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.     

The history of consumption: A literature review and consumer guide

The history of consumption is fast becoming a vital area of academic research. For the social sciences, in general, this new field promises new insight into the great transformation of Western society. For consumer research, in particular, it promises the opportunity to create new perspectives, sources of data, and theoretical concepts. The purpose of this paper is to review recent literature on the history of consumption, and to offer a consumer guide for those who wish to use it in the study of modern consumer behavior and policy.

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Die Geschichte des Konsums: Ein Literaturüberblick und Leseführer

Zusammenfassung Die Geschichte des Konsums wird immer stärker zu einem wichtigen Gegenstand der akademischen Forschung. Für die Sozialwissenschaften im allgemeinen gilt, daß das neue Feld völlig neue Einsichten in die große Tranformation der westlichen Gesellschaften bietet. Für die Verbraucherforschung insbesondere gilt, daß es neue Perspektiven eröffnet, neues Datenmaterial erschließt und die Bildung neuer theoretischer Konzepte ermöglicht. Der vorliegende Beitrag will über die neuere Literatur über die Geschichte des Verbrauchs orientieren und Einstiegshilfen für denjenigen geben, der diese Literatur bei der Analyse des heutigen Verbraucherverhaltens und der Verbraucherpolitik benutzen möchte. Dabei warnt der Beitrag gleich zu Beginn vor einigen naheliegenden Betrachtungsfehlern, vor allem vor einer allzu gegenwartsbezogenen Betrachtung, die vergangene Perioden vorranging als die Vorwegnahme oder zumindest die Vorbereitung unserer Gegenwart auffaßt, sowie vor der Gefahr einer Projektion der eigenen Sichtweisen und Einstellungen auf eine andere Zeit, also die Erforschung einer vergangenen Zeit ausschließlich mit Denkweisen von heute.Die weiteren Abschnitte behandeln die verschiedenen Zusammenhänge, in denen Konsum gesehen werden kann: den kulturellen, den soziologischen, psychologischen, politischen und intellektuellen Kontext, sowie den Marketing- und den Verbraucherkontext. Diese Überlegungen können — so die Schlußfolgerung des Beitrages — einen entscheidenden Beitrag zu der Frage beitragen, weshalb sich in den westlichen Gesellschaften so große Veränderungen ergeben haben, die sich nicht nur in einer industriellen Revolution, sondern auch in einer Konsumrevolution niedergeschlagen haben.

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Grant McCracken is Assistant Professor, Department of Consumer Studies, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada. He wishes to thank Russell Belk, Victor Roth, Montrose Sommers, Richard Vosburgh, and anonymous referees for their comments on this paper.     

The relationship between major-league sports’ official sponsorship announcements and the stock prices of sponsoring firms

This study presents analysis of the impact of “official product” sports sponsorships with the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) on the stock prices of sponsoring firms. The primary finding of the study is that, in the main, announcements were accompanied by increases in shareholder wealth. The 53 sponsors analyzed experienced mean increases in stock valuations of about $257 million. A multiple regression analysis of firm-specific stock price changes and selected corporate and sponsorship attributes indicates that official product sponsorships with the NBA, NHL, and PGA and those with smaller market shares were associated with the largest gains in share prices. Although corporate cashflow (a proxy for agency conflicts) is statistically unrelated to shareholder approval, sponsorships by high-technology companies were associated with stronger stock price reactions than otherwise. Finally, product congruence with the sponsored sport was positively related to changes in stock prices. T. Bettina Cornwell (b.cornwell@business.uq.edu.au) is Professor of Marketing and Leader of the Marketing cluster in the UQ Business School at the University of Queensland, Australia. She was formerly Professor of Marketing in the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas. Her research focuses on promotion and consumer behavior, especially with regard to international and public policy issues. Other articles on the topic of sponsorship-linked marketing have recently appeared in theJournal of Advertising, the Journal of Advertising Research, theJournal of Business Research, andPsychology & Marketing. Stephen W. Pruitt (pruittst@umkc.edu) is the holder of the Arvin Gottlieb/Missouri Endowed Chair of Business Economics and Finance in the Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He received his Ph.D. from Florida State University. He has published more than 45 articles, most of which employ event study methodologies, in journals such as theJournal of Finance, theJournal of Political Economy, Financial Management, theJournal of Public Policy and Marketing, and theJournal of Advertising Research. John M. Clark (clarkj@cba.usm.edu) is an assistant professor of finance at the University of Southern Mississippi. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama. His research interests include options and other derivatives, investments, and the impact of real events upon the stock prices of corporations. His work has appeared in scholarly outlets such as theJournal of Advertising Research, theFinancial Review, and theJournal of Business Ethics.     

Stable matchings and preferences of couples

Couples looking for jobs in the same labor market may cause instabilities. We determine a natural preference domain, the domain of weakly responsive preferences, that guarantees stability. Under a restricted unemployment aversion condition we show that this domain is maximal for the existence of stable matchings. We illustrate how small deviations from (weak) responsiveness, that model the wish of couples to be closer together, cause instability, even when we use a weaker stability notion that excludes myopic blocking. Our remaining results deal with various properties of the set of stable matchings for “responsive couples markets”, viz., optimality, filled positions, and manipulation.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF THE INTER-INDUSTRY PATTERN OF DIVERSIFICATION BY U.K. MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES*

Evidence of the diversity of output of larger U.K. manufacturing enterprises’in 1958, 1963 and 1968 is provided in the Reports on the Census of Production. The Censuses show that between 1958 and 1968 diversification was a significant and general trend in manufacturing industries and an important element in the growth of firms during the period. Moreover diversification seems to be part of a longer term trend in U.K. industry and part of the typical development pattern of the large firm. A theory of the firm's diversification decision is proposed and from this theory predictions are made of the structural features both of a firm's primary industry and of outside industries which are likely to encourage diversification from the one industry to the other. The power of the model in explaining the pattern of diversification between SIC manufacturing orders in the period 1963–68 is weak, due in part to the wide variety of factors influencing diversification and to the aggregated form of the data. Nevertheless, the results show the importance of research and development effort in encouraging diversification and the stimulus to diversification given by profitability and risk in firms’primary industries and high rates of output growth in outside industries. While the findings offer no clear conclusions regarding the impact of diversification upon economic performance, the results are consistent with the propositions that (i) diversification encourages technical progress in industry and (ii) diversification increases the efficiency with which resources are allocated between industries.     

Finance, Politics, and the Accounting for Stock Options

The politics of option accounting crosses party lines, reflecting both the interests of the affected constituencies and the desire for power over standard setting. House Bill HR-3574, which mandates an assumption of zero stock price volatility, runs counter to the recently passed Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rule requiring fair-value expensing of stock options. For any option issued at or out of the money, where strike prices are normally set, expense recognition is zero under this bill's mandated assumption.
Besides excessive use of stock options, the lack of a "final peace" in the option accounting war appears to have encouraged another questionable corporate practice. This article examines a sample of "six-and-one restructurings," exchanges of options in which expensing of re-priced (deep out-of-the-money) options can be avoided if employees wait at least six months and one day before receiving new options. The authors found that market-adjusted stock prices tend to decrease during the six-month period before the strike price is reset. This result provides one more reason why companies should be required to use fair-value option pricing models to expense options.     

Market Risk Disclosures and Investment Efficiency: International Evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council Financial Firms

This study examines the association between market risk disclosures (MRDs) and the investment efficiency of financial firms from six emerging markets in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Based on a sample of 553 firm‐year observations over the 2007–2011 period, we find that MRDs are significantly and negatively associated with both under‐investment and over‐investment and that this association is more pronounced for larger firms. We also find that the association between MRDs and under‐investment is moderated during periods of economic distress such as the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and that the association between MRDs and over‐investment is magnified during periods of reduced financial distress. Our results are consistent with the idea that MRDs reduce information asymmetry, which ultimately improves investment efficiency. We contribute to the literature in an emerging market context by providing empirical evidence on the association between MRDs and investment efficiency across six emerging GCC capital markets. This study also fills a gap in the literature by providing evidence on the factors affecting the investment efficiency of financial firms.