Decoupled earnings: An institutional perspective of the consequences of maximizing shareholder value

Recent accounting scandals have brought focus on the role of management in financial statement manipulation. This focus on micro-behavior does not capture the complexities of earnings management. Taking an institutional rather than agency theory approach, earnings management is posited as a decoupled behavior. A behavior that results from not only agency-based motivations of self-interests, but also regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive legitimacy pressures. Conformity to the central logic of “maximizing shareholder value” found in the “US financial market” institutional field provides the context in which to explore earnings management as a decoupled behavior. Insights for earnings management include the blending of agency and institutional theory perspectives to gain a more complete understanding of the behavior and the positing of a continuum of earnings management conducive to this merger. Institutional theory benefits from exploring the nesting in multiple institutional fields.     

The relationship between legitimacy,reputation, sustainability and branding for companies and their supply chains

This paper aims at filling a gap that we perceive to exist in the scientific literature as to legitimacy, reputation and sustainability and their interrelationship to corporate and supply chain branding. A series of innovative theoretical frameworks are provided interrelating companies and their value (supply) chains with legitimacy, reputation, and branding which are essential conditions to achieve sustainability and competitive advantage based on dyadic and social context consonance to the benefit of society and all stakeholders involved. An urgently required better understanding of the concepts and their interrelations is enhanced by a synthesized explanatory basis entailing an eclectic mosaic of interdisciplinary theories (institutionalist, neo-institutionalist theories, the viable system approach, isomorphism and identity) to improve corporate and supply chain performance. To better inform managerial practice the theoretical considerations are spiced with case studies among which especially the currently debated supply chain case of the European horse meat scandal is illuminated suggesting concrete managerial cross-functional implications in the food industry. The paper culminates in the call for a newly to-be-established marketing stream we call ‘Sustainable and Curative Marketing’.     

The challenge of legitimizing spatially differentiated regulation: Experiences from the implementation of the Danish Buffer zone act

Differentiating regulation is a promising approach to agri-environmental regulation that may potentially reduce the environmental impact of agriculture at the lowest possible costs for the farmers and society, but also possesses a number of challenges. In this article, we explore the challenges to the legitimacy of agri-environmental regulation that occurs when the regulatory regime changes from general regulation to differentiated regulation. The analysis is based on a case study of the implementation of the Buffer zone act in Denmark – a regulation that prevents agricultural production in a 10 (later 9) meter fringe around selected waterbodies. We distinguish between two different ways of legitimizing: Producing knowledge and participation. We conclude that to harvest some of the obvious benefits of differentiated regulation a number of challenges must be resolved, 1) ensuring legitimacy of differentiated regulation is crucial, 2) differentiated regulation imply that farmers are also differentiated, 3) differentiated regulation implies new uncertainties, 4) the current knowledge regime need to be reconfigured, 5) stakeholders feel that they are unevenly treated and 6) it is difficult to establish a win–win solution for all farmers on an individual level.     

The impact of four CSR dimensions on a gaming company’s image and customers’ revisit intentions

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives affect casino customers’ corporate image as well as the customers’ behavioral intentions (i.e., revisit intentions), through the lens of Carroll’s corporate social performance model, stakeholder theory, and legitimacy theory. This study also examines the mediating effect of corporate image on the relationship between perceived CSR and behavioral intentions. An onsite survey was conducted with 596 casino customers in South Korea. The results revealed that ethical CSR had the strongest impact on corporate image, followed by economic and philanthropic CSR. Only philanthropic CSR had a significant and direct effect on behavioral intentions. Corporate image mediated the relationship between three types of CSR (ethical, economic, and philanthropic) and behavioral intentions. Companies can benefit from these findings by understanding how specific CSR initiatives can enhance corporate image and increase customer retention. This study advances the emerging field of CSR in the gaming industry.     

乡土正当性与法律正当性在林权纠纷中的博弈——基于桂南两县一区的实地调查

通过背景梳析,在对林权纠纷中地方政府、国有林场、农户的调查后发现乡土正当性和法律正当性在当地林权纠纷中存在冲突,通过分析得出当前的林权纠纷问题具有普遍性和复杂性的基本特征;从制度经济学的产权角度和农户增收角度来看,农户的土地产权应得到维护。     

Socio-technical transition governance and public opinion: The case of passenger transport in Finland

As a governance perspective, transition management views the engagement of a wide variety of stakeholders in policy development as a necessary element in furthering sustainability through enhanced social learning. Yet as a literature it has paid relatively little attention to public consultation on socio-technical change. Here we set transition management in the context of longstanding debates in science and technology studies, technology assessment and deliberative democracy. Empirically, we use national survey data on Finnish public opinion of state support for future transport options. Showing how transport practices and attitudes to transport innovation policy vary with both demography and geography, we argue that these differences have implications for policy legitimacy. We suggest that, both given and despite the practical difficulties of deliberative democracy, use of participative opinion surveying to better understand social groups with needs and interests that differ from national averages, may help to enhance policy legitimacy and hence the success of transition management.     

涉农贷款中新担保措施的合法性及有效性分析

为防范涉农贷款违约风险,部分农村信用联社积极探索,创新出债权文书公证方式、以人身险保险金担保债权等担保方式,以确保债权得到切实维护.这些新担保方式一定程度上增加了农村贷款供给,但存在法律风险.本文着重对这些新措施、新方法的合法性及有效性进行了探讨.     

亚洲金融区域主义的政治逻辑

本文探讨了"合法性"与"权力"在金融区域主义方面的因果效应。当前以G7为主导的全球体制中合法性的明显缺失和国家间权力格局的变化影响了东亚的政策决策。东亚国家寻求"抗衡性"的战略,也即在保持着与以G7为中心的全球金融体制合作关系的情况下,通过发展自身的区域性制度(或其他潜在方案)以避免对前者的过度依赖。上述观察意味着,除非现存全球金融体制解决了合法性问题,并且当前(有利于东亚的)权力转移发生逆转,亚洲新兴经济体不会将应对国际金融问题的全部希望寄于全球性的解决方案。     

Cultural legitimacy and framing struggles in innovation journeys: A cultural-performative perspective and a case study of Dutch nuclear energy (1945-1986)

This article contributes to the field of innovation studies by addressing the role of cultural legitimacy in technical innovation journeys. The article develops a new perspective that connects insights from discourse theory, interpretive approaches to culture, cultural sociology and social movement theory. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches (which tend to conceptualize culture in a top-down deterministic manner), our cultural-performative perspective emphasizes agency, collective sensemaking and framing struggles. Cultural change is a contested process, in which various groups perform on public stages to influence the attitudes and opinions of relevant audiences who provide financial resources, protection or support relevant for innovation journeys. We demonstrate the usefulness of this perspective with a longitudinal case study of nuclear energy in the Netherlands (1945-1986), which encompasses both the creation of legitimacy in the 1950s and 1960s, and its contestation by an anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s, which halted the innovation journey.