The IMF and the countries of Eastern Europe

The countries of Eastern Europe need to raise considerable finance not only in order to improve their balances of payments but also to adjust the structure of their economies over the long term to changed internal and external conditions. The adjustment measures require capital, but the Eastern European countries have only limited scope to broaden their own capital base. What actual or potential significance does the international Monetary Fund have for overcoming the difficulties of the CMEA countries in question?     

Is Corporate Responsibility Converging? A Comparison of Corporate Responsibility Reporting in the USA, UK, Australia, and Germany

Corporate social reporting, while not mandatory in most countries, has been adopted by many large companies around the world and there are now a variety of competing global standards for non-financial reporting, such as the Global Reporting Initiative and the UN Global Compact. However, while some companies (e.g., Henkel, BHP, Johnson and Johnson) have a long standing tradition in reporting non-financial information, other companies provide only limited information, or in some cases, no information at all. Previous studies have suggested that there are, country and industry-specific, differences in the extent of CSR reports (e.g., Kolk et al.: 2001, Business Strategy and the Environment 10, 15–28; Kolk: 2005, Management International Review 45, 145–166; Maignan and Ralston: 2002, Journal of International Business Studies 33(3), 497–514). However, findings are inconclusive or contradictory and it is often difficult to compare previous studies owing to the idiosyncratic methods used in each study (Graafland et al.: 2004, Journal of Business Ethics 53, 137–152). Furthermore, previous studies have relied mainly on simple measures, such as word counts and page counts of reports, to compare the extent of reporting that may not capture significant differences in the content of the reports. In this article, we seek to overcome some of these deficiencies by using textual analysis software and a more robust statistical method to more objectively and reliably compare the CSR reports of firms in different industries and countries. We examine a sample of leading companies in four countries (US, UK, Australia, and Germany) and test whether or not membership of the Global Compact makes a difference to CSR reporting and is overcoming industry and country specific factors that limit standardization. We conclude that GlobalCompact membership is having an effect only in certain areas of CSR reporting, related to the environment and workers, and that businesses from different countries vary significantly in the extent to which they promote CSR and the CSR issues that they choose to emphasize in their reports. These country differences are argued to be related to the different institutional arrangements in each country.     

The role of transformational leadership and leaders’ skills for new agricultural cooperatives in post-soviet countries

Team leadership plays a crucial role in the management of agricultural cooperatives, especially in post-Soviet countries where farmers keep bad experiences from the collectivization of their farms. The main objective of the research was to investigate how important the role of leadership is in the process of establishing, initial sustaining of cooperation and members’ commitment among small farmers in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Leadership was analysed from multiple perspectives using an explanatory sequential mixed approach involving quantitative and qualitative methods. We interviewed 293 cooperative leaders and members. The partial least squares structural equation model was used to examine the relationship between multiple constructs and variables. We concluded that leaders do differ in some of their characteristics from other members. They are the most active in the group, influencing all major decisions, playing a crucial role in trust-building and group cohesion. Their skills and leadership style are significantly important for members’ commitment to the group's success. However, the dominance of group founders and lack of understanding of cooperative principles among members indicate some emerging challenges to the cooperatives’ sustainability and efficiency, and it is necessary to focus on the progressive professionalization and capacity building of leaders while maintaining a transformational leadership style.     

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND THE QUANTITY AND DISTRIBUTION OF EDUCATION: A SURVEY

Abstract The focus of this survey is to discuss different attempts at incorporating the distributional dimension of human capital into the theoretical and empirical growth framework. We present a series of models which deviate from the direct link between the aggregate or average level of human capital and economic growth in that they introduce the distribution of education as a new element in explaining the relationship under investigation. After surveying the theoretical literature, we present recent empirical work on the relation between economic performance and the average level, as well as the distribution of education, respectively.     

CLASSIFICATION PROBLEMS AND THE DIVIDING LINE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND THE MARKET: AN EXAMINATION OF NHS FOUNDATION TRUST CLASSIFICATION IN THE UK

ABSTRACT: In this paper we argue that national accounting categories provide an inadequate basis for evaluating differences between public and private sector services. This is because accounting categories rely on economic concepts such as market price but do not take account of substantive public policy goals such as universality. The argument has important consequences for the structures and systems of delivery especially where nonprofit providers and social enterprise models are substituted for public bodies formerly integrated into the government's delivery system. Using an example taken from the UK's National Health Service, we show that the mechanisms for ensuring universality through redistribution are not sufficiently taken into account for classification purposes.