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Looks at the application of marketing philosophy to non‐profit‐making organizations, looks briefly at the work of Kotler and Levy. Examines similarities between non‐profit‐making and profit‐making organizations, and investigates the role of local government in the marketing of non‐profit‐organizations. Concludes that the growth pressure being put on local government to justify the existence of their non‐profit‐making organizations means that the role of marketing in this area must become an important factor.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how performance management control should be optimised for housing management services, through two different organisational contexts in the social housing sector.

Case study methodology was used to examine the performance management control of one typical local authority in England where housing management services are run by a non‐profit‐making Arm's Length Management Organisation, and of another major housing organisation, the Hong Kong Housing Authority, where the services are contracted out to profit‐making consultants.

In a non‐profit‐making organisational context, housing management services should be measured by performance indicators related to the strategic objective of providing efficient and effective services. Benchmarking should be conducted to supplement performance control. In a profit‐making organisational context, market competition should also be introduced so that more tendering opportunities are given to the best performers to optimise the performance of service providers.

The findings of this research are based on two cases representing the social housing sectors in England and Hong Kong. The research forms a conceptual baseline on which further research can be built to find out effective control to optimise the performance of property management services in many other housing and facilities management organisations.

Performance management of housing management services can be optimised by benchmarking and market competition.

This study contributes to performance management of housing management services by conducting empirical confirmatory testing of the validity of performance management theory.

Describes some of the issues raised and problems encountered in an attempt to apply a market analysis to a non‐profit making organization. Applies a marketing approach in order to tackle the non‐profit making organizations more complex problems. Suggests that the marketing approach is very useful in this situation for three reasons it helps to make objectives explicit; it helps create better criteria for the organization; and it helps bring detailed marketing activities to the company.

This paper aims to examine the literature of CSR motivation and presents research results from a case study of the water sector (water companies from Denmark, the UK, the USA and South Africa) and its motivation for and maturity in its CSR work.

The methodology used in this paper is first a literature review followed by research done with ethnographic methods such as participant observations, interviews and document analysis.

Based on a literature review and research in water companies’ motivation and maturity based on Crowther (2006) and Crowther and Reis’ (2011) CSR maturity typology, the paper suggests an extension of this into a CSR Maturity Framework by adding profit-making, legitimacy and business ethics as clusters of motives for businesses to engage in CSR work. The concrete findings of the water sector suggest it as semi-mature according to the proposed CSR Maturity Framework, because it has only reached the level of CSR reporting, but neither suggests definitions of sustainability nor shows any particularly good transparency and accountability yet.

The research is limited to water companies in four regions – Denmark, the UK, the USA and South Africa – which means that such companies in other regions may differ from the findings in this paper. However, these companies are especially chosen according to their similarities, which means that it is not the point of the paper to cover all water companies in the world, but to retrieve findings from a specifically chosen type of water companies that share a specifically institutional setup.

The originality and value of the paper is based on the findings of the research in motivation and maturity in the cases of water companies, which have been used to elaborate on an existing CSR framework – the CSR maturity typology suggested by Crowther (2006) and Crowther and Reis (2011) into a CSR Maturity Framework incorporating businesses’ motives of profit-making, legitimacy and business ethics. The CSR Maturity Framework will be applicable for analyzing the CSR maturity for any business sector, and it adds value for businesses in its clarifying and suggesting themes that business sectors need to elaborate.

Given the complexity of inclusive business (IB) to combine social contribution and business sustainability, companies make strategic choices. One multinational corporation (MNC) avoided interconnections with villagers and used only market-based relations with stimulants and incentives in the market. Another one delegated management completely to local partners, succeeding in stimulating the poor’s self-initiated economic activities. MNCs seem to have difficulties in handling institutional interconnections. In such cases, market-based relations or delegating management to the local partners were found to be highly effective for covering missing capabilities. One foreign NGO, despite its well-developed institutional interconnections with the locals, is struggling to develop markets for its social enterprises. In contrast, one local trust successfully cooperated with many local partners, appealing to local institutions (values and beliefs). Also, poor farmers felt the social contributions of two local companies by being incorporated into the companies’ supply chains backed by their corporate social responsibility (CSR) orientations and activities. Hence, both foreign and domestic organizations seem to succeed in IB by embedding their projects to their original institutions and developing diverse mechanisms to compensate for missing capabilities. One exception is a local company which successfully coordinated MNCs’ CSR activities, local communities, and governments. However, its success is owing to governmental regulation for CSR contribution. In general, though restricted by institutional backgrounds and business orientations, each case tried to create a fit between business models and its contingencies, achieve scale (at the level of communities, nations, or the global market) and business sustainability, and generate socioeconomic effects.

This paper responds to the increasing concern among both the public and the academic community regarding the negative effects of for‐profit activities of organisations on society, in particular on human development and well‐being. It does so by aiming to examine the main theories regarding the possibility of positive and/or negative relationships between the management of for‐profit activity and human value. It aims to identify guiding principles to assist organisations in meeting the business imperative of respecting and considering their effects on human rights wherever they operate.

This paper takes a conceptual approach drawing from economic, social and political philosophy literature to investigate four perspectives on the relationship between the management of for‐profit activity and human value.

The need for management theory to develop a typology of factors determining positive, negative or mixed effects of for‐profit activity on human value is identified. The study identifies recommendations for management theory and practice regarding the scope and limits of action that could be taken by business organisations to improve human value.

Research questions relevant to three key areas of management (people management, operational management and strategic management) are suggested.

The paper concludes that there is a need to understand why there are negative relationships between profit making and human value, and how to identify the means of minimising this relationship in a human value oriented organisation.

The paper responds to the increasing concern among both the public and the academic community regarding the negative effects of for‐profit activities of organisations on society, in particular on human development and well‐being. It does so by proposing the guiding philosophical principles that should inform organisations in meeting the business imperative of respecting and considering their effects on human rights wherever they operate.

The paper is unique in proposing the guiding philosophical principles that should inform a human value oriented workplace culture and can be applied in various management sub‐disciplines. It also makes an original attempt to understand the gap between conflictualist and compatibilist paradigms and how this can inform management theory.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt a justification as to why a profit-making firm may be viewed as a function of its nucleus expertise and a risky portfolio of deals.

This is a theoretical paper relying on mathematics, graphs and verbal arguments to describe concepts.

A profit-making firm can gain even more if it reduces the risk of its portfolio of deals. In its effort to reduce such a risk, the firm needs to know each deal’s profit share and be able to estimate each dealing partner’s reliability (a random variable).

The proposed hypotheses are not empirically tested, an exercise left to future work.

Pragmatically, a profit-making firm may be viewed as a function of its strategic nucleus and its strategic federation. The firm may increase its gains by minimizing deals’ risk through a portfolio of deals diversification. The more the firm considers factors such as mediation, optimal commitments and the like, the more effective and efficient becomes the management of the portfolio of deals.

As explained through examples and illustrations, viewing the firm as a function of deals benefits the parties in such deals as well as other stakeholders (community, region, nation, etc), e.g. less costly deals contribute to more profit and more growth.

A profit-making firm is viewed as an entity that manages a risky portfolio of promisor- and promisee-type deals. The ideas in this paper may be of value to today’s global, knowledge-based, outsourcing/insourcing firms which may find it increasingly difficult to rely on conventional contracts.

This study aims to apply unit root test to investigate the behavior of Chinese firms toward their leverage policy. The study is based on two influential and competing theories of capital structure.

This study applies unit root test to investigate the behavior of Chinese firms toward their leverage policy. The study is based on two influential and competing theories of capital structure. Trade off theory advocates that firms have a target level of leverage ratio and that firms try to achieve that optimal leverage ratio, whereas pecking order theory argues that firms have no target level of leverage and that they follow a specific pattern of leverage. For this purpose, this study applies a Fisher type unit root test to 12,808 firm level observations. The data are unbalanced and cover a period from 1991 to 2014.

The results reveal the presence of a stationary behavior across short-term, long-term and total leverage policies. For short-term leverage policy, 21 per cent firms show stationary behavior, while for long-term, 20 per cent show a targeting behavior; for the total leverage policy 17 per cent of firms are found to follow a tradeoff model. To make the findings more interesting sample was further classified into profit and loss making firms. The study finds that loss making firms do not follow a target level of leverage in China. Furthermore, unit root is applied to all firms before and after crises-2008. It is revealed that stationary behavior is more prevalent before crises-2008.

This study is highly important from the point of view that it quantifies firms into distinct categories of following specific model of capital structure. To the best of the author’s knowledge, the findings of this study add to current research knowledge about Chinese firms with respect to adjustment behavior toward a target capital structure.

Considering the ongoing debate regarding the roles of business in society, this paper aims to examine the managerial understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Nepal.

This study uses explanatory sequential design under mixed methods of research. First, the questionnaire survey method was used to collect data from 168 managers of listed companies in Nepal. Second, semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 senior-level managers of listed companies to verify the results obtained from the survey and to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena.

The survey results show that managerial understanding of CSR is mainly guided by the notions of corporate philanthropy, stakeholder approach and political CSR, respectively. However, the managerial understanding vis-à-vis political CSR and corporate philanthropy were found to be remarkably positively influenced by the firm’s size, whereas the stakeholder perspective was widely held by the managers regardless of their firm’s size. The interview results largely substantiated questionnaire survey findings and further revealed vivid dimensions within the philanthropic approach, stakeholder approach and political CSR.

Given the recent legal provisions vis-à-vis mandatory CSR spending in Nepal, the policymakers may devise and update common core and firm-size-specific informational, fiscal-economic, legal and partnering instruments based on the findings of this study. Besides, companies may go for appropriate institutional arrangements for CSR as needed.

The reaffirmation of conventionally accepted roles and the approval of relatively nascent political roles of business in a distinct socio–political–legal–economic context of Nepal can be an important contribution to the literature.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions: