Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee–Company Identification

This study proposes two identification cuing factors (i.e., CSR associations and CSR participation) to understand how corporate social responsibility (CSR) relates to employees’ identification with their firm. The results reveal that a firm’s CSR initiatives increase employee–company identification (E–C identification). E–C identification, in turn, influences employees’ commitment to their company. However, CSR associations do not directly influence employees’ identification with a firm, but rather influence their identification through perceived external prestige (PEP). Compared to CSR associations, CSR participation has a direct influence on E–C identification. On the basis of these findings, it is argued that CSR performance can be an effective way for companies to maintain a positive relationship with their employees.     

An integrated approach for port selection,ship scheduling and financial analysis

Ship routing and scheduling is an important activity for ship operators at both planning and operation levels. Ship operators, as commercial entities, have to closely monitor routing and scheduling in relation to their financial implications. This paper presents an integrated approach for port selection, ship scheduling and financial analysis. It aims to discuss the architecture and the major features of an integrated intelligent system for liner shipping. Currently many liners still perform ship routing and scheduling manually based on professional knowledge and experience. The proposed system is developed with an international liner company and is flexible to account for user inputs according to the real situation in the port selection module. Also the system provides two modes in the scheduling module: automatic and manual. The automatic mode makes use of an optimisation model to find the optimal proforma schedule (PFS). The manual mode allows manual modifications to be performed to accommodate the existing liners to allow for a smooth implementation. The financial analysis module examines the financial consequences of the PFS which are crucial for making commercial decisions. As a whole, the solution algorithm calls for an integrated approach that can integrate data from various sources with different levels of certainties and accuracies, knowledge gained from practical operations and optimisation routines. The system will be useful for ship operators in liner shipping.     

Benchmarking and Transparency: Incentives for the Pharmaceutical Industry’s Corporate Social Responsibility

With over 2 billion people lacking medicines for treatable diseases and 14 million people dying annually from infectious disease, there is undeniable need for increased access to medicines. There has been an increasing trend to benchmark the pharmaceutical industry on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in access to medicines. Benchmarking creates a competitive inter-business environment and acts as incentive for improving CSR. This article investigates the corporate feedback discourses pharmaceutical companies make in response to criticisms from benchmarking reports. It determines whether these responses are part of a healthy process in increasing access to medicines or a barrier to improvement. A qualitative analysis on the feedback the industry provided was performed, and the responses seen in these statements were grouped by analysing the language used, the ideas portrayed and atti-tudes of the companies. Increasing transparency through benchmarking is a powerful tool which reveals the industry’s shortfalls to the public, affects the decisions of socially responsible investors, and is a risk to their financial bottom line. This article demonstrates the importance of benchmarking and transparency in creating inter-business competition and the translation of these responses to actual access to medicine practices.     

Exploring customers’ store loyalty using the means-end chain approach

The study is aimed at revealing the relationships in terms of customer store loyalty by using means-end chains (MEC) analysis, in order to examine the linkages between department stores’ service attributes, involvement, satisfaction and loyalty each of which the customer regards as important. In the study, customer involvement, satisfaction and service quality are connotations that are strongly linked with the customer store loyalty, with service quality being the element to which the platinum tier customers attach the most importance. Data are gathered for a MEC analysis by interviewing 34 platinum tier customers of department stores individually. The results reveal that platinum tier customers are department store customers with a relatively high degree of involvement which is likely to have a positive impact on both core and peripheral service quality, satisfaction toward store loyalty. Although there are numerous studies in the literature that use the means-end chain model to examine customer value within the realm of consumer behavior, few studies discuss platinum tier customers’ store loyalty which is a phenomenon currently receiving a great deal of interest. In contrast to prior research, three connotations are integrated in the study to represent the content and structure of stores’ loyalty attributes for MEC analysis which can offer a different perspective and better understanding for developing highly targeted marketing strategies.     

Nonlinear Dynamics and Structural Change in the U.S. Hog–Corn Cycle: A Time-Varying STAR Approach

The linearity of the U.S. hog–corn cycle has been questioned by Chavas and Holt (1991) . Even so, attempts have not been made to model the potential nonlinear dynamics in the hog–corn cycle by using regime-switching models. One popular alternative is Teräsvirta's smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) model, which assumes regime switching is endogenous and potentially smooth. In this article, we examine monthly data for the U.S. hog–corn cycle, 1910–2004. A member of the STAR family, the time-varying STAR, is fitted to the data and its properties examined. We find evidence of nonlinearity, regime-dependent behavior, and time-varying parameter change.     

A Political Economic Analysis of U.S. Rice Export Programs to Japan and South Korea: A Game-Theoretic Approach

The Uruguay Round Agreement on agriculture has contributed to the increase in U.S. and world rice trade since 1994. Despite this, the Japanese and Korean rice markets continue to be characterized by high levels of trade intervention. This article attempts to analyze both import markets incorporating econometric estimates and public choice theory in a game-theoretic framework. Various scenarios are analyzed. The results show that the overall Nash equilibrium occurs with a 4% tariff reduction for Japan and Korea under the U.S. Market Development Program, which includes the Market Access Program and Foreign Market Development Program.     

Futures Trading,Spot Price Volatility and Market Efficiency: Evidence from European Real Estate Securities Futures

In 2007 futures contracts were introduced based upon the listed real estate market in Europe. Following their launch they have received increasing attention from property investors, however, few studies have considered the impact their introduction has had. This study considers two key elements. Firstly, a traditional Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model, the approach of Bessembinder & Seguin (1992) and the Gray’s (1996) Markov-switching-GARCH model are used to examine the impact of futures trading on the European real estate securities market. The results show that futures trading did not destabilize the underlying listed market. Importantly, the results also reveal that the introduction of a futures market has improved the speed and quality of information flowing to the spot market. Secondly, we assess the hedging effectiveness of the contracts using two alternative strategies (naïve and Ordinary Least Squares models). The empirical results also show that the contracts are effective hedging instruments, leading to a reduction in risk of 64 %.     

Firm Growth and Failure in Increasingly Competitive Markets Theory and Application to Hospital Markets

Recent models of firm failure and growth have ignored demand factors. In this paper, we generalize these theoretical analyses to include demand factors in explaining failure and growth for heterogeneous firms in local markets facing imperfect but increasing competition. The model is then applied empirically to the hospital industry in California over the 1980s, during which time competition did intensify. We model the closure decision based on expectations of future growth, explicitly accounting for self selection and simultaneity. We find that both size and demand factors are important determinants of survival and growth     

Optimal Taxation for Polluting Oligopolists with Endogenous Market Structure

This paper examines the optimal output taxes for polluting oligopolists under endogenous market structure, in the presence of external costs that vary exogenously with aggregate output. For general functional forms, we show that (i) the equilibrium number of firms in an industry may differ from the socially optimal number of firms and (ii) the second-best optimal taxes under imperfect competition could be less than, equal to, or greater than marginal external damages depending upon the curvature of market demand.