Australia has committed to reducing emissions under the Paris Agreement by 2030, in alignment with the United Nations' (UN) Sustainability Development Goal (SDG) climate action. This article investigates the responses of Australian high-emission businesses to Australian government action and legislation in relation to climate change, specifically the carbon tax, and how this knowledge can assist in delineating future carbon legislation. A qualitative study of the responses of 17 high-emission businesses and three industry associations to carbon legislation during the implementation of the carbon tax in Australia identified the use of resistive, reactive or cooperative strategies by the businesses. Issues related to carbon legislation identified by businesses included differences in time orientation, multiple regulations, political uncertainty, international positioning and the need for long-term and consolidated policies. Given these findings, this article argues that well-designed top-down legislative measures are necessary to steer businesses towards a carbon-neutral regime.

We test whether lenders’ screening incentives weaken when faced with the possibility of loan sales. We adopt a new measure of lending standards, the processing time for mortgage applications at the loan level, and use the collapse of the nonagency mortgage-backed securities issuance market as a natural experiment. Secondary market liquidity for nonconforming loans decreased significantly at the end of 2007, but the market for securitizing conforming loans did not experience the same breakdown. Following this event, lenders spent significantly more time screening applications for loans larger than the conforming loan limits than for those below the limits. The processing-time gap widened more for banks with lower capital, greater involvement in the originate-to-distribute model, and larger assets.

This study investigates whether the perceived opportunity to craft (POC) is related to job crafting (JC) strategies and whether these strategies are related to thriving at work, in terms of both vitality and learning. It aims to verify the mediating role of JC between POC and thriving. Data were collected from 424 accounting professionals in Canada. The structural equation modeling based on bootstrap analysis was used to test mediation. The results indicate that POC is positively related to increasing structural and social resources and challenging job demands and negatively to decreasing hindering job demands. They reveal that increasing structural and social resources enhances learning and mediates the relation between POC and vitality and learning, as do challenging job demands, whereas decreasing hindering job demands does not. This study is one of the first to confirm that POC influences vitality and learning via JC behaviors as mediators.

Extant literature remains inconclusive with regard to optimal structural designs for sustaining effective knowledge flows, boosting innovativeness, and achieving superior performance in organizations. We contribute to the ongoing debate on formal, informal, and ambidextrous configurations in the specific context of small high-tech innovators. Adopting an inductive approach to theory building, we explore the factors that account for the variation in knowledge-focused designs across sample firms. In our study, innovative ventures rely on pure formal and informal organizational designs but also attempt to mix both, suggesting that gains from ambidexterity are not ubiquitous. Our analysis unveils that the pursuit of a given structural configuration results from a set of operating contingencies and a deliberate managerial effort to align firm idiosyncrasies with desired strategic outcomes. We advance a grounded theory of knowledge-focused organizational design in small high-tech innovators and formulate propositions that may be tested in future inquiries in the field.

Nepal has suffered from the worst electricity shortages in South Asia. This study is an attempt to measure the willingness to pay for an improved service using a model of revealed preference. Respondents are asked about the actions they are taking to reduce the impact on their household or business of scheduled and unscheduled outages and more stable voltage. We estimate the averting expenditures that were being incurred to compensate for the lack of reliability of the electricity service. The estimated cost of the averting actions as a percentage of the electricity bills is 53 % for households, 47 % for small businesses, 46 % for medium businesses, and 35 % for large businesses. Based on the estimations, we find that in 2017 the annual benefit from improving the reliability of the electricity service would be approximately US$ 188 million with a present value over 20 years of US$ 1.6 billion.

How does politics affect private international lending? This article highlights the relationship between international banks, their home governments, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and international regulators during the years that preceded the debt crisis of 1982. Based on new archival evidence from different case studies, we find that the decisions of commercial banks to lend were largely based on the home governments’ preferences, competition, and the assumption that home governments and international organizations would provide lender of last resort functions to support borrowing governments. While previous works suggest the 1982 debt crisis was unexpected, we show that banks primarily reacted to the deteriorating macroeconomic situation in many emerging economies once the support of their home governments and the IMF became uncertain.

Regulating environmental outcomes without stipulating the technologies to accomplish them is a characteristically American form of governmental intervention. This approach aims to encourage industry to address public-policy concerns while minimizing interference in its affairs. However, California's zero-emission-vehicle mandate of 1990 implied the development of specific technologies with highly disruptive sociotechnical effects. The most practical zero-emission vehicle of the day was the all-battery electric vehicle, a technology characterized by the temporal mismatch of its components. Batteries have shorter life-spans than electric motors, a durability dilemma that rewards battery-making. In response, General Motors and Toyota devised strategies to mitigate this risk that involved mediating the technology of the Ovonic Battery Company.

Steve Jobs was the most charismatic businessperson in the modern era. When he died, on October 5, 2011, Apple was inundated with condolence messages from all over the United States and from around the world. These notes were sent not only to Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, but to Apple retail stores. The stores posted them on their windows. In addition, bouquets of flowers were brought to the stores. Think of this—flowers in front of hundreds of stores in dozens of countries because of Jobs's death. No one knows how many notes were received at Apple and in the stores. According to the “Remembering Steve” page on Apple.com, “Over a million people from all over the world have shared their memories, thoughts, and feelings about Steve.” As he was dying, people made a pilgrimage to his home in Palo Alto. His daughter has written that “a few people he didn’t know came to the doors wanting to see him … , wandering into the garden. … A stranger in a sari begged to talk with him. A man came in through the gate and said he had flown in from Bulgaria just to see my father.” After Jobs's death, California governor Jerry Brown declared October 16 to be “Steve Jobs Day.” The president of United States and the First Lady, Barack and Michelle Obama, posted a condolence note. Nothing remotely like this outpouring had ever taken place on the occasion of the death of an American CEO.