The HR role in corporate social responsibility and sustainability: A boundary‐shifting literature review

Although research on human and social sustainability has flourished in the past decade, the role that human resource management departments play (or should play) in facilitating more socially responsible and sustainable organizations remains unclear. In practice, this lack of clarity is due to the multiple features and dimensions of potential HR contributions to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability (CS), as well as widespread failure to integrate HR and CSR functions. Theoretically, the absence of a framework that articulates the HR role in CSR and CS and the substantial separation between HRM and CSR/CS studies among academics act as a reinforcing mechanism. The present study contributes to the growing research on this topic, presenting a framework and a typology to classify the potential HR roles in CSR and CS and comprehensively reviewing the literature at the intersection of HR with CSR and CS. The results of the review provide a broader perspective on the role HR might play in CSR and CS as well as its impact beyond organizational boundaries.     

Communication and performance in Bank–Fund joint participation

In this paper I relate Bank–Fund performance to their willingness (or ability) to communicate. I find evidence that a Bank–Fund simultaneous loan is associated to an increase in economic growth and that such effect is diminished by factors preventing full communication, such as the degree of Bank-Fund competition and the salience of informational asymmetries. Politically motivated loans seem—at least to some extent—stimulate more IMF–WB interaction, which turns out to be associated to a better country’s performance.     

IMF Conditionality as a Screening Device

A theoretical model is developed in which both buybacks and the adoption of an IMF programme can be used as screening devices which enable a creditor to discriminate between debtor countries which are willing to use debt relief in order to invest and repay and countries which are not. Asymmetric information is assumed. This problem can be solved if the country has sufficient resources to engage in a debt buyback and so gain the debt relief. When the country is credit constrained, an alternative screening mechanism is to undertake an IMF programme in return for debt reduction and possibly an IMF loan.     

Factors Influencing Corporate Environmental Disclosure

In this paper, we have studied the factors that influence the environmental disclosures of Italian listed companies. We also aimed to verify the effects produced by the introduction of specific legislation (albeit of a voluntary nature) on environmental disclosures. The analysis has the advantage of including all of the informational documents produced by the company. The analysis shows an (excessively) low level of disclosure of environmental information by the companies examined. The econometric analysis then shows, contrary to our hypothesis and the results of previous analyses carried out in other countries, a negative and statistically significant relationship between environmental disclosures, the presences of minority shareholders and large auditors and the listing of the company, including in foreign markets. We lastly observed that the introduction of ad hoc legislation as purely voluntary only affects the contents of quantitative environmental disclosures, which are unsuitable for a highly industrialized developed country. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The migration of professionals within the EU: Any barriers left?

As shown by the intense legislative effort at the European Union level, the mutual recognition of professional qualifications represents an important step towards the completion of the single EU labor market. In this paper we provide the first empirical evidence on the link between intra‐EU mobility and mutual recognition of professional qualifications. Our results show that bilateral EU migration is positively affected by the destination country's rate of recognition of professional qualifications obtained in another EU member state.     

Interaction of maritime shipping and hinterland traffic using a two-level hierarchical transport network

A transport scenario based on a two-level network is developed in order to model operations in maritime transport. To enhance competitiveness and sustainability of shipping companies, the interaction between maritime shipping and hinterland traffic is considered in the novel two-level hierarchical transport network. Demand occurs on the second level, the hinterland, whereas the first level, the sea transport, acts as a pure distribution network. The two-level hierarchical transport model allows regulating the degree of interaction a liner operator has regarding the hinterland traffic. Moreover, access of vehicles to nodes or edges is given subject to feasibility constraints, relating to the size of a vehicle. In this work, the relation to existing routing models, such as the travelling salesman problem, the vehicle routing problem, or the travelling purchaser problem, is illustrated. Moreover, through the definition of a proper set of assumptions, it is possible to reduce the considered two-level hierarchical transport network to different standard routing models. These new insights allow the application of existing solution methods. Numerical experiments are conducted for a particular case and illustrate the influence of node costs on the distribution of workload to the vehicles.     

The impact of a study abroad programme on learning abilities and personality traits: evidence from a randomization

Personality traits are increasingly considered as a powerful predictor of socio-economic success as academic achievement. In this article, we exploit the random assignment of applicants to a programme in order to retrieve unbiased estimates of the impact of studying abroad on both cognitive and noncognitive abilities. Our findings suggest that secondary school students, especially those considered ‘more able’, benefited from a 1-month experience abroad, as it enhanced both personality traits and language proficiency.     

Regional growth and unemployment in the medium run: asymmetric cointegrated Okun’s Law for UK regions

This article tests for the presence of a medium-run asymmetric Okun’s Law relationship between regional output and regional unemployment rate in UK regions. The test is performed with a panel data version of the hidden cointegration technique suggested by Granger and Yoon. A novelty of the article is to combine the method of hidden cointegration with a panel data method of removing cross-sectional dependence. The medium-run Okun relationship for regions in the UK appears to confirm results found elsewhere in the literature on countries as a whole, although the coefficients tend to be smaller.     

Don't patronize me! An experiment on preferences for authorship

Do people only reject interference and keep control to affect the outcome? We find that 20% of subjects reject unrequired help and insist on their solution to a problem—although doing so is costly and does not change the result. We tease out the motives by varying the information available to the interfering party (paternalist). Subjects do not resist to show to the paternalist that they were able to find the correct solution. Instead, two motives seem to play a role. First, subjects prefer to have produced or “authored” the solution themselves. Second, subjects desire to signal their authorship and hence their independence to the paternalist.