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Informal payments in health care exist in many countries around the world. However, the prevalence of informal payments varies between countries. A distinction between illegal or unethical informal payments like bribes and corruption, and legal and ethical forms of informal payment like giving gifts is not always easy to make. Illegal and unethical practices include, for example, buying medical certificates, bid rigging during procurements, or selecting service-providers for a hospital based on personal connections. A conceptual global definition of informal payments in health care is not feasible because informality depends on local regulations, values, and traditions. In this chapter, we provide an up-to-date understanding of informal payments in health care (including corruption, fraud etc.) by distinguishing micro, meso, and macro levels of informal payments. We argue that informal payments that occur at these levels cannot be unified under one umbrella of corruption because the various forms of informal payments in health care differ in nature, scope, and damaging effects.

Corruption continues to ravage societies around the world. The fight against corruption can be fruitful only if approached from multiple standpoints. Thus, corruption must also be approached from an academic and educational perspective. The purpose of this paper is to provide a good practice example of how universities and business schools can take actions to align themselves with the international sustainability and anticorruption agenda.

The six principles of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) provide a framework for higher education institutions to address corruption-related issues. This paper presents the case story of the Swiss-based University of Applied Sciences HTW Chur, which developed an academic working agenda on corruption-related topics based on the principles of the PRME.

The case story shares the actions that HTW Chur has taken and the benefits that have resulted from the university’s work. The findings show that to address corruption-related issues, scholars from the university took actions related to four principles in the PRME: method, research, partnership and dialogue. Furthermore, the results indicate that in addition to the university itself, public and private institutions have also profited from the actions taken.

This paper is founded on a single case story; thus, the usual limitations of this research design apply.

It becomes apparent that the needs of the private sector in the fight against corruption could be addressed by engaging in and strengthening partnerships with universities. Thus, it seems beneficial to develop guidelines and standards to facilitate collaborations and dialogue in a participatory and transparent way.

The paper provides a good practice example of how universities can take actions to align themselves with the international sustainability and anticorruption agenda.

This chapter discusses how businesses can create alignment between their corporate sustainability (CS) efforts that focus on the triple bottom line of the financial, environmental, and social, and the 10 principles of the UN Global Compact in the four core areas of environment, human rights, labor standards, and anticorruption.

Based on the literature review, the relationship between CS and corporate responsibility is presented. Creating alignment between CS management and Global Compact initiatives requires knowledge of the Global Reporting Initiative (G4-GRI), third-party CS rankings, green supply chain management, and anticorruption strategies.

UN Global Compact is an international forum to promote and self-report CS and corporate social responsibility [Bitanga & Bridwell, 2010. CS is achieved through a triple bottom line – financial, environmental, and social (Hutchins & Sutherland, 2008). For CS management, businesses use four strategies including defensive, cost-benefit, strategic, and innovation/learning [Buchholtz & Carroll, 2008; Egbeleke, Journal of Management and Sustainability, 4(2), 92–105 (2014); Epstein, 2008; Epstein, Buhovac, & Yuthas, 2010]. The UN G4-GRI is the most widely used comprehensive sustainability reporting standard in the world (G4-GRI, 2013). Third-party, industry sector-specific CS ratings reinforce the self-reported sustainability reports. Each firm has to conduct their own CS cost-benefit analysis to determine how CS practices can lead to value creation for sustained competitive advantage. Creating alignment with Global Compact initiatives offers firms a marketing advantage. Conducting business in accordance with the Global Compact is a value-increasing business strategy [Kaspereit & Lopatta, 2011; Lopatta & Kaspereit, 2014; Michelon, Corporate Reputation Review, 14(2), 79–96 (2011)]. Green supply chain management is essential for CS (Penfield, 2014). Four prevailing anticorruption frameworks or intervention policy approaches include law enforcement, economics, moralism, and cultural relativism (Bellows, 2013). There is little sustainability reporting in the government and public-sector organizations (Adams, Muir, & Hoque, 2014).

It is difficult to quantify the financial and social benefits of aligning the CS efforts with the 10 principles of UN Global Compact [Parisi, Journal of Management and Governance, 17(1), 71–97 (2013); Nilipour & Nilipour, Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 3(9), 1084–1092 (2012)]. The environmental impact can be easily quantified.

As the primary driver of globalization, businesses and other organizations can help ensure that markets, commerce, technology, and finance advance in ways that benefit environment, economies, and societies in both developed and developing countries leading to sustained development.

The role of green supply chain management and anticorruption strategies in CS management is explored.

This paper focuses on customer value analysis and measurement, framing customer value management as one of the main antecedents of the company value-creation process. The paper builds on three main pillars. First, the paper highlights the critical role of customer value in business-to-business markets, focusing on the links between the company's ability to manage customer value-creation processes and the positive financial and economic outcomes generated by loyalty effects. Secondly, the paper develops key analytical stages for an understanding of customer value. The focus is on the customer value-chain concept, including consideration of the customer information and acquisition process and its decision rules. Third, the paper illustrates the measurement process, offering an organizational framework for selecting the most suitable method for measuring perceived customer value. The methodological alternatives range from desk measures (e.g., technical computation of the total cost of ownership (TCO)) to field analysis, like those considered under both compositional and the decomposition approaches (e.g., conjoint analysis). The paper concludes with remarks on the managerial implications of these measures, as well as offering suggestions for further research on value for the customer.

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of shared services by end-users and why this may conflict with the use as intended by the shared service center (SSC) management.

By applying structuration theory, this empirical study draws on qualitative data obtained from semi-structured interviews with managers and end-users of an SSC. This SSC is part of a Dutch subsidiary of a multinational corporation that produces professional electronics for the defense and security market.

We find two main types of shared services usage by end-users which were not intended by the SSC management: avoidance and window-dressing. These forms of unintended usage were the result of contradictions in social structures related to the centralization and decentralization models as appropriated by end-users and management.

Our findings show that the benefits of shared services depends on how well contradictions in managers’ and end-users’ interpretive schemes, resources, and norms associated with centralization and decentralization models are resolved.

A popular argument in existing studies is that the benefit of shared services follows from the design of the SSC’s organizational structure. These studies overlook the fact that shared services are not always used as their designers intended and, therefore, that success depends on how the SSC’s organizational structure is appropriated by end-users. As such, the originality of this study is our focus on the way shared services are used by their end-users in order to explain why SSCs succeed or fail in reaping their promised benefits.

This study aims to examine the determinants of adoption intention toward the rooftop solar photovoltaic (RSPV) systems among residents of peri-urban villages of Gurugram, Haryana, India. This study also analyzes the impact of the adoption of RSPV systems on carbon neutrality from a behavioral perspective.

Data was collected using a self-administrated structured questionnaire from 208 male villagers (195 usable) of 22 villages using the purposive sampling technique.

Results revealed that relative advantage, followed by simplicity, trialability, observability and compatibility, positively and significantly impact villagers’ attitude toward adopting RSPV systems in their homes. Perceived severity and perceived vulnerability significantly influence the perceived behavioral control of villagers toward adopting the RSPV systems. The results show villagers’ attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control are the essential predictors of their adoption intention of the RSPV systems. Most notably, carbon neutrality was significantly affected by villagers’ adoption intention of RSPV systems as the renewable energy source in their homes.

The findings of this study provide that innovation attributes are important factors in shaping the adoption intentions of customers toward RSPV systems. This study is also the extent of previous studies measuring customers’ perception of adopting renewable energy in developed and emerging countries worldwide.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

Purpose – While important changes have been made in the American workplace, gender inequality persists. Contemporary analyses of occupational segregation suggest that gendered roles and identities may be playing a role, yet few studies explicitly tackle the effects of occupational identity on female disadvantage at work. Moreover, most previous research ignores the structured, multidimensionality of occupational identity focusing on more overt one-dimensional forms of status differentiation. Using sociological work as a case, these analyses delineate how occupational identities contribute to and differentiate publication success – and thus status hierarchies – for men and women in the sociological field.Findings – Net of human capital, results demonstrate the pronounced effect of the structure of occupational identity on publication: An often hidden form of job-queuing, occupational identities are gendered and influence the publication process. Differential rewards based on subtly gendered distinctions prove an important source of persistent inequalities.Social implications – While gender alone may not directly influence publication in premier research journals for more recent cohorts of sociologists, the gendered nature of research specialization and the distribution of rewards based, in part, on specialization present a troubling, more subtle stratifying mechanism.Originality/value of the chapter – This chapter contributes to our understanding of the puzzling pertinence of gender inequality in the academy by pinpointing how the organization of research into specialties is gendered and how this gendering of research affects important outcomes, such as publication. The paper also contributes to our broader understanding of inequality at work as an example of how occupational identity is multidimensional and networked.