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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.

This chapter presents a study on the work of commercial diplomats as international business promoters at foreign posts. Research has largely overlooked the actual roles and activities of commercial diplomats in explaining the effectiveness of commercial diplomacy and international business support. In this study, it is assumed that commercial diplomats’ behavior is influenced by informal institutions. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 23 commercial diplomats at foreign posts from different countries were conducted and analyzed. The results show three different types of role behavior and differences in proactivity per type. Informal institutions such as background, skills, and experience, cultural differences, and the working environment suggest to explain the differences in levels of proactive international business support behavior of commercial diplomats. Further research is needed to assert these findings.

In disaster risk reduction (DRR), it is important to realise stakeholders’ approaches against disasters in the built environment. The purpose of this paper is to explore why stakeholders take proactive and/or reactive approaches in DRR.

Using a review of existent literature, this work scrutinises disaster theories and their applications in the built environment to develop a theoretical framework for perceiving stakeholders’ proactive and/or reactive approaches in DRR.

Stakeholders’ organisational attributes – power, legitimacy and urgency – and decision-making paradigms – value maximisation and intuitive reasoning – are fundamental factors affecting stakeholders’ approaches against disasters. Power and legitimacy of stakeholders result in a proactive approach if stakeholders consider value maximisation paradigm in their decision-making process. Powerful and legitimate stakeholders may take reactive approaches because of intuitive reasoning paradigm. Stakeholders may shift from a reactive to proactive approach and vice versa based on the combination of urgency attribute and decision-making paradigms.

It is essential to consider the classification of respective stakeholders in applying the idea of this paper. Furthermore, this paper does not attempt to validate the proposed theoretical framework empirically, but it combines stakeholder and decision-making theories by which this could be undertaken.

Little attention has been paid to systematic theorising in managing stakeholders’ approaches against disasters. Furthermore, many researchers have focused on similar underlying theories and heuristics in the context of DRR. Thus, this paper introduces a theoretical framework to examine stakeholders’ proactive and/or reactive approaches in the built environment, by synthesising stakeholder and decision-making theories.

The increasing pressure for social responsibility and sustainability that multinational enterprises (MNEs) are facing in their global operations represents one important emerging phenomenon within the international business field. In this book chapter, we present an in-depth case study on how a global fashion MNE develops and implements sustainability practices in their operations in an emerging market context. The case study focusses on the MNE’s work related to energy efficiency and renewable energy in the production market of Bangladesh. The purpose of this chapter is to advance the understanding about particular practices pertinent to a proactive approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR). The chapter contributes to ongoing discussions within the international business field on the role of MNEs in driving and implementing sustainability practices. We add an in-depth understanding of the proactive CSR practices undertaken by an MNE, in an emerging market context.

Although top‐down interventions have the potential to reduce repatriate turnover, most organizations have not been very accommodating and repatriate turnover continues to remain high. Drawing from career transitions theory and the protean perspective of career management, this paper proposes a model of repatriate proactivity as an alternate approach. A “successful” repatriation transition outcome is defined as one in which, upon return, the repatriate: gains access to a job which recognizes any newly acquired international competencies; experiences minimal cross‐cultural re‐adjustment difficulties; and reports low turnover intentions. Individual antecedents are posited to include proactive repatriation behaviors and the personality characteristics which are suggested to drive the use of these behaviors. The strength/weakness of the repatriation situation is posited to moderate the relationship between personality and the emergence of proactive repatriation behaviors. Practical and theoretical implications for both the repatriation problem, and the career development literature in general, are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the proactive market orientation approach and business performance in retail banking.

Based on a theoretical discussion, empirical research was conducted to test the proposed relationship. Multiple item indicators were employed to measure the constructs.

Results from the study provide empirical support, suggesting that the proactive market orientation approach has a positive influence on business performance.

The study has pondered the relationship between the proactive market orientation approach and business performance, while other factors that have an influence on business performance have not been considered.

Research results suggest that the proactive market orientation philosophy in the banking sector can be viewed as a threshold factor in order to increase business performance.

The present study provides useful information on driving market strategies in retail banking.

The purpose of this paper is to provide industrial managers with insight into the real‐time progress of running processes. The authors formulated a periodic performance prediction algorithm for use in a proposed novel approach to real‐time business process monitoring.

In the course of process executions, the final performance is predicted probabilistically based on partial information. Imputation method is used to generate probable progresses of ongoing process and Support Vector Machine classifies the performances of them. These procedures are periodically iterated along with the real‐time progress in order to describe the ongoing status.

The proposed approach can describe the ongoing status as the probability that the process will be executed continually and terminated as the identical result. Furthermore, before the actual occurrence, a proactive warning can be provided for implicit notification of eventualities if the probability of occurrence of the given outcome exceeds the threshold.

The performance of the proactive warning strategy was evaluated only for accuracy and proactiveness. However, the process will be improved by additionally considering opportunity costs and benefits from actual termination types and their warning errors.

Whereas the conventional monitoring approaches only classify the already occurred result of a terminated instance deterministically, the proposed approach predicts the possible results of an ongoing instance probabilistically over entire monitoring periods. As such, the proposed approach can provide the real‐time indicator describing the current capability of ongoing process.

Services marketing research continues to be largely focused on firms’ reactive interactions for recovering from service failure rather than on proactive customer interactions that may prevent service failure from occurring in the first place. Building on previous studies that assess the efficacy of implementing proactive interaction in service provision contexts, the purpose of this paper is to compare the influences of proactive interaction to prevent service failure and reactive interaction to correct service failure on customer emotion and patronage behavior. Since proactive interaction for service failure prevention is a relatively underexplored and resource-intensive approach, the authors also assess the moderating influences of customer and firm-related characteristics.

The study hypotheses are tested with survey data from two scenario-based experiments conducted in a retail setting.

The findings reveal that customers prefer service providers that take the initiative to get to them before they have to initiate contact for themselves. The findings also identify the moderating influences of relationship quality, situational involvement, and contact person status and motive.

The research contributes to the development of service provision theory and practice by expanding on previous studies which report that proactive efforts to prepare customers for the adverse effects of service failure are favorably received. The results also shed light on moderating factors that may further inform the exploitation of resource-intensive proactive interaction for service failure prevention. An agenda is proposed to stimulate future research on proactive customer interaction to prevent service failure in service provision contexts.

The aim of this study is to identify the critical factors of green supply chain (GSC) and to adapt these factors to the taxonomy of green practices in healthcare.

A qualitative multiple-case study approach was followed based on 60 interviews with nine French hospitals. An intra-case and a cross-case analysis were implemented.

The findings provide a taxonomy of healthcare GSC and show that regulation, cost reduction, top management commitment, employee training, information technology and measures of environmental performance are critical factors for GSC implementation. The study also underlines a few emergent critical factors including the purchasing group, environmental champion, building construction, combining safety and green approaches.

This study was conducted in France following a qualitative methodological approach. Future research can consider other national and cross-national investigations and other quantitative or mixed methods approaches.

The research provides managers and policy makers numerous invaluable suggestions for the implementation of GSC practices in healthcare facilities. To accelerate GSC implementation, managers can invest in the construction of new buildings, in information technology, and in the automation of flows.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper identifying the critical factors of GSC implementation in the healthcare sector. It is also the first attempt to provide a taxonomy of hospitals according to their green approaches (reactive, receptive, and proactive).

This study examined how proactive environmental management affects firm performance and whether a controlling family moderates this effect. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study adopted content analysis to collect data on listed Taiwanese firms and used cross-sectional regression analysis to examine the relationship between proactive environmental management and firm performance as well as the moderating role of a controlling family.

The results indicated that not all types of proactive environmental management are positively associated with firm performance and that a controlling family might be more effective in low-risk proactive environmental management practices.

The focus was on the impact of proactive environmental management from the perspective of stockholders. Future research could investigate its impact on other stakeholders as well.

The findings might convince managers that the stereotype of an environment-friendly firm – that the more its green initiatives, the less competitive it becomes – may not necessarily be true. Investing in product-focused pollution prevention could increase revenues and improve performance. Even though process-focused pollution prevention is negatively associated with firm performance, companies are not expected to reduce investment in green processes since they are required for the production of environment-friendly products.

This study adopted a multi-dimensional approach to reveal how different types of proactive environmental management affect firm performance. The authors used the controlling family as a moderating variable to determine whether it moderates the relationship between proactive environmental management and firm performance.