Search results

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the ways in which companies either reproduce or challenge the growth-based roots of the social imaginary, in order to inform the degrowth debate at the firm level.

This paper offers an epistemic analysis of the ways companies organise, revealing underlying conceptions of organisations' identities and their corresponding ways of organising.

The epistemic analysis derives four conceptual findings allowing the authors to suggest ways of organising in a socio-environmental future not driven by economic growth. The paper suggests new research avenues to study alternative worldviews in organisations.

This paper creatively contributes to the discussion about alternatives to the current unsustainable economy with a special focus on the micro level, where businesses act as a vital driving force for economic growth.

As globalization has influence on social sustainability mainly due to its effects on income distribution as well as labor share and profile at the local and global levels, sustainable development and globalization need to be examined from the social sustainability point of view. Social sustainability aspect of development and globalization is mainly affected by the income distribution and labor aspects. Labor share, degree of equality in the income distribution, labor competence, degree of elimination of child labor, degree of labor intensiveness in the production, labor's level of competence and productivity are among the main factors which can be influenced by globalization, its opportunities, and challenges as well as by its transformation into the postglobalization phase. These factors can influence social sustainability. In other words, there is a link and relationship among sustainable development, globalization, and postglobalization, income distribution and labor. Enhancing welfare of the societies and social sustainability necessitates focusing on the ways to achieve equality in the income distribution, and enhanced working conditions at the local and global levels across countries and industries. Based on an in-depth literature review, this chapter aims to assess and rethink sustainable development and globalization from the income distribution and labour aspects. Furthermore, this chapter covers and examines effects of globalization on low-income and developed countries. This chapter provides suggestions and recommendations on how to enhance welfare of the society at the local and global levels in the post-growth phase. This chapter is expected to be useful to policy makers, researchers, and academics.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic literature review that illuminates the current state of knowledge regarding the specific approaches by which multinational corporations (MNCs) implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the subsidiary level in developing countries.

Even though substantial scholarly work has been made to outline MNCs' activities in developing countries, this literature remains fragmented. To support the field in its theoretical as well as empirical advancements, this study conducts a systematic review of this body of literature and content analysis of relevant articles using insights from strategic marketing literature (market driving/proactive and market-driven/reactive approaches).

The authors synthesize our findings by presenting a taxonomy of proactive/reactive CSR approaches in developing markets along with propositions that can guide future research in this area.

Among the key contributions of this study's literature review is the development of a taxonomy of proactive/reactive CSR, bringing together different and fragmented streams of research and viewing them from strategic marketing (“proactive/reactive”) perspective. The taxonomy and the two ensuing propositions can advance future CSR-related studies with MNCs in focus by providing both theoretical and empirical guidance.

The chapter examines the role of the UN Global Compact inspired Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative, how it operates, and the role that signatory schools and regional chapters play in its continued development and evolution.

The chapter conceptualizes the PRME engagement model (a learning network, reporting to stakeholders, commitment to continuous improvement), and uses three case vignettes to illustrate the type of programs and activities that signatory schools and regional chapters have developed and how these endeavors contribute to PRME’s evolution and development.

As a way of thinking about the ability of PRME to achieve its intended goals, it is important to look at higher education (thought leadership) within the context of the world of practice in both business (practice leadership) and civil society (practice leadership). PRME signatories and regional chapters need to more fully engage in this “sustainable praxis triad,” extending the growing network of signatories and chapters within the academic community to include businesses and civil society organizations.

The chapter focuses on three vignettes to illustrate different activities and involvement in PRME signatory schools and regional chapters. More extensive comparative analysis across business schools and regional chapters throughout the world is needed to ensure broader dissemination of current practices and innovations.

Beyond teaching and a focus on the current generation of students, PRME has the potential for more immediate impact through student-based consulting activities, the transfer of research results to the business community and larger society, and ensuring that university campuses and operations are exemplars of sustainable practice. PRME signatories and regional chapters can work to ensure that relevance and rigor in research are not polar extremes but rather as praxis – the integration of academic thought leadership with needed stewardship and practice leadership in the larger society.

Transparency and communication are important first steps for change. As business schools and universities openly share their research, curricula and pedagogical innovations, and best practices for their campus operations, they contribute to a vivid and stimulating intellectual climate, through which society and all stakeholders will benefit. PRME can facilitate the ability of higher education to serve as a nucleus and crystallization for innovative solutions for a more sustainable future.

PRME is still a relatively young initiative. First evidence shows that the PRME initiative is successfully contributing to educating a new generation of managers who are better prepared for the global challenges of sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise how place management practices in UK housing associations (HAs) involve processes of ecological place management.

Ethnographic fieldwork focusing on how communal spaces are organised on a housing estate in a UK city revealed the importance of negotiation with other actors, including an HA which is responsible for managing the estate. The authors draw on extensive participant observation with residents, as well as interviews with both residents and employees of the HA, to show the wider forces and complexities involved in these ecological place management practices.

This paper identifies hybrid socio-ecological, socio-political and political-economic dynamics unfolding as places are managed and organised. These widen the scope of place management research and practice to account for multiple ways places are organised.

This paper offers a critical perspective on place management, developing an ecological approach that is applicable both to the relatively new context of housing and to more established sites in town and city centres.

This paper’s findings point to ways that housing and place management practitioners, both in the UK and elsewhere, can use an ecological approach to re-frame their strategic and practical actions with regards to “place”.

This paper contributes to unveiling the complexity involved in place management and organisation, thereby encouraging place managers to embrace ecological thinking capable of addressing future challenges.

Acquisition is one of key corporate strategic decisions for firms’ growth and competitive advantage. Firms: (1) diversify through acquisition to balance cash flows and spread the business risks; and (2) eliminate their competitors through acquisition by acquiring new technology, new operating capabilities, process innovations, specialized managerial expertise, and market position. Thus, firms acquire either unrelated or related business based on their strategic motivations, such as diversifying their business lines or improving market power in the same business line. These different motivations may be related to their assessment of market growth, firms’ competitive position, and top management’s compensation. Thus, it is hypothesized that firms’ acquisition decisions may be related to their industry growth potential, post-acquisition firm growth, market share change, and CEO’s compensation composition between cash and equity. In addition, for the two alternative acquisition accounting methods allowed until recently, a test is made if the type of acquisition is related to the choice of accounting methods. This study classifies firms’ acquisitions as related or unrelated, based on the standard industrial classification (SIC) codes for both acquiring and target firms. The empirical tests are, first, based on all the acquisition cases regardless of the firm membership, and then, deal with the firms acquiring only related businesses or unrelated businesses exclusively.

The type of acquisitions was more likely related to industry growth opportunities, indicating that the unrelated acquisition cases are more likely to be followed by higher industry growth rate than the related acquisition cases. While there were a substantially larger number of acquisition cases using the purchase method, the related acquisition cases used the pooling-of-interest method more frequently than in the unrelated acquisition cases. The firm-level analysis shows that the type of acquisition decisions was still related to acquiring firms’ industry growth rate. However, the post-acquisition performance measures, using firm’s growth and change in market share, could support prior studies in that the exclusive-related acquisitions helped firms grow more and get more market share than the exclusive-unrelated acquisitions. CEO’s compensation composition ratio was not related to the types of acquisition.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the factors contributing to major shifts in the growth of tax revenue through the estimation of structural breaks and analysis of major tax regimes. Recent contributions to optimal tax theory and empirical literature on the Laffer curve effect, based on elasticity of taxable income, challenge the settled understanding on the rate-revenue relationship. In this backdrop, the objective of the paper is to find out the relative significance of changes in tax rate, tax base and administrative reforms in affecting the growth of tax revenue in India. The paper considers tax data spanning a period of six and half decades for five major components of direct and indirect taxes (corporation, personal income, customs, excise and service) of the central government of India.

Unknown break point(s) – single and multiple – in the tax structure are identified by using the Quandt-Andrews and Bai-Perron econometric tests. These tests were conducted for two models of growth of taxes (tax revenue and tax-NDP ratio) estimated using semi-log functions. A simulation exercise was conducted to find out the robustness of the results by varying the trimming parameter and number of breaks. An analytical framework is used to understand the factors associated with these breaks.

There is more than one break identified for every tax component as per the results of Bai–Perron test. The simulation exercise suggests that estimated breakpoints are mostly robust. Economic growth, structural changes in the economy, simplification and rationalization of tax structure, tax competition, policies such as liberalization have contributed to the changing tax regimes. Results of this study suggest that high tax rates have not been, in particular, detrimental to achieving growth in revenue and factors other than changes in tax rates have been more prominent in bringing about the shifts.

This is, perhaps, the first paper exploring the multiple structural breaks in the fiscal variables in India. It offers an understanding of the changing regimes of central government taxes and the underlying factors for the same.