Sustainable growth, the DuPont way

Like many manufacturers, DuPont traditionally has grown by making more and more "stuff." And its business growth has been proportional to the amount of raw materials and energy used--as well as the resulting waste and emissions from operations. Over the years, though, DuPont became aware that cheap supplies of nonrenewable resources wouldn't be endlessly available and that the earth's ecosystems couldn't indefinitely absorb the waste and emissions of production and consumption. Chad Holliday, chairman and CEO of DuPont, believes strongly in the challenge of sustainable growth and makes the business case for it: By using creativity and scientific knowledge effectively, he says, companies can provide strong returns for shareholders and grow their businesses--while also meeting the human needs of societies around the world and reducing the environmental footprint of their operations and products. In fact, a focus on sustainability can help identify new products, markets, partnerships, and intellectual property and lead to substantial business growth. Holliday describes how DuPont developed a three-pronged strategy to translate the concept of sustainability into nuts-and-bolts business practices. Focusing on integrated science, knowledge intensity, and productivity improvement, the strategy was accompanied by a new way to measure progress quantitatively. Sustainable growth should be viewed not as a program for stepped-up environmental performance but as a comprehensive way of doing business, one that delivers tremendous economic value and opens up new opportunities. Ultimately, companies will find that they can generate substantial business value through sustainability while both enhancing the quality of life around the world and protecting the environment.     

Community college supervisors and their subordinates: A quantitative investigation of personality temperament and leader‐member exchange

Community college leadership is facing a crisis fueled by leaders retiring and student enrollment that outpaces budget growth. The purpose of this study was to better understand the leadership dynamics of community college supervisors and direct subordinates by examining the relationship bgetween leader‐member exchange (LMX) and personality temperament. Data from the Supervisor Leader‐Member Exchange Multidimensional Model (SLMX‐MDM) survey was used to determine LMX total within four subscales: affect, loyalty, contribution, and professional respect. Participants' temperaments were determined by the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (KTS‐II). Research questions focused on whether differences in LMX existed among groups of supervisor–subordinate dyads that were categorized according to temperament similarity: 1) identical temperament (e.g., both supervisor and subordinate are SJ), 2) one letter (e.g., SP and SJ), or 3) no letters in common (e.g., NF and SP). The 50 participating dyads were selected through proportionate stratified sampling. Results from one‐way ANOVAs showed significant differences among groups with respect to total LMX, contribution, and professional respect.     

THE OUTPUT DECISION PROCESS OF CANADIAN BROILER MARKETING BOARDS

This paper begins with a discussion of the process followed by Canadian broiler marketing boards in making output and pricing decisions. The conclusion is that, while the major variables are broiler and feed prices as in an uncontrolled market situation, one would hypothesize that the lag between a change in price and a change in output for a board controlled situation will be longer than for an uncontrolled situation. To test this hypothesis, output response equations for five provinces or regions are estimated using polynomial distributed lags from data after the formation of boards. These are compared to similar equations for pre-board Quebec and the United States. The results show that maximum output response occurs one quarter after a price change for the uncontrolled situation and from two to five quarters for the board controlled equations. The Canadian equations also suggest that in recent years the pattern of output in Canada resembles that of an oligopolistic situation in which the two major producing provinces (Ontario and Quebec) have expanded output with reservation, thereby establishing price levels which have provided an umbrella under which the remaining provinces have increased their market shares. Cet article débute par l'examen du processus de décision adopté par les Offices canadiens de commercialisation de la chair de volaille lors de la détermination des niveaux de production et des prix. La conclusion tend à démontrer que même si les principales variables sont le prix du poulet et de la moulée, comme dans un marché libre de contrôle, l'écart entre le changement de prix et le changement de production est plus long dans un marché contrôlé. Pour vérifier cette hypothèse, on a bâti les équations de la production pour 5 provinces ou régions. Ces équations ont été construites avec les données de la distribution des écarts recueillies après la mise en place des Offices de commercialisation. Elles ont ensuite été compareées aux équations de même type, établies pour le Québec avant l'établissement de l'Office et pour les Etats-Unis. Les résultats démontrent que la réaction maxi-male de l'offre, lors d'un changement de prix, survient avec un trimestre de retard dans le cas d'un marché libre de contrôle et avec un retard variant de 2 à 5 trimestres dans le cas d'un marché contrôleA. Les équations canadiennes tendent aussi à démontrer que, ces dernières années, le modèle de production au Canada ressemble à une situation d'oligopole oú les principales provinces productrices (Québec et Ontario) n'ont augmenté leur production qu'avec réserve et ont ainsi établi un niveau de prix permettant aux autres provinces productrices d'augmenter leur part du marché.     

Why does firm reputation in human resource policies influence college students? The mechanisms underlying job pursuit intentions

Business periodicals, such as Fortune magazine, rank organizations in lists such as the “Best Companies to Work For,” providing applicants with information about firms' human resource practices, including pay, benefits, work‐life, and diversity practices. It is not clear what influence this reputational information about HR practices has on applicant interest in pursuing employment or, more important, why it does so. Given that firms invest substantial resources in HR practices to vie for positions on these lists, the current study sought to fill these gaps in the literature. In the 2 (compensation) × 2 (work‐family) × 2 (diversity) factorial design, 232 college students read about magazine rankings in which a firm's reputation in each HR practice was manipulated as ranking either high or low relative to competitors. We examined perceptions of organizational prestige, anticipated organizational support, and anticipated role performance as mechanisms that explain the influence of HR practice reputation on job pursuit intentions. Our results indicate that a firm's reputation in compensation, work‐family, and diversity efforts increase college students' intentions to pursue employment with a firm. They do so because college students perceive that the organization is prestigious, will be supportive, and will foster their job performance. Our results suggest that a strong employer brand derived from employee‐centered HR practices is important for recruiting college students. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Who Will We Recruit? Targeting Deep‐ and Surface‐Level Diversity with Human Resource Policy Advertising

Research on targeted recruitment has focused on targeting applicants with surface‐level attributes such as underrepresented demographic groups. The present study extends targeted recruitment research by examining how advertising human resource policies might be useful for targeting both surface‐ and deep‐level attributes. Specifically, the current study uses an experimental design to examine the impact of work‐family, diversity, and employee development policies on the job‐pursuit intentions of working adults in the United States. We examined surface‐ (demographic characteristics; e.g., race) and deep‐level differences (attitudes or values; e.g., diversity values) as predictors of whether participants intend to pursue jobs with firms advertising these human resource (HR) policies. Deep‐level differences consistently predicted job‐pursuit intentions for all three HR policies, but only marginal support was obtained for surface‐level variables as predictors. Findings suggest that targeted recruitment based on deep‐level attributes may be more successful than targeted recruitment based on surface‐level factors.     

An integer-based blackman innovation index: Hypothesis,evidence, and implications

Blackman, Seligman, and Sogliero [4] factor analyzed U.S. industrial data on innovation-related variables and defined an “innovation index.” This index was strongly correlated with a parameter which measures the propensity of an industrial sector toward adoption of new technology within the classic Mansfield market substitution model [7].Extension of their analysis to cover a 22-year period, along with consideration of certain methodological issues, suggests that the index values for industries in their data base are not free to vary continuously. Instead, the innovation index for each of the industries can be linked with some fundamental value which lies at an integral number of units (i.e., 0, 1, 2, or 3) above an absolute zero. Such an integer structure may signal the existence of fundamental, quantitative relationships between the behaviors of diverse sectors toward innovation— including both research and development effort and adoption of new technology. Understanding such relationships should prove relevant both to efforts to enhance innovation in the private sector and to evaluating proposals for selective emphasis on particular sectors as part of any national “industrial policy.”