Where Do We Go From Here? Progressing Sustainability Implementation Efforts Across Supply Chains

T he findings from an inductive study conducted in the United States and Europe focused on sustainability implementation efforts across supply chains are reported. In particular, the study focuses on developing a better understanding of: “how do companies involve other members of their supply chain into their sustainability efforts?” Building upon themes that emerged from the data, a typology for the supply chain implementation of sustainability initiatives is proposed. A lack of supply chain integration was identified and companies reported a tendency toward a “mandated” implementation when extending efforts across companies. These efforts are generally initiated by the dominant companies and then forced onto the weaker upstream members. The data suggests that the merits of these initiatives are viewed as being disproportionately awarded to the dominant firm and thus did not receive full buy‐in from the other party. A common vision by both sides of this relationship is to develop a more collaborative implementation that can be supported by all the involved parties. In theoretical implications, empirical findings are viewed through the lens of several prominent management theories in order to augment and elaborate current theory. Managerial implications, limitations, and opportunities for further research are detailed.     

“Wilderness” – A designation for Central European landscapes?

The concept of “wilderness” has been intensively discussed as an approach for nature protection in Central Europe among managers of protected areas, decision makers, natural and social scientists. This paper discusses the various attempts for physical definitions for Central Europe. It examines, if “wilderness” a suitable expression for communicating different types of places designated “wilderness”, especially in the context of rising awareness and acceptance in all parts of society of the demands of the national strategies for protecting biodiversity. Literature surveys were carried out in order to find expert quotes on the physical definitions, spatial characteristics, and attributes of “wilderness”. For the analytical perception of the general public, a survey using opinion polls among visitors in the Müritz National Park in north-eastern Germany was carried out. A quantitative approach was chosen, and interviewees were selected on an objective, systematic basis. The paper demonstrates, that the wilderness discussion among experts in Central Europe lacks a common physical and spatial definition. It can be shown that there are strong ethical and religious, educational and cultural motifs in the demand for wilderness. For a broad range of laypersons interviewed in Müritz National Park, “wilderness” seems to be a suitable, positive label for wetlands, shorelines, large forests and remote mountain areas. Important key factors, aside from natural features, are few human traces, little infrastructure and few persons using an area, so that visitors experience a feeling of solitude.     

Hedging in Incomplete Markets: An Approximation Procedure for Practical Application

Derivative financial instruments are frequently used as a tool for influencing the risk of entrepreneurial uncertain payoff. To this end, an approximation procedure is developed capable of calculating the optimal quantity of derivatives to be used. It is assumed that the entrepreneurial cash flow is governed by several stochastic factors and that derivatives are only available as a hedging tool for one of these factors. In general, it is easy to determine optimal hedging payment structures with respect to this factor, but real‐life hedging opportunities will typically not allow to perfectly reproduce such a fictitious payment structure, thus leading to complex numerical optimization problems. Instead of directly approximating the entrepreneurial expected utility maximum, we suggest using the fictitious optimal hedging payment structure as a starting point and to minimize the quadratic deviation between payment structures realizable by financial derivatives actually available and the resulting entrepreneurial payoff achieving the fictitious optimal hedging payment structure. This approach proves to be rather easy. Indeed, under certain conditions an explicit solution can be reached. After analyzing the qualitative properties of our approximation solution, we examine its efficiency for two practical hedging problems. In the first example, we get nearly the same solutions with our approximation procedure as with a grid programming approach presented by some other authors. Among other things, our second example may explain why some special kinds of financial derivatives, known as shared currency option under tenders, are not used in international invitations for tenders even though they offer hedging opportunities that are otherwise not available. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21: 599–631, 2001     

Wages in the East German Transition Process: Facts and Explanations

We analyze wage developments in the East German transition process both at the macro- and at the microeconomic level. At the macroeconomic level, we draw special attention to the important distinction between product and consumption wages, describe the development of various wage measures, labor productivity and unit labor costs in East Germany in relation to West Germany, and relate these developments to the system of collective wage bargaining. At the microeconomic level, we describe changes in the distribution of hourly wages between 1990 and 1997 and analyze the economic factors determining these changes by way of empirical wage functions estimated on the basis of the Socio-Economic Panel for East Germany. The paper also draws some conclusions on the likely future course of the East–West German wage convergence process.     

Currency risk cover — an enquiry among German firms

Intereconomics - The attitude of German exporters and importers to currency risks under a system of floating exchange rates has, for the first time, been the subject of an empirical study by the...