Unmasking Corporate Sustainability at the Project Level: Exploring the Influence of Institutional Logics and Individual Agency

Due to their consolidated nature, corporate sustainability reports often mask the evolution of organizations’ sustainability initiatives. Thus, to more fully understand the environmental performance of an organization, it is essential to examine the experiences of specific projects and how they relate to corporate sustainability. Based on case studies of green projects in four different organizations, we find that it is difficult to determine the environmental impact of a project a priori, even in cases where environmental considerations are included as part of the initial project scope. Instead, the decision to integrate environmentally favorable elements into projects is a dynamically occurring interaction between competing institutional logics and organizational identities, which create windows of opportunity for individual agency. During these windows, individuals may engage in reinforcing microprocesses that support traditional practices, or invoke enabling microprocesses to facilitate green decision-making, consistent with ecosystem logics. The process model developed in this paper provides a new perspective on the temporal and contextual dimensions of environmental championship behaviors, and sheds light on otherwise puzzling results such as why organizations with strong environmental orientations continue to struggle with delivering projects with strong positive environmental impacts.     

The Mediating Role of Postrecovery Satisfaction in the Relationship between Justice Perceptions and Customer Attitudes

ABSTRACT

The present study advances the literature by examining the meditating roles of postrecovery satisfaction in the relationships between distributive and interactional justices, and postrecovery attitudes. The model is empirically tested using survey data collected from 600 telecommunications service customers; and analyzed using partial least squares technique. Results indicate that postrecovery satisfaction partially mediates the perceptions of justice in the recovery process and service quality as well as repurchase intention. It is the first study to examine postrecovery satisfaction as a mediator in understanding the impact of recovery justice (antecedent) on service quality (consequence) in the telecommunications service context.     

DISTRIBUTING THE GAINS FROM TRADE WITH INCOMPLETE INFORMATION*

We argue that the incomplete information which the government has about domestic agents means that tariffs become an optimal instrument to protect them from import competition. Using a model where agents have private information about their endowments, we solve for the optimal government policy subject to the political constraint of ensuring Pareto gains from trade, the incentive compatibility constraint, and the government's budget constraint. We find that the optimal policy takes the form of nonlinear tariffs. These tariffs are never complete, in the sense of bringing prices back to their initial level, but always allow some individuals to be strictly better off than at the initial prices.     

Tax Competition, Income Differentials and Local Public Services

This paper examines strategic tax setting between fiscal authorities in the presence of mobile workers who locate across these jurisdictions in response to differing tax structures and congestable local public amenities. We find that the nature of the tax setting outcomes depend crucially on the proximity between cities. For distant cities with the same size populations, the pressure on tax rates of a more mobile workforce depends on the whether mobile workers are net beneficiaries or net contributors. If mobile workers are either high or low income earners, cities lower tax rates. If mobile workers are middle income earners, cities raise tax rates. For close or neighbouring cities, workers locate in one of the cities and tax rates and local public amenities are dispersed.     

Taxation and House-Price Uncertainty: Some Empirical Estimates

Purchasing a home involves a large and localized investment that leaves many families exposed to volatile house prices and at risk of losing their home equity. Price movements are typically not synchronized across cities, suggesting the potential for efficiency gains through risk sharing across households. In this paper, we consider the possibility of risk sharing through capital gains taxation. When full loss offset is permitted, potential gains and losses are reduced at the household level by taxation and distributed nationally, thereby allowing the tax authority to diversify away the local risks associated with owner-occupied housing. We simulate the effect of a capital gains tax with full loss offset on tenure choice and housing demand using micro-level data from the American Housing Survey, spanning ten years, from 1985 to 1995, and measures of time varying risk and return.     

Exchange rate and price level determination in a stochastic equilibrium model

This paper analyzes a stochastic general equilibrium model of the open economy under floating exchange rates. It is shown that increased integration of the domestic economy with the rest of the world—whether integration is considered from the viewpoint of financial or commodity markets—has differential impacts upon price and exchange rate variability with the impacts depending further upon the source of variability.     

The role of lockups in takeover contests

We examine breakup fees and stock lockups as devices for prospective target firms to encourage bidder participation in takeover contests. Unless bidding costs for the first bidder are too high, breakup fees provide for the socially desirable degree of competition and ensure the efficient allocation of the target to the highest‐valued buyer in a takeover auction. In contrast, stock lockups permit the target firm to subsidize entry of a new bidder at the expense of an incumbent bidder. Stock lockups induce too much competition when offered to a second bidder and too little competition when offered to a first bidder. Despite their socially wasteful properties, target management would favor stock lockups, as they induce takeover competition at least cost to the target.