The relative importance of social responsibility in determining organizational effectiveness: Student responses

This paper investigates the relative importance of social responsibility criteria in determining organizational effectiveness. The organizational effectiveness menu was used as a questionnaire with a sample of 151 senior undergraduates. Each respondent was asked to rate the importance of the criteria from three constituent perspectives within a service organization: (1) as a manager, (2) as an investor, (3) as an employee. Later, a subsample of students (n=61) responded to the same questionnaire acting as a manager in an assigned case study. The results indicated that students acting as managers, investors, or employees rate social responsibility criteria among the least important of the determinants of organizational effectiveness. Moreover, while specific situations may call for changes in the relative importance of these criteria, social responsibility criteria were not viewed, generally, as the most important determinants of organizational effectiveness.Kenneth L. Kraft is currently an Associate Professor of Management at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. His recent papers explore the relationships between strategy, structure, social responsibility, and organizational effectiveness in a variety of settings.     

Marketing and the law

Marketing decisions are particularly vulnerable to legal rulings made in both the courts and the legislatures. The effective management of those legal implications challenges the modern marketing professional. Grasping marketing’s overall legal environment, including its governing case law, regulatory statutes and future trends, is essential. This review will provide analysis of recent court cases and legislation with particular emphasis on creatively assisting the marketer’s management of the legal factor.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne ZusammenfassungAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von M. St. Braun, WienAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von E. Allina, WienAus dem Russischen übersetzt von A. GerschenkronÜbersetzt von Paul Brüll, Wien.     

Organisation für Kooperationen — Ansätze für eine erfolgreiche Einbindung des Kooperationsmanagements in das eigene Unternehmen

Kooperationen stellen Unternehmen vor spezifische Herausforderungen. Dabei geht es nicht mehr nur darum zu entscheiden, ob mit externen Partnern zusammengearbeitet werden soll. Aufgrund einer zunehmenden Zahl von Partnerschaften stellt sich vielmehr vielfach die Frage, wie Kooperationen im eigenen Unternehmen erfolgreich begleitet bzw. verankert werden k?nnen. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht verschiedene Herausforderungen im Umgang mit Kooperationen und leitet entsprechende Handlungsoptionen für das Marketing-Management ab.     

A Strategic Approach to Financing Public Transport Through Property Values

Traditional sources of finance are becoming inadequate to meet the needs of public transport. This has led to the emergence of a number of local earmarked tax and charging mechanisms, in particular road user charges and tolls. This article examines one group of such mechanisms: charges to property owners and developers, and draws on worldwide examples of the practical use of a number of such schemes. There are a number of practical difficulties with capturing value from property owners and developers, and these are detailed with a commentary on best practice.     

Information,motivation, and control in decentralized planning: the case of discretionary managerial behavior

A simple piecewise-linear managerial incentive scheme is analyzed in a decision-making environment in which a manager is allowed some discretionary activity (effort). Initially, he must report to the planner a target that will be used subsequently to evaluate his performance. If managerial effort is chosen after the random production components are realized, this predicted target will be more realizable than one reported in the absence of such discretionary adjustment. The sensitivity of target and performance to the parameters of the incentive scheme and the manager's utility function is examined to study the planner's ability to both acquire information and motivate performance. J. Comp. Econ., Sept. 1979, 3(3), pp. 235–253. Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.     

The Sustainability Balanced Scorecard – linking sustainability management to business strategy

The Balanced Scorecard of Kaplan and Norton is a management tool that supports the successful implementation of corporate strategies. It has been discussed and considered widely in both practice and research. By linking operational and non‐financial corporate activities with causal chains to the firm's long‐term strategy, the Balanced Scorecard supports the alignment and management of all corporate activities according to their strategic relevance. The Balanced Scorecard makes it possible to take into account non‐monetary strategic success factors that significantly impact the economic success of a business. The Balanced Scorecard is thus a promising starting‐point to also incorporate environmental and social aspects into the main management system of a firm. Sustainability management with the Balanced Scorecard helps to overcome the shortcomings of conventional approaches to environmental and social management systems by integrating the three pillars of sustainability into a single and overarching strategic management tool. After a brief discussion of the different possible forms of a Sustainability Balanced Scorecard the article takes a closer look at the process and steps of formulating a Sustainability Balanced Scorecard for a business unit. Before doing so, the basic conventional approach of the Balanced Scorecard and its suitability for sustainability management will be outlined in brief. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

IDENTIFICATION AND ESTIMATION OF EXCHANGE RATE MODELS WITH UNOBSERVABLE FUNDAMENTALS*

This article is concerned with issues of model specification, identification, and estimation in exchange rate models with unobservable fundamentals. We show that the continuous‐time model proposed by Gardeazabal, Regúlez, and Vázquez (International Economic Review 38 (1997), 389–404) is not identified and that this property is characteristic of the discrete‐time representation of the model that they used as the basis for estimation by simulated method of moments. We briefly discuss the implications of this result in the context of the asset‐market model of exchange rates with unobservable fundamentals.