CEO letters: Social license to operate and community involvement in the mining industry

This paper aims to analyse how the discourse of CEO letters and other factors influence community involvement and Social Licence to Operate (SLO) in the mining industry. The analysis is based on qualitative information disclosed in sustainability reports and CEO letters from 32 mining firms. Content analysis was undertaken to obtain data for the study, and then a regression analysis and a multiple correspondence analysis were used to test the hypotheses defined in the study. The results indicate that the CEO discourse influences how a firm expresses the importance of gaining its SLO, the philanthropic activities in which companies become involved and the destinations of the investments in the communities in which they operate. The results also show changes in the discourse between 2011 and 2015, which are, in part, explained by the difficult situation experienced by the sector during this period. The paper contributes to the Corporate Social Responsibility literature by integrating different theories from this field into the SLO framework. The analysis carried out and the results obtained are useful for both CEOs and Sustainability Managers, especially in managing their relationships with the communities where they operate or intend to operate.     

Building dynamic capabilities in product development: How do contextual antecedents matter?

This paper contributes to elucidate the nature, antecedents and outcomes of dynamic capabilities in product development. Building on the organizational context literature, the paper uses an input–process–output framework to argue that a context characterized by a combination of autonomy, performance management, support and trust facilitates dynamic capabilities for continuous product development. Further, dynamic capabilities shape product development competences. Empirical evidence is provided by performing survey research with data collected from 80 product development efforts developed in Spain. The paper includes conclusions, limitations and future research potentials for those with an interest in supporting dynamic capabilities.     

Peer Group Formation in an Adverse Selection Model

This paper develops an adverse selection model where peer group systems are shown to trigger lower interest rates and remove credit rationing in the case where borrowers are uninformed about their potential partners and ex post state verification (or auditing) by banks is costly. Peer group formation reduces interest rates due to a 'collateral effect', namely, cross subsidisation amongst borrowers acts as collateral behind a loan. By uncovering such a collateral effect, this paper shows that peer group systems can be viewed as an effective risk pooling mechanism, and thus enhance efficiency, not just in the full information set up.     

A review of the literature on environmental innovation management in SMEs: implications for public policies

The aim of this article is to collect and make up the most important contributions in the economic literature in relation to the special characteristics of the management of the environmental innovation in the SMEs. Specifically, we want to show their strengths and weaknesses in order to make up the main conclusions of these analyses with the literature in relation to the way Public Administrations face this situation. The scarce development in the SMEs in respect to their environmental strategy may be a consequence of the links among some of the following factors: limited financial resources, the type of organizational structure, a little influence of the strategic adaptation competence against the changes in the SMEs, the managers’ scarce environmental training and short term orientation, the staff’s scarce environmental awareness and training, the status of the environmental issues in the company, the SMEs’ lower ability to obtain highly radical innovations, the scarce influence of manufacturing process flexibility in the most advanced states of the environmental strategy in the SMEs and their lack of relation ability with external stakeholders—very important in the success of the most advanced environmental approaches. Besides, the lack of regulation neutrality must be added as a key difference among companies of different sizes. So specific actions seem be necessary, such as technological advice and awareness, and training programs in order to cooperate with external stakeholders.     

Choosing an optimal investment strategy: The role of robust pair-copulas based portfolios

This paper is concerned with the efficient allocation of a set of financial assets and its successful management. Efficient diversification of investments is achieved by inputing robust pair-copulas based estimates of the expected return and covariances in the mean-variance analysis of Markowitz. Although the whole point of diversifying a portfolio is to avoid rebalancing, very often one needs to rebalance to restore the portfolio to its original balance or target. But when and why to rebalance is a critical issue, and this paper investigates several managers' strategies to keep the allocations optimal. Findings for an emerging market target return and minimum risk investments are highly significant and convincing. Although the best strategy depends on the investor risk profile, it is empirically shown that the proposed robust portfolios always outperform the classical versions based on the sample estimates, yielding higher gains in the long run and requiring a smaller number of updates. We found that the pair-copulas based robust minimum risk portfolio monitored by a manager which checks its composition twice a year provides the best long run investment.     

Obesity and perceived work discrimination in Spain

Obesity is increasingly becoming a source of discrimination in many domains of living, including at the workplace. In this study, we estimate obesity-related discrimination in work settings in Spain and explore its potential sources. We use data from the European Health Interview Survey conducted in 2009–2010. Our models control for a comprehensive set of demographic, socioeconomic, health, and work-related sickness characteristics. We run separate models for women and men, and stratify by type of occupation and by area obesity prevalence. Our results indicate that weight-related discrimination in work settings in Spain is concentrated among women with morbid obesity, particularly among those working in customer-facing jobs and living in areas with low-obesity prevalence. These findings emphasize the persistence of the gendered nature of obesity-related discrimination, and provide evidence of a form of induced statistical discrimination. Employers’ expectations of lower returns from obese workers in customer facing jobs might be driven by customers’ preferences caused by social stigma. Furthermore, the role of area-obesity prevalence highlights the impact of cultural social norms even within the same country.     

The Barcelona initiative and the importance of NTBs: a dynamic CGE-analysis for Syria

The Barcelona Initiative is the central element of the EU’s Mediterranean policy. We study the implementation of this policy with respect to Syria using a dynamic general equilibrium model with credit constraints and capital market imperfections. Dismantling formal tariffs has only limited effects on the Syrian economy, while reducing non-tariff barriers produces by far larger results. EU association promises broadly positive effects for factor incomes and sectoral outputs, with some temporarily negative effects in agricultural sectors. Nevertheless, we find evidence of severe trade distorting effects making preferential trade policy clearly welfare inferior to multilateral trade liberalization within the WTO framework.

Perception of the acquisition of generic competences in engineering degrees

The aim of this paper is to analyze what generic competencies at the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC BarcelonaTech) are most evaluated by the teaching staff belonging to the first curricular block of industrial engineering degree courses at the Barcelona Escola Universitaria d’Enginyeria Técnica Industrial, and also to relate these competencies to the assessment tools and the types of session most frequently used in the evaluation of the said competencies. Furthermore, it is intended to determine the level of acquisition of the generic competencies (related to their profession) as perceived by the students themselves during their course of study and their completion of the Final Year Degree Project (Project Trabajo Final de Grado—TFG). To that end, a group of 140 university teachers and a population of 145 students were each the object of an anonymous online survey while they were engaged on the Final Year Degree Project (TFG). The results of this survey show that the competencies most evaluated by the university teaching staff, in order of importance, are as follows: autonomous learning, the effective use of information resources, teamwork, and good oral and written communication, while the most frequently used tools of assessment are the rubrics. Autonomous learning is the generic competence perceived by the students as being the one most acquired during their completion of the TFG.     

Sustainable manufacturing and green human resources: Critical success factors in the automotive sector

This study aims to identify critical success factors (CSFs) for implementing sustainability in organizational human resources management (OHRM) within the automotive sector (AS). A literature review was carried out to identify the OHRM factors that are instrumental for the significant adoption of sustainable practices (SP) in the sector. Based on the outcomes from the literature review, an expert team composed of 17 experts from the AS, academia, and consultancy firms were consulted in order to identify cause–effect relationships among CSFs using a multi-criteria decision making tool. Data were gathered in India from November 2019 to April 2020. The results revealed that top management support and environmental auditing for suppliers are the two most important CSFs to be prioritized among the factors studied, which implies that by managing these factors first, automotive manufacturers may deal better with the adoption of SP. As a result of prioritizing these two factors, other CSFs related to OHRM (e.g., organizational culture, environmental training, rewards, and incentives) will also positively affect the adoption of SP. The novelty of this study comes through raising the importance of environmental auditing for suppliers as a factor that can facilitate not only the adoption of SP in the AS, but the other OHRM factors as well.