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This study investigates the pricing decisions of the UK wholesale and retail food, beverages and tobacco sector over 2007–2016 using 19 four-digit level NACE Rev.2 classification industries.

The Hall (1988) and Roeger (1995) model is employed to estimate the price-cost margin for the aggregate sector and each constituent industry.

The results suggest the presence of weak imperfect competitive conduct as the markup value is close to perfect competition. Moreover, it is found that industries with higher market share and liquidity reserves tend to charge a lower markup, validating the presence of price wars and competitive incentives in the sector.

This paper contributes to the literature of pricing decisions and how access to available liquidity may affect the selling price of products. The pricing strategies also depend on the market structure as firms operating in more competitive sectors may start price wars more often than their counterparts in more concentrated sectors. Therefore, this study adds value to the investigation of pricing decisions under liquidity constraints across the UK wholesale and retail food, beverages and tobacco firms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate current practices of water governance disclosure in the food, beverage and tobacco industry and to determine whether the quality of disclosure has a positive association with integrated reporting (IR).

A water governance disclosure index was developed that used content analysis to code the latest standalone social, environmental and sustainability reports or integrated reports of 49 companies in the food, beverage and tobacco industry. The selected companies are listed on three indices, the ASX, JSE and DJSI. This was followed by quantitatively testing the association between IR and the quality of water governance disclosure, as measured against the qualitatively developed index.

It was found that the 18 IR companies’ water governance disclosure quality significantly outperformed the 31 companies in the non-IR group, with a calculated index score of 71.67% and 40.97%, respectively.

The evidence indicates that IR is superior to non-IR water governance disclosure, and the study, therefore, contributes to the literature around the legitimacy theory by concluding that IR is supportive to companies to legitimise their being.

The originality of this paper stems from the comparison of water governance disclosures between IR and non-IR firms. Considering that IR preparers outperformed companies in the non-IR group could provide insights to academics, regulators and reporting organisations that IR could be used to enhance water governance disclosure.

We examine how third party certification with quality management standards and mutual recognition of certification through international agreements of accreditation bodies creates trust between trading partners and increases bilateral trade. We focus on the food, beverage, and tobacco industry and use augmented gravity models for the 2000–2008 period. Our results show that quality management certifications are positively correlated with bilateral trade. Certifications help to reduce information asymmetries and signal commitment to quality production processes. Moreover, our results show that mutual recognition of certification has a positive and significant effect on trade. Members of the mutual recognition agreement for quality management standards have higher bilateral trade flows than non-members. Mutual recognition is in particular beneficial for markets access in high-income countries. We conclude that technical cooperation programs for developing countries’ conformity assessment services might be effective means to increase trade performance of developing countries.

In manufacturing industries, the levels of inventories at all stages (i.e. raw material, work-in-process and finished goods inventories) indicate the firm's competitive positioning, strategies, internal processes and relationships with suppliers and downstream customers. The authors identify patterns of manufacturing industries based on levels of raw material and finished goods inventories to classify inbound and outbound supply chain strategies.

The authors review literature on supply chain inventory strategy and perform cluster analysis to analyze patterns of manufacturing industries based on manufacturing industry data collected from US Census of Bureau. Following Porter's Five Forces Model, the authors perform in-depth case studies of four representative industries to analyze factors driving supply chain strategies, including industry intensity of rivalry, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, bargaining power of suppliers, and bargaining power of buyers.

This study identifies three streams of research on supply chain strategy: Fisher's model and its variations, lean and agile paradigms, and push/pull systems. It finds that whether an industry shows low or high raw materials or finished goods inventories depending on its products, processes, and the dynamics of all forces described in the Five Forces Model.

This study is not able to include supplier selection, production strategies, warehousing and distribution, and even product design into the analysis of supply chain strategy due to data limitation. This study classifies industries based on average inventory levels of raw materials and finished goods, while inventory levels and supply chain strategies for specific firms may vary significantly within each industry.

This study contributes to the supply chain management literature by providing a parsimonious framework of mapping inbound and outbound supply chain inventory strategies, and the results based on the analyses of all US manufacturing industries provide a baseline picture for supply chain management professionals with manufacturing firms.

The purpose of this paper is to focus, first, on the analysis of recent trends of the European and Italian food industries, and, second, on the possible implications that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiate can exert on the Italian agri-food system.

The study is based on an in-depth analysis of current economic trends, characteristics of production structure, and the trade balance of Italy-USA commercial relationship in the context of EU market. The main advantages and disadvantages that can be derived from the TTIP negotiation are pointed out.

The analysis of the Italian food industry highlights a very fragmented production structure characterized by the coexistence on the market of a small number of big companies and a large number of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Such bipolar structure constitutes a constraint to internationalization and limits the quantities of exportable products. The TTIP can represent an opportunity for the Italian food small businesses. On the other hand, the main disadvantages are related to the agricultural raw materials market.

The study offers an in-depth analysis of the main features of the Italian food industry and of its role in international agri-food trades, describing the scenario that could be opened by the TTIP negotiation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of different kinds of merger and acquisitions (M&As) on domestic industries’ productivity in the form of technological change (TC) and efficiency change (EC) in the Brazilian extracting and processing industries.

Panel data analysis is employed to test the impact of different kinds of M&As spillovers on each component of productivity growth. The database contains data collected from 2007 to 2011 referring to the Brazilian industries. The estimation procedure involves two stages. The first stage decomposes TFP growth into EC and TC using a input-based Malmquist Productivity Index. In the second step, EC and TC indexes are used interchangeably as a dependent variable in panel data regressions on the M&As-spillover variables.

The results indicate a positive relationship between TC and M&As made by Brazilian majority capital acquiring foreign-held capital from a company established abroad, which is consistent with reverse spillover theory. They also suggest an inverse relationship between TC and M&A operations made by companies with foreign majority capital acquiring both Brazilian-held capital and foreign-held capital from a company established in Brazil. Only the sectors that are capable of increasing their productivity via TC are able to benefit from technology transfer.

This study is limited by the extent of data aggregation applied, which did not identify M&A transaction effects at the firm level. The available data do not allow isolating the effects of M&A processes on industry performance, given the co-occurrence of several factors that affect the performance of the industry. The study results imply that public managers must remain cognizant of the critical need to preserve and maximize competition between foreign and domestic firms while promoting a competitive environment that encourages the development of domestic technological capacities and skilled human capital.

M&A processes raise important issues with respect to organizational decisions and industrial policy. Studies of M&A transactions may be of fundamental importance to the expansion of healthy companies as they evolve through successive stages of growth and development. Liberalizing regulations to promote M&A transactions, and corporate market control is only justified if it promotes social welfare and economic development. Understanding the complexity and dynamics of this phenomenon and appreciating the heterogeneity of possible outcomes can lead to more relevant discussion regarding their contributions.

Results found in this study indicate the need for greater efforts to understand how M&A operations, especially those associated to foreign-held capital, interact with local owned enterprises in developing economies and what benefits can be achieved through public policy. M&A operations need to be well evaluated by considering the kinds and intensities of externalities they might generate, whether and how local firms can potentially internalize those gains, building up absorptive capacities in order to achieve productivity spillover gains.

This study not only offers a more accurate understanding of the diverse nature and effects of M&A operations, but also stimulates a more relevant public policy discussion related to both foreign direct investment and OFDI incentives in Brazil. The growing economic importance of the activities of developing emerging countries’ multinational enterprises is making governments more inclined to re-evaluate their political strategies. Indeed, governments are beginning to recognize that markets need to be created, monitored and nurtured.

The purpose of this paper is to present possible strategic actions that aim to recover the value still remaining in industrial waste.

The research method is a multiple case study. The sample included six Brazilian companies of the footwear, metal-mechanics, pulp and paper, beverages, chemical and food industries. The study investigated the production process, waste generation, internal reuse, the destination of unused waste, difficulties and strategic challenges.

Possible strategies to recover the value remaining in industrial waste are increasing the internal reuse, developing new routes to other industries, reducing the waste generation, increasing the destination to cooperatives or recycling companies, which require studies to understand the legislation and agility in licensing and reducing the logistical cost of the destination.

The study relies on six case studies. Further research shall encompass an entire industry, starting with hypotheses derived from the cases.

The main barriers observed for reuse and recycling are uncertainties and ambiguities in the interpretation of legislation, the difficulty for the environmental licensing for recycling operations, excessive logistics costs for exploration opportunities and the lack of research to reduce the waste generation and to increase the internal reuse.

Waste managed by scavengers’ cooperatives can offer jobs to the people of vulnerable communities.

The study offers robust hypotheses to be tested in a survey on the capacity of a waste management strategy to create competitive advantage in the industry. The study establishes a relationship between waste management and three competitive enablers, compliance, corporate image and green market.

This work aims at discovering the multifaceted business performance of SA8000-certified companies operating in the Italian food and beverages manufacturing industry.

A clustering based on a principal component analysis considering 20 profitability, productivity and value-added distribution ratios was carried out on a sample of 105 Italian SA8000-certified food and beverages manufacturing companies.

Two clusters (CL1 and CL2) emerged from the statistical analysis, where CL1 represents 85.71% of the sample. Despite their general and some labour-related features being similar, they show very different performances. While CL2 performs better both within the food and beverage manufacturing industry than CL1, the latter performs similarly to industry, although even lower. Labour productivity pushes the gap between the clusters mostly through sales (generating revenues) and production (in the aspect of generating personnel costs). These findings suggest that a nonunique performance profile of firms SA8000 certified exists and that low performances do not prevent certification.

By focusing on SA8000 standard in the food and beverage sector, the study contributes to the research field by investigating the relationships between corporate social responsibility and firm performance in an important industrial sector for the Italian economy.

This paper aims to examine the short-term structure of the impact of R&D investments on turnover growth, indicating differences between tangible and intangible investments. The main questions are whether R&D and capital investments accompany firms' growth in the subsequent periods and how this relationship depends on other characteristics of the firms, such as size and industry. In addition, the authors study the relationship between R&D investments and the autocorrelation dynamics of firm growth.

The paper uses the European Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard as data source. This data source includes 1,000 European companies with information on employees, turnover, sector affiliation and details on capital expenditure and R&D expenditure.

The authors find that R&D activities have, on average, a positive effect on turnover growth, while capital investments show both, positive and negative, relationships with firm growth. The relationship and its temporal structure strongly depend on firm size and industry affiliation as well as whether investments are considered as one-time or permanent activities.

Usually, the impacts of firm characteristics on firm growth are studied without explicitly considering time. Firm characteristics and firm growth are usually measured and examined at the same point in time. In contrast, the study will focus on the short-term structure of the influence of firm characteristics on turnover growth, especially the impact of R&D investments.

This paper aims to make an attempt to identify labour intensity of organized manufacturing industries in India using the Annual Survey of Industry (ASI) data at three-digit level. It estimates total factor productivity growth (TFPG) and technical efficiency for both labour intensive and all manufacturing industries during the pre- and post-reforms periods.

The study uses three approaches to estimate TFPG. They are growth accounting (GA) (non-parametric), production function with correction for endogeneity – Levinsohn-Petrin (LP) (semi-parametric) and stochastic production frontier (SPF) analysis (parametric). The study uses ASI data published by Central Statistical Organization, Government of India for the period 1980-1981 to 2007-2008 for the analysis.

The study finds that the rate of decline of the labour intensity is more pronounced in the case of labour-intensive industries than all the manufacturing industries. The results of GA method suggest that the TFPG of labour-intensive industries has declined continuously from the pre-reforms period to the post-reforms period. Similarly, LP method indicates a continuous decline in TFPG of labour-intensive manufacturing industries during the post-reforms period. Interestingly, the results of SPF method also corroborate the findings of earlier two methods at the aggregate level but vary at a certain degree at the disaggregated level.

This paper is useful in the context of India considering the importance given to labour-intensive industries by the present government in terms of reviving the sector and improving the productivity and output.