On voluntarism and the role of governments in CSR: towards a contingency approach

In the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature, the principle of voluntarism is predominant and implies that responsible business activities are discretionary and reach beyond the rule of law. This principle fails to explain that governments have a great interest in CSR and exercise influence on firms’ CSR activities. Therefore, we argue in favour of a contingency approach on voluntarism in CSR. To this end, we analyse the academic literature to demonstrate how governments are part of the CSR debate. We selected 703 papers where the impact of governments is mentioned from five journals in our field (BEER, BEQ, BSE, BAS, JBE) in the period 1982–2011. We studied the titles and abstracts of these papers and provide an overview of: (i) the geographical orientation of the reviewed studies; (ii) the variety of government levels involved; and (iii) the various subjects where governments appear to be involved. In addition, an in‐depth reading of a subsample of 39 articles offers more details on the role of governments in the CSR literature. Hence, we offer a structured overview on the discussion of CSR and governments while stimulating a contingent understanding of the voluntarism concept in CSR.     

Editorial. Problems, challenges and opportunities: the small business as a setting for management accounting research

This special issue is devoted to management accounting in the small firm. It comprises five studies which address various aspects of this topic, which have been undertaken from different perspectives and which involve different research methodologies. The editorial below reviews the potential for and significance of research in this area and assess the contribution made by the five studies.     

Policy implications

Abstract: In the European Union, the framework of financial services legislation at EU level has been aimed primarily at forming a single market for banks, insurers and other financial services firms. Substantial progress has been made towards this objective. Also, the EU initiatives have stimulated a reappraisal of national regulatory systems. Most of this EU legislation (with the exception of the consumer credit directives) has not had consumer protection as one of its main aims, although it has been assumed that consumers will eventually benefit from a wide choice of financial services providers and from price competition. However, partly in response to consumer pressure, the European Commission is developing a set of initiatives more closely geared to protecting consumers’ interests. Within the context of the EU’s approach, there remain considerable variations in the approach to protecting consumers’ interests in different member states as a result of legal and cultural differences.     

Cow-calf profitability and leptin genotyping

Profitability of cow-calf production is determined largely by market prices, calf weaning weights, and cow productive life. While producers individually have no effect on prices, weaning weights and productive life have genetic influences and hence can be altered by selection programs implemented by producers. We investigate the impact of a mutation in the leptin gene (exon 2; single nucleotide polymorphism [SNP] 305) on cow-calf profitability. Prior research shows that this mutation has effects on performance and traits of fed cattle and milk production in dairy cows. Using data from a teaching-research herd, we find that it is also associated with calf weaning weights and cow productive life. A bio-economic stochastic simulation demonstrates that the mutation has statistically positive impacts on profits, suggesting that producers can profitably make use of this information.     

Hunting the Whale: More Evidence on State Government Leviathans

Caplan holds that governments are Leviathans, seeking to extend their power by increasing government expenditures beyond the level preferred by voters. We extend Caplan's model by examining the real (percentage) growth rates of government. We also examine whether government size increases at an increasing rate as the minority party weakens. We find evidence that supports and fails to support the original Leviathan hypothesis. We also fail to support our extensions of Caplan's hypothesis. Furthermore, our significant and contrary results have intuitively appealing interpretations. From these results, we conclude that the impact of political party power on government spending is ambiguous.     

Toward a sustainable conceptualization of dependent variables in entrepreneurship research

Entrepreneurship researchers have yet to explore the full range variance that occurs in entrepreneurial value creation because we have focused almost exclusively on financial performance as the dependent variable in our research. However, such arbitrary narrowness is not supported by research, which shows entrepreneurs to not focus exclusively on income maximization. Consistent with calls for an expanded view of the consequences of entrepreneurship, we develop a typology of entrepreneurship dependent variables that supports broadening the scope of entrepreneurship research to include economic, environmental and social value. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Implications of a negatively sloped LM curve

Conclusion This paper has shown that the LM curve could be downward sloped if the rate of interest on money (specifically liquid deposits) is sufficiently flexible. If so, the momentary equilibrium could be unstable, especially if the LM curve is far from the vertical (i.e., if the interest rate on money is very flexible). Prospects for instability are enhanced if output adjusts slowly or if the central bank varies the money supply strongly over time in response to the general interest rate. If stability obtains with a downward sloped LM curve, fiscal policy has an unconventional direction of effect on income. Three policy implications follow directly. (1) The rate of interest on deposits which are part of the money supply used as the central bank control tool, should not be allowed to be too flexible (to avoid instability). (2) If the monetary deposit rate is quite flexible, the central bank should not have the money supply react too strongly to the general interest rate—i.e., should not come too close to a pure interest rate policy (again, to avoid instability). (3) If the monetary deposit rate is very flexible, fiscal policy should be used with caution (due to the unconventional direction of effect in the event LM is downward sloped).     

Develop and nurture an international alliance capability

Firms increasingly enter into alliances when expanding into international markets and market segments. Unfortunately, many of these alliances fail because managers are overconfident and unprepared for the diverse and complex contingencies they encounter. Growing research suggests that developing an alliance capability function improves alliance performance. We first identify common types of problems and opportunities that arise from alliance design to alliance dissolution. With this understanding, we then specify the alliance capabilities that must be developed to deal with these contingencies. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.