Environmental Governance of Enterprises and their Economic Upshot through Corporate Reputation and Customer Satisfaction

Drawing on resource‐advantage and signalling theories, we investigate two mechanisms, namely corporate reputation and customer satisfaction, by which the environmental governance of enterprises can benefit their economic performance. Based on secondary data from the 500 largest US enterprises compiled from multiple sources, our findings contribute to the literature by establishing the link between corporate reputation and green reputation. We also establish the economic performance paths of environmental governance via corporate reputation and customer satisfaction. This study expounds on why ‘green’ matters and identifies the performance roles of two corporate strategic resources extractable from the environmental governance of enterprises. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Motivations and Barriers to Corporate Environmental Management

This paper integrates two conceptual frameworks, utility maximization and institutional theory, to analyze voluntary corporate environmental management. The utility maximization or economic approach centers on motivations to decrease cost, increase revenue and improve manager utility. Institutional theory emphasizes how external pressures from market and non‐market constituents shape the firm's environmental efforts. We view the two frameworks as complementary and postulate a model that includes both types of influences. Survey data from six major industries consisting of a diverse set of facilities are used to estimate the effects of economic and institutional factors on a facility's use of environmental practices and pollution‐prevention activities. Our results support the hypothesized model, and show that cost barriers, management attitudes toward environmental stewardship, company ownership and external institutional forces, including competitiveness, investor and regulatory pressures, all affect a facility's environmental practices and pollution prevention activities. Findings suggest that a multifaceted policy strategy is needed to advance corporate environmental management across diverse firms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Sustainability Development and the Quality of Assurance Reports: Empirical Evidence

There is a rising trend among companies to publish their sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Assurance of these reports is a valuable voluntary tool to provide them with higher credibility. Nonetheless, the quality of assurance reports differs in practice and the objective of this paper is to provide evidence in this new area of research. Indeed, we are pioneers in developing an index to measure the quality of assurance reports. We choose the Spanish setting because it is the worldwide leading country as regards CSR reporting (KPMG, 2011; Sierra et al., 2012). We have found evidence on the determinants for CSR reporting posited by existing literature that have an impact on (a) the decision of companies to publish their CSR reports, (b) the decision to assure the CSR report or not and (c) the decision to hire the assurance services from an auditor or a consultant and the subsequent quality of the assurance report. Last but not least, our results from a sample of 161 CSR assurance reports evidence that assurance reports are of fairly acceptable quality, according to the index proposed. Furthermore, the value of the quality index is significantly higher if the assurance services are provided by an auditor (as opposed to a consultant) and if the CSR reporting company is larger. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Consumers as researchers – innovative experiences in UK National Health Service Research

Consumer involvement is an established priority in UK health‐ and social‐care service development and research. To date, little has been published describing the process of consumer involvement and assessing ‘consumers’ contributions to research. This paper provides a practical account of the effective incorporation of consumers into a research team, and outlines the extent to which they can enhance the research cycle; from project development and conduct, through data analysis and interpretation, to dissemination. Salient points are illustrated using the example of their collaboration in a research project. Of particular note were consumers' contributions to the development of an ethically enhanced, more robust project design, and enriched data interpretation, which may not have resulted had consumers not been an integral part of the research team.     

Requirements for Skill,Training and Retraining in the Mexican Food and Drink Industry

The Mexican food and drink industry has been producing for a more standardized consumer market. The influence of North American and European habits on Mexican traditional habits is very strong, and this population is rapidly coming to be part of the global market. The traditional Mexican foods and drinks are being processed by Mexican and American companies, including new formulas of low calories of healthy diet At the same time, the changes in the food and drink industry requires training in the management of the new biotechnologies and the aspects of business administration and vocational-technical education, in order to increase their competition with its processed products in the internal and also the international markets, through efficiency and quality.     

Married couples’ involvement with family vacations

Abstract

The involvement construct has received a great deal of attention in recent years. However, the majority of research on this topic has focused on the individual and has ignored spouses’ shared leisure involvement. In addition, little work has been done on involvement in the product‐class context of family vacations. This study examined the underlying dimensions of married couples’ involvement with family vacations and how these dimensions relate to selected personal variables. Factor analysis revealed two underlying dimensions. Stepwise multiple regression revealed that pleasure‐importance was positively related to gender role ideology and education and negatively related to presence of children in the home. A positive relation existed between the second dimension, sign value, and age. The study provides insight into both the nature of the involvement construct and how it might be used in future research.     

中国物流行业企业社会责任报告体系研究

通过对中国物流行业较有代表性的两家企业的CSR报告内容分析,提出中国物流行业企业社会责任报告体系编写方法,其内容主要包括报告背景、公司治理、责任管理、责任绩效披露、第三方审验说明等。     

利益相关者理论的经济伦理意蕴

利益相关者理论不仅是一种管理技巧,而且是一种企业和经济伦理理论。其含义是指能够影响企业或受企业决策和行为影响的个人与团体,有广义和狭义之分:广义的利益相关者以经验主义的事实为基础,集中于参与者对企业行为的影响力方面;狭义的利益相关者则以合法性原则要求为基础,合同、法律和道德义务成为确定利益相关者的依据。其伦理维度是,企业与利益相关者之间是一种相互对待、双边互求的平等的伦理关系,是一种信任伦理,要求企业尊重利益相关者的包括道德权利在内的各种权利,具有广泛的公正性。企业处理与利益相关者的关系时必须认清关系、认定权益并对社会负责。     

基于社区参与的海口市旅游业循环经济发展

旅游业在海口市国民经济中具有重要贡献,循环经济对于海口市这样一个既需要促进经济高速增长而资源又相对稀缺的海岛型城市的发展具有重要的指导意义。海口市旅游业循环经济建设不能只是市场和国家的结合,必须是包括社区在内的三个组织的结合。     

Purchasing Competence: A Stakeholder‐Based Framework for Chief Purchasing Officers

A specific research stream within the purchasing and supply management literature focuses on the development of purchasing competence frameworks. We apply stakeholder theory and multiple methods of data collection to develop and confirm a hierarchy‐specific purchasing competence management framework for Chief Purchasing Officers and validate it using confirmatory factor analysis on empirical data from 124 multinational companies. The results reveal a significant relationship between Chief Purchasing Officers purchasing management competence and different purchasing performance measures confirming the appropriateness of stakeholder theory for such a competence framework.