A political economy approach to regulated Australian information disclosures

In an effort to improve comparability between socially responsible investment products and standardize investment terminology, Australian legislators recently required investment managers to report to retail investors the extent to which 'social considerations' are used in portfolio construction. Using a lens of political economy, this paper assesses whether the objectives of the legislation to standardize investment terminology, promote inter-product comparability and encourage the accountability of product claims have been met. The context of legislative development is examined in Australian Parliamentary debates. Practised accountabilities are identified by examining a representative sample of the initial set of regulated disclosures issued. The quality of regulated information disclosures is assessed by the degree of correlation with legislators' objectives and the regulatory requirements. Initial disclosures were poor, providing little basis for comparability. In some instances, the quality of information had declined relative to the information supplied on a voluntary basis before the legislation took effect. The evidence supports a criticism of a regulatory laissez faire approach to self-reporting and an argument for more directed regulation of management processes.     

The natural environment as a primary stakeholder: the case of climate change

In this paper, we review the debate surrounding whether or not the natural environment should be considered an organizational stakeholder. We argue for a broad definition of stakeholders, and present a case for the natural environment being an easily identifiable primary stakeholder when climate change is brought into the debate. We develop a conceptual stakeholder identification framework by combining and extending the work of Mitchell, Agle and Wood, and Driscoll and Starik. We approach the stakeholder issue from a strategic rather than moral or ethical perspective. In particular, we contend that power, legitimacy, urgency and proximity are combined when climatic changes, such as increasingly frequent anomalous extreme weather, can damage business infrastructure, resources, products and market, overshadowing moral and ethical aspects of the debate. We also identify key implications for business and policymakers, and highlight opportunities for future research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Valuing not-for-profit and charity brands—real insight or just smoke and mirrors

Brands introduce emotional decision-making criteria, differentiating all brands across the not-for-profit sector. Brands shift the demand curve upwards and the cost curve downwards. The result is higher turnover, profit and surplus ‘consumer utility’. Brand equity is a measure of the emotional reservoir that shows how far the demand curve has moved and what the future cash flows will be. Brand valuation is a snapshot of those future cash flows. David Haigh and Stephen Gilbert's article describes how these three concepts fit together and explains how and why they have become best practice in marketing and financial management. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integration and Causality in International Freight Markets: Modeling with Error Correction and Directed Acyclic Graphs

Using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) and error correction models, we study the dynamics of freight prices that comprise the Baltic Panamax Index (BPI), the index on which freight futures trading was based. The DAGs are used to make statements about the contemporaneous correlations between prices and allow us to address the construction of the data-determined orthogonalization on contemporaneous innovation covariance, which is crucial in providing inference in innovation accounting techniques. Our results provide a source of information on price discovery and suggest that the index is not appropriately composed and weighted, which may help explain the failure of the Baltic International Freight Futures Exchange (BIFFEX) contract.     

A configural framework of practice change for B corporations

There is increasing scholarly attention toward understanding how enterprises seeking prosocial impact organize their practices. However, this research has primarily explained changes in isolated practices and has not fully explored the mechanisms for such changes. This omission is relevant for social entrepreneurship scholars who seek to better understand how practices operate not simply internally but can effect a positive impact. We address this omission by drawing from a unique longitudinal dataset – assessment scores of enterprises seeking to be certified and recertified as B Corporations (B Corps). We also conducted 24 interviews with B Corp leaders, B Lab staff, and venture fund managers. We found that B Corps shifted their practice configurations as they underwent assessment and reassessment for certification. We also found that exogenous factors such as size and sector, and endogenous factors such as the nature of practices explained shifts in practice configurations. Our contribution is twofold. First, we test deductive claims that social enterprises re-organize for impact. We show that enterprises update their practice configurations over time. Second, we propose an inductively derived theoretical framework with three building blocks: affordability, interpretability, and social referents to explain the shifts in practice configurations.