The effect of the ‘evoking freedom’ technique on sales in a computer-mediated field setting

The ‘evoking freedom’ technique is a verbal compliance procedure which solicits someone to comply with a request by simply telling a person that he/she is free to accept or to refuse the request. However, the effect of this technique has never been tested in a selling context. Previous customers (N = 900) of an extreme sports store were solicited by email to participate in a campaign where they were offered a gift voucher if they persuaded someone to become a new customer of the store. According to the case, the email contained a sentence that stated that they were free to participate or not in the operation. It was found that the ‘evoking freedom’ condition was associated with a higher number of new customers (+8.4%) than the control condition (+4.7%).     

The Equivalency Principle for Discounting the Value of Natural Assets: An Application to an Investment Project in the Basque Coast

Making decisions about optimal investments in green infrastructure necessitates setting social discount rates. This paper suggests a practical way for determining the discount rate for projects or programmes in which one of the options is to maintain or restore land to an undeveloped state. We propose an “equivalency principle” to derive a simple rule that sets the discount rate. The rule is based on the premise that the long term value of a piece of undeveloped land ought to be at least the same as the value of an identical piece of land in the vicinity to which permission has been granted for development. We illustrate this principle with various case studies and we apply it to a contentious investment project in the Basque Country associated with the regeneration of a large scale harbour that involves reclaiming undeveloped land that has important ecological values, including for the conservation of a marine ecosystem.     

Does Stakeholder Management have a Dark Side?

This article is a first attempt to line out the conditions under which executives might have a real self-interest in pursuing a broad stakeholder management (SM) orientation to enlarge their power. We suggest that managers have wider latitude of action under an SM approach, even when this is instrumental to financial performance. The causally ambiguity of the performance effects of idiosyncratic relationships with stakeholders not only makes SM strategy difficult for competitors to imitate but also increases managerial discretion. When managers use this situation for their own benefit, they can undermine the purported goals of the SM approach. By analyzing some of the factors that might lead to such disfunctionalities, this article advances a theory of the potential dark side of SM.     

Economic Performance and Leadership Accountability: An Econometric Analysis

Logit models of leadership duration test whether different agents are responsible for constitutional and unconstitutional transfers of power. Lagged values of per capita real investment have a significantly negative impact on unconstitutional transitions. This suggests that the elites of less developed countries determine the timing of unconstitutional transfers as they are the ones with investment capabilities. Lagged values of per capita real consumption are associated with the well-being of an average citizen. However, consumption exerts an unexpected positive influence on constitutional transitions when political regime differences are not taken into account. This significant effect disappears with the inclusion of parliamentary and presidential regime dummies.     

Board structures,liberal countries,and developed market economies. Do they matter in environmental reporting? An international outlook

Previous empirical evidence has shown the effect of most corporate governance mechanisms on corporate social responsibility and environmental disclosure. However, there is scant empirical evidence that examines the influence of liberal countries, developed market economies, and board structures on environmental disclosure. Thus, this research aims to explore how liberal and developed countries and board structures affect environmental reporting. We hypothesise a linear and positive association between companies located in countries with liberal and developed market economies and environmental reporting. Moreover, we hypothesise that one‐tier board structures negatively affect environmental disclosure. Focusing on 13,100 companies domiciled in 39 different countries from 2005 to 2015, it is established that those companies located in liberal and developed economies are more likely to disclose environmental information, whereas one‐tier boards have a negative effect.     

Environmental management capabilities for a “circular eco‐innovation”

At a micro level, eco‐innovation marks a transition towards a circular economy (CE), and standardised routines and controls are being implemented by businesses to introduce eco‐innovative processes and thus a circular business model. Eco‐innovation applied to a circular model implies changes to companies' environmental management and accounting practices used to manage natural resources. In this context, this study analyses and measures formal and informal environmental management systems, such as certification standards and other management and environmental accounting procedures used in eco‐innovation and the CE within the dynamic capabilities theoretical framework. The study also investigates the cause‐and‐effect relationship between firms' “circular eco‐innovation” and environmental capabilities using partial least squares structural equation modelling and tests it using a sample of Spanish companies. This study offers new knowledge about the interposition of business eco‐innovation and CE‐related activities introduced by firms from the dynamic capabilities perspective.     

How cultural dimensions,legal systems,and industry affect environmental reporting? Empirical evidence from an international perspective

Past research has paid little attention to the impact of stakeholder engagement, cultural, legal, and industrial contexts on environmental disclosure. Thus, the aim of this paper is to explore how these three institutional factors affect the reporting of environmental information by companies in different countries. This research draws on institutional theory: normative isomorphism, coercive isomorphism, and mimetic isomorphism. This study uses the generalised method of moments procedure. The findings show that the legal system and certain cultural dimensions such as individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long‐term orientation, and indulgence are determinants of voluntary disclosure of environmental information (individualism and indulgence—negatively; uncertainty avoidance and long‐term orientation—positively), particularly when companies belong to industries with high environmental risk.     

Preventing rather than punishing: An early warning model of malfeasance in public procurement

Is it possible to predict malfeasance in public procurement? With the proliferation of e-procurement systems in the public sector, anti-corruption agencies and watchdog organizations have access to valuable sources of information with which to identify transactions that are likely to become troublesome and why. In this article, we discuss the promises and challenges of using machine learning models to predict inefficiency and corruption in public procurement. We illustrate this approach with a dataset with more than two million public procurement contracts in Colombia. We trained machine learning models to predict which of them will result in corruption investigations, a breach of contract, or implementation inefficiencies. We then discuss how our models can help practitioners better understand the drivers of corruption and inefficiency in public procurement. Our approach will be useful to governments interested in exploiting large administrative datasets to improve the provision of public goods, and it highlights some of the tradeoffs and challenges that they might face throughout this process.