An environmental social marketing intervention among employees: assessing attitude and behaviour change

Abstract

The paper examines the impact of individual and organisational factors on two simultaneous environmental social marketing interventions (SmartPrint and heating/cooling) and types of behaviours (recycling, printing and heating/cooling), among employees of a British City Council. Using a quantitative methodology, in the form of a situated experiment, self-reported attitudes, perceptions of organisational support, self-reported behaviours and actual behaviours were measured before and after the interventions. The interventions generated significant changes in employees’ overall environmental behaviour, heating/cooling behaviour and in some perceptions of organisational support (support and incentives/rewards). Findings are used to detail recommendations for future campaigns aiming to improve organisations’ environmental performance and to drive enduring employee behavioural change.     

Corporate lobbying,political connections,and the bailout of banks

Political involvement has long been shown to be a profitable investment for firms that seek favorable regulatory conditions or support in times of economic distress. But how important are different types of political involvement for the timing and magnitude of political support? To answer this question, we take a comprehensive look at the lobbying expenditures and political connections of banks that were recipients of government support under the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). We find that politically-engaged firms were not only more likely to receive TARP funds, but they also received a greater amount of TARP support and received the support earlier than firms that were not politically involved.     

Women's Access to Credit: Does It Matter for Household Efficiency?

Studies that assess the impact of credit constraints on farm households' efficiency have largely used the household as the unit of analysis. This can be problematic when there are gender-based market imperfections and asymmetries in how rights, resources, and responsibilities are distributed within the household. Constraints on women matter: in addition to the efficiency loss associated with the husbands' credit constraints, when women are unable to meet their needs for capital, their households experienced an additional 11% drop in efficiency. This suggests that there are efficiency-based arguments for enhancing women's access to capital and that studies based only on the household's head may significantly underestimate the true economic impact of credit constraints.     

The basic ideas and prospects

The locomotive theory is likely to come up again for discussion at the next summit of the major industrial nations in Bonn in July. What are the basic ideas behind this theory? And what are its chances of success if adopted as an economic policy?     

Measuring Exchange Market Pressure and Intervention in Interdependent Economies: A Two-Country Model

In this article, operational exchange market pressure and intervention indices are derived for a world composed of two interdependent economies. The model-consistent formulae, which can be calculated from observed data, are obtained by applying general definitions of exchange market pressure and intervention activity to a two-country rational-expectations model. It is demonstrated that the functional forms used to measure exchange market pressure and intervention activity depend on whether intervention is direct or indirect and also on whether foreign exchange reserves are held as currency or in the form of bonds.     

Professional Development: the Individual Perspective

This article outlines why and how professional development processes need to be changed - from the perspective of the individual. It builds not only on a five-year experience in helping individual business school faculty develop their capabilities, but also on experience with other professionals ranging from bankers to entrepreneurs. Key features of the recommended process are that formal professional development should not be remedial but should be regarded as an integral and rewarding part of work.     

Structural change and industrial classification

Understanding of structural change is compromised because scholars do not clearly articulate the limits of the classification infrastructure (NAICS or GICS) that shapes empirical analysis. These limits are particularly salient in the study of innovation, an activity that by its nature challenges existing categories. Because innovative industries are often not part of the classification infrastructure, they are invisible in empirical analyses and in government statistics. This paper examines the classification of a population of highly innovative, often small, firms working in gaming devices, packaging, filtration, photonics, imaging, biomedical research and fabless semiconductor design. I find examples of knowledge integration, vertical disintegration and emerging industries that challenge both NAICS and GICS exposing their strengths and weaknesses.     

Retirement in Australia: A Closer Look at the Financial Incentives

In Australia, labour force participation among older people has been declining. Previous research has found that in many OECD countries, the retirement income system actually provides a financial incentive for older workers to retire early. In this article, we model the retirement behaviour of Australian men and women aged between 55 and 70 years, where individuals retire in the period that the present value of their lifetime retirement income is maximised. Our findings suggest that the Australian retirement system does provide an incentive to retire early. However, men are much more likely than women to respond to these financial incentives.     

MANAGERS' OCCUPATIONAL HISTORIES, ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS, AND CLIMATES FOR MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT

Abstract Seventeen intact collegiate groups of managers from eight companies and two publicly owned organizations described the organizational climates in which they worked. Their perceptions ranged from highly favourable to highly unfavourable. Did the occupational histories of the 134 managers influence their perceptions? Could the differences in their evaluations have arisen from other features of the environment, for which unobtrusive measures were available? Or was the level of each group in the hierarchy the prime determinant? All of these explanations have some plausibility in relation to the data presented. It is probably impossible to create‘the right climate’for management development by piecemeal strategies which ignore the significance of market success and deal only with the immediate experience of managers. On the other hand, a global strategy which concentrates on external factors and minimizes the importance of the individual's contribution in his particular location is likely to be equally defective. The major moderating variable in this study between the perceived developmental climate of the organization and the manager's occupational history was the salary he was paid.