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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social responsibility approaches of six small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Argentina and their definitions of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

This is an exploratory, qualitative study and part of a broader study. A sample of six Argentine SMEs from manufacturing, services and construction sectors was used to evaluate specific CSR initiatives in the areas of social development. A total of 23 interviews were conducted, and open coding was used to analyze and develop categories and themes from the data patterns.

Results provide a set of definitional dimensions for CSR from an Argentine perspective, and indicate that SMEs in Argentina frequently engage in education and training oriented initiatives as a primary emphasis for their CSR efforts. Commitment, community and employee orientations, the natural environment, and education/training represent key elements of their conceptualizations of CSR.

This research extends the literature related to CSR definitions. It also highlights elements of a growing trend around educational social development initiatives in developing countries. Additionally, it is one of only a few studies to focus on Argentina.

The purpose of this study to propose a model that links the following human resource (HR) factors: employee environmental empowerment, employee environmental training, employee environmental teamwork, managerial environmental empowerment and managerial environmental training, to environmental performance as perceived by managers.

A survey was administered to 220 manufacturing organizations in Mexico. The survey instrument was self‐report format with attitudinal variables. Items were adopted from previously published scales. A hypothesized model of the variable relationships with structural equation modelling analysis was tested.

The results suggest that managers perceive that both environmental training and environmental empowerment are important to themselves and employees. In this study, overall environmental training had a stronger relationship with the dependent variables than environmental empowerment. In the case of the employee level, the effects were mediated through environmental teamwork.

This study contributes to both theory and praxis. First, it extends the literature related to environmental management and HR management. Second, it examines managerial perceptions of the HR role within the firm for both manager/supervisors and hourly/direct workers. Third, the study is one of the first to investigate the relationships between HR factors and environmental issues in Mexican manufacturing firms. Finally, the study has important implications for practitioners in the manufacturing sector.

Over the last several years, there has been a significant increase worldwide in the implementation of environmental management systems (EMS). Yet, few studies have provided feedback on managerial views of key components and performance of these systems. The purpose of this paper is to examine variations in perceptions of a number of environmental and human resource constructs that are operationalized and measured in the field at Mexican maquiladoras. Differences between organizations with a certified EMS, informal EMS, and no EMS are examined.

A survey was administered to 220 manufacturing organizations in Mexico. The survey instrument was self‐report format with attitudinal variables. Items were adopted from previously published scales. A global hypothesis was proposed in order to test the difference between groups across multiple dependent variables. A MANCOVA and post hoc MANOVA were used to simultaneously evaluate the difference among the multiple metric dependent variables in this study.

The paper found that significant facility differences existed for all environmental management practices and perceived environmental performance across all levels of EMS, with certified EMS facilities being the highest, informal EMS facilities being second and facilities with no EMS being lowest.

This study contributes to both theory and practice. First, it extends the literature related to EMS and environmental and human resource constructs. Second, it tests the role of EMS certification in firm environmental management. Third, the study is the first to compare EMS differences among firms in the Mexican manufacturing sector. Finally, the study has relevant implications for practitioners.

This paper presents a theoretical framework for environmental performance by looking at the crucial employer and employee factors affecting environmental performance. The model focuses on the integration between top management commitment, employee empowerment, rewards, feedback and review, and environmental performance. Suggestions for managers on implementing core concepts from the model, in addition to the challenges they may encounter are discussed throughout the article.

Currently, many businesses are implementing a proactive, strategic tool known as an environmental management system (EMS) to gain a competitive advantage. Companies can no longer simply use compliance plans to deal with environmental concerns; consumer demands for greener products and services, and operational efficiencies require long term strategic and sustainable approaches for environmental management. An EMS includes documentation of: commitment and policy; planning; implementation; measurement and evaluation; and review and improvement. Establishment and maintenance of an EMS can be costly and time consuming, therefore implementation should be carefully structured to assure success. This paper identifies human resource (HR) factors such as top management support, environmental training, employee empowerment, teamwork, and rewards systems as key elements of the implementation process of an EMS. Furthermore, the interaction of these factors is examined in terms of the five categories of an EMS mentioned above. Finally, a conceptual model of the EMS‐HR factors is proposed to assist in proper facilitation of the environmental management program.

In many countries, small and medium-sizes enterprises (SMEs) are primarily responsible for wealth, economic growth, innovation and research and development. In this paper, the authors examine the impact of family ownership and owner involvement on the financial performance of unlisted Finnish SMEs.

This is an empirical paper using a random sample of 1,137 non-listed Finnish SMEs. Through regression analyses and robustness tests, the authors examine the effects of family management, family and employee ownership and involvement.

Using profitability measures, the authors find family-owned and controlled SMEs perform significantly better than non-family firms. The number of family members actively involved in daily business operations bears a significant negative relation to firm performance. In contrast, non-family firms in which owners are actively involved, provide comparable returns to family firms, suggesting that in non-family firms active involvement contributes to performance. The authors find that employee ownership in SMEs does not provide an efficient way to compensate employees since more dispersed ownership does not lead to higher performance.

SME employee ownership does not provide an efficient way to compensate employees since more dispersed ownership does not lead to higher performance.

In the case of Finland, family ownership is an effective organisational structure. As the depth of the COVID pandemic remains uncertain, firms with committed ownership are key to the economic recovery.

The authors approach the family ownership and involvement issue from a different angle. Unlike earlier studies, the authors examine the impact of both family ownership and involvement on the financial performance of privately owned SMEs. This paper helps shed light on the role of family ownership and involvement as a possible explanatory factor of overall economic performance.

Bonnie CLAC (car loans and counseling) is a social entrepreneurship venture whose mission was to help low-to-moderate income consumers purchase new cars. Co-founder and social entrepreneur, Robert Chambers developed a business proposal for the venture. Chambers was struggling to convince banks that the proposal significantly reduced the banks' risks and the proposal provided significant benefits to the banks and community at large. The case begins with another bank rejecting the business proposal, continues with an explanation of the issues sub-prime consumers (generally low-to-moderate income consumers) face when attempting to obtain financing for reliable automobile transportation, and concludes with Chambers beginning to revise his proposal to convince risk averse bankers that Bonnie CLAC's clients were credit worthy and worth the risk. The exhibits for the case are the principal information sources students will use to answer the ice breaker and discussion questions.

The authors developed the case from interviews with Robert Chambers and secondary sources.

Personal finance, Financial management, Financial institutions management

Personal financial planning, Bank lending decisions and Credit scores

The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in short‐sale transactions of target firms and acquiring firms around merger and acquisition (M&A) announcements using daily short‐sale transaction data from the New York stock exchange and NASDAQ. The paper further aims to investigate the link between short‐sale transactions and trading costs.

Two abnormal short‐sale measures are developed. Two regression models based on the two short‐sale measures are constructed and ordinary least squares is used to estimate the regressions. Two samples to test bid‐ask spreads (BAS) before and after M&A announcements t‐test are used.

The paper finds that target firms experience significant excess short sales (ES) from day−1 to day+7; while acquiring firms experience significant ES from day 0 to day+20. For acquiring firms, the five‐day pre‐announcement abnormal short sale is negatively related to the announcement day return and is positively related to post‐announcement return. Such a relationship for target firms is not observed. For target firms, it is found that changes in short activity are not significantly related to changes in trading cost. For acquiring firms, short activity changes are positively related to quoted spreads and percentage quoted spreads. The short‐sale activity changes are negatively related to effective spreads.

The paper is a first step to understanding whether short sales affect market liquidity around M&A announcements; therefore restriction is necessary. Additional research can be done which should extend the current study to include the options market.

From the results, the paper cannot conclude that short sellers are informed traders around M&A announcements. Therefore restrictions on short sales around M&A announcements may not be warranted.

The paper fills an important blank in the existing literature by examining short‐sale transactions around M&A announcements. Such an investigation is of particular interest to market regulators as they try to update the short‐sale rules.

The purpose of this paper is to study short sales trading as part of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) batch open and National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) opening cross. The paper examines whether short transactions at the open can predict future returns.

The study tests to see if short transactions in the NYSE opening batch trade and NASDAQ opening cross are informative of future returns.

It is found that a stock's opening‐trade short volume is predictive of its short volume for the rest of trading day, positively related to its previous‐day price change, and positively related to its overnight price change at the opening trade on option‐expiration Fridays when the stock is part of the Standard and Poor (S and P) 500 index.

While previous research shows that intraday short sale trades are informative, this is the first paper to examine the opening trade of the day, and whether these short sales are informative.

Given the rising need for measuring and controlling of financial risk as proposed in Basel II and Basel III Capital Adequacy Accords, trading risk assessment under illiquid market conditions plays an increasing role in banking and financial sectors, particularly in emerging financial markets. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate asset liquidity risk and to obtain a Liquidity-Adjusted Value at Risk (L-VaR) estimation for various equity portfolios. The assessment of L-VaR is performed by implementing three different asset liquidity models within a multivariate context along with GARCH-M method (to estimate expected returns and conditional volatility) and by applying meaningful financial and operational constraints. Using more than six years of daily return dataset of emerging Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stock markets, we find that under certain trading strategies, such as short selling of stocks, the sensitivity of L-VaR statistics are rather critical to the selected internal liquidity model in addition to the degree of correlation factors among trading assets. As such, the effects of extreme correlations (plus or minus unity) are crucial aspects to consider in selecting the most adequate internal liquidity model for economic capital allocation, especially under crisis condition and/or when correlations tend to switch sings. This chapter bridges the gap in risk management literatures by providing real-world asset allocation tactics that can be used for trading portfolios under adverse markets’ conditions. The approach to computing L-VaR has been arrived at through the application of three distinct liquidity models and the obtained results are used to draw conclusions about the relative liquidity of the diverse equity portfolios.