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Getting rid of the contradictions between financial and sustainability reports is not straightforward, owing to their disparate financial-, environmental- and people-related data. The purpose of this paper is to show how a big step toward integrating the reports can be made by focusing on extracted value and subtracting it from reported profits. Value extraction is defined as value captured from stakeholders by distorting the competitive market process.

Value extracted is identified by looking at three ways in which it is done: manipulating markets to enhance profits, exploiting market distortions to socialize costs and privatizing benefits. These categories are related to one consolidated bottom-line using the data from JPMorgan’s 2012 reports. Application to the Western oil majors shows how one bottom-line can be used to assess the risks posed by value extraction to the economic sustainability of a firm.

Conservatively estimated, JPMorgan’s value extracted in 2012 was 25 per cent of reported profits. From 2007-2009, the average annual value extracted by Exxon and Chevron was 17 and 16 per cent of reported profits, respectively, whereas for BP and Eni, it was 23 and 30 per cent, respectively. Higher value extraction by BP preceded the Deepwater Horizon explosion and, in Eni’s case, the political disruption of its activities.

It is difficult to get precise numbers on the value extracted because sustainability costing and related data are often neither available nor standardized.

Reported profits minus value extracted, defined as competitive profits, provide a proxy for one bottom line that integrates the financial and sustainability reports.

The construction industry is facing an enormous number of challenges due to continuous advancements in construction technologies and techniques. Hence, construction management theories have to confront critical newly issues concerning market globalization and construction innovations. The key factor to address these challenges is to ameliorate the competitive abilities of the competing construction firms. In this context, measuring competitiveness of construction firms is an efficacious approach to amplify their competitive growth and profitability. To this end, the purpose of this research paper is to design a three-tier multi-criteria decision making model for competitiveness assessment and benchmarking of construction companies, meanwhile tackling a wide range of essential factors and attributes that covers broad aspects of the present competitive market.

In the first tier, four new pillars (4P) of competitiveness assessment are introduced for construction firms, namely, organization performance, project performance, environment and client and innovation and development. These pillars are able to aid in construction firms’ management on both long and short term basis. Hence, 21 key competitive factors and eighty key competitive criteria are identified, incorporated and analyzed in this research study. The second tier encapsulates carrying out a questionnaire survey in the Canadian and Vietnamese market to garner two main sets of information. The first set of information incorporates responses of the pairwise comparisons between competitiveness factors and criteria. The second set involves gathering utility scores pertinent to each competitiveness criteria. The developed model then leverages the use of analytical hierarchy process to scrutinize the relative importance priorities of competitiveness factors and criteria. The third tier of the developed model encompasses the use of multi-attribute utility theory to compute competitiveness scores for construction companies through blending criteria’ relative importance weights alongside their respective utility functions. In addition, the third tier comprises conducting a sensitivity analysis to derive the most important criteria influencing the overall competitiveness of construction companies. The developed model is tested and validated using three case studies; one construction company from Canada and two construction companies from Vietnam.

Results demonstrated that the developed model has a potential to render a synthesized and methodical performance evaluation for the competitive ability of a given construction company. Furthermore, it was found that Vietnamese companies are more considerate towards pillars pertaining to environment and client while Canadian companies are more attentive towards innovation and development. The outcome of sensitivity analysis revealed that effectiveness of cost management highly affects the competitive ability of Vietnamese companies while effectiveness of cost management exhibits the most significant influence on the competitive of Canadian companies.

The developed model can benefit construction companies to understand their competitiveness in their market and diagnose their strengths and weaknesses. It is also can be useful in efficient utilization of their limited resources and development of sustainable and long-term strategic plans strategic plans, which consequently leads to maintaining better position in their dynamic business markets.

Literature review manifests that reported competitiveness assessment models and practices are not able to address present challenges, technologies and developments in construction market.

Sees the objective of teaching financial management to be to help managers and potential managers to make sensible investment and financing decisions. Acknowledges that financial theory teaches that investment and financing decisions should be based on cash flow and risk. Provides information on payback period; return on capital employed, earnings per share effect, working capital, profit planning, standard costing, financial statement planning and ratio analysis. Seeks to combine the practical rules of thumb of the traditionalists with the ideas of the financial theorists to form a balanced approach to practical financial management for MBA students, financial managers and undergraduates.

Under the big data background, there are many influencing factors for investors of new energy vehicles (NEV), and government subsidies promote the sustainable development of the new energy vehicle industry. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to provide solutions for the sustainable development of NEV.

The sustainable marketing strategy of NEV in China is put forward. This paper first analyzes the subsidy policy effect of NEV under the background of big data. It then establishes the online optimal leasing strategy under multiple strategy choices and the online leasing strategy of multiple vehicles under the inflation market.

With the fixed cost of NEV in each lease period, the optimal competition ratio of online decision-makers will continue to decrease with the increase of the difference between prepaid funds and government subsidies. In the decision-making of renting and purchasing multiple vehicles, the general strategy competition ratio is 2.922, while the optimal competition ratio of the online renting and purchasing strategy proposed by the research is 2.723.

The research is limited by the limited data and information collected, so the optimal decision-making model has some limitations. The authors need to find more representative data to optimize the model.

As an emerging industry, NEV have developed rapidly in recent years. Based on the online algorithm and competitive ratio theory, this paper solves the decision-making problem of operators and gives the optimal strategy to promote the green development of the new energy vehicle industry.

This paper proposes the optimal strategy for online investors of new energy vehicle operators by combining online algorithm and competitive ratio theory. The numerical analysis results of the optimal online model under multi strategy selection show that with the same difference between prepaid funds and government subsidies, the time point will be delayed and the time point will be advanced as the cost of leasing NEV in each period increases.

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 explore the moderating role of competitive intensity between the existing relationship of capital structure and firm performance.

Using the balanced panel data of listed non-financial firms of Pakistan, the present study adopts both the panel and OLS estimation techniques to draw the inferences.

The results exhibit that high debt ratio is harmful for the accounting performance of the selected sample firms of Pakistan. In addition, product market competition negatively moderates the relationship between capital structure and firm performance which suggests that high product market competition can be used as a substitute of debt financing to align the interests of a firm’s managers and shareholders.

The findings of the research provide evidence for the policy makers/regulators that the sample firms should discourage the high debt financing in the presence of competitive intensity in the product marketplace.

The core contribution of the current research is to examine the moderating role of product market competition on the leverage–performance relationship because, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no single study has previously explored this relationship in the context of Pakistan.

Medium‐sized regional building contractors in the UK are exhibiting poorer performance in the 1980s and the 1990s and are less likely to survive than their larger or smaller counterparts. The market structure of contracting appears to be changing, putting pressure on these intermediate firms. Evidence drawn from the Department of the Environment (DoE) statistical series shows industry composition is changing, in particular the gradual decline over time of the middle market. An analysis of company accounts for a sample of approximately 200 contractors shows that medium‐sized firms are also displaying inferior business ratios. Possible explanations are offered, including barriers to entry, such as capitalization, economies of scale (pecuniary and market), along with changes in construction demand.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the leverage of French wine companies (410 companies) in the wine industry during the period 2000‐2004.

Different classical capital structure theories are reviewed (trade‐off theory (TOT), pecking order theory (POT) and dynamic TOT) in order to formulate testable propositions concerning the determinants of debt levels of the French wine companies. A number of regression models (classical and panel techniques) are developed to test the static theory of trade‐off against the POT.

The results suggest that POT seems to better explain leverage of French wine companies. Significant differences in debt ratio were found between cooperatives and other legal structures. Debt ratios are also different between sub‐sectors (wholesalers, wine growers, wine makers, etc.).

Cost of capital is one of the pillars of competitive advantage (or disadvantage) of companies. With the objective to minimize the cost of capital, it seems very important to know the potential determinants of an optimal capital structure.

This is a first study of capital structure determinants in the French wine industry which contributes to the current debate between competitive capital structure theories.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the effect of the National Hockey League (NHL) collective bargaining agreement (CBA) of 2005 between the NHL owners and the NHL Players Association, to determine whether competitive balance in the NHL increased after the CBA.

Competitive balance in the NHL was compared between 11 seasons before the NHL Lockout Season in 2004-2005 and 11 seasons after, with a new CBA and a new revenue sharing plan. Competitive balance was measured in multiple ways, within seasons, across multiple seasons, by the margin of victory in individual games, by the concentration of teams winning and playing in the NHL championship, in the correlation of winning percentage of a season with subsequent seasons, and the number of consecutive winning or losing seasons.

There was greater competitive balance after the Lockout Season and the new CBA than before on all of the measures of competitive balance. The NHL has found a management solution to the effective management of a common pool resource and avoided a tragedy of the commons.

While this research builds on previous work which examines the presence of competitive balance in the NHL, it encourages those engaged in labor policy to consider not only the merit of design when negotiating labor policy, but also to explore the impact of policy on organizational outcomes over time.

This paper combines perspectives and insights from multiple disciplines including economists’ ideas about competitive balance in a sports league, ecologists’ ideas about effective management of a common pool resource, and strategic management ideas about management solutions to a sustainability problem.

This study aims to investigate how firms of different sizes respond to competitive pressure from peers.

This study employs machine learning techniques to measure competitive pressure based on management discussion and analysis (MD&A) documents and then utilises the constructed pressure indicator to explore the relationship between competitive pressure and corporate risk-taking behaviours amongst firms of different sizes.

We find that firm sizes are positively associated with their risk-taking behaviours when firms respond to competitive pressure. Large firms are inclined to exhibit a high level of risk-taking behaviours, whereas small firms tend to make conservative decisions. Regional growth potential and institutional ownership moderate the relationships.

Utilising text mining techniques, this study constructs a novel quantitative indicator to measure competitive pressure perceived by focal firms and demonstrates the heterogeneous behaviour of firms of different sizes in response to competitive pressure from peers, advancing research on competitive market pressures.