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Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a tool for public and private institutions to promote sustainable development in developing and emerging markets. This work brings together contributors from a variety of fields and international perspectives to assess and improve the effectiveness of CSR by addressing the following questions: what are the linkages between CSR and sustainable development? What does CSR mean for developing or emerging economies and in what ways does this deviate from orthodoxies and universalist approaches? What institutional factors and actors influence the effectiveness of CSR in developing and emerging economies? How can developing and emerging economies promote a flexible, diverse and reconstructed form of CSR that leads to inclusive and sustainable development? This book should be read by anyone interested in understanding what normative factors, theoretical models, policy strategies, and corporate practices best facilitate effective CSR and sustainable development.
Many academic studies use fixed preannouncement event days (e.g., -20,-42, or -63) to measure takeover premiums. In this paper, we show that the use of traditional fixed windows generates premiums that are underestimated by as much as 8 percentage points. This downward bias is especially severe for transactions with long processes (e.g., target-initiated deals). We take account of this bias by hand collecting deal initiation dates and show that using these dates results in measured premiums that give contradictory conclusions to those found in existing literature. We also offer guidance for measuring premiums if hand collecting data is impractical.
This paper identifies recurrent patterns in the political activity of American corporations that support trade. These firms have made public coalitions a central element of their pro-trade activities, and their collective efforts vastly outstrip those of trade's corporate opponents. This superiority in organization is paired with dramatically greater volumes of lobbying and campaign contributions. I explain these striking divergences by integrating collective action theory into a firm-centred model of trade politics: the heavy concentration of gains from trade among a small number of firms makes both individual and collective political action easier for pro-trade firms than for producers opposed to trade. This explanation is supported in panel analysis of firms’ participation in pro-trade coalitions, which shows that size, multinationality, and heterogeneity in global networks of production and sales drive participation in pro-trade groups. Globally engaged firms have supported trade by matching pro-trade preferences with highly organized political action.
A management framework (like the Business Model Canvas or SWOT) is a combination of interlinked items that support a particular approach to a specific objective. Various management frameworks are widely used even though their origins, adoption, and value remain vague. Previous research tried to decipher the adoption of these management frameworks, whereas considerably less attention was devoted to the theoretical explanation of the development and value of the frameworks. This paper investigates the nature of management frameworks in particular realms using analogical reasoning between biological and social systems, and mostly draws on memetics, intersubjective reality, and the network effect. By using memetics, the explanations on the origins of well-known frameworks are complemented. Second, the paper shows the role of the network effect in the growing value of a framework until it becomes an intersubjective reality. Finally, such a framework is explained as autopoietic within a particular realm.
This article has three sections, each of which deals with an Executive Order. The first section, “Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Past,” emphasizes the critical role that Executive Orders played in the formation of OIRA. More specifically, OIRA owes its initial existence to the establishment of a centralized regulatory review system, the Quality of Life Review, which initiated Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review of environmental regulations through the issuance of a directive from OMB. Every subsequent President expanded OMBs powers through the issuance of Executive Orders which culminated in the Iconic Executive Order 12291. The section concludes with the recommendation that a select class of Executive Orders, and OMB Directives, be designated as “Iconic” by the National Archivist in consultation with the OIRA, and then given substantial deference by incoming Administrations. The second section, “OIRA Present,” describes an Executive Order issued during the Kennedy Administration which remains in effect but was promulgated prior to the establishment of OIRA and therefore recommends that a new Executive Order be issued which gives OIRA specific authority to participate in the conduct of interagency reviews of Executive Orders. The third section, “OIRA Future,” describes an Executive Order which implements a regulatory budget (RB) and institutionalizes a mechanism for controlling the size of the administrative state. This final section of the article recommends that the aforementioned Executive Order be reviewed and modified based upon the outcome of a request for public comments, and rules with demonstrated positive net benefits should no longer be accorded an automatic entitlement for issuance as a final rule absent their inclusion in an RB.
Business and human rights (BHR) scholarship addresses whether corporations have human rights responsibilities and if so, what such responsibilities mean for corporate behaviour. BHR scholarship is cross-disciplinary and scattered across numerous academic disciplines such as law, philosophy, management, political science and accounting. While BHR scholarship in law is well established, this review focuses on BHR scholarship in the social issues in management (SIM) field, which – like BHR scholarship – addresses the nature and content of corporate responsibility. Based on a review of 180 articles from SIM speciality journals published between 1990 and 2017, the article suggests that BHR research has emerged as a subfield of study within SIM. BHR scholarship to date has largely focused on the justification for why firms have human rights responsibilities, and on descriptive research studies at the organizational and macro level. The article develops a conceptual framework for future BHR research which can usefully guide scholars – both SIM and non-SIM BHR scholars – in identifying potential research gaps and embedding their research in related focus areas.
What can we tell about the future of automobiles and the industries that make them by examining their past? Wormald and Rennick trace the history of powered land transport, the rise and fall of the railways, the spectacular rise of the automobile, and what might come next. Delving into the mighty and complex automotive industry, following the growth of the markets and production, this book illustrates the globalization of vehicle manufacturers and component suppliers, giving form to the development of the industry's business model. A key factor in an auto-industry's successes and failures is the often-difficult relationship it has with government, which varies in nature from country to country. As an illustrative case, Wormald and Rennick present and analyse the entire lifecycle of Australia's automotive history – including its birth, growth, functioning and death - and its shifting relationship with the government that supported it.
Nordic countries have their own variations of the same corporate law theme, based on equality between shareholders and minority protection. However, U.S.-style shareholder primacy has influenced corporate practices, legal literature and governance codes. The strength of the ‘Nordic model’ is not in law or in codes, but in a typically Nordic form of ‘active ownership’ by non-institutional direct shareholders such as families, foundations and public pension funds. It is not, however, enough and requires broader participation for sustainability. The answer might be in corporate board activity. The Nordic ‘soft’ shareholder activism, based on a dialogue between the investors and the board, gives room for the boards to convince the investors of the advantages of long-term sustainability. Recurring Nordic bank crises show that bankers’ motives for profit maximisation should be particularly constrained.
This chapter analyses the Pacific Alliance – an economic bloc formed by Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru in 2011 – and its integrated stock exchange, the Mercado Integrado Latinoamericano. It contends that the Alliance has the potential to foster the transition toward a sustainable economy in Latin America, through a renewed system of corporate law and corporate governance. On the one hand, it asserts that Colombian Law 1901 of 2018, creating the Companies of Collective Benefit and Interest, initiated a healthy regulatory competition in corporate law among member states. On the other, it discusses alternatives to promote sustainable corporate practices through executive compensation, leveraging the legal convergence in corporate governance prompted by the integrated stock exchange. The Alliance’s economic strength and regional leadership further bolster its potential to bring about meaningful changes in the region.
This chapter considers sustainability issues in Italian business law. In particular, it focuses on the two main approaches the lawmaker uses: creating no- or low-profit organisations (such as benefit companies), with specific labels; and setting down rules on special reports and statements that some companies must or may prepare in order to show their commitment in the field of sustainability. Following a normative analysis, the Italian system is shown to be ineffective, as the approach towards sustainability is always seen as an exception to a full-profit rule, even if the full maximisation approach comes from a social norm rather than a legal one. The chapter concludes that a much more effective measure would have been to change the basic norm on partnerships and companies, delivering such concepts from the need of profit purpose.
In September 2015, Volkswagen's "clean diesel" technology was exposed as a sham. Not only were the company's vehicles discharging dangerously high levels of nitrogen oxide, but VW had intentionally rigged its emissions systems to cheat on environmental tests. In the wake of resignations and criminal investigations, the company's governance system came under justifiable attack. Were VW's famously worker-friendly governance policies to blame? This Chapter examines the root causes of the emissions scandal and concludes that VW's governance culture suffered from dictatorial leadership as well as a cozy relationship between management and labor leaders. This culture of complacency led to a lack of accountability at key levels, including executives, shareholders, and regulators. In addition, despite its worker-oriented governance structure, Volkswagen's internal management is still organized along traditional hierarchical lines. Empowered workers, participating at all levels of company governance, would provide a stronger internal culture of compliance, innovation, and sustainability.
Despite the growing literature on China’s proliferating corporate social responsibility initiatives, little is known empirically about how Chinese shareholders react to these initiatives in their invested firms. Drawing upon a unique, hand-collected dataset containing the votes cast at shareholders’ meetings in Chinese A-share listed firms, this research reveals two divergent patterns. Some shareholders support (or oppose) such initiatives as often as they do proposals most susceptible to conflicts of interest (e.g. a firm transacting with its controlling shareholder). Others vote more strategically, rarely opposing such proposals as rigorously as they oppose proposals with a perceived negative impact on their immediate financial interests. Their varied approaches seem to be correlated with certain firm characteristics such as who controls the firm (i.e. state or private actors) and how strong the degree of control is.