Management and Business Research on Commercial Diplomacy: Examining Trends and Themes

This article reviews the literature of commercial diplomacy during the period 1960–2014 from a management angle and is organized around four major themes: (1) government’s export/trade promotion function; (2) institutional/organizational arrangements; (3) managerial roles and activities; and (4) interaction between commercial diplomats and businesses. A complementary quantitative analysis tracing current research trends reveals the emergence of relevant publications at the end of the 1970s and a real increase after 2000. It also confirms the relative scarcity of commercial diplomacy literature focusing on the business and management dimension. Gaps in current literature are identified, and suggestions for further research are presented.     

Brands as cultural resources in children’s peer culture

This article examines how children collectively appropriate brands as cultural resources. From the New Childhood Studies perspective, an ethnographic study was conducted in schools to investigate the engagement of 10- to 11-year-old children in brand culture. The findings demonstrate that, through a process similar to Corsaro’s model of interpretive reproduction, children do not simply reproduce brand culture; instead, they actively use branding to fuel their peer culture. Mastering and manipulating brands are thus sources for integration or exclusion within the peer group and for differentiation from the adult world. We show the paradoxical impacts of branding on children’s well-being and participate in the debate on their vulnerability to marketing by highlighting how they deploy brand culture to interact in their social spheres, with the consequence being that their would-be empowerment remains entangled in the “brandscape.” Last, we contribute to a better understanding of the concept of culturally based brand literacy.     

Designing and Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility: An Integrative Framework Grounded in Theory and Practice

This article introduces an integrative framework of corporate social responsibility (CSR) design and implementation. A review of CSR literature – in particular with regard to design and implementation models – provides the background to develop a multiple case study. The resulting integrative framework, based on this multiple case study and Lewin’s change model, highlights four stages that span nine steps of the CSR design and implementation process. Finally, the study identifies critical success factors for the CSR process.     

Designing and Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility: An Integrative Framework Grounded in Theory and Practice

This article introduces an integrative framework of corporate social responsibility (CSR) design and implementation. A review of CSR literature – in particular with regard to design and implementation models – provides the background to develop a multiple case study. The resulting integrative framework, based on this multiple case study and Lewin’s change model, highlights four stages that span nine steps of the CSR design and implementation process. Finally, the study identifies critical success factors for the CSR process.     

Spatial determinants of productivity growth on agri‐food Spanish firms: a comparison between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms

This study analyses the effect of the spatial factor, location, and interaction effects among peer companies, on the productivity growth of agri‐food companies in Spain. With this aim, we build a productivity growth index and apply a multiequational Seemingly Unrelated Regression on a sample of 344 Spanish cooperatives and investor‐owned firms for the period 2010–2012. Our findings show that agri‐food firms are influenced by spatial factors finding interesting differences between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms. With regard to the geographical location, cooperatives in the western of Spain show higher productivity growth rates, whereas investor‐owned firms in the northeast of Spain present better results. The interaction effect among closer peer companies is also a relevant factor to determine the productivity growth in agri‐food companies. This factor is more relevant for cooperatives than for investor‐owned firms.     

Spatial dynamic analysis of productivity growth of agri‐food companies

This study analyzes the spatial dynamics in productivity growth and its components for a sample of agri‐food companies in Murcia (Spain) over the period 2005–2014. We find that productivity growth of a company is related to productivity growth of neighboring companies, in both the short and long term. The marginal effects of the different factors on productivity growth are stronger in the short run rather than in the long run. Land characteristics and economic territorial conditions have the largest marginal effect on productivity growth and its components. This study contributes to the existing literature by including spatial interactions in the analysis of productivity growth.     

Rushing to Overpay: Modeling and Measuring the REIT Premium

We explore the questions of why Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) pay more for real estate than non-REIT buyers and by how much. First, we develop a search model where REITs optimally pay more for property because (1) they are willing, due to cost of capital advantages and, (2) they are occasionally rushed, due to external regulatory time constraints and internal incentives to deploy capital quickly. Second, using commercial real estate transactions, we find that the extant hedonic pricing models contain an unobserved explanatory variables bias leading to inflated estimates of the REIT premium. Third, using a repeat-sales methodology that controls for unobserved property characteristics, we derive more plausible estimates of the REIT premium. Consistent with our model, we also find the REIT-buyer premium depends on the size of the REIT advantage, the rush to deploy, and the relative presence of REITs in the market.     

Fractional cointegration and the term structure

According to the expectations theory of the term structure of interest rates, the yield spread between long-term and short-term interest rates is an optimal predictor of future changes in short rates over the long-run. Results concerning the empirical validity of this hypothesis are not unanimous. These contradictions may be due to the fact that the traditional concept of cointegration is too restrictive. We refer here to the concept of fractional cointegration introduced by Granger (1986). We study the expectations theory by testing for the existence of a (fractional) cointegration relationship between short-term and long-term interest rates. There is evidence of fractional cointegration between interest rates for the G7 countries, with the exception of Germany.First version received: July 2002 / Final version received: July 2003We thank two anonymous referees for very helpful and detailed comments.     

Aligning ERP systems with companies’ real needs: an ‘Operational Model Based’ method

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems offer standard functionalities that have to be configured and customised by a specific company depending on its own requirements. A consistent alignment is therefore an essential success factor of ERP projects. To manage this alignment, an ‘Operational Model Based’ method is proposed. It is based on the design and the matching of models, and conforms to the modelling views and constructs of the ISO 19439 and 19440 enterprise-modelling standards. It is characterised by: (1) a predefined design and matching order of the models; (2) the formalisation, in terms of modelling constructs, of alignment and misalignment situations; and (3) their association with a set of decisions in order to mitigate the misalignment risk. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of the alignment management during ERP projects is given. Unlike existing methods, this one includes decisions related to the organisational changes an ERP system can induce, as well as criteria on which the best decision can be based. In this way, it provides effective support and guidance to companies implementing ERP systems, as the alignment process is detailed and structured. The method is applied on the ERP project of a Small and Medium Enterprise, showing that it can be used even in contexts where the ERP project expertise level is low.     

Ethnic diversity on top corporate boards: a resource dependency perspective

This paper examines the presence of ethnic minority (EM) directors on FTSE 100 company boards, following the 2003 Higgs Review, which strongly recommended that more efforts should be made to find talented non-executive directors with diverse backgrounds, including EM individuals. The 20 companies with EM directors are significantly more likely than other boards to have higher market capitalization, a larger workforce and a larger, more independent and gender-diverse board. Their sectors are banking and life assurance, media, pharmaceuticals, energy, chemicals, mining, telecoms, and food and beverage production. The 27 EM directors hold 28 seats, representing 2.4 per cent of all FTSE 100 directorships, almost the same as in 2001, indicating little impact of the 2003 Higgs recommendations. Next, drawing on resource dependency theory, this paper considers the human and social capital of EM directors. They have high levels of human capital, particularly advanced education and considerable social capital from connections to important resources. Even executive directors provide links to public bodies and community influence. Boardroom expertise and linkages acquired through these appointments fit well with challenges faced by companies in the sectors where EM directors have been appointed, particularly relating to globalization, post-colonialism, increased regulation, importance of CSR, reputation, learning and increased connectedness, supporting the resource dependency explanation.