Social enterprise push or corporate social responsibility pull? The mainstreaming of fair trade

Social enterprise organizations and activities combine market-oriented approaches with social aspirations, whereas corporate social responsibility strategies seek to integrate social aspects into core business strategies. The rise in social enterprise activity at the business end of the spectrum raises questions about how, where, and why social enterprise and corporate social responsibility might overlap. Through a review of literature, we demonstrate how the mainstreaming or corporatization of fair trade activity provides an example of this overlap. The tensions between the push of social aspirations within fair trade and the pull of commercial imperatives are highlighted. From a marketing viewpoint, a social enterprise push strategy is shown as typically undertaken from an organization perspective, whereas pull strategies in marketing are typically customer driven. We demonstrate that influences from both social enterprise and corporate social responsibility are evident in fair trade mainstreaming processes, although the extent to which each “pushes” or “pulls” varies across circumstances and interpretations.     

Complex Network of Aviation E-Services in the Belt and Road Initiative: A Heuristic Study of Small Data based on Block Modeling

ABSTRACT

The aviation e-service system is an important part of support for business communication in regions covered by Belt and Road initiative. In exploring the role of airline companies in this system, we examine the structure of the network, which consists of airlines interconnections based on small data of individual attributes of aviation companies in aviation e-services, and study these interconnections across different groups using block modeling. The heuristic solution of airline companies in development of international communication and cooperation is further discussed. Among our policy implications for global managers, we suggest the enhancement of cross-regional cooperation among airlines.     

The price adjustment and lead-lag relations between stock returns: microstructure evidence from the Taiwan stock market

This paper investigates the price adjustment and lead-lag relations between returns on five size-based portfolios in the Taiwan stock market. It finds evidence that the price adjustment of small-stock portfolios is not slower than that of large-stock portfolios. Additionally, limited evidence supports a positive leading role of large-stock portfolio returns over small-stock portfolio returns. These two findings are substantially different from the results of previous research on developed markets.     

Agglomeration Effects versus Policy Effects: The Case of the Electronics Industry in Malaysia

The present study analyses investments within the Malaysian electronics industry in 1991 to assess the effectiveness of development policy in light of strong agglomeration effects in the electronics industry. We find that agglomeration and the use of industrial estates as development policy have had positive effects on firms' location choice. However, agglomeration has a much larger effect than industrial estates. In addition, we find that the marginal effect of industrial estates is positively correlated with the degree of agglomeration. This suggests that improvement of problems of regional inequality by industry estates would be very difficult in reality.     

Opening the Black Box: Corporate Codes of Ethics in Their Organizational Context

A review of the literature on Corporate Codes of Ethics suggests that whilst there exists an informative body of literature concerning the prevalence of such codes, their design, implementation and promulgation, it is also evident that there is a relative lack of consideration of their impact upon members' everyday organizational behaviour. By drawing upon organizational sociology and psychology this paper constructs a contextualist and interpretive model which seeks to enable an analysis and evaluation of their effects upon individual, group and organizational behaviour.     

Self-Efficacy Toward Service, Civic Participation and the Business Student: Scale Development and Validation

This paper presents the development andvalidation of new measurement tools to exploreself-efficacy toward service and toward civicparticipation. We developed and administereda survey to 851 students in an AACSB-accreditedcollege of business at a comprehensive publicuniversity located in the Midwest. Traditionalscale development methodologies plusconfirmatory factor analysis and simultaneousfactor analysis in several populations wereused to analyze both a primary sample and aholdback sample. Results strongly support thevalidity and reliability of the surveyinstrument. Future use for the instrumentincludes verification of the effectiveness ofpedagogies designed to increase self-efficacytoward service and motivation for civicparticipation in business students.     

Research notes and communications management and organizational change: A note on the railroad industry

Hypotheses which relate top-level managers' age, years of company and industry service, and education to strategic change are studied with a sample of 855 managers from 27 railroads. Results generally support hypotheses that younger managers and those with less experience are more likely to alter their strategies with changing environmental conditions.     

Capital Investment under Alternative Marketing Scenarios in the Hog Industry: A Real Option Approach

This paper uses a real option approach to analyze the impact of alternative marketing contracts on the decision to invest in a cooperatively owned hog facility. For the numerical analysis of the impact, this paper uses a simulation method that incorporates early exercise, multiple‐state variables, multi‐choice decisions and temporal optimality. The results show that the option values that stem from the value of waiting to invest and choosing between alternative marketing methods amounts to 20–36% of the initial investment. Further, having an option to choose an alternative marketing method with different risk structure does add to the value of waiting to invest. Having an option to enter a 15‐year marketing contract increases the value of waiting by as much as $117,097 for the pork production example in this paper. Finally, the value of the option to wait is unilaterally lower under a risk‐reducing contract scenario than under a spot market alternative. This could explain the explosion in hog production facility investment during the 1990s when prevalence of contract production increased. Les auteurs ont recouru à l'approche du choix véritable pour analyser l'impact d'autres solutions de mise en marché sur la capacité d'investir ou pas dans un élevage de porcs exploitéà la manière d'une coopérative. Aux fins de l'analyse, on s'est servi d'une méthode de simulation intégrant une brève campagne, de multiples variables d'État, des décisions à choix multiple et des conditions optimales dans le temps. Les résultats indiquent que l'existence d'un choix réel permettant à l'exploitant d'attendre avant d'investir et de sélectionner entre plusieurs méthodes de mise en marché représente 20 à 36 pour cent de l'investissement initial. Par ailleurs, le fait d'avoir accès à une autre méthode de mise en marché, à structure de risque différente, ne donne pas plus de valeur à la capacité d'attendre avant de procéder aux investissements. La possibilité de signer une entente de commercialisation de quinze ans accroît la valeur de l'attente de jusqu'à 117,097 $ pour le type d'élevage porcin retenu comme exemple. Enfin, l'existence d'une entente de commercialisation atténuant les risques réduit unilatéralement la valeur de l'option « attente », comparativement à ce qui se produit quand l'éleveur n'a d'autre choix qu'écouler ses bêtes sur le marché au comptant. Ces résultats pourraient expliquer l'explosion des investissements observée dans le secteur du porc au cours des années 90, où la production sous contrat avait sensiblement augmenté.     

Estimating the Probability of Informed Trading

Using a new empirical model, I estimate the probability of trades being generated by privately informed traders. Inference is drawn on a trade‐by‐trade basis using data samples from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The modeling setup facilitates in‐depth analysis of the estimated probability of informed trading at the intraday level and for stocks with different levels of trading activity. The most important empirical results are: (a) the intradaily pattern of the inferred probability of informed trading is highly correlated with the intradaily pattern of observed quoted spreads, (b) differences in the magnitude of quoted spreads across volume categories are not exclusively related to differences in the level of informed trading, and (c) private information is incorporated faster in the quotes for high‐volume stocks than in the quotes for low‐volume stocks.     

The amenity value of woodland in Great Britain: A comparison of economic estimates

Forests produce benefits over and above the revenue yielded from timber and other wood based products. Most important among these may be the recreational benefits for visitors, which have been examined in several studies. Total benefits for residents are perhaps more accurately captured in property values since, ceteris paribus, the price of a house reflects willingness to pay to live near an environmental amenity such as a forest to gain access to it, and also the amenity (non-use) value of the forest in so far as it creates a pleasant landscape. However, the total non-priced value of forestry is not the sum of HPM and ITCM benefit estimates. Recreational benefits will typically be less, and will be subsumed in the HPM estimates, since the hedonic price is partly induced by the value of recreational access.