Forcing Firms to Think About the Future: Economic Incentives and the Fate of Hazardous Waste

What is the cost of off-site hazardous waste disposal? In addition to paying for disposal fees and shipments costs, generators of hazardous waste can potentially be held liable for the cost of cleanup if the waste disposal site contaminates the environment after closure or abandonment and thus falls under the federal or state Superfund legislation. This paper empirically examines the sensitivity of individual hazardous waste generators to these categories of costs, exploiting the variation across states in factors influencing disposal costs, and in the structure of the liability imposed on waste generators under certain circumstances by state laws. We fit nested logit models to predict the waste management method (incineration or landfill disposal) and the state of destination for shipments of halogenated solvent waste used for metal cleaning in manufacturing and reported in the Toxic Release Inventory in 1988–1990. Waste generators respond to transportation costs and to proxies for current disposal costs. Generators also find the concurrent presence of strict and joint-and-several liability a deterrent, but this deterrent effect does not vary with the wealth of the firm or the volume of the waste shipped.     

International Comparisons of Australia's Infrastructure Performance

International benchmarking has played a key role in the reform of Australia's infrastructure industries by promoting indirect or yardstick competition, in highlighting the need for further reform and building a consensus for implementing necessary changes. The international benchmarking of infrastructure performance by the Bureau of Industry Economics (BIE) between 1991 and 1996 did much to focus attention on the need for change. The BIE examined the performance of eight infrastructure industries relative to international best practice: electricity, rail freight, telecommunications, the waterfront, road freight, coastal shipping, aviation and gas supply. Performance comparisons concentrated on indicators of price, service quality, labour productivity and capital productivity. This paper reviews and summarises the performance comparisons the BIE undertook over the last three years of its infrastructure benchmarking program. The BIE international benchmarking program provides a useful role model for other countries wanting to seriously pursue reform of their infrastructure industries.     

How Useful Is the Genuine Savings Rate as a Sustainability Indicator for Regions within Countries? Australia and Queensland Compared

This article shows how macroeconomic indicators of sustainable development can be applied to the Queensland economy. While recognising the complex and contentious theoretical and practical issues in deriving the Genuine Savings Rate (GSR) to serve as such an indicator, we use the World Bank's methodology, which includes only mineral depletion, deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions as environmental terms, to estimate GSRs for Queensland for the period 1989 to 1999, and compare these to World Bank estimates of Australia's GSR for the same period. We find that Queensland has a higher rate of natural resource depletion and a lower GSR than the whole of Australia. We also examine how well the World Bank GSR performs as a ‘headline’ measure of overall sustainability, review criticisms of the GSR, and compare its implicit policy implications with those of net state savings, and of the GSR plus a suite of other indicators.     

Translating sustainable and smart city strategies into performance measurement systems

This paper shows how sustainable and smart strategies can be implemented in cities and how these strategies influence, and are influenced by, performance measurement systems. Drawing upon the Foucauldian notion of governmentality, the authors present the case of Gothenburg in Sweden, where they interviewed the key actors involved in a new sustainability strategy. Translating strategy into performance measurement systems requires collaboration across organizational boundaries and considerations of financial goals and social and human aspects.     

An integrated algorithm for three-way compositional data

Quality & Quantity - Compositional data with a tridimensional structure are not uncommon in social sciences. The CANDECOMP/PARAFAC model is one of the most adequate techniques for modeling...     

How young firms achieve growth: reconciling the roles of growth motivation and innovative activities

This special issue focuses on entrepreneurship, innovation and enterprise dynamics, as these key components of any prospering economy are at the heart of the current policy discussion. It gathers the latest national and comparative cross-country evidence about: new business venture formation and the role of framework conditions in fostering entrepreneurial activities; the determinants and outcomes of firms’ innovative activities and, more generally, of business and innovation dynamics; and the determinants and patterns of post-entry firm growth performance. The contributions synthesised in this introductory piece all rely on sound micro-level data and robust econometrics and propose novel findings that are relevant for policy making. Among them, that risk aversion encourages individuals to invest in balanced skill profiles, making them more likely to become entrepreneurs; and that while micro firms may grow when they are young, they are less likely to do so when old.     

Navigating compromise: How founder authenticity affects venture identification amidst organizational hybridity

Founders of hybrid ventures encounter organizational tensions that can compel compromise in both their organizations' and their own personal values. Such compromises may, in turn, undermine founders' identification with their ventures. In a multi-case study analysis we examine why social entrepreneurs differ in their responses to organizational tensions, both at the firm- and individual-level, and how such differences relate to their venture identification. Specifically, our findings reveal that strategic decisions made in the context of values-based complexity are often accompanied by concerns regarding founder authenticity—that is, judgments about the alignment between founders' actions and the commitments or responsibilities associated with their identities as entrepreneurs. Yet, because founders differ in the basis from which they seek to maintain such alignment, these differences shape both hybridity management and subsequent venture identification. By unpacking such differences, our findings contribute new theory, bridging recent scholarship on founder authenticity with longstanding research on organizational identification and hybrid organizing.     

Defining and Defending a Progressive Market Square: Bringing Institutionalist Development Discourse in Line with the Reality of Post-Soviet Transition Experiences

Abstract:

This article is a response to two crucial ideas about progressive institutional change: the first is J. Fagg Foster’s principle of “minimal social dislocation,” which asserts that socio-economic changes should be implemented gradually, to avoid unraveling the social fabric of the community; the second is Karl Polanyi’s principles of redistribution of rights and powers by relevant authorities and reciprocity, a symmetrical and highly personalized exchange system, which is likewise a protective mechanism that society employs against anonymity and disintegration brought about by unregulated market. Using lessons learned in the thirty-year transition to market in post-Soviet countries, this article argues that to commence progressive institutional change in the honesty- and transparency-resistant cultures of former Soviet states, impersonal exchange and impartial rule of law must be given far greater weight than personalization of contacts and continuation of cultural traditions.     

Opportunities and Challenges in Engaging Citizens in the Co-Production of Infrastructure-Based Public Services in Australia

Research and practice have observed a shift towards service-oriented approaches that depend on input from citizens as co-producers of services. Yet in the delivery of public infrastructure the focus is still on managing assets rather than services. Using a Policy Delphi approach, we found that although experts advocate service-centric approaches guidelines and policies lack a service-centric perspective. Findings revealed a range of impediments to effective stakeholder involvement. The paper contributes to co-production and new public governance literature and offers directions for public infrastructure decision-makers to support and reconnect disengaged government–citizen relations, and determine ways of understanding optimal service outcomes.