The Proactive Corporation: Its Nature and Causes

We argue that the stakeholder perspective on corporate social responsibility is in the process of being enlarged. Due to the process of institutional isomorphism, corporations are increasingly adopting organizational features designed to promote proactivity over mere reactivity in their stakeholder relationships. We identify two sources of pressure promoting the emergence of the proactive corporation -- stakeholder activism and the recognition of the social embeddedness of the economy. The final section describes four organizational design dimensions being installed by the more proactive corporations today -- cooperation, participation, negotiation, and direct anticipation.     

Supplier relations and management: A survey of Japanese,Japanese-transplant,and U.S. auto plants

This article presents the results of a questionnaire survey sent to a sample of automobile manufacturers in the United States and Japan (including Japanese-managed plants in the United States) during the spring of 1990. The data support observations that Japanese and U.S. practices tend to differ in key areas and Japanese suppliers perform better in dimensions such as quality (defects) and prices (meeting targets, reducing prices over time); and that Japanese-managed auto plants established in the United States have, in general, adopted Japanese practices and receive extremely high levels of quality from Japanese as well as U.S. suppliers. These findings provide evidence that Japanese practices and performance levels are transferable outside Japan and suggest that considerable improvements are possible for U.S. suppliers supplying U.S. auto plants. In addition, the survey indicates that U.S. firms have adopted at least some practices traditionally associated with Japanese firms, apparently reflecting some convergence toward Japanese practices and higher performance levels in supplier management.     

New legislation affecting us nonprofits

In the summer of 1996, Congress passed and the President signed, four pieces of legislation of significance to the nonprofit sector: the Taxpayers Bill of Rights 2 (TBR2), the Small Business Job Protection Bill of 1996 (Small Business Act), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation (Welfare Reform) Act of 1996. Taken together, these four laws contain what are perhaps the most significant changes to the Internal Revenue Code since the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and what are certainly the most profound changes in the rules affecting tax-exempt organisations since the enactment of the 1969 legislation governing private foundations. This paper highlights the most significant features of these laws as they affect nonprofits.¹     

An Economic Analysis of the UK Landfill Permits Scheme

The UK will introduce in 2004 a system of tradable permits for the landfill of municipal waste, in response to an EU directive setting limits on such activity. Tradable permits are becoming an increasingly popular method of dealing with some environmental issues — for example, sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions in the USA. This paper describes the background to the landfill proposals and provides an analysis of how the permit system might work. Estimates are made of the possible savings in compliance costs of a permit system compared with a conventional ‘command–and–control’ approach. These estimates are subject to a considerable degree of uncertainty, related to factors discussed in the paper.     

The International Competitiveness of Germany and other European Economies: The Assessment of the Global Competitiveness Report

The Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum examines the relative competitiveness of economies on a broad basis of microeconomic and macroeconomic indicators. The following discussion uses the results of the Global Competitiveness Report 2004–2005 and investigates how the relative competitiveness of Germany and other European countries has developed over the recent past.     

Construct measurement in strategic management research: illusion or reality?

Strategic management research has been characterized as placing less emphasis on construct measurement than other management subfields. In this work, we document the state of the art of measurement in strategic management research, and discuss the implications for interpreting the results of research in this field. To assess the breadth of measurement issues in the discipline, we conducted a content analysis of empirical strategic management articles published in leading journals in the period of 1998–2000. We found that few studies discuss reliability and validity issues, and empirical research in the field commonly relies on single‐indicator measures. Additionally, studies rarely address the problems of attenuation due to measurement error. We close with a discussion of the implications for future research and for interpreting prior work in strategic management. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.