The evolving role of trade associations in negotiated environmental agreements: the case of United Kingdom Climate Change Agreements

Voluntary and negotiated agreements are becoming increasingly popular instruments for regulating industry's environmental performance. Although their main purpose is to modify the behaviour of individual firms, the coordinating role of trade (or industry) associations is often critical to their environmental effectiveness. Thus, a clear and mutually agreed understanding of associations' role in the agreement process is essential. This paper examines the nature of trade associations' input into the negotiation and implementation of environmental agreements, using the case study of United Kingdom Climate Change Agreements. Results show associations serving a range of coordinating roles, including the aggregation of members' viewpoints, negotiation of agreements, provision of regulatory and technical knowledge and collation of performance data. We conclude that further involvement of trade associations in negotiated and voluntary agreements can bring appreciable, though not uncontested, benefits in terms of environmental effectiveness. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

STATE-LEVEL BASIC WAGES IN AUSTRALIA DURING THE DEPRESSION, 1929–35: INSTITUTIONS AND POLITICS OVER MARKETS

State wage-fixation tribunals developed quite particular patterns of basic wage fixation during the Depression. They declined to follow the Commonwealth Court's 10 per cent wage cut, thereby confining its effect to about half the workforce and creating distinctly different State and Commonwealth basic wage patterns in each capital city. Further, tribunals' uneven patterns of basic wage adjustment to deflation meant that in some states, the real State basic wage increased. Patterns of state institutional behaviour and state politics therefore help explain the stickiness of real average wage levels during the Depression.     

Bringing computer power to the consumer market

Firms in m a y industrial sectors are seeking to capitalize on the promise of new information technology to generate new consumer products which can gain substantial markets. Where these are improved versions of familiar products, the marketing task is relatively easy, but many of the new product opportunities involve radically new types of consumer good and/or service. Drawing on studies of efforts to establish such radical innovations, this paper examines the problems that are confornted in attempting to define what sort of product is actually being created and how it may fit into consume life-styles. Though there is considerable discussion of these topics in industrial circles, it appears that until late stages of product development, little serious analysis of social issues is undertaken— if at all. Furthemore, such discussio of the nature and use of products are more intended to mobilize the group of actors who are needed to support the innovation than to feed substantial information about possible user reqquirements into the design process. The design process is much more liable to invorporate ideas derived from analysis of technological trends and the use of products in professional applications, than information derived from social scienc or market research.     

From Experience Dreams to Market: Crafting a Culture of Innovation

Do certain common principles guide uncommonly innovative companies down the risk-riddled road to value creation? Or do successful innovators break boldly through the barriers to new product development along pathways of their own unique making? Karen Anne Zien and Sheldon Buckler discern a strikingly consistent model of how companies craft and sustain cultures in which innovation is nurtured, rewarded, even demanded. An article by the authors in the September 1996 issue of JPIM recounts seminal tales from the cultures of innovation consciously nourished by 12 leading-edge corporations in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Gathered through an extensive series of interviews with key personnel in the management, technical, manufacturing, and marketing divisions of each firm, the stories revealed seven traits widely shared from one company to the next, irrespective of business focus, geography, or nationality. These traits, as discussed in this article, not only serve to reconcile the culturally contradictory demands of the three critical stages of innovation—the “fuzzy front end,” the product development process, and marketplace operations—but also condition the company as a whole to sustain its innovative capacity over time. The principles at work in highly innovative companies encompass corporate as well as individual attitudes and behaviors. On the one hand, company leaders demonstrate in every decision, action, and communication that innovation propels profitability. So, for the CD project at Sony, the R&D general manager heeded “a voice from above that does not question the possibilities and absolutely believes” in the potential of the enterprise. On the other hand, actively helping individuals create a linkage between their “work life” and longer term “life work” is a crucial step in generating an environment where innovation and high productivity flourish together. Thus, a divisional chief executive at ICI/Imperial Chemicals Industries recognizes the need to “create an environment where people will work at what they are best at doing and what they like doing best.” Although the trail to successful innovation inevitably follows the unique contours of any company's environment, some universal guideposts point the way.