Has the CSR engagement of electrical companies had an effect on their performance? A closer look at the environment

Even though electrical companies attain a top ranking in the publication of CSR reports, they are often accused of 'green‐washing' due to their bad environmental reputation. The current economic crisis is testing their real CSR commitment more than ever, especially when this goes beyond its economic consequences. Based on a worldwide sample of electrical companies, we are going to study why companies are being socially responsible. We wish to know if it is due to the impact on the firms' performance or whether there are other motives (legitimation, improving their reputation) that lead companies to carry out these practices. We will also consider if it changes across the kind of CSR action considered. The results show that there is an economic justification beyond the socially responsible behaviour of the electrical companies. Additionally, most kinds of CSR action (community, diversity, corporate governance, product responsibility) are also carried out looking for economic rewards. However, the CSR actions oriented to the environment are mainly motivated by their need to improve their image and reverse their negative impact. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Enhancing Corporate Environmental Performance Through Reporting and Roadmaps

Managing the carbon footprint of companies and addressing their respective decarbonization plans is a challenging endeavour. The aim of this study is to help companies better understand the issues around decarbonization and environmental performance by suggesting a holistic management process on which they could embark. This process comprises two crucial steps, which are (a) sustainability reporting and (b) low‐carbon roadmaps. These steps are covered and further developed based on a detailed study of the UK food retail sector. This sector is relevant due to its economic and environmental importance, but most importantly it has a significant record of available environmental reports in the public domain and a large potential to influence consumers, policy makers and multiple supply chains. Sustainability reporting is assessed by analysing environmental KPIs disclosed in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, and then these are compared against industry standards. This analysis highlights a general lack of consistency and transparency in CSR reporting of UK food retailers. Consequently, a low‐carbon roadmap based on relevant KPIs and on the ‘backcasting’ framework is presented as a case study in order to showcase how a hypothetical UK food retailer can employ a low‐carbon roadmap. The case study demonstrates that ambitious environmental targets are achievable if robust corporate action plans are followed. Furthermore, the case study indicates that capital might be misallocated in favour of highly visible environmental stores and on‐site energy generation technologies, whilst more could be done by applying energy efficiency measures that have the potential to deliver substantial carbon savings. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A Geometrical Interpretation of Collinearity: A Natural Way to Justify Ridge Regression and Its Anomalies

Justifying ridge regression from a geometrical perspective is one of the main contributions of this paper. To the best of our knowledge, this question has not been treated previously. This paper shows that ridge regression is a particular case of raising procedures that provide greater flexibility by transforming the matrix X associated with the model. Thus, raising procedures, based on a geometrical idea of the vectorial space associated with the columns of matrix X , lead naturally to ridge regression and justify the presence of the well-known constant k on the main diagonal of matrix X ^′ X . This paper also analyses and compares different alternatives to raising with respect to collinearity mitigation. The results are illustrated with an empirical application.     

Trading activities,productivity and markups: Evidence for Spanish manufacturing

This work analyses the firms' internationalisation strategies of importing intermediates and exporting output, and the potential rewards of these activities in terms of total factor productivity (TFP), as a proxy for marginal costs, and markups. It further deepens into the study of the relationship between internationalisation strategies and markups by disentangling whether it operates through affecting firms' marginal costs and/or firms' prices. The panel database employed in this paper is the Spanish Survey on Business Strategies (ESEE) for the period 2006–14. Results in the paper distinguish between SMEs and large firms and indicate that there is high persistence in the performance of these activities and in firms' TFP and markups. For SMEs, we obtain rewards from importing inputs as well as exporting output in terms of TFP and markups. For large firms, we obtain rewards in TFP from the importing activity and rewards in markups from the exporting activity. Finally, we find evidence that the effects of internationalisation strategies on markups are due to both a price channel and a marginal cost channel.     

Marketing capabilities and innovation. How do they affect the financial results of hotels?

From the point of view of firms’ managers, the knowledge of the factors which explain their firms’ financial results is considered of great usefulness to propose the most appropriate and profitable marketing strategies and actions. This research sets out from this central idea and proposes a model of relationships that considers the marketing results, the marketing capabilities, and the innovation capability as key factors for achieving good financial results. This model is verified via an empirical investigation carried out among 200 directors of hotel establishments in Andalusia, a region in the south of Spain which is one of the country's main tourist destinations. The results indicate that innovation capability is strongly conditioned by marketing capabilities and resources and that this innovation capability affects the financial results of the firms analyzed. Likewise, it is deduced that a market-oriented management philosophy contributes to the development of these marketing capabilities. The implications for management are considered very relevant as they must lead these firms to invest in the development of marketing resources and capabilities, and apply a market-oriented management philosophy if they wish to improve their financial results.     

Upgrading peripheral wind sectors

The implementation of traditional policies does not consider institutional singularities in peripheral sectors. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the interaction among local capabilities and multinational agents to upgrade a peripheral wind sector. The case study conducted in the peripheral region of Galicia (Spain) emphasises the challenges concerning policy design and implementation in this kind of regions. The theoretical foundations are based on the systemic and evolutionary approach of the innovation system and the global value chain perspective. This combination enables to analyse how local contexts could shape governance patterns within value chains in peripheral regions. Likewise, the target approach is also applied concerning the design and implementation of a policy programme and its timing. Empirical evidences underline the complementarity of market size and foreign direct investment policies, as well as the diversification towards green transitions through enhancing local capabilities.     

Exploring the customer's intention to switch firms: The role of customer‐related antecedents

This study examined the customer‐related antecedents of the customer's intention to switch firms. Customer citizenship behavior was a key element in this study. Scholars have extensively studied the antecedents of customer citizenship behavior. However, the way that customer citizenship behavior relates to other attitudinal variables and the intention to switch has scarcely been analyzed. The proposed hypotheses were verified using partial least squares variance‐based structural equation modeling applied to 947 users of beauty care service firms in five countries. The results suggest that customer citizenship behavior is an antecedent of satisfaction, trust, and attitudinal loyalty. Two of these variables influence customers’ intentions to abandon relationships with the service provider. The implications of these findings enhance managers’ and scholars’ understanding of the determinants of customers’ intentions to switch firms.