Stakeholder Engagement: Defining Strategic Advantage for Sustainable Construction

Although sustainable development is increasingly becoming a part of business plans, it is unclear what makes the economic, social and environmental dynamics strategically compatible. This research examines which of the following in sustainable development – government policy, managerial attitude and stakeholder engagement – is the most influential on the profitability of companies in the UK construction sector. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were rendered through a survey and semi‐structured interviews. Patterns of ambiguity in legislation were discovered as an obstacle for changing the sector's mind‐set. Stakeholder engagement was identified as the defining factor increasing managers' awareness, helping legislation to be effectively implemented and making sustainability highly appealing to clients. These findings indicate that to gain competitive advantage, companies should embark on long‐term strategic alliances which adopt the proposals of environmental non‐governmental organisations and closely follow public opinion. This, strengthens brand equity, allows for premium pricing, increases market share and maximizes profit. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The Dilemma of Accountability for Professionals: A Challenge for Mainstream Management Theories

Professional institutions are increasingly confronted by fiscal constraints and political pressures to improve and increase their accountability in a competitive consumer-driven market. Accordingly, the need to ensure efficiency and accountability is of strategic importance. This article reports on a qualitative study of medical professionals that assessed the utility of financial incentives and external control methods derived from agency theory to ensure accountability of professionals. The authors argue that approaches derived from stewardship and institutional theories can extend the principal–agent perspective to sustain greater social and ethical accountability.     

Regulation and Coordination of International Environmental Externalities with Incomplete Information and Costly Public Funds

In this article, we study cross-border externalities in a game played by two principal-agent pairs with adverse selection. Each firm/agent is located in one country and generates pollution by producing complementary or substitute goods, sold on a common market. A fraction of pollution is transferred from one country to another. Each regulator/principal is imperfectly informed about the marginal cost of his domestic firm and accordingly uses secret incentive contracts with costly public funds. We show the necessity of cooperation between competing regulators to effectively internalize all the damages caused to the environment, while reaching the first best. If the level of uncertainty is sufficiently low, we obtain an infinity of noncooperative Bayesian differentiable equilibria, which may necessitate competing regulators to coordinate on an equilibrium. Such coordination constitutes an incentive for competing regulators to cooperate. Our major result states that under some circumstances asymmetric information relaxes the transborder externality problem. Indeed, we show that, when there is a major transfer of pollution and firms' marginal costs are sufficiently high, competing regulators are better off under uncertainty. Therefore, asymmetry of information can have the very consequence of generating regulation that is too strict from the domestic viewpoint but that improves social efficiency when the benefits to both countries are taken into account.     

Decision support for build-to-order supply chain management through multiobjective optimization

This paper aims to identify the gaps in decision-making support based on multiobjective optimization (MOO) for build-to-order supply chain management (BTO-SCM). To this end, it reviews the literature available on modelling build-to-order supply chains (BTO-SC) with the focus on adopting MOO techniques as a decision support tool. The literature has been classified based on the nature of the decisions in different part of the supply chain, and the key decision areas across a typical BTO-SC are discussed in detail. Available software packages suitable for supporting decision making in BTO supply chains are also identified and their related solutions are outlined. The gap between the modelling and optimization techniques developed in the literature and the decision support needed in practice are highlighted. Future research directions to better exploit the decision support capabilities of MOO are proposed. These include: reformulation of the extant optimization models with a MOO perspective, development of decision supports for interfaces not involving manufacturers, development of scenarios around service-based objectives, development of efficient solution tools, considering the interests of each supply chain party as a separate objective to account for fair treatment of their requirements, and applying the existing methodologies on real-life data sets.     

Key Components for Organizing Architectural Tours in Isfahan,Iran

Architectural heritage attracts many tourists due to its aesthetic features and celebrities. Architourism as a new niche tourism strives to attract those who are interested in architectural heritage. This paper highlights the introduction of Isfahan city (Iran) as a new architourism destination. This research also has three other major purposes: (1) to identify the attractions for promoting architourism in Isfahan; (2) to investigate the key components for organizing architectural tours; and (3) to introduce architectural tour packages. Using a qualitative method clearly shows that demography, visitor/tourist interest, motivation and expertise, the time and duration of the visit, providing special tourism facilities, organizing educational and research activities and marketing are key components in organizing architectural tours. The results also illustrated that Isfahan has buildings, urban collections and historical textures that can be attractions for promoting architourism. Further analysis illustrated that Isfahan city has potential to organize architectural tours with 16 themes.     

Correction to: Sovereign contagion risk measure across financial markets in the eurozone: a bivariate copulas and Markov Regime Switching ARMA based approaches

Review of World Economics -     

Sovereign contagion risk measure across financial markets in the eurozone: a bivariate copulas and Markov Regime Switching ARMA based approaches

Review of World Economics - This paper analyzes sovereign risk contagion across financial markets in the eurozone during and after the European debt crisis. A particular focus is made on the causal...