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The purpose of this paper is to give an updated overview over the development of employee-ownership in Italy, France, Spain including Mondragon, the UK and the US with relatively many employee-owned firms. How have the barriers for employee-ownership been overcome in these countries?

The overview is based on updated descriptions of the development of employee-ownership included in this special issue. The analysis follows the structure of overcoming five barriers: the organization problem; the problem of entry and exit of employee-owners; the startup and takeover problem; the capital- and the risk problem.

Italy, France and Spain have overcome the barriers by specific legislation for worker cooperatives, this includes rules for entry and exit of employee members. Cooperative support organizations play an important role for monitoring and managing the startup problem and for access to capital. The Mondragon model includes individual ownership elements and a group structure of cooperatives. The EOT and ESOP models are well suited for employee takeovers, financing are eased by tax advantages and they are all-employee schemes. While the EOT has no individual risks, the ESOP model has the possibility for capital gains for employees but also the risk of losing these gains.

Comprehensive and updated overview of the development in employee-ownership in the five countries to identify successful formats of employee-ownership for implementation in countries with few employee-owned firms.

Within a framework of supply chain (SC) coordination, this paper analyzes a green SC consisting of a retailer and a manufacturer, under government incentives and legislations and the consumer environmental awareness. To mitigate carbon emissions and promote the sustainability of the SC, a customized carbon emission trading mechanism is developed.

A game-theoretical decision model formulated determines the optimal sustainability level and the optimal quota of carbon credit from the ceiling capacity set by the government. In order to coordinate the SC and optimize environmental decisions, a novel combination of consignment and zero wholesale price contracts is proposed.

Analytical and numerical analyses conducted highlight that the proposed contract generates a Pareto improvement for both channel members, boosts the profit of the green SC, enhances the sustainability level of the channel and contributes to a reduction in the requested carbon emission credit by the manufacturer.

With the proposed mechanism, governments can protect their industries and, more importantly, comply with European Union (EU) rules on annually reducing emission ceilings allocated to industries.

Different from previous studies on cap-and-trade strategies, the proposed mechanism enables companies to select lower emission quota/allowances than the maximum amount set by the government, and in return, companies can benefit from several incentive strategies of the government.

This paper aims to develop an optimal buyback promotion strategy for enterprises, including multibuyback strategy and self-buyback strategy, taking both the consumer's multichannel psychological acquisition attributes and remaining market into account.

Based on the game theory and Hotelling model, the authors formulate a new model to study the equilibrium of different buyback models, given the utility maximization of the consumers, the profit maximization and the constraint on nondecreasing market share of the enterprises, and the authors conduct comparative analysis.

Intuitively, enterprises buying back products of other brands would appeal to some consumers. However, the authors find that after implementing the multibuyback scheme, enterprises may not be able to seize competitors' markets or even lose their original customer base in the context considered in this article counterintuitive. In addition, the size of remaining market share and the consumer's multichannel psychological acquisition affect the choice of buyback promotion strategies. Moreover, after implementing multibuyback scheme, customers with old products subsidize those who receive additional discounts. Finally, the authors point out that the buyback strategy choices of companies with different goal-oriented are diverse.

This study has a very solid realistic background and provides guidance for enterprises to implement buyback promotion strategies. In addition, the authors unearth new influencing factors to provide a reasonable explanation for different buyback strategies in reality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to explore the multibuyback promotion strategy as a new buyback method, where the two influencing factors the authors have not been proposed so far.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of current carbon tax (CT) policy on organizations involved in a sharing network relation.

For finding the CT and economic value of the industries connected in a sharing network model a multi-objective multi-integer linear model has been formulated. The data set of the case organization is used for computation. The formulated mathematical model is computed with the aid of GAMS optimization program.

This research paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the sharing network strategy in increasing the economic value and decreasing the CT for industries involved in sharing network. The CT value INR 3,012.694 for the industries in Scenario II which incorporates the sharing network is less than the CT INR 3,580.167 for industries in Scenario I without sharing network.

The data used for the computation is based on a particular sharing network under investigation. The formulated mathematical model can be checked with similar sharing networks by varying the parameters.

This work can aid in gaining complete knowledge on the sharing network strategy which can uplift the resources and the monetary value of the non-efficient industries moving them towards sustainable and greener supply chain practices.

The presented work can impact various industries in developing countries providing them with a strategy to enhance their resources and economic value by maintaining an amicable relation.

This work uniquely was able to validate economic feasibility and CT in accordance with the carbon footprint involved in sharing network. This sharing network also incorporates the concepts of circular economy and reverse logistics for showcasing a better strategy.

This study aims to investigate how a French multinational enterprise (MNE) is developing employee stock ownership (ESO) in its subsidiaries in Peru and Mexico, both Latin American countries with deep social and economic inequalities.

This is a qualitative case study which conducted interviews with representatives of the French MNE and its subsidiaries in Peru and Mexico.

The employee stock purchase plans offered by the company to its employees support the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) 1, 8 and 10 in these countries.

The authors argue that MNEs could become flagships in the SDG achievement in emerging economies.

By contributing to better workplace outcomes and enhanced corporate performance, ESO is in line with SDG 8. ESO also fulfills SDGs 1 and 10 by allowing employees to build up savings and wealth, whose lack is the main source of inequality and poverty. Reciprocity and binary economics theories explain these relationships.

In order to encourage the high-water-consumption (HWC) manufacturers to carry out water-saving transformation relying on self-strength or outsourcing to a water-saving service company (WSSC) during production processes, government subsidies are provided according to water-saving efforts (WSE) or investment cost. In this context, the authors derive the participant's equilibrium decisions and the manufacturer's water-saving strategy. Additionally, the effects of subsidies on WSE and stakeholders' profits are discussed.

Mathematical models including optimization model and Stackelberg game model are constructed under different subsidy schemes.

The study finds that (1) there exists a threshold related to the subsidy coefficient for the HWC manufacturer when choosing between self-saving and outsourcing-saving. (2) When the technological competitive advantage between WSSC and manufacturer is within a certain range, government's subsidy promotes HWC enterprises to choose outsourcing-saving. (3) Given a water-saving mode, subsidy on investment cost is more effective for the government to achieve more environmental performance.

First, subsidy endogeneity can be considered to explore the optimal interval for government subsidies to maximize social welfare. Second, in outsourcing-saving, other types of contract can be discussed. Another extension is about model uncertainties. Finally, other policies on improving water efficiency can be also examined.

The paper includes implication for HWC manufacturers to select the best water-saving mode under subsidy, and it allows policymakers to understand the efficiency of proposed subsidies.

Decisions on water-saving efforts, selection of water-saving modes and operational planning are also regarded as business strategies in the paper. Particularly, the influences of different government subsidies are also considered and compared.

France is the third country in Europe after Italy and Spain for the number of employee-owned firms, with some 2,600 worker cooperatives (SCOPs). The authors propose a comprehensive review of SCOPs and any barriers to their expansion.

The authors analyse relevant legislation; review the rich empirical economic literature on SCOPs; and offer new descriptive empirical evidence comparing SCOPs and other French firms.

SCOPs benefit from a consistent legal framework and a well-structured and supportive cooperative movement. Cooperative laws allow attracting external capital, provide barriers against degeneration and encourage profit allocations that favour investment and labour. SCOPs are distributed across a wide range of industries; are larger than conventional firms, as capital intensive, more productive and survive better. Despite this good performance their number remains modest, perhaps because of information barriers.

An examination of the Italian and Spanish experiences and the relationship between SCOPs and the French labour movement might contribute to explaining the modest number of SCOPs.

The first comprehensive review of French worker cooperatives in four decades and the first with extensive comparative data on SCOPs and conventional French firms. With some of the best data on worker cooperatives in the world, findings have international relevance.

The return behavior of customers has a great impact on the e-retail industry and has resulted in the emergence of return-freight insurance (RI). Additionally, customer loss aversion arising from returns affects e-retailers' decisions and manufacturers' profits. Therefore, the main purpose of the authors' study is to determine how e-retailers and manufacturers choose their RI strategy and pricing according to customers' loss aversion.

The authors propose three scenarios: no RI, customer purchase RI and free e-retail RI (FRI). Meanwhile, the authors also model a Stackelberg game between e-retailers and manufacturers for analysis. Then, according to customer return behavior and loss aversion, the authors study the optimal pricing decision and RI premium allocation scheme for e-retailers and manufacturers under different scenarios.

It was found that the loss sensitivity reduces customers' willingness to buy RI, which is not conducive to the development of e-retailers and manufacturers. Additionally, with higher loss sensitivity, e-retailers and manufacturers offer FRI to gain higher profits, which supports the implementation of the FRI strategy.

The authors introduce customers' loss aversion into RI to analyze the optimal pricing decisions and profits of e-retailers and manufacturers, enriching the application of loss aversion theory. In addition, this study analyzes the two-way cost-sharing mechanism between manufacturers and e-retailers to provide FRI, which provides a theoretical basis for RI premium sharing.

This paper aims to use rhetorical theory to understand how actors mobilise persuasive communication to justify the arguments for and against transfer pricing and tax management schemes in an international context. The strategic adoption of transfer pricing by transnational corporations is controversial since it affects wealth transfers.

This paper adopts a micro-rhetorical analysis of submissions to a recent government Inquiry in Australia based on Aristotle's appeals of logos, ethos and pathos. The arguments used by Chevron Australia, and its protagonist civil society organisation, the Tax Justice Network highlight the vexed nature of tax management schemes.

Transfer pricing (TP) is more than a mere technical practice, as it involves wealth transfers initiated by powerful economic players. From a neoliberal justification of fair markets and shareholder wealth maximisation, the moral ambiguity is attenuated because it is accepted as a normative social ideal.

Prior studies on TP and tax schemes are primarily theoretical and conceptual. This paper adopts a rhetorical approach which provides important insights into the communication devices used to legitimate taken-for-granted ideas about corporate actions.