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The purpose of this paper is to find ways of improving the efficiency of the meatpacking business by achievement of a few sequential aims: an estimation of efficiency, determination of its key factors, revealing of the reserves of input reduction and potential growth of efficiency, and defining the ways of its improvement.

A few models of the data envelopment analysis (DEA), three‐factor production function and other tools of competitive and international benchmarking are used to analyse the efficiency of meatpacking companies. A two‐criteria analysis tool named the efficiency‐profitability matrix is used to determine the factors that influence efficiency. The results are based on the samples of 29 Ukrainian and 53 foreign meatpacking companies.

Significant reserves of inputs reduction by the domestic meatpacking companies are revealed. The offered ways of using the potential of efficiency growth for the Ukrainian meatpacking producers are connected with the use of both their internal ability (modernization of equipment, motivation of personnel) and successful experience and resources of domestic and foreign companies through the tools of co‐operation, exchange of experience, merger or friendly acquisition.

The research is limited to a single industry that is explained by requirement of technology (product) homogeneity while using DEA tools.

The results contain the data and recommendations that can be practicable for meatpacking companies' management, present and potential investors and proprietors.

This is the first study that adopts various analysis and benchmarking tools for the versatile research of efficiency in the meatpacking industry and finding ways for its improvement.

This article aims to identify strategies used by a midsize meatpacking plant company located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in order to remain competitive in the market. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to understand which strategies the company uses and how those have been designed according to the company managers.

Concerning the methodology, a descriptive research was developed as a case study. The data collection was accomplished through researches on official company documents which describe its history and are used for several tasks. This information source pointed out critical events during the history of the organization which allowed the researchers to identify the strategies developed and implemented through its leaders' insight during those historical periods when the company was in crisis.

Mintzberg and McHugh's model was applied to identify strategies, as well as discovering the effects they obtained by using them. It has been observed that in order to remain competitive in the market, the company used strategies classified as Deliberate‐Accomplished and Emergent.

Through this case study it has been possible to identify the strategies created and applied by the meatpacking company's managers in order to remain competitive in the market.

The growing foreign labor population has become a major political issue in Taiwan. However, there has been a lack of understanding about foreign laborers in Taiwan from foreign laborer perspectives. This ethnographic case study focuses on foreign laborer perspectives and examines social contexts, conditions, and support for Filipino and Thai laborers at a meatpacking factory in rural southern Taiwan. The findings suggest that foreign laborers are pushed by family financial needs and pulled by higher wages and labor shortages in Taiwan meatpacking factories. Also, these laborers work and live under difficult conditions and lack social welfare and support.

This study seeks to empirically and theoretically show how and why food chain specific advantages along with country-specific and firm-specific advantages impact the development of competences and shape distinct strategies for international growth.

Case studies were conducted with three Brazilian meatpacking firms with solid global operations. Top managers in charge of international operations were interviewed and documents were collected. Data were coded and submitted to triangulation. Content analysis was used as data analysis technique.

Results suggest that a meso-level of analysis is important to understand the development of competences and strategies for internationalization of meatpacking firms. Additionally, it was found that the internationalization process of meatpacking firms are supported by four supportive competences, namely: technical, production, sales and logistics competences. Findings also reveal that these companies tend to pursue either a raw material seeker or local taste supplier strategy.

International business scholars have struggled to incorporate meso-level characteristics into mainstream literature. This paper tries to fill in this gap by incorporating distinctive features from the food supply chain in the analysis. Two novel international strategy typologies were introduced by considering firm-, food chain- and country-specific advantages. It also proposes sound theoretical and managerial evidence to support public and private decision-making.

The manager of a meatpacking factory allows his 100-plus Muslim workers to take breaks believing that it is an appropriate response to the religious needs of this large part of his employee base. But the breaks have begun to interfere with the overall operation of the plant, resulting in a loss of productivity. Other employees have become irritated resenting what they see as preferential treatment. Because of the productivity issues, other employees' complaints, and concerns about the credibility of his management, the manager considers reneging on his agreement.

Numerous studies have concluded that immigration has very small effects on wages or unemployment, even when the immigration flow is very large. Three reasons suggested for this are that immigration: (1) is not supply-push, but may instead be driven by demand-pull factors; (2) is likely to cause some out-migration; and (3) may induce flows of other factors across the economy. Surprisingly, few studies consider another obvious explanation: immigrant workers also consume locally, which means immigration stimulates the local demand for labor. Previous researchers have generally ignored the measurement of immigration's effects on labor demand, perhaps because when immigration, out-migration, and immigrant consumption occur simultaneously in the same labor market, it is very difficult to isolate immigration's effect on labor demand. This paper measures the labor demand-augmenting effects of immigration using a two-sector model of a very special case in which the receiving economy consists of: (a) an export industry employing both immigrants and natives; and (b) a retail industry employing native labor that is driven by local demand. The model can incorporate both supply-push and demand-pull immigration as well as out-migration. The model's important implication is that since immigration is exogenous to the retail sector, an unbiased estimate of the demand effect of immigration can be obtained without having to use instrumental variables estimation or other statistical procedures that may introduce new sources of bias. Fortunately, the economy in our model matches a very convenient test case: Dawson County, Nebraska. Dawson County recently experienced a surge in demand-pull immigration due to the location of a large export-driven meatpacking plant. This exogenous capital shock pulled in many Hispanic immigrant workers, who did not immediately seek work in the retail sector because of social and language barriers. This immigration led to higher retail wages and housing prices, confirming that immigration is capable of exerting significant effects on local labor demand.

This research seeks to develop a better understanding of internationalization patterns of agrifood firms and explains why different paths are adopted. Further, a conceptual framework to support public and private decision-making is proposed.

An exploratory qualitative research framework was developed featuring case studies about three highly internationalized Brazilian meat processing firms. Top managers were interviewed, and documents were collected to support the intraand crosscase analyses.

Results suggest that meat processing firms tend to adopt a dual internationalization pattern. Distribution-oriented foreign direct investment (FDI) is normally established gradually, whilst horizontal FDI – the establishment of foreign production facility – tends to be conducted through a fast-paced expansion mode. Interestingly, it was found that food safety issues play a central role in internationalization decisions.

An extension to the Uppsala model was provided by considering agrifood characteristics in the analysis. The results have broad appeal to managers and policymakers. Agribusiness managers could use the theoretical and empirical evidence to support their internationalization decisions. Policymakers can also use this research to gain a better understanding of how agrifood firms expand internationally to either attract or foster FDI.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the proactive role elite organizations play within-network corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance by determining whether organizations can be identified that serve as aspirational CSR role models. The assumption is that elite CSR performance inspires and challenges other in-network actors to raise their standards in order to be legitimate, and resource rewardable.

Three cases are discussed to exemplify elite CSR: historical: recognizing the value of embracing a trend in improved standards of meatpacking, Armour Meatpacking campaigned for sanitary meatpacking and implemented strategic change; global energy: Chevron Corporation conducts “business in a socially and environmentally responsible manner, respecting the law and universal human rights to benefit the communities where we work”; and non-profit: “Elite” universities’ CSR standards attract bright faculty and students and build beneficial relationships with industry, government and peers.

Elite institutions raise CSR standards by using issue trends to guide strategic change that can performatively demonstrate the societal value of proactive leadership that elevates standards and increases the reward value to communities and organizations that is achieved by adopting higher standards.

Through micro-politics that increase CSR social productivity, elite CSR standards earn rewards for exemplary organizations and subsequently raise standards for in-network organizations to, in turn, achieve the license to operate.

Discussions of CSR should consider the influences that establish CSR standards. To that end, this paper offers the explanatory power of a micro-political, societal productivity approach to CSR based on the pragmatic/moral resource dependency paradigm.

The paper reasons that higher CSR standards result when NGO stakeholder critics and/or government agencies exert micro-political pressure. In response to such pressure, elite organizations, those that are or can meet those higher CSR standards, proactively demonstrate how higher CSR standards can accrue resources that benefit them and society. Elite CSR performance challenges other in-network actors to raise standards in order to be legitimate, that is resource rewardable.

Because elite organizations understand the reward advantage of higher levels of CSR, they proactively elevate the discuss of standards and advantages for achieving them, and penalties for falling short.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the instrumental role of physician Caroline Hedger during the first half of the twentieth century, with her emphasis on worker health, which influenced American society and helped to improve working and living conditions of people across the USA.

Drawing on archival newspaper clippings, original journal articles and books written by the subject, historical manuscripts and other labor history resources, this manuscript pulls together information on this topic in a unique way to give a broad view of the impact of Hedger and her important role not only for the city of Chicago, but the nation as a whole.

This research concludes that Hedger was an instrumental force and tireless advocate for the improvement of public health and social change. She was a constant driver for the creation of better living and working conditions of poor laborers, especially immigrants and women, desired the enhancement of child welfare, and was also helpful in supporting the labor movement and educating those involved in the process.

This is the first manuscript to explore the role played by Caroline Hedger in relation to her impact on the importance of the health of workers and their families. Her story is a testament to the powerful effect of a single person in a dynamic world, and demonstrates how understanding a worker's health contributes to greater insights about management history.

This essay critiques the assertion that an appreciation of animal sentience necessarily runs counter to their exploitation as industrial resources. It is argued that the U.S. meatpacking industry has consistently engaged animals as sentient creatures in order to elicit behavior that enhances manufacturing efficiency. This discipline of animals in and around the packing plant is exemplified in Temple Grandin’s “humane” slaughter technologies. The author suggests that even as the representation of these innovations tends to obscure the role of labor in industrial meat production, they demonstrate that discipline is a cross‐species regime, recasting the packing plant as a continuum of violence.