.     

Toward a Typology of Family Firm Corporate Entrepreneurship

Family involvement in business creates idiosyncrasies in firm behavior that promote long‐term, often transgenerational, strategic logics that ostensibly align with the motivations and outcomes of corporate entrepreneurship. Interestingly, extant research provides only minimal insight into the heterogeneous nature of corporate entrepreneurship orientations pursued by family firms. To better understand this heterogeneity, we develop a typology of corporate entrepreneurship in family firms providing a reconciliatory approach to this literary diversity and suggest that the varied corporate entrepreneurship orientations of family firms are impacted by the duality of a family's distinct intention to pursue transgenerational succession and capabilities to acquire external knowledge.     

Wealth transfer through private placements: Evidence from China

We examine private issuance of public equity (PIPE) in China, and our results suggest that PIPE investors benefit from the price manipulation before and after issuance. These investors tend to cash out after lockup expiration and make large profits. We also find evidence that the trading of PIPE investors after lockup expiration is informed. Tests about the abnormal returns in the 3 years after lockup expiration suggest that at least part of the benefits PIPE investors receive come from wealth transfer from outside investors. Overall, PIPE issuers in China seem to use an opaque mechanism to compensate PIPE investors.     

Buying reputation as a signal of quality: Evidence from an online marketplace

Seller reputation, generated by buyer feedback, is critical to fostering trust in online marketplaces. Marketplaces or sellers may choose to compensate buyers for providing feedback. Signaling theory predicts that only sellers of high-quality products will reward buyers for truthful feedback, especially when a product lacks any feedback and when the seller is not established. We confirm these hypotheses using Taobao's reward-for-feedback mechanism. High-quality products, especially without established feedback, are chosen for feedback rewards, which cause sales to increase by 36%. Marketplaces and consumers can therefore benefit from allowing sellers to buy feedback and signal their high-quality products in the process.     

Stakeholder planning of the institutionalization of the volunteer farmer-trainer approach in dairy producer organizations in Kenya: key steps and supporting mechanisms*

The effectiveness of community-based extension approaches has been widely documented, however their sustainability remains weak. Institutionalization has been proposed as a way of achieving sustainability. This paper shares experiences of the learning and planning phase of the institutionalization of the volunteer farmer-trainer (VFT) approach in three dairy producer organizations (POs) in Kenya. The paper builds a detailed understanding of the key steps and social processes involved and the wider lessons that might be learned regarding institutionalization in the context of local institutions such POs. We draw on data from key informant interviews, focus groups discussions and workshops. The first phase of the process which spanned one year involved engagements with stakeholders at different levels; from VFTs, dairy cooperative management, government extension and local NGOs. The process involved awareness creation, joint learning at the individual, group and organization level, a strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats (SWOT) analysis of producer organizations and identifying opportunities for harnessing resources for support functions. We highlight the important supporting social and institutional processes that are required for this to happen. These include getting acceptance and support from key stakeholders, developing a shared understanding, stakeholder ownership of the process, commitment from top leadership of POs and institutional structures to support the process. For the process to be actualized, we discuss mechanisms that need to be put in place.