Are Conglomerates Less Environmentally Responsible? An Empirical Examination of Diversification Strategy and Subsidiary Pollution in the U.S. Chemical Industry

This paper is an attempt to address the limited amount of research in the realm of organizational ethical climate in the not-for-profit sector. The paper draws from Victor and Cullen's (1988) theoretical framework which, combines the constructs of cognitive moral development, ethical theory, and locus of analysis. However, as a point of departure from Victor and Cullen's work, the authors propose an alternative methodology to extract ethical climate dimensions based on theoretical considerations. Using the Ethical Climate Questionnaire (ECQ), an exploratory factor analysis is conducted followed by a confirmatory factor analysis using LISREL. The resulting five dimensions are labelled as: individual caring, machiavellianism, independence, social caring, and law and code. Findings provide a somewhat disparate perspective of the ethical climates in a not-for-profit context. First, there is a more discriminating perception of benevolent climate than its for-profit counterpart. Second, the dimensions are polarized between the individual and the cosmopolitan loci of analysis. These findings are then discussed with implications and direction for future research.     

Comparing adolescent-focused obesity prevention and reduction messages

Drug abuse, smoking, and disordered eating literature reveal that some health promoting messages can induce unintended or harmful effects on the target audience. Scholars recommend careful messaging in social marketing campaigns, by shifting the focus away from health outcomes. This study tests the effects of adolescent-targeted obesity prevention messages (body-image, health benefit) with positive experience and unrelated messages on health behavior intentions and unintended effects. A pre-post experiment (N = 95) reveals that body-image public service advertisements (PSAs) may increase anxiety when compared to unrelated PSAs (no main effect, significant planned comparisons are found). Health benefit PSAs are more readable (F = 4.59, p < .05) than all other PSA groups and show higher healthy eating planning (F = 3.19, p < .05) compared to unrelated ones. No significant weight attitudes, self-esteem, and stages of change differences are found by message type. Overall, health benefit messages are not less effective.     

Routine Rigidity and Environmental Sustainability: Why Rational Innovations are Regularly Ignored

Rigidities describe the sluggishness of an organization's response in the face of discontinuous external change, and routine rigidity is the failure to change the organization's processes. This article aims to provide empirical evidence that substantiates the relevance of routine rigidity in the discussion on environmental sustainability. A qualitative approach employs a logic model to analyse two sequences of events and tracks the implementation of innovations that had been overlooked for some time. The evidence shows that the selected organizational innovations were previously inhibited by a failure to change the organization's formal processes and informal cultural norms. This is especially true of innovations that altered the daily routines of the focal firm's employees and of innovations that potentially alienated customers. The characteristics of the innovations (high impact and low barrier to implementation) indicate that firms are now less able to justify inaction through the traditional barriers of environmentally focused innovation. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Internet and E-Commerce Adoption by Agricultural Input Firms

By 1999, most agricultural input firms used company Web sites and adopted some type of Internet strategy. However, far fewer engaged in e-commerce with most activity occurring with suppliers (channel partners) rather than with end customers. Firms perceiving greater logistics and inventory management gains were more engaged in e-commerce activity. The ease of information access, more product choices, easier product comparisons, and improved buying convenience were expected to support farmer e-commerce adoption. However, firm managers indicate that a key to expanding farmers' e-commerce activity is the ability to build personal relationships over the Internet that satisfy farmers' service needs.     

A Model of Crises in Emerging Markets

This paper presents a perfect foresight model of speculative attacks on emerging markets. Credit constrained governments are assumed to have two objectives: to accumulate liquid assets in order to self-insure against shocks to national consumption and to insure poorly regulated domestic financial markets. This policy regime generates endogenous fiscal deficits defined to include the growth of contingent liabilities. The model sets out a sequence of yield differentials consistent with capital inflows followed by anticipated speculative attacks. The model suggests that a common shock generated capital inflows to emerging markets in Asia and Latin America after 1989.     

Is the Debt Crisis History? Recent Private Capital Inflows to Developing Countries

The outlook for economic development for an important groupof middle-income countries has once again been buoyed by substantialprivate capital inflows in the 1990s. As in the 1970s, thisdevelopment has been met with cautious optimism. This empiricalstudy finds that although debt reduction and policy reformsin debtor countries have been important determinants of renewedaccess to international capital markets, changes in internationalinterest rates have been the dominant factor. We calculate theeffects of changes in international interest rates for a "typical"debtor country. We conclude that increases in interest ratesassociated with a business cycle upturn in industrial countriescould depress the secondary market prices of existing debt tolevels inconsistent with continued capital inflows.     

Impacts of Trade and Agricultural Policies on the World Malt and Malting Barley Market

Major changes have been occurring in agricultural policies affecting world malt and malting barley production and trade. This paper analyzes effects of these changes on international trade and competition. A spatially disaggregated linear programing model of the world malt and malting barley sector is constructed and used to analyze effects of changes in European Union supply, European Union restitutions, the U.S. Export Enhancement Program subsidy regime, and import tariffs on malt and malting barley. Policy changes are found to generate substantial changes in trade flows and competitiveness between producing and exporting regions.     

Environmental purchasing and supplier management (EPSM): Theory and practice

The purpose of this research is to explore current literature and practice specifically in environmental purchasing and supplier management (EPSM) in order to understand current activities and also to suggest avenues for future research. First, an assessment of the current literature in environmental purchasing was completed which showed that most of the research in environmental purchasing is not grounded in theory, and is just beginning to appear in premiere business journals, as defined by the Financial Times journal list. This was followed by an examination of company practices in environmental purchasing by assessing a targeted cross-industry subsection of 68 corporate sustainability reports. This analysis revealed that the organizations studied are still in the relatively early stages of environmental purchasing and supplier management, and practices vary by industry predominantly because of external pressure towards environmental sustainability. The authors conclude that given the relatively early stage of development of environmental purchasing practice and research, there is significant opportunity in this area to develop theory and to influence practitioner behavior.     

Analyzing the successful development of a high‐novelty innovation project under a time‐pressured schedule

Research has identified numerous determinants leading to the success of new product development (NPD) projects. However, which particular determinants carry more importance when developing high‐novelty projects under tight time constraints have yet to be clarified. We study the development of ECJ‐400 of Eclipse Aircraft Company, a highly innovative new jet airplane that was designed and built in a very aggressive 229‐day timetable. Through an in‐depth case analysis using interviews with members of the four companies involved in the design, manufacturing, and flight testing of the airplane, we enquire about the underlying factors that led to the successful creation of this product. Propositions were formulated and then depicted respectively through the development of a casual network diagram. Our study contributes to the NPD speed literature by highlighting the particular interrelationships between determinants that are influential toward highly novel time‐pressured NPD projects.     

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Rethinking the Core and Periphery in the Eurozone Crisis

Recent literature on the eurozone crisis has begun to rethink those explanations of its origins that rely on narratives stressing the ‘immaturity’ of political and economic governance in the countries of the European periphery. These narratives are typically challenged by frameworks which understand the eurozone as a region characterised by a ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ hierarchy between the economic growth of Germany, which leads to precarious, ‘financialised’ growth in the periphery. Yet, this article shows that core–periphery scholarship is unable to adequately challenge the immaturity thesis due to its preoccupation with German ‘victimisation’ of the European periphery. By exploring country-specific direction of trade and capital lending statistics, I shows that there is little basis for the argument that Germany is to blame for the origins of the eurozone crisis in the individual countries of the European Periphery. This article shows that by bringing core–periphery analysis into dialogue with Comparative Political Economy, a critical approach to the Eurozone crisis can be developed which leaves behind the myth of the German ‘big bad wolf’. Instead, I show that imbalances between the core and periphery are a product of a flawed construction of the Single Market and Economic and Monetary Union.