Rhetoric and reality of corporate greening: a view from the supply chain management function

The increasingly important economic role of supply chain management provides the backcloth against which this article examines what contribution the function can make to environmental protection. Theoretical perspectives on greener supply are developed and then tested against a sample of manufacturing companies. Environmental policy documents published by the sample companies seem to offer surface evidence for a proactive supply chain management role in environmental protection. Yet a more detailed examination of the three elements that constitute supply chain management – the management of the transformation of materials, the management of information flows and the management of supply chain relationships – finds a suboptimal situation for all three areas. In part this gap can be explained by limits in the technical capabilities of the supply chain. More important, however, are structural constraints that prevent the supply chain manager from actively searching for environmentally friendlier alternatives. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

基于公司治理的会计控制问题探讨

有效的会计控制对于公司治理结构的优化及推行均有重要作用;反过来,公司治理结构直接影响会计控制的有效性。公司治理与会计控制具有“共生互动”的关系,因而会计控制须纳入公司治理的整体架构当中,做到两个同步：一是在搭建公司治理结构的过程中,同步设计会计组织架构及运行机制;二是在公司治理配套制度体系建设过程中,同步建立会计监督和资金监控机制。     

Factors affecting corporate environmental disclosure in emerging markets: The role of corporate governance structures

This study seeks to examine whether internal corporate governance (CG) mechanisms affect corporate environmental disclosure (CED) in emerging economies. Using a sample of 500 firm-year observations, this study distinctively applies a linear panel quantile regression (PQR) model to examine the CG–CED nexus in Jordan. This technique is supplemented with conducting a two-step dynamic generalised method of moment (GMM) model to overcome any potential occurrence of endogeneity problems. This study reports an increasing trend in CED practice among the sampled companies over the period of analysis, yet it is still at an early stage as compared with their developed counterparts. Furthermore, this study suggests that board size, board independence, CEO duality and foreign ownership have positive associations with CED. In contrast, managerial ownership, institutional ownership and ownership concentration are negatively associated with the disclosed amount of environmental information in the Jordanian context. Theoretically, board structures appeared to be more efficient than ownership structures in reducing agency conflicts by addressing the asymmetric gap of information and promoting the disclosure of environmental information. These findings add to the debate about whether ownership structures detrimental to CED in developing economies. Specifically, when it comes to spending money on CED, owners seemed to be more concerned about any reductions in their share of the pie and may, therefore, be less motivated to disclose their companies' environmental information. This paper provides managers, owners and policymakers with a set of context-specific recommendations related to the crucial need for a more concerted effort to integrate governance and environmental regulations in order to ensure sustainability in emerging markets.     

The greening of the press: A case study of stakeholder accountability and the corporate management of environmentalist publics

The concept of stakeholder accountability and management is increasingly an integral facet of business strategy. This is particularly evident for companies which have a significant environmental impact, be it real or perceived, where public scrutiny of environmental performance is facilitated through heightened press coverage. Effective stakeholder management therefore necessitates an active response to the media's attention in order to manage the public perception of business activities. This article presents data on the exponential growth in both the total number and the proportion of news articles over the past fifteen years which have associated a large forestry company in Western Canada with environmentalist issues. More detailed analyses of these articles illustrate how environmentalist sub-issues can be identified and whether the voice is either that of the corporation or the environmentalist movement. Implications of these findings for the management of environmentalist publics is discussed.     

The political bottom line: the emerging dimension to corporate responsibility for sustainable development

This paper explores the idea that businesses are being moved to proactively manage their political activities and influence in relation to their often‐expressed responsibility for promoting sustainable development, which we define as managing the ‘political bottom line’. We argue that three key drivers account for this shift: first, the growing criticism of voluntary corporate responsibility initiatives; second, the increasing awareness and targeting of corporate political activities, and third, a realization among certain corporate executives and financiers that, without changes to public policies, an individual company's own voluntary responsibility may not deliver sufficient commercial returns. We describe several initiatives on public policy dimensions of sustainable development, which indicate that some companies are beginning to manage their political power in light of societal concerns. In conclusion, we discuss the potential and limits of a ‘political bottom line’ concept by critiquing the mainstream triple bottom line discourse.Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

中国绿色发展中企业环境责任立法探讨

经济活动过程和结果的绿色化主要靠企业承担环境责任来实现,但基于企业的营利本质,期望企业自觉承担环境责任并不现实,必须通过立法从内外部保障、强制其承担环境责任。我国环境保护法及企业法中无法容纳大量的企业环境责任条款,因此我国有必要制定专门的《企业环境责任法》,要求企业承担产品从设计、生产直至废弃的环境责任,并建立环境信息披露、税收优惠等企业承担环境责任的激励约束措施。同时我国应修改环境保护法,提高企业污染环境的成本、将企业环境成本内部化。     

Liquidity and firm value in an emerging market: Nonlinearity,political connections and corporate ownership

This study re-examines the relationship between liquidity and firm value in the emerging stock market of Malaysia, exploring the issues of nonlinearity and moderating variables. Using data for all non-financial firms traded on Bursa Malaysia over the sample period of 2000–2015, the results from the baseline quadratic model suggest stocks must be traded higher than the threshold liquidity level before reaping the benefit of larger firm value. Our key finding of a nonlinear relationship remains robust to alternative liquidity measures and estimation methods, as well as passing a series of endogeneity checks. Using an ideal candidate of lot size reduction for Malaysian stocks in May 2003 as exogenous liquidity shock, we establish the causal effect from liquidity to firm value. Further interaction analyses uncover three important moderating variables in the liquidity-firm value relationship, in which the value impact demands a more liquid market for Malaysian public firms with political connections, higher foreign nominee ownership and higher foreign institutional ownership.     

Promoting research access and informant rapport in corporate settings: Notes from research on a crisis company

Obtaining evidence on managerial action is inevitably difficult. Although it has been suggested that critical events such as corporate crises provide opportunities for research, there has been a lack of discussion on what aspects of management such conditions help to illuminate and how they could be exploited in obtaining both formal access and rapport with individual informants. Based on fieldwork experience this paper suggests that corporations in crisis should be taken seriously in research on managerial action because they may both facilitate access and liberate and motivate individual managers to reflect on both their own acts and intentions and on those of other individuals.     

How an international ambidexterity strategy can address the paradox perspective on corporate sustainability: Evidence from Chinese emerging market multinationals

Corporate sustainability (CS) is receiving considerable attention from emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs), playing an important role in the globalized market. However, theoretical and empirical knowledge about how EMNEs address CS is still scant, and the relationship between internationalization and CS has not been widely explored. This study aims to fill this gap, evaluating the relationship between an international ambidexterity strategy and CS in EMNEs, which highlighted the paradox perspective. Then we develop three hypotheses in which we argue how the dynamic capabilities underpinning international ambidexterity could be considered a driver of CS in EMNEs. We test the developed hypotheses against data from 300 Chinese EMNEs obtained by a survey. Our results contribute to shape ambidextrous international strategies and to consider CS as a springboard for the strategic intent to systematically and recursively outperform global competition. Testing a measurement scale of international ambidexterity, we suggest structural ambidexterity as a strategic option of internationalization that allows the achievement of economic, social, and environmental sustainability objectives.     

大学生创业意愿与学校创业环境的营造

广东纺院是国内最早开展创业教育研究并针对在校学生开设创业教育课程的高校之一,我们在该校进行了创业调查,总结了多个调查内容数据和该校在支持营造创业环境方面的一些做法。     

The impact of policy,political and economic uncertainty on corporate capital investment in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe and Turkey

This paper examines the impact of policy, political, and economic uncertainty on firm-level capital investment in Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Turkey. Our results indicate an insignificant relationship between uncertainty and investment in these countries. This finding is robust to six different uncertainty measures, including time-series uncertainty indices that track either local or global uncertainty and country-level electoral activities. The results are also robust to two different proxies for measuring corporate investment. Overall, the real-option mechanism in which firms delay irreversible investment in uncertain times does not hold in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe and Turkey.     

The heterogeneous relationship between board social ties and corporate environmental responsibility in an emerging economy

Firms in emerging economies are faced with multiple, incompatible institutional forces in their environmental activities. Which of these forces will be dominant and instantiated within an organization is partly determined by the social relationships that a firm maintains with external actors. This paper investigates the relationship between board social ties and the level of environmental responsibility undertaken by firms in China, an emerging economy, by categorizing board social ties into three types in terms of the three isomorphic forces in the institutional field (coercive, normative and mimetic). Drawing on institutional and agency theories, using a sample of listed firms in environmentally sensitive industries, and a generalized least squares regression method, the results provide empirical evidence that ties that are linked to coercive and normative forces (i.e., political organizations and universities) are related to a higher level of environmental responsibility; however, those that are linked to mimetic forces (i.e., industrial peers) have a negative association with environmental responsibility, which is mitigated by CEO power. These findings suggest that the heterogeneous effects of board social ties on environmental responsibilities experienced by firms in a context of environmentalism are at an early stage.     

Determinants of corporate borrowing: Some evidence from the Indian corporate structure

In contrast to previous empirical work on capital structure, which is mainly confined to the United States and a few other advanced countries, this paper attempts to study the capital structure choice of developing countries through a case study of the Indian corporate sector. The paper shows that the optimal capital structure choice is influenced by factors such as growth, cash flow, size, and product and industry characteristics.     

The greening of industry: needs of the field

This article takes stock of some of the advances research on the greening of industry has made over the last decade and sets out an agenda for the next one. Obviously, a thorough review of all of the work on the greening of industry is outside the scope of this article. Instead we will only outline the evolution of the field and focus on the area of inquiry situated at the centre of greening of industry studies: the determinants and consequences of greening. These two questions were the focus of some of the first greening of industry studies and a multitude of works, especially on the determinants of greening, subsequently has identified numerous important insights. Yet, this area of inquiry also exemplifies major weaknesses within research in data on the greening of industry. Progress in our understanding of greening has been hampered by a lack of theoretical and methodological rigour. This article points out the resulting gaps in the scientific analysis of greening and lays out research necessary to improve our understanding of its causes and consequences. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

园林绿化废弃物的资源化再利用

我国园林绿化废弃物资源化再利用产业还处于发展初期,存在于产业链中各个环节的诸多问题严重阻碍着该产业的健康发展。将园林绿化废弃物资源化再利用产业链划分为原料产供子系统、产品产出子系统、交易市场子系统和政策体系子系统,通过对相关因素进行梳理,根据调研结果并运用头脑风暴法提出相应的产业发展问题并据此运用政策工具提出有针对性的政策建议。     

The greening of the EC agrochemical market: Regulation and competition

This paper analyses the process of harmonisation of national pesticides regulations in the EC. One of the outcomes of this process was, in 1991, the adoption of an EC regulation which includes new environmental requirements for pesticides to be sold on the EC market. This regulatory process shows an example of trade-off between competition policy and environmental policy. After having described the competition in the agrochemical sector, the paper examines this trade-off in two ways. Firstly, the behaviour of industrial interest groups throughout the process and their influence in the devising of the regulation is considered. Secondly, the impact of competitive issues on the implementation of part of the 1991 regulation (i.e. the re-registration of old pesticides commercialised in the EC) is analysed. This case study confirms some general results of the regulatory capture theory but it also points out some limits of these theories: firms seemed to be much more sensitive to negative pay-offs than to positive ones when deciding to become involved in this regulatory process. A second insight brought up by this case study concerns the link between competition policy and environmental policy and its influence on the efficiency of the latter. Environment-competition trade-off in the agrochemical sector confronts the regulator, when it adopts environmental policy, with two risks: a risk of changing the structure of the industry (from a differentiated and innovative one to a commodity one) if the regulator does not provide sufficient pay-offs for environmental R&D costs, or a risk of allowing part of the industry to increase monopoly rents. Both risks would affect environmental efficiency, either by reducing the innovation in the sector or by over-protecting ‘greener’ pesticides from competition on price.     

关于城市园林绿化与城市林业一体化的思考

从城市园林绿化与城市林业的背景、特点和优势等方面,结合国外经验,对城市园林绿化与城市林业一体化的必要性和整合途径进行了探讨,认为协调管理体制、明确规划定位和加强科技合作是实现城市园林绿化与城市林业一体化、建设区域性城市绿地系统的重要条件.     

Subcultures and sustainability practices: the impact on understanding corporate sustainability

In this paper we present findings of how employees from a single organization understand corporate sustainability. Responses from 255 survey participants indicate (1) that differences exist in how employees understand corporate sustainability and (2) that these differences can be partially explained by the presence of organizational subcultures and by differences in employee awareness of the organization's sustainability practices. In particular, findings reveal that employees from a subculture with a stronger emphasis on hierarchical and bureaucratic values emphasize an economic understanding of corporate sustainability. Implications for research and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Institutional investors,corporate governance and the performance of the corporate sector

Proportions of equity held by institutional investors—pension funds, insurance companies and mutual funds—are rising across all OECD countries. Meanwhile institutions are becoming more influential in corporate governance, even in bank-dominated countries, inter alia due to international investment, pension reform and EMU. We provide two forms of evidence on the effects of institutional corporate governance on corporate performance. First we offer a literature survey on micro evidence, the outcome of which is mixed, but on balance suggesting a positive effect on equity returns. We contend that these micro studies face a difficulty that they cannot capture effects of governance initiatives whose effects go wider than “target firms”. Accordingly, we present results for the reduced form empirical relationship between institutional share holding and corporate sector performance at an economy-wide level. These are consistent with significant effects which differ between “Anglo-Saxon” and “relationship banking” countries. For example, institutions appear to accompany lower investment and higher dividends in the former.