Does social trust promote behaviour aimed at mitigating climate change?

Using international data from the Life in Transition Survey, I analyse the role of social trust on pro-environmental behaviours aimed at helping to fight climate change. Social trust might increase pro-environmental behaviour by reducing the free-rider problem, restraining opportunistic behaviour, and enhancing cooperation. The results suggest that social trust increases the probability of individuals taking personal actions aimed at helping to fight climate change; the results are robust to using different sets of control variables, and to controlling for country and region fixed effects. The results also indicate that social trust is positively and significantly associated with environmental actions that are time-consuming, but there is no significant relationship with environmental actions that impose monetary costs on individuals.     

The influence of feedback and awareness of consequences on the development of corporate sustainability action over time

The current level of corporate sustainability is insufficient for overcoming pressing environmental and social issues. Research is therefore needed about processes that lead to increased corporate action that fosters sustainable development. This study investigates the influence of feedback and corporate awareness of consequences on the development of corporate sustainability action over time. It uses action regulation theory to quantitatively analyse data of 59 large German companies measured at two points in time. The results reveal a positive temporal development of corporate sustainability action, and awareness of consequences positively mediates the relationship between corporate sustainability actions in two different time periods. Feedback acts as a moderator between the positive effect of corporate sustainability action in the first period on corporate awareness of consequences in the second period. Based on these findings, recommendations for organisations include the importance of seeking and processing feedback.     

Revitalizing social dialogue in the workplace: the impact of a cooperative industrial relations climate and sustainable HR practices on reducing employee harm

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to unravel the relationship between current forms and realities of social dialogue in the workplace, the industrial relations climate, HRM, and employee harm. We tested a model specifying associations between (1) indicators of revitalized social dialogue, (2) perceived cooperation within the industrial relations climate, (3) perceived sustainability in HR practices, and (4) management perceptions regarding employee harm. The test was based on a survey conducted among 356 (HR-)managers and CEOs in Belgium. The results support the idea that a cooperative industrial relations climate and sustainable HR practices can reduce employee harm. More specifically, efficiency in social dialogue fully mediated the relationship between cooperative industrial climate and employee harm. In turn, industrial relations climate partially mediated the relationship between sustainable HR practices and employee harm. Finally, sustainable HR practices correlated positively with a cooperative industrial relations climate, suggesting that HR and employee relations reinforce rather than weaken each other.     

Procurement of logistics services and sustainable development in Europe: Fields of activity and empirical results

This paper strives to answer the general question; how far purchasers of logistics services take into account aspects of sustainable development. Modeled on the German Sustainable Development Strategy, which is based on the EU Sustainable Development plan, five fields of activity are defined: the reduction of transport intensity and emission, the reduction of land use, the choice of carrier under consideration of sustainable aspects, the permanent improvement of working conditions, and the enhancement of qualified employment. Then, propositions for purchasing companies of logistics services are developed, which contribute to safeguard ecological as well as social sustainability. In order to conduct an explorative study, a questionnaire was sent to 750 purchase and logistics managers. It was found that purchasing companies place high value on ecological and social aspects. But the perceived importance is not associated with purchasing companies' own contributions to logistics service providers' sustainable activities. Additionally, it was seen that purchasing companies exert only a minor influence on logistics service providers regarding ecologically and socially sustainable actions. A fundamental precondition for a sustainably oriented procurement of logistics services can be seen in the purchasing companies' awareness of the need for integrating sustainable aspects in economic decisions.     

Cities and Climate Change Challenges: Institutions,Policy Style and Adaptation Capacity in Bogotá

While a growing awareness of climate change has marked the institutional agenda at the national level in Colombia, the capital city of Bogotá has not undertaken actions to include adaptation to climate change within its policies so far. Conceptualizing the central role of city‐level institutions in the successful realization of adaptation policies is a straightforward matter. This is not the case for actions and conditions that may foster adaptation capacity according to varying institutional and social geographies. Using secondary data and a selection of interviews with key stakeholders occupying leading planning roles in important departments of the local administration, this article explores why and how a framework based on incentives and obstacles should be complemented by recent developments in the analysis of policy implementation based on the differentiation between political and programmatic success and failure on the basis of existing local policy styles.     

Strategiewechsel für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung – Möglichkeiten und Grenzen

Corporate activities and strategic decisions cause several ecological and social problems. However, companies also develop solutions, products and services to face these problems and to create social and ecological development proactively. Against the background of the far-reaching economical and societal change we need sustainable development. Implementing sustainable requirements in corporations necessitates strategic change. Thus, the question arises which influencing factors initiate pro-active or intensive sustainable strategic changes. This question will be addressed on the basis of an empirical analysis of three companies in the business fields chemistry, recycling and information & communication. The study examines the internal (organisational, cultural) and external conditions for pro-active and intensive corporate strategic change. It can be shown that there are various, but different patterns to initiate sustainable strategic changes. The findings highlight the role of visions and options, the companies’ interactions, the role of change agents and management as well as their values and norms, the companies’ history, and the history of business fields.     

Analysis of the impact of university policies on society's environmental perception

Today's society is showing great interest in achieving sustainable development in all socio-economic facets, and higher education institutions stand out as being proactive in this regard. University campuses are successfully implementing policies to curb climate change, energy and water conservation, waste recycling and green transport. In this struggle, education plays an essential role in shaping a population that is aware of the situation and willing to stop —and if possible undo— the damage caused. This study is aimed at evaluating universities' capacity to foster society's environmental perception and commitment. The analysis, which focuses on the Spanish and Italian campuses assessed by GreenMetric during the period 2018–2022, has a twofold objective: to identify the sustainable actions that have a direct impact on students' and researchers' awareness; and to analyse the efficiency of the environmental policies implemented by those responsible for these educational centres, as well as the differences between the two countries' universities. To that end, a panel data model is estimated on a sample composed of the pillars of GreenMetric, with DEA-bootstrap and the sequential Malmquist index then used to assess the efficiency of the actions undertaken. The results reveal the importance of the waste and transport policies implemented on campuses when it comes to the arduous task of kindling society's interest in the environment. Furthermore, both countries show increasing engagement, with productivity improvements of over 36% in the case of Italy.     

Urban Responses to Climate Change: Theories and Governance Practice in Cities of the Global South

Cities around the world have recently started to become ‘proactive’ initiators of climate strategies containing both mitigation and adaptation elements. The experience of these first movers has been studied and documented both empirically and, to a lesser extent, theoretically, primarily for cities in the global North. This symposium addresses related knowledge gaps by exploring case studies of urban regions in the global South confronting their projected climate change challenges, showcasing the experiences of Delhi, Santiago de Chile and Bogotá. Its specific aim is to explore the urban social response to nature change, the adaptation challenges faced by cities across the world and current practices of urban adaptation. Further, the symposium seeks to understand to what extent and in what respect current conceptual frameworks — which highlight urban ecological security and vulnerability — provide a useful context/framing to assist cities in confronting their challenges and to explain their actions. This introductory article examines current knowledge of the theory and practice of urban climate response. It introduces the concepts of ecological security and vulnerability and discusses the adaptive capacity of cities and how they are starting to respond to the emerging challenges of climate change. It concludes with a synthesis of the case articles and highlights some of the findings.     

企业生态经济效率与可持续发展

认为可持续发展是当今社会发展的主题,生态经济是现代乃至未来经济发展的方向;随着经济发展由工业时代向环境时代、由经济效率向生态效率的转变,将生态环境因素纳入企业管理决策中显得愈发迫切,在业绩评价中融入生态经济效率概念,对于企业可持续发展有着重要的现实意义。从业绩评价的角度对生态经济效率的相关概念、内涵、特点及作用进行了诠释和解读,指出生态经济效率融合了环境业绩与经济业绩,要求企业以较少的生态环境影响实现较大的经济效益,从而实现可持续发展的战略目标及创造长期的价值。     

水资源可持续利用及其管理的重要性分析

在新时期的快速发展中,人民群众的环保意识不断增强,越来越注重水资源的可持续利用和管理,其有助于改善生态环境,推动现代社会经济的快速发展。论文主要对水资源可持续利用及其管理的重要性进行了研究。     

Sustainable development and the firm: Organizational innovations and environmental strategy

Sustainable development is increasingly receiving attention from proactive firms. A consistent economic framework which could be used as the economic foundation of both sustainable development and firm strategies towards sustainable development is developed here. It is shown that organizational innovations play a crucial part. Sustainable development requires organizational innovations which could change the business perspective dramatically. Time seems to be a crucial factor when business decisions in accordance with sustainable development are to be made. The content and meaning of sustainable development are briefy discussed. The analysis focuses on the economic interpretation and ecological consequences; some empirical data used to evaluate the future of sustainable development are considered. A model for the economic basis of long-term development is presented.     

Do Managers with Limited Liability Take More Risky Decisions? An Information Acquisition Model

Risk‐neutral individuals take more risky decisions when they have limited liability. Risk‐neutral managers may not when acting as agents under contract and taking costly actions to acquire information before taking decisions. Limited liability makes it optimal to increase the reward for outcomes relatively more likely to arise from desirable than from undesirable actions. The resulting decisions may be less, rather than more, risky. Making a decision after acquiring information provides an additional reason to those in the classic principal‐agent literature for using contracts with pay increasing in the return. Further results on the form of contracts are also derived.     

Does political propaganda matter in mitigating climate change? Insights from the United States of America

Some research on climate change has been the basis of climate change denialism (hereafter, CCD is used to refer to denial, denialism, and deniers). There is formative knowledge about the role of political propaganda in climate policies and resulting outcomes. To contribute to the understanding of political ideology and the extent of CCD, we adopt econometric techniques to study the impact of the United States of America's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. The results show that ideological political propaganda has psychological and philosophical consequences that impact climate change policies. In addition, we find that the effect of a state's economic growth on climate change is mediated by CCD. In particular, low-income capitalist states have a higher propensity to become CCDs because they are more likely to engage in economic expansion even at the expense of environmental sustainability. Global climate change policies depend on high-income nations and industries' willingness to adopt economic policies to achieve sustainable future development. Thus, this study fills the literature gap on the relationship between political ideology and climate change. The findings show that CCD significantly influences voting patterns and socioeconomic outcomes. It impedes states from achieving net-zero emissions and carbon neutrality and it is used as a political propaganda. Subject to these findings, relevant policy suggestions are offered.     

Collective Action and the Sustainability of Co-Production

Abstract

This article addresses the sustainability of citizen/user participation in the provision of public services, often referred to as co-production. Co-producing public services not only promises to limit cost, but it also requires a change in the relations and behaviour of public servants and citizens/users, in order for the latter to make a long-term commitment to co-production. The article notes that Olsen proposes two logics of collective action, not just one. Focusing on small group interaction can provide an important strategy for achieving sustainable co-production, particularly of enduring welfare services. However, Ostrom criticizes too simplistic approaches based on size alone for promoting social cooperation in collective action situations. She proposes seven structural variables of importance in resolving social dilemmas. Several of them can also be perceived as factors that facilitate sustainable citizen participation in co-production. Some additional factors are also considered important for sustainable co-production, like the nature of the service itself, organizational diversity, a dialogue between the staff and clients, and facilitating small group interactions in large organizations. This article concludes that governments should develop more flexible, service-specific and organization-specific approaches for promoting co-production, rather than looking for simple ‘one size fits all’ solutions to the challenges facing public service delivery, particularly of enduring welfare services. It also proposes a research agenda on sustainable co-production.     

Does social learning promote cooperation in social dilemmas?

In this study, we analyze how emergence of cooperation is related to social learning. Cooperation is an example of social behavior. It is frequency-dependent that is the success of a particular behavior depends on the number of individuals adopting each behavioral trait. We study how social learning can affect the evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas represented by two well-known games: Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) and Snowdrift (SD). We show that, in the PD game, increase in the proportion of social learners leads to the alleviation of the social dilemma. Whereas, in the SD game increasing the proportion of social learners does not always lead to the alleviation of the social dilemma, that is there is no simple monotonic relation between social learning and the weakening of the social dilemma.

     

Well‐being‐oriented human resource management practices and employee performance in the Chinese banking sector: The role of social climate and resilience

Drawing upon positive psychology and a social relational perspective, this article examines the relationship between well‐being‐oriented human resource management (HRM) practices and employee performance. Our multilevel model examines relationships among collectively experienced well‐being‐oriented HRM practices, social climate (characterized by trust, cooperation, and shared codes and language that exist among individuals within the organization), employee resilience, and employee (in‐role) performance. Based on the two‐wave data obtained from 561 employees and their managers within 62 bank branches in 16 Chinese banks, our multilevel analyses provide support for our four hypotheses. First, we found a positive relationship between well‐being‐oriented HRM practices and social climate. Second, social climate mediated the relationship between well‐being‐oriented HRM practices and employee resilience. Third, we found a positive relationship between resilience and employee performance. Finally, employee resilience mediated the relationship between social climate and employee performance. This study is one of the first to unpack the social mechanisms through which well‐being‐oriented HRM practices increase development of resilience and subsequent employee performance at the workplace, namely through influencing group feelings of social climate.     

Understanding pension communications at the organizational level: Insights from bounded rationality theory & implications for HRM

This paper applies concepts from bounded rationality theory to develop an integrative model to understand how pension scheme structure and pension scheme communication impact pension participation and contribution rates at organizational level. Organizational pension policies create framing effects that can have intended and unintended consequences depending on how they impact on employees' cognitive processes. Organizational pension communication policy impacts employee pension outcomes through the interaction between fast-acting, automatic System 1 and deliberative, calculating System 2 that typically endorses and occasionally overrides System 1 judgments. System 1 exhibits mental short-cuts (heuristics) and systematic biases. The likelihood of a System 2 challenge to System 1 depends on the personal, socio-demographic and economic characteristics of the individuals within the workforce. We propose that those within the HR function, who understand framing effects, can develop pension policies that positively affect pension plan outcomes at the organization level, specifically the pension participation and average contribution rates, using a combination of policies that in some cases promote System 2 endorsement and in other cases, System 2 engagement.     

浅谈西部大开发中的生态环境问题

在西部大开发的背景下,西部生态环境问题愈发显得重要。通过加大政府宣传干预力度,加大教育发展,引导群众生态环境树立意识措施,开展国际合作,加强生态环境建设等途径能有效解决西部生态环境问题。     

Using Social Cognitive Theory to Investigate Green Consumer Behavior

Green consumer behavior can induce industries to develop green production methods and convert wasteful patterns of consumption into green consumption patterns. This study demonstrates that the practice of green consumption relies on the self‐sanction concept in individuals. The objective of this study was to develop a research model of green consumer behavior based on social cognitive theory. The results show that personal self‐concepts (the most significant of which is green consumption self‐efficacy), personal outcome expectation and social sanction all have a significant influence. On the other hand, the influences of the expected outcome of green consumer behavior, climate change and the mass media were not significant. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Mitigating climate change: A role for regulations and risk‐taking

Why do some firms engage in actions to reduce climate change? We propose two counterintuitive mechanisms: high levels of regulation and a firm's increased tolerance for risk. Drawing from insights on how institutional contexts constrain, and enable, prosocial firm behavior, we argue that external pressures, amplified internally by a firm's higher tolerance for risk, increase the likelihood that a greenhouse gas (GHG)‐intensive firm will engage in climate change actions that exceed regulatory requirements. An analysis based on 7,101 observations of U.S. publicly traded firms during the 2013 to 2015 period supports our hypotheses. Our models show high overall prediction accuracy (88.6%) using an out‐of‐time holdout sample from 2016. Moreover, we find that firms that have exhibited environmental wrongdoing are also more likely to engage in beyond‐compliance activities, which may be a form of greenwashing. Thus, more formal and informal regulatory oversight has the potential to spur positive environmental actions. This has implications for a firm's corporate social responsibility actions as well as for climate change regulatory policy.