Does environmental underperformance duration affect firms' green innovation? Evidence from China

Does the length of a firm's environmental underperformance shape its green innovation? Drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm, we argue that the duration of a firm's environmental underperformance plays an important role in shaping its green innovation activities. Using the data from Chinese publicly listed firms spanning from 2010 to 2018, we find that the duration of environmental underperformance has a U-shaped effect on a firm's green innovation, possibly due to competing short- and long-term solutions to regain legitimacy. We also find that this relationship is moderated by environmental underperformance intensity and analyst recommendation pressure. Our study contributes to the literature on green innovation and the behavioral theory of the firm. We discuss the implications for policymakers and managers.     

Exposure to workplace bullying and negative gossip behaviors: Buffering roles of personal and contextual resources

This study adds to business ethics research by investigating how employees' exposure to workplace bullying might spur their negative gossip behaviors, as well as how this effect might be buffered by their access to two personal resources (religiosity and innovation propensity) and two contextual resources (work meaningfulness and trust in top management). Survey data collected among Canadian-based employees who work in the religious sector reveal that workplace bullying increases the likelihood that they spread negative rumors about other organizational members, but this effect is weaker when employees (1) can draw from their religious faith, (2) are motivated to generate innovative ideas, (3) derive meaning from their work, and (4) have confidence in the trustworthiness of top management. For management scholars and practitioners, this study thus pinpoints different resources that diminish the risk that workplace bullying infuses work environments with even more negative energy, as might occur if bullying spills over into additional, negative gossip behaviors.     

发薪日贷款:特点、争论和启示

发薪日贷款在美国大行其道,其简单便利性使穷人也能够获得信贷服务;但是另一方面,由于借款人缺乏自控,不得不连续借贷,从而陷入债务危机,这也导致了政府监管的不断升级。经济学家对发薪日贷款是否改善借款人的福利进行了实证研究,找到了正反两方面的证据。发薪日贷款使我们认识到方便易得的信贷服务的两面性,对我国正在进行农村金融改革有重要的启示。     

基于忠诚度的饭店员工管理

人是企业经营发展的资本,尤其是饭店作为劳动密集型、技术含量低的服务性行业,在个性化服务呼声越来越强烈的21世纪,员工的经验与工作心态直接影响饭店对顾客的服务质量。因而,对饭店的核心竞争优势———人力资源,应给以充分认识,重视员工忠诚的价值,重视对员工忠诚度的培养与提升,以保证饭店的可持续发展。     

企业价值创造系统中技术创新乘数效应分析

技术创新是现代企业价值创造的关键资源,可以从现有资产与成长机会两个层面进行分析。企业价值创造系统中,技术创新产出与投入之间存在着乘数关系,技术创新有效使用率、技术创新成果流失率以及竞争取胜概率影响并决定着乘数值。进一步分析表明,企业技术要素与非技术要素协同程度和关键员工的代理人选择行为是影响企业技术创新乘数效应的深层次原因。     

Social capital,institutional innovation and Atlantic trade before 1800

The growth of the Atlantic economy during the eighteenth century has been associated with developments in business networking to mitigate the hazards of communication in long-distance trade. Such social capital-based mechanisms reduced transaction costs, but also proved to have their limitations in the changing conditions of eighteenth-century international trade. This paper argues, using the example of the British slave trade, that efforts to innovate less personalised forms of commercial exchange gave those prepared to do so a considerable competitive advantage, and promoted the unprecedented expansion of that trade between 1750 and 1807. We suggest that this shift may be viewed as a precursor of modernising tendencies in business practice in Britain during the industrial revolution.     

Organizational innovation as an enabler of technological innovation capabilities and firm performance

This study assesses the relationship between organizational innovation and technological innovation capabilities, and analyzes their effect on firm performance using a resource-based view theoretical framework. The article presents empirical evidence from a survey of 144 Spanish industrial firms and modeling of a system of structural equations using partial least squares. The results confirm that organizational innovation favors the development of technological innovation capabilities and that both organizational innovation and technological capabilities for products and processes can lead to superior firm performance.     

New plant engineering techniques,R&D investment and international trade

New plant engineering techniques (NPETs) may significantly improve both production and quality of foods. Some consumers and regulators around the world might be reluctant to accept such products and the global market penetration of these products may remain low. We develop a parsimonious economic model for R&D investment in food innovations to identify conditions under which NPET technology emerges in the context of international trade. The framework integrates consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for the new food, the uncertainty of R&D processes, the associated regulatory cost of approval, and the competition between domestic and foreign products. With generic applicability, the model enables the quantitative analysis of new foods that could be introduced in markets and then traded across borders. We apply the framework to a hypothetical case of apples improved with NPETs. Simulation results suggest that import bans and high values of sunk cost can reduce R&D investment in NPETs to suboptimal levels.     

全低变工艺开发应用中的问题与对策

讨论了全低变工艺开发过程中遇到的一些问题和对策,对中、小氮肥企业进行技术改造具有一定的参考意义。     

The distribution of returns from land efficiency improvement in multistage production systems

This paper assesses the distributional consequences of technical changes that improve the efficiency of land and of other inputs in a multifactor crop‐production system. We introduced an equilibrium displacement model (EDM) by using the specification of a factor‐augmenting approach. Given the uncertainty about the EDM parameters, a Monte Carlo simulation is used to produce a distribution of possible return measures. We found that land suppliers (likely farmers) receive a larger share (73%) of total benefits from the adoption of land‐technical change than they do from the adoption of other input technologies. Each input supplier receives a larger share of total benefits from technical change in her own input. However, this result is sensitive to the value of the parameters, especially the value of the elasticity of substitution. We applied the EDM to the case of no‐tillage (NT) to provide insight into how the aggregate return from the adoption of NT was distributed among different groups on the Canadian Prairies. The results of this study can be used by policymakers and funding agencies in order to influence landowners and farming communities to adopt environmentally sound land technologies to achieve both greater agricultural productivity and sustainability.