The inside effects of a strong external employer brand: how external perceptions can influence organizational absenteeism rates

In this study, we invoke a social identity and job resources perspective to investigate the impact of an organization’s internal and external employer brand images on employee absenteeism. Specifically, using workforce samples of 56 Belgian companies (n = 12670) and a second independent study sample (n = 4461), we assess the relative importance of the internal employer brand image (i.e. employee perceptions) and the external employer brand image (i.e. non-employee perceptions) in predicting the absenteeism rate in these organizations. Results show that corporate absenteeism decreases as internal (employee) views and external (non-employee) views of the organization decline. Results further show that the external employer brand image may be a more important driver of absenteeism than the internal employer brand image. Such results highlight that an organization’s external image may be a strong antecedent of important internal organizational behavior outcomes.     

An integrative model for competency development in organizations: the Flemish case

The prominent role of competency development in enhancing the success of employees and organizations has drawn the attention of practitioners leading them to introduce competency development as a central part of their human resource practices. Unfortunately, this strong managerial interest has not been fully translated into the academic world, creating a gap between theory and practice. The main purpose of this study is to fill this gap by exploring the nature of competency development in 22 Flemish organizations through a longitudinal multiple case study design. By using a grounded theory approach, a framework has emerged mapping out the different steps of competency development in the participating organizations. As such, this study can be an important first step toward closing the gap between practice and theory concerning competency development in organizations.     

The evolution of environmental management: from stage models to performance evaluation

In the past two decades, academics and practitioners have attempted to improve understanding of environmental management by classifying companies' environmental behaviour, and evaluating their performance. Driven by both research and societal interest, this has resulted in a wave of stage or phase models, and a range of typologies. This article gives an overview of the development of such environmental management models, analysing their characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. An evolution can be noted in the direction of typologies and non‐linear models to deal with organizational and strategic complexities. Models are starting to pay more attention to the management side. To overcome problems of operationalization and limited company and sector specificity, environmental performance evaluation systems have emerged more recently. Although comprehensive performance assessments are still unavailable, the tenets of such a system can already be delineated. The paper presents these components, and draws conclusions on the contribution of environmental management models and performance evaluation systems. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment     

From Chain Liability to Chain Responsibility MNE Approaches to Implement Safety and Health Codes in International Supply Chains

This article examines whether the involvement of stakeholders in the design of corporate codes of conduct leads to a higher implementation likelihood of the code. The empirical focus is on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH). The article compares the inclusion of OSH issues in the codes of conduct of 30 companies involved in International Framework Agreements (IFAs), agreed upon by trade unions and multinational enterprises, with those of a benchmark sample of 38 leading Multinational Enterprises in comparable industries. It is found that codes of the IFA group have a higher implementation likelihood in OSH than the codes of the benchmark group. Further, European firms, culturally more used to stakeholder involvement, score higher than their US and Japanese competitors, and hence are more capable of addressing the safety and health issues in international supply chains. The implementation likelihood of codes seems closely related to the type of corporate CSR approach.     

Environmental reporting by the Fortune Global 250: exploring the influence of nationality and sector

While research on environmental reporting frequently includes large multinational enterprises, the number of surveys that systematically analyses a whole set of such firms, including the non‐reporters, is limited – and mainly focuses on the United States. This article presents the state of environmental reporting by the Fortune Global 250, all large multinationals with a potentially large impact on other firms. Of these 250 firms, 35% has a recent environmental report, with another 32% publishing other types of environmental information. Reporting frequencies between the financial and non‐financial sector differed considerably, at 15 and 44% respectively. Besides an analysis of the number and contents of environmental reports, the importance of sectoral differences and firms' nationality is also considered. A framework is developed that posits the existence of reporting legislation in firms' home countries (some in place/pending, or none) against the direct environmental impact of the sector (large or small). The results of the analysis fit partially in this framework. Only a small number of reporting firms originates from countries with some kind of legislation (particularly The Netherlands), but national societal pressure seems to play a large role (especially in the UK, The Netherlands and Germany). Many operate in sectors with a substantial direct environmental impact (chemicals, pharmaceuticals, oil and motor vehicles and parts); reporting in sectors with more indirect effects is getting off the ground. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The Role of Public and Private Protection in Disruptive Innovation: The Automotive Industry and the Emergence of Low‐Emission Vehicles

In the automotive industry, the need to move toward more sustainable trajectories of innovation has received much attention. Car manufacturers have started to develop lower emission alternatives for the internal combustion engine, particularly electric, hybrid, and fuel‐cell vehicles. They face the challenge, however, of how to make a potentially disruptive, systemic, and societally embedded technology such as a low‐emission vehicle attractive to mainstream customers. While literature has suggested that companies can empower the initial stages of disruptive innovation by creating protected spaces themselves and/or by taking advantage of such spaces created by public actors, the specific role of these different types of protection levers—private and/or public—has remained unclear. This article therefore investigates to what extent and how private and public protection levers affect firm‐level strategies to increase the attractiveness of disruptive and systemic innovations to mainstream customers. This is explored empirically through a multiple case study of the emergence of low‐emission vehicles within three car manufacturers—Daimler, General Motors, and Toyota—in the context of European, Japanese, and U.S. policies. The empirical analysis is conducted on a data set consisting of more than 9000 articles from two trade magazines, a car magazine and a financial newspaper for the period of 1997–2010. As main findings, the article identifies regulation, tax incentives, and public–private partnerships as the public protection levers that impose or stimulate “new” performance metrics such as fuel economy and vehicle emissions. It also finds that resource allocation, niche occupation, and collaboration‐integration act as the main private protection levers. In addition, two protection levers emerge from the data that are rather prominent in this context: the use of regulation imposing large‐scale commercialization of low‐emission vehicles and dumping of products in the market below cost price. The article concludes with two different protection trajectories—a public protection trajectory and a private protection trajectory—which explain how car manufacturers leverage the various protection levers to deal with disruptive technology. The main implication of the two trajectories is that while the public protection trajectory stalled due to the systemic, socially embedded technological impediments of electric vehicles and fuel‐cell vehicles, the private protection trajectory picked up the remains of the public protection trajectory and has gained momentum, continuing until today.     

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Drivers of Corporate Social Performance: Evidence from Foreign and Domestic Firms in Mexico

The literature on corporate social performance (CSP) is largely split between approaches that consider CSP to be extrinsically driven and those that consider it to be intrinsically driven. While the management literature has paid attention to drivers of both types, the relationship between the two remains largely unstudied, particularly in the international setting. Meanwhile, the international business (IB) literature has addressed the international dimension of CSP more directly, but focuses largely on extrinsic pressures. Our paper links the management and IB literatures by addressing intrinsic drivers (management commitment to ethics) in conjunction with extrinsic (trade‐related) drivers for both foreign‐ and domestically‐owned firms in a single‐market setting. Using survey data from 121 auto parts suppliers in Mexico, we find that management commitment to ethics is a dominant driver of CSP among both foreign and domestic firms. More importantly, management commitment to ethics interacts positively with trade‐related pressures in raising CSP levels.