Editorial

Original Papers

Editorial     

Engaging Hong Kong businesses in environmental change: drivers and barriers

Hong Kong's businesses have been slow to embrace environmental management principles, particularly in the SME sector. This article analyses key barriers and incentives to engaging Hong Kong businesses with voluntary environmental initiatives and compares their relevance for companies of different sizes. As in other countries, SMEs show a much lower uptake of such activities than larger companies. Their approach towards environmental management is predominantly reactive, and legislation remains the key driver for engaging them with environmental change. Inadequate government policy and support, societal attitudes and corporate culture all contribute significantly to the comparatively poor development of corporate environmental management among Hong Kong companies. As long as most SMEs regard voluntary environmental activities as costly and unnecessary ‘extras’ that endanger their competitiveness and detract resources from their core business without offering any tangible benefits, fundamental improvements in their environmental performance will be difficult to achieve. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Struggles in optimal labelling: how different consumers react to various labels for genetically modified foods

The labelling of genetically modified (GM) foods is an important policy issue, as consumers' attitudes towards these foods appear to be quite sensitive to information about their potential benefits and risks. Because it is difficult for labels to differ across consumers, differences in reactions to label information could lead to conflicts across consumer groups or to different market outcomes. Using factor and cluster analysis, we uncover three consumer segments with different attitudes to the risks and benefits of GM foods. Our segmentation‐based analysis on consumer reactions to information points out important differences across consumers. Not only did we find differences across segments in how they view the credibility of GM‐related information, we also find differences in how information influences segments' perceptions of the product, and in their likelihood to buy.     

Work-to-family enrichment and gender inequalities in eight European countries

Abstract

All social roles have positive and rewarding as well as negative/problematic aspects. Research on the work–family interface has predominantly focused on conflicting roles. In contrast, this paper extends research on work–family enrichment (WFE), a positive aspect of work and gender differences in WFE in a cross-national context. Drawing upon social role theory and the culture sensitive theory on work–family enrichment, we examined gender differences in experiences of developmental WFE in a sample of service sector employees in eight European countries. In line with traditional gender roles, women reported more WFE than men. The relationship was moderated by both an objective and subjective measure of gender egalitarianism but in the opposite direction as hypothesized. The gender gap in WFE was larger in more gender-egalitarian countries, where women may be better able to transfer resources from the work domain to benefit their family role than in low egalitarian societies. National differences in labour market factors, family models and the public discourse on work–life balance mainly explain the unanticipated findings.     

Trading Hot-Air. The Influence of Permit Allocation Rules,Market Power and the US Withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol

After the conferences in Bonn and Marrakech, it is likely that international emissions trading will be realized in the near future. Major influences on the permit market␣are the institutional detail, the participation structure and the treatment of hot-air. Different scenarios not only differ in their implications for the demand and supply of permits and thus the permit price, but also in their allocative effects. In this paper we discuss likely the institutional designs for permit allocation in the hot-air economies and the use of market power and quantify the resulting effects by using the computable general equilibrium model DART. It turns out that the amount of hot-air supplied will be small if hot-air economies cooperate in their decisions. Under welfare maximization, more hot-airis supplied than in the case where governments try to maximize revenues from permit sales.     

Competitive outcomes and the inner core of NTU market games

We consider the inner core as a solution concept for cooperative games with non-transferable utility (NTU) and its relationship to payoffs of competitive equilibria of markets that are induced by NTU games. An NTU game is an NTU market game if there exists a market such that the set of utility allocations a coalition can achieve in the market coincides with the set of utility allocations the coalition can achieve in the game. In this paper, we introduce a new construction of a market based on a closed subset of the inner core which satisfies a strict positive separability. We show that the constructed market represents the NTU game and, further, has the given closed set as the set of payoff vectors of competitive equilibria. It turns out that this market is not uniquely determined, and thus, we obtain a class of markets. Our results generalize those relating to competitive outcomes of NTU market games in the literature.     

An appraisal of the Vulamehlo Handcraft Project

The sale of Zulu handcrafts from the Spioenkop Nature Reserve curio shop was a project initiated by the KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Service to improve the social and economic status of the women of a neighbouring community and thereby address the Neighbour Relations Policy of the organisation. This initiative was deemed viable by the women who all needed an additional income. Through collaboration, the project was implemented successfully in a way that gave the women access to resources within the reserve in order to make craft items which were then sold on their behalf. Responses to structured interviews with the women suggest that the project has addressed the social needs of the community by providing several non-tangible benefits. Although the economic benefits from craft item sales were minimal in terms of the average income per person, they were significant to the most committed project members and were deemed significant by all the women who now had disposable cash. The economic viability of the project could be improved by sourcing additional outlets for sales of craft items, and the women would be able to meet an increase in the demand for these items. The predicted increase in the flow of tourism in the uThukela region, together with improved marketing strategies, will provide opportunities for future local markets.     

Managing Multiple Institutional Logics and the Use of Accounting: Insights from a German Higher Education Institution

This paper examines the use of accounting in managing the co-existence of different institutional logics in a German higher education institution (HEI), and its impact on the HEI. The study is of particular interest as the HEI analyzed pursued its own corporatization through a re-organization from a state into a foundation university. We show that this corporatization through the adoption of new public management related ideas leads to institutional complexity arising from the co-existence of extant state and emergent business logics. Our study suggests that HEIs may deploy particular accounting practices shaped by business logic only superficially, so as to satisfy stakeholders such as governmental authorities in order to enhance their legitimacy following a self-imposed reform, while the operation of the HEI remains rooted in state logic. Specifically, the findings suggest that in the case of actual changes to the budgetary process arising through the corporatization and an emergent logic, failure to replace abandoned accounting practices shaped by a previously dominant logic with equivalent practices adhering to either extant or emerging logic(s), may put the organization at risk. Overall, our study contributes to a better understanding of the dangers of an organizational response to institutional complexity, referred to as reactive decoupling, in the management of institutional complexity and points to its negative impact on organizations' hybridization capability.     

Antecedents of consumers' time perceptions in a hypermarket retailer

This study examines the effects of five antecedents on consumers' time perceptions in a hypermarket environment. Findings indicate that the actual shopping time spent in the store and planned shopping activities significantly influence consumers' shopping time perceptions, while consumers' waiting time perceptions are driven by both actual checkout waiting time and actual shopping time. The article examines time gaps, i.e. consumers' errors in time estimation, as related to store loyalty intention and finds that past consumer purchases moderate the relationship between both time gaps and store loyalty intention. Managerial implications are discussed in the article.     

An environmental social marketing intervention among employees: assessing attitude and behaviour change

Abstract

The paper examines the impact of individual and organisational factors on two simultaneous environmental social marketing interventions (SmartPrint and heating/cooling) and types of behaviours (recycling, printing and heating/cooling), among employees of a British City Council. Using a quantitative methodology, in the form of a situated experiment, self-reported attitudes, perceptions of organisational support, self-reported behaviours and actual behaviours were measured before and after the interventions. The interventions generated significant changes in employees’ overall environmental behaviour, heating/cooling behaviour and in some perceptions of organisational support (support and incentives/rewards). Findings are used to detail recommendations for future campaigns aiming to improve organisations’ environmental performance and to drive enduring employee behavioural change.