Conceptualizing businesses as social actors: A framework for understanding sustainability actions in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises

Small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can play a crucial role in advancing environmental and social well‐being. Yet various—often conflicting—explanations have been offered to clarify why SMEs pursue sustainability. Some arguments foreground possibilities of profit maximization, whereas others emphasize individual values and convictions. Research supporting such contradicting explanations is often biased towards large enterprises or small, innovative frontrunners. In this article, we examine the underlying drivers of social and environmental interventions of SMEs by exploring empirical data from a survey of over 1,600 Canadian SMEs and complementary in‐depth interviews. We argue that sustainability actions of SMEs can be understood by viewing these firms as social actors—organizations that are shaped by individual values, internal and external interpersonal relationships, and are embedded in a social environment. This conceptualization directs attention to the full range of factors that shape sustainability engagement of SMEs and highlights frequently overlooked forms of sustainability‐oriented actions.     

乡村森林旅游项目升级发展过程政商博弈探微——基于Z风景区3A创4A的案例分析

以Z风景区3A创4A愿景中当地政府与风景区经营商两个主体的决策行为为研究对象,以制度经济学为理论基础,采用博弈论模型进行分析。结果表明:在政府和经营商目标不一致的前提下,从政府来说,在政绩驱动下急于达到创4A目标,但政府又不能滥用纳税人的钱追加投资,其意愿是让商家继续投资,为创4A发力;从商家来说,虽然创4A有利于项目营利空间,但是客观上有规避未来市场不确定性和投资回报周期长双重风险的意识,还可能由于政府对项目创4A的急切性,导致商家存在"政府有可能追加投资,自己"搭便车"的"等靠要"机会主义思想,追加投资意愿不高;反过来也可能存在政府等待商家投资的搭便车行为。为此,提出以政商共同利益最大化为目标,通过改变激励措施,使政商博弈达到合作状态下较优的均衡结果。     

国有森工企业进入市场的特点和规律研究

我国社会主义市场经济的发展要求企业全面走向市场,但是森工企业生产经营活动的特殊性,决定了森工企业进入市场的不同特点。研究森工企业进入市场的特点和规律,以便使森工企业遵循特定规律、采取合理措施有效进入市场。     

MODELLING THE ADAPTATION OF BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING BY BUSINESSES USING NEURAL NETWORKS

Business continuity planning is an important element of business continuity management and is regarded as a fundamental step towards reducing the negative impacts of business disruptions caused by internal and external hazardous events. Many businesses are not prepared for such events, and very few studies have tried to examine and model the factors that contribute to business continuity management planning by various companies. In this paper we propose and develop a feed‐forward neural network for modelling businesses continuity planning by businesses based on a dataset of 283 businesses operating in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. The fully connected neural network applied was trained on 65 % of the dataset records using different subsets of input variables. In order to preserve the generalization ability of the trained network, 15 % of the dataset records were used as a validation set for early stopping during the network's training process. Prediction capability of the trained networks was evaluated on 20 % and never‐seen records of the dataset. The classification ability of the networks was then analysed using receiver operating characteristic and detection error trade‐off curves, where the results obtained were promising. The equal error rate for the best models was 12 %, which reflects a very good accuracy of these models in predicting the existence of business continuity planning for a generic company. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

深入剖析Compiere ERP & CRM数据模型的研究

设计一个成熟稳定的ERP系统的关键是创建通用的数据模型框架和能够适应企业业务流程的软件体系。本文通过"报价-发票"业务流程中的销售订单业务深入分析Compiere ERP & CRM(Web Application版本)的通用数据模型及其动态数据字典设计思想,为企业导入应用和客户化定制提供基本思路。     

Organizational Communication Research on Motorola

With China' s accession to the WTO, it is faced with huge challenges and opportunities. One of the biggest challenges is to foster intercultural thinking and working abilities so that China can compete with other powers. This paper tries to set Motorola Solution as an example to discuss cross-cultural business communication problems.     

Share Holder Wealth Effects of Corporate Selloffs: Impact of Growth Opportunities, Economic Cycle and Bargaining Power

Most of the existing empirical evidence on corporate selloffs documents significant wealth gains for the seller's shareholders. We investigate the sources of these wealth gains by examining the impact of business and financial strategy, the economic environment during selloff, and the bargaining advantages of the seller including information asymmetry. We find evidence that sellers with growth opportunities and financially strong sellers enjoy higher returns. Selloffs during recessions generate larger wealth gains than those during economic boom. Information asymmetry due to the buyer's location being different from the purchased division's gives the seller a bargaining advantage leading to larger wealth gains. Relatively large divestments are more beneficial to seller shareholders than small ones. The study highlights the importance of both firm specific and environmental factors in explaining the wealth gains associated with corporate selloffs.     

Understanding the Large Negative Impact of Oil Shocks

This paper offers a plausible explanation for the close link between oil prices and aggregate macroeconomic performance in the 1970s. Although this link has been well documented in the empirical literature, standard economic models are not able to replicate this link when actual oil prices are used to simulate the models. In particular, standard models cannot explain the depth of the recession in 1974–75 and the strong revival in 1976–78 based on the oil price movements in that period. This paper argues that a missing multiplier-accelerator mechanism from standard models may hold the key.     

我国中小企业政策:演进过程与创新思路

我国中小企业政策的演进过程,可以分为四个阶段:以"单一公有制"为特征的中小企业政策;以"分户口"和"所有制等级序列"为特征的中小企业政策;以"重大轻小"为特征的中小企业政策;统一整体的中小企业政策。构建我国中小企业政策体系的基本思路是:一要切实落实法律精神;二要设立专门管理机构;三要全面深入地加大整顿市场经济秩序的力度;四要建立中小企业的社会化服务体系;五要促进行业性中小企业协作会的建立;六要从政策方面进一步促进中小企业发展。     

Do alliances promote knowledge flows?

We explore the role of interfirm alliances as a mechanism for sharing technological knowledge. We argue that knowledge flows between alliance partners will be greater than flows between pairs of nonallied firms, and less than flows between units within single firms. Using patent citations as a proxy for knowledge flows, we find results that are consistent with these expectations. We then explore how firm characteristics affect knowledge flows within alliances and find positive effects due to technological, geographic, and business similarities between partners. We use alliance data from MERIT, patent data from the USPTO, and firm data from Compustat.