Search results

The aim of this study is to determine key factors and processes for multinational companies (MNCs) to develop an effective stakeholder engagement and sustainable development (SD) framework.

A qualitative multiple-case approach was used. A triangulation method was adopted (interviews, archival documents and observations) to collect data on three global firms (MNCs). Nine senior executives were interviewed for this study (three from each firm). An initial literature review was conducted to explore possible practices and factors (the deductive approach) to SD. Interview data were analysed using Nvivo to obtain appropriate nodes and themes for the framework. A comparison of findings from interview data, archival data, factors, themes and cross cases comparison were used to develop the final conceptual framework (the inductive approach).

The results suggested that stakeholder engagement is a key mediator between “stakeholder network” (internal and external factors) and outcomes (corporate social responsibility, social capital, shared value and SD). Key internal factors such as human capital/talent, technology, culture, leadership and processes such as collaboration, knowledge sharing and co-creation of value with stakeholders were identified. These internal factors and processes must be integrated and aligned with external factors such as social, political, cultural, environment and NGOs to achieve effective stakeholder engagement.

This study has captured the insight of how MNCs developed their SD strategies. Accessing internal data from MNCs is always a challenge and in-depth qualitative approach is warranted here to obtain underlying strategies, processes and meaning to SD in MNCs.

In the light of a recent systemic model, the yoyo model, this paper aims to look at how to show Bergstrom's Rotten Kid theorem as a simple corollary of earlier results along this line of work, explaining why transferable utility implies Becker's Rotten Kid theorem. It also aims to look at the relevant problem with child labor.

The systemic yoyo model published earlier is the road‐map and foundation for the discussion. Since “as long as the benevolent head continues to contribute his income to all, other members are also motivated to maximize the family income,” as claimed by Becker's Rotten Kid theorem, the issue of child labor naturally comes into play. To this end, an example is constructed to show that the works of Baland and Robinson and Bommier and Dubois need to be fine‐tuned.

The paper provides a short and clean proof for Bergstrom's Rotten Kid theorem and, by linking to Buchanan's Samaritan's dilemma, the clouds surrounding the difficult situation can be penetrated with more clarity. More specifically, child labor and children's human capital accumulation should not be mutually exclusive, as Baland and Robinson and Bommier and Dubois had assumed.

The paper shows rigorously how Baland and Robinson and Bommier and Dubois need to be fine‐tuned in order to capture more of the published empirical findings.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce two important principles of efficiency, one on the management of a business entity and the other on the structure of employees’ efforts and devotion toward realizing the mission of their organization.

All discussion and reasoning are established on some of the traditional methods of microeconomics and on the basis of the systemic yoyo model. Here, the yoyo model plays the role of intuition, while the traditional methods are utilized to present the exact details underneath the systemic thinking.

What is discovered include how management efficiency can be achieved by being flexible in terms of allowing individual employees to have conflicting personal values and how organizational inefficiency always exists no matter how the business entity is set up.

The established results are applicable in all business scenarios without foreseeable limitations.

By understanding these results, business managers could simply devote more of their time and effort on being flexible in terms of management styles and focusing on the “big” picture of the corporation instead of dwelling on how to improve employees’ efficiencies.

This paper establishes two very important, very useful results for managers. These results are expected to enrich the managerial understanding on what can be improved and what cannot.

This article argues in favor of using motion picture screens as a medium for the presentation of advertising messages. The concept and history of cinema screen advertising is examined, previous and contemporary audience research on cinema ads is presented, and an argument favoring the adoption of cinema screen advertising is offered. Virtually all of the American mass media are characterized as commercial in the sense of being largely advertising supported. The most commonplace and pervasive media‐newspapers, television, radio, and magazines—all share this characteristic. Cinema, however, is and has been supported almost entirely by patrons. Moreover, today there is much discussion as well as research on how new communications technologies might be employed to meet advertising and marketing needs. This article examines a mass communications technology which has been present for a century but has been virtually untapped as an advertising and marketing medium for reaching American consumers. Few individuals think of theatrically exhibited motion pictures as a likely medium to be supported by advertising. Introductory mass communications, advertising, and marketing texts regularly omit mention of this notion. This article argues that in an age of new communications technologies, use of this older technology for advertising and marketing carries many of the same advantages as does use of the emerging ones. This article explores the concept of cinema advertising, presents previous and contemporary audience research on cinema ads, and argues that today, especially, this long‐neglected medium should be adopted for the dissemination of information by the consumer marketing and advertising industries.

What happens when leaders are unable to keep leading? Leaders are often expected to be enthusiastic, innovative and help lead their organization forward. However, sometimes they can find themselves so emotionally and physically depleted that they are unable to function, even at the most basic level. Years of stress, heavy responsibilities, personal issues and unhealthy work hours can take a toll in the form of ‘burnout’. The battery is flat and the car cannot start. There are many contributing factors to burnout. It comes at a high cost to the leader, his family and his organization. This chapter will look at the nature of burnout and examine how the leader’s personality, work role, leadership style and life experiences can all contribute to the development of this condition. The impact of burnout, pathways to recovery and some preventative measures will also be examined combining current research findings with the author’s own experience of burnout. This chapter aims to highlight the need for leaders to look after themselves and for organizations to help support their leaders in an effective way. Although recovery from burnout may be a difficult and long journey, leaders can regain their strength and motivation and return to the role stronger and with more effective coping strategies.

The paper focuses on the question of the extent to which individual preference-based values are suitable in guiding environmental policy and damage assessment decisions. Three criteria for “suitableness” are reviewed: conceptual, moral and legal. Their discussion suggests that: (i) the concept of economic value as applied to environmental resources is a meaningful concept based on the notion of trade-off; (ii) the limitations of the moral foundations of cost-benefit analysis do not invalidate its use as a procedure for guiding environmental decision making; (iii) the input of individual preferences into damage assessment is compatible with the basic foundations of tort law; (iv) using individual preference-based methods provides incentives for efficient levels of due care; (v) determining standing is still very contentious for various categories of users as well as for aggregating non-use values. Overall, the discussion suggests that the use of preference-based approaches in both the policy and legal arenas is warranted provided that they are accurately applied, their limitations are openly acknowledged and they assume an information-providing rather than a determinative role.

When the policy maker contemplates the current aggregate demand (AD), she/he does so given implicitly the current state of income inequality. And, policy goals should be set based on the distance between this demand and some “optimal” AD from the viewpoint of optimal income inequality. The purpose of this paper is to relate this policy concern to the sources of modern inequality.

To characterize optimality, recent research in inequality reveals that paternalistic inheritance is the decisive source of it. Inequality is the outcome of an intergenerational externality according to which the current entrepreneurs (physical-capital formation agents) bequeath to descendants who use the inheritance as rentiers rather than as entrepreneurs. Several policy measures have been proposed to correct for this externality. Yet, it is found that if the “dynastic” character of inequality is disregarded, the distance between actual and optimal AD will be ever increasing.

Policy should be addressing the motive of the descendants to act as rentiers, which is found to be easy to attain once the policy maker adopts a natural-resource view of sizeable inheritance and proceeds to reassign property rights over it across generations.

Optimality is identified with the Cantorian (total) ordering of the social economy, which is inhibited by the institution of dynastic property rights. One way to deal with this problem is to view inheritance as a depletable natural resource.