Exploring the relationship between environmental orientation and brand value: is there fire or only smoke?

This paper investigates whether a firm's environmental orientation influences corporate brand value. In the discussion on sustainable development, corporate participation is a given, and increasingly firms are adopting environmental policies and practices. This paper observes corporate environmentalism from two perspectives: environmental embeddedness – the level to which environmental values are incorporated in brand identity; and environmental performance – the level of a firm's accordance with environmental policies and good practices. Cross‐analysis of these two perspectives generates four types of corporate environmental orientation: leaders, performers, advocates and laggards. The results do not provide conclusive evidence for whether consumers reward environmental leaders and punish environmental laggards by converting their environmental opinions into brand perceptions and purchasing decisions. It is believed that the hypothesized relationships are moderated and mediated by other stimuli, so managers are advised not to negate corporate social responsibility, but rather to invest wisely in environmental activities and its communication. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Long-run performance following quality management certification

Public firms that seek and successfully receive certification of quality management, type ISO 9000, seem to experience different post-announcement share-price drifts depending on their size. This result is not consistent with the notion that companies seeking to implement a quality management system may be reducing agency problems between managers and shareholders, which are among corporate governance and control goals of any well management company. Otherwise, we should have observed material and positive abnormal share-price changes, following ISO 9000 registration announcements, independently of company size. Our results show that only stocks of large-size firms, experience positive average significantly abnormal returns over the post-announcement 1-, 2-, and 3-year horizons. On the other hand, stocks of small-size firms experience negative average significantly abnormal returns, and stocks of mid-size firms do not show any material gain over the same horizons. Although there is a rich finance literature that has studied the long-run abnormal stock-price returns following several major corporate events, this study seems to be the only one that have examined the potential long-run impact of this certification-event, despite the fact that those standards have been around since the middle 1980s.

Drivers and outcomes of open-standard interorganizational information systems assimilation in high-technology supply chains

In recent years, firms in high-technology supply chains have established internet-based electronic linkages with their trading partners. As a result, they have improved their ability to coordinate and synchronize shared business processes by using more complete, accurate, and timely information. These electronic linkages are based on open-standard interorganizational information systems (OSIOS), which are fundamentally different from traditional electronic data interchanges. OSIOS capture not only the technical specifications for data interchange but also the sequential steps for the execution of shared business processes. Because OSIOS are still at an early diffusion stage, it remains unclear why firms would assimilate such an innovation and whether assimilation provides firms any benefits. In this research, we develop a framework grounded on the economics of standards, institutional theory, and strategic interorganizational information systems literatures to investigate the drivers and outcomes of OSIOS assimilation in a focused context. In order to test our hypotheses based on this framework, we used data from a high-technology supply chain and employed econometrics techniques. We found that both competition asymmetry across supply chain echelons and OSIOS assimilation within supply chain echelons predict individual firms’ OSIOS assimilation. The results also suggest that firms’ supply chain dominance is both a driver and an outcome of OSIOS assimilation, highlighting a mutually reinforcing process. In addition, our study reveals boundary conditions of the hypothesized relationships. The use of multiple theoretical perspectives, a unique dataset, and innovative statistical techniques to investigate OSIOS assimilation in high-technology supply chains contributes to the body of knowledge in both the supply chain management and management of information systems disciplines.     

Business and Human Rights in South Africa: An Analysis of Antecedents of Human Rights Due Diligence

The purpose of the present article is to analyse South African listed companies’ public reporting in order to contribute to our understanding of how and why companies consider human rights. The empirical analysis is placed in the context of the increasing prominence of human rights as a business issue, premised in part on the activities of the United Nations (UN) Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) on human rights and business. On the basis of a content analysis of the public reports of the top 100 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), we test hypotheses focused on the antecedents of companies’ demonstrated human rights due diligence, with particular reference to assumptions or findings of the SRSG and institutional theory. Some of our results are unexpected: there is little influence exerted by the sector and size of companies in our sample, and there is also an unexpectedly insignificant impact of company participation in the UN Global Compact and the JSE Socially Responsible Investment Index. On the other hand, a key predictor of human rights due diligence is an explicit leadership commitment, and important roles are also played by government regulations and stock exchange listing rules.