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The chapter examines the perspectives of campus advocates involved with the advancement of a comprehensive internationalization process at their state comprehensive university (SCU). Advocates explain their definitions of comprehensive internationalization, which are analyzed through an internationalization lens and framework of intercultural competence based on recent studies of Internationalization at Home (IaH). The study found faculty and staff perspectives of comprehensive internationalization to reflect attributes consistent with IaH, which is believed to be a vehicle for transmitting intercultural competence throughout the higher education institution. The context for this study is important as it takes place in an SCU located in a region where higher education is under significant public scrutiny.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) own and control technological resources and capabilities that make them critical actors in accelerating the transition toward net zero. Even beyond the energy sector, stakeholders are putting increasing pressure on MNEs to reduce the carbon intensity of their operations, that is, to improve their carbon performance. While there is unambiguous evidence that national climate policy is a critical catalyst for long-term carbon performance improvements, there is limited research on how MNEs’ carbon strategies react to climate policies. This chapter reviews the concepts, drivers, and strategies connected to carbon performance in the broader sustainability and management literature to clarify potential complementarities to international business (IB). The authors then highlight how MNEs will face increasing institutional complexity along two dimensions: (1) the structural diversity of institutional environments and (2) institutional dynamism, primarily reflected by public policy. The proposed conceptual framework maps these two dimensions to national and subnational levels, and the authors present two data sources that allow the quantitative analysis of country differences in the diversity and dynamism of national climate policy. The authors conclude that there are ample opportunities for IB researchers to explore MNEs’ strategic reactions to climate policy and to inform policymakers about the consequences of national climate policy in the global economy.

This chapter develops a productivity analysis of the US pharmaceutical industry via Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This study concerns itself with 16 US pharmaceutical companies. The output variables are profit margin, operating margin, return on assets, and return on equity. The input variables are corporate workers and market capital. Since negative data appear in DEA, a directional distance approach was applied.

This chapter aims to answer whether foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) operating within the Chinese context differ from indigenous firms on several essential labor standards indicators: white- and blue-collar salaries, pension insurance, and working hours. In drawing upon neo-institutional and organizational imprinting theories and applying these to the Chinese context, the study addresses competing arguments regarding the expected effects of ownership type on these indicators. We employ seemingly unrelated regressions (SURs) to empirically examine a novel national survey of 1,268 firms in 12 Chinese cities. The regression results show that foreign MNCs do not provide uniquely beneficial labor practice packages to workers when compared with various indigenous firm types, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs), affiliate businesses of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, and domestic private enterprises (DPEs). Specifically, although MNCs provide relatively higher wage rates, they underperform relative to SOEs concerning social insurance. However, DPEs consistently underperform relative to MNCs across most indicators. The mixture of the results contributes important nuances to the application of neo-institutional and organizational imprinting theories to the Chinese context.

China and the United States represent the two largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world. Studies on how US companies react to the natural environment are plentiful and show that stakeholders are one of the key drivers for green decisions. However, we have limited understanding of the stakeholder pressure faced by firms in China. Drawing on stakeholder theory, this study builds from in-depth interviews with 32 businesses in China. We show that government, customers, employees, suppliers, investors, and community are stakeholders most mentioned. Interestingly, findings also seem to suggest that the perceived pressures of non-profit organizations (NGOs) differ by the form of ownership. Multinational firms often view NGOs as allies, while Chinese firms downplay them as powerless and unimportant. Although stakeholders are seen as both threat and opportunity, two-thirds of those surveyed in this study focused on opportunity as opposed to threat.

The circular economy (CE) proposes that all materials flow in a close-looped system. Waste generated by one production stage may be useful in another. Thus, the idea of a CE is linked to the goal of zero waste (ZW) and promotes a range of sustainable economic, social and environmental benefits in each sector. When we apply this to construction waste management, waste can be managed through reducing, recycling, upcycling and reusing. However, there is an inevitable cost implication associated with this process due to the additional requirement of inventory and waste processing, and this becomes a disincentive to implementing the CE. Formal institutions, referring here to legal rules and regulations, play a critical role in motivating firms and individuals towards a CE. As different countries have different government rules and regulations, and there is limited research on their differences, we review Asia’s and Europe’s legal rules and regulations relevant to the goal of ZW and CE in the construction sector.

Using the most recent dataset from 2013–2014 to 2017–2018, the study examines the efficiency of 75 coal-fired power plants in the Indian thermal power sector. The authors obtained robust estimates of efficiency scores by employing Seiford and Zhu’s (2002) DEA-based classification invariance technique to account for CO₂ emissions as an undesirable output. Meta-frontier analysis and the Tobit regression are used to compute technology heterogeneity across power plants belonging to public and private groups and investigate the factors driving carbon-adjusted efficiency, respectively. The results reveal that, on average, the efficiency of power plants during the study period is 78.26%, showing significant room for reduction in CO₂ emissions alongside augmentation in electricity generation. Private plants are more efficient than public ones, and relative performance inefficiency is the primary source of inefficiency in the thermal power sector. Regression analysis indicates that domestic-equipped plants perform with lesser levels of efficiency, and plants with more units are more inefficient than plants with fewer units. Carbon productivity significantly improves efficiency since fewer fossil fuels with high carbon will generate more electricity.