Social franchising: A systematic review

Abstract

Social franchising is starting to garner more interest among researchers and practitioners as a replication approach used to help address a growing array of societal issues in both developed countries and emerging economies. While there has been a proliferation of experimentation with social franchising that is occurring on the global stage, the knowledge base remains fragmented. A comprehensive review of the empirical and practitioner literature has not been done. This article fills the void by reviewing the past decade of literature and will be of interest to governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), philanthropists, social impact investors, corporations devoted to social goals, and other key players who support the scaling up or replication of ventures that strive to address societal ills by creating pathways to health and prosperity.     

Morally Contentious Technology-Field Intersections: The Case of Biotechnology in the United States

Technologies can be not only contentious—overthrowing existing ways of doing things—but also morally contentious—forcing deep reflection on personal values and societal norms. This article investigates that what may impede the acceptance of a technology and/or the development of the field that supports or exploits it, the lines between which often become blurred in the face of morally contentious content. Using a unique dataset with historically important timing—the United States Biotechnology Study fielded just 9 months after the public announcement of the successful cloning of the first mammal (i.e., Dolly the sheep)—we find that microlevel factors (i.e., conservative Christianity) predict unfavorable judgments of the technology-field intersection while macrolevel representations [i.e., exposure to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics disciplines and media coverage] predict more favorable judgments.     

Globalization,technical change and the skill premium: magnification effects from human – capital investments

This paper shows that endogenous adjustments in the composition of labour supplies magnify the effects of changes in commodity prices on the measured skill premium under quite plausible conditions. These composition effects arise from decisions of individuals with heterogeneous inherent abilities about acquiring human capital. They reinforce the well-known Stolper?–?Samuelson effect on the measured skill premium in countries with a sufficiently high relative supply of skilled labour, but compensate them otherwise. As a result, the model can account for the observation of a worldwide increase in the skill premium during the last two decades.     

Emigration and wages: The EU enlargement experiment

The enlargement of the European Union provides a unique opportunity to study the impact of the lifting of migration restrictions on the migrant sending countries. With EU enlargement in 2004, 1.2 million workers from Eastern Europe emigrated to the UK and Ireland. I use this emigration wave to show that emigration significantly changed the wage distribution in the sending country, in particular between young and old workers. Using a novel dataset from Lithuania, the UK and Ireland for the calibration of a structural model of labor demand, I find that over the period of five years emigration increased the wages of young workers by 6%, while it had no effect on the wages of old workers. Contrary to the immigration literature, there is no significant effect of emigration on the wage distribution between high-skilled and low-skilled workers.     

Information systems and technology sourcing strategies of e-Retailers for value chain enablement

In the e-Retail industry, a well-designed IT infrastructure is essential in creating a tightly integrated value chain and delivering high quality service. With intense competition for market share and profits, information systems and technology (IST) sourcing decisions are becoming increasingly important to e-Retail firms to support continued growth and market responsiveness. Drawing on the contingency theory, we examine organizational and environmental factors that influence an e-Retailer's IST sourcing strategy of make versus buy in enabling its value chain activities, and we also look at firm-level performance impacts of IST sourcing decisions that involve bundling across value chain activities. We test the proposed model and hypotheses using a panel data set of 307 firms over the period of 2006–2010. The results show that firms that make transformative IT investments tend to source a smaller portion of IST for their e-Retail value chain activities than firms that pursue automate or informate as their strategic role for IT investment. Capabilities are positively associated with IST sourcing. Firms experienced in e-Retail are more likely to build rather than buy their IST. In addition, we find mimicking behavior for IST sourcing among firms in the same merchandizer category. We find that IT strategic role is strongly associated with growth metric, whereas sourcing decisions predominantly impact operational performance measures. There is partial evidence that alignment between IT strategic role and IST sourcing decisions results in better performance effects. Moreover, complementary IST sourcing of synergistic marketing and sales activities positively impacts Web sales and conversion rate, but the sourcing combination of logistics, operations, and sales activities is associated with lower Web sales and conversion rate.     

Sacred alliance or pact with the devil? How and why social enterprises collaborate with mainstream businesses in the fair trade sector*

Abstract

This paper uses institutional theory to highlight different patterns of cross-sector collaboration from the perspective of social enterprises. Specifically, it explores how and why social enterprises interact with mainstream businesses and to what extent their collaboration patterns reflect a vision of how their social mission should be implemented and institutionalized. The empirical analysis is derived from a qualitative study of ‘fair trade’ – a hybrid model created by social enterprises and using market mechanisms to support small-scale producers in developing countries and to advocate for changes in international trading practices. The findings highlight three strategies used by fair trade social enterprises to manage their interactions with mainstream businesses: sector solidarity, selective engagement, and active appropriation. This paper suggests that each strategy is motivated by a different vision of how best to articulate the social mission of fair trade via specific types of collaborations. It also notes how each vision has a distinct pattern of institutionalization at the field level. This paper adds to the emergent literatures on social enterprise and social entrepreneurship, fair trade, cross-sector collaboration and hybrid organizing.     

U.S. Monetary Policy: A View from Macro Theory

We use a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to address two questions about U.S. monetary policy: 1) Can monetary policy elevate output when it is below potential? and 2) Is the zero lower bound a trap? The model’s answer to the first question is yes it can, but the effect is only temporary and probably not welfare enhancing. The answer to the second question is more complicated because it depends on policy. It also depends on whether it is the inflation rate or the real interest rate that will adjust over the longer run if the policy rate is held near zero for an extended period. We use the Fisher equation to analyze possible outcomes for situations where the central bank has promised to keep the interest rate near zero for an extended period.     

A critical discourse analysis of racial violence in South Carolina,U.S.A.: implications for traveling while Black

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to present a rich, detailed case that illustrates the way in which the discourse of racial violence has been constructed in the United States (U.S.), and how that has impacted Black travel. Using South Carolina, a state centrally-located along the East coast with historic, political, and social ties to the U.S. South as the context for this analysis, this paper employs a critical discourse analysis to examine the intersection of racial violence and tourism, situating cases of violence – historic to the modern. This study makes a case for more focused attention on the intersection of tourism and violence within the literature, as well as a call to the tourism industry to be proactive to discourses of violence, demonstrate a desire for diversity in their visitors, consider the critical issues of racial representation in their tourism products, and be aware of the emerging organizations supporting and facilitating Black travel.     

Fear of a Lonely Planet: author anxieties and the mainstreaming of a guidebook

Lonely Planet (LP) guidebooks are one of the most popular guidebook brands in tourism, but few studies have examined the guidebooks in detail or their relationship with tourism and tourists. Utilising an inductive research approach, this exploratory study aims to make a contribution to the theory and knowledge of guidebooks. Interviews with guidebook writers reveal a sense of frustration created by editorial controls and tourist behaviour. Writers prefer the counter-cultural style of the early LP guidebooks, whereas the editors are keen to appease a more mainstream audience. While tourists tend to follow prescribed routes based on LP information, the writers seek to promote more spontaneous tourism experiences. The conventional view that texts convey the worldview of their authors needs to be re-thought in light of such rigid editorial controls. Findings also suggest that new media could lead to the decline of guidebooks and the rise of more collaborative forms of information sharing, potentially representing the end point of the mainstreaming process of LP guidebooks. Theories of new media may then inform new theories on guidebooks. This paper demonstrates the utility of Grounded Theory and the use of guidebook authors in the research process.     

Trading spaces: Calculating embodied Ecological Footprints in international trade using a Product Land Use Matrix (PLUM)

Nations import and export biophysical resources. With many ecosystems worldwide under mounting stress, countries may be increasingly interested in knowing the extent and origin of their ecological imports and dependencies. In this paper the Ecological Footprint is used as a tool to measure the biophysical (as opposed to financial) value of international trade flows. This paper attempts to answer the following question: How large of an Ecological Footprint does a given country exert inside the borders of each of its trading partners? Records in the UN COMTRADE bilateral trade database are multiplied by a matrix of per-product Footprint yield coefficients to translate from values in dollars and tonnes to units of hectares. The results show that the largest interregional flows are from Latin to North America, and from North America to Asia-Pacific. Grouping countries by GDP, high and middle income countries appear in Footprint terms to trade predominantly with other high and middle income countries and much less with low income countries.