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The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively investigate the combined influence of a firm's political connection and diversification on corporate performance, and to explore whether firm's political connection has an impact on the diversification effect, and whether this diversification effect would promote its performance significantly or not.

The research used a regression model to explore the correlation among political connection, diversification strategy, and corporate performance. The research subjects are the private enterprises listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China for the period 2002‐2005.

The study found that: first, for those firms without political connections, the relationship between diversification strategy and corporate performance displayed an “inverted U” curve; for firms with political connection, the relationship was a “reverse L”. Second, firms with political connections are more likely to implement a diversification strategy, especially unrelated diversification. Third, when implementing an internationalization strategy, private enterprises with political connections are more likely to expand through unrelated diversification strategy. Fourth, the diversification of the enterprises with political connection are more likely to promote the short‐term accounting performance than those without political connection, but the unrelated diversification of politically connected enterprises would have a negative impact upon its future performance, that is to damage the company's market value.

The paper expands the literature on the relationship between diversification and firm performance. It contributes to the research about the influence of political connection upon corporate performance.

Previous theories discuss how corporate managers can stir anti-discrimination laws away from their initial social goal by managerializing the law. Yet, other actors – notably insider activists – can contribute to move corporate regulations beyond merely symbolic compliance. I demonstrate this influence of activists with three cases studies: (1) LGBT activists for same-sex parental leave; (2) disability rights activists for implementing a quota; and (3) Muslim activists to secure accommodations in French workplaces. Through these cases, I show how activists can move corporate laws beyond compliance, pressure firms to go from merely symbolic to substantive compliance, and analyze mechanisms that explain their unequal success. Bringing together insights from the legal endogeneity theory and social movements theory, I analyze these activist legal intermediaries as actors faced with unequal structure of opportunities, and examine what factors hinder or favor an activist-driven legal endogeneity. I demonstrate the impact of more prescriptive regulations, the institutional power of union representatives (and their alignment with activists’ claims), reputational stakes for companies, and the resources of activists themselves (legal expertise, ability to reframe laws, and informal power within their organizations). Last, I show how activists leverage organizational and legal tools (collective agreement, diversity policies) to induce recoupling between formal commitments and informal practices.

We argue that the influence of public stakeholders (the state) and private stakeholders (nonstate social or economic stakeholders) on corporate philanthropy is interdependent, in that satisfying the state may increase the degree of scrutiny and pressure exerted by private stakeholders on the firm, particularly in institutional environments that place few checks and balances on the power of the state – thus creating suspicion that political patronage shelters firms’ social and moral wrongdoing. To test this theory, we examine the circumstances under which politically patronized firms engage more (or less) in corporate philanthropy. Utilizing a dataset that encompasses both publically traded and unlisted private firms in China, we find that corporate philanthropy is negatively associated with political patronage among unlisted firms but positively associated with political patronage among listed firms. These results are consistent with the predictions made based on our theoretical arguments. This chapter aims to foster further discussion regarding the interdependence of the influences exerted by different stakeholders on firms.

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are viewed as a reform tool for resolving inefficiency and absence of dynamism in water supply delivery in developing countries. However, the requirements for their successful implementation have received very little attention. This paper aims to describe a set of critical success factors (CSFs) that, when given special and continual attention, would ensure a successful project implementation and to provide a predictive tool to aid implementers to evaluate the likelihood of a successful PPP water supply project.

Fourteen perceived CSFs were initially derived from project cases and extant literature, and verified through a two-round Delphi survey. Factor analysis established five critical success factor groups (CSFGs) that were then used to develop a fuzzy synthetic evaluation tool for assessing the chance of a successful project.

The five key CSFGs are commitment of partners, strength of consortium, asset quality and social support, political environment, and national PPP unit. The model output showed that, overall, these factors have a “very high” positive impact on a successful implementation of a water supply project. Hence, there is an excellent correlation between achievement of the CSFGs and project success. Success indices of individual principal factors are also “very high”.

The study presents a tool to public clients and private audience, and it is hoped that the study will trigger policy development towards PPP practice in developing countries, because these findings have wider implications for legal and regulatory systems, public capacity, financing, public procurement and politics.

The form of crisis-governance responses to austerity urbanism that is the focus of this paper is ‘fleet-of-foot’ partnerships. These non-statutory mechanisms which champion dispersed forms of leadership are crafted in policy discourse as lean, mean, crisis-tackling fighting machines. Their perceived agility and entrepreneurialism are often lauded, yet empirical evidence for these traits remains sparse. This paper investigates this concern through the lens of the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England, which are deemed by some to exude some of the defining characteristics of ‘fleet-of-foot’ mechanisms.

A mixed method approach was utilised, including analysis of socio-economic datasets and qualitative policy analysis of primary and secondary material. The quantitative element includes analysis of employment and journey-to-work data, whereas the qualitative material originated from a review of LEP proposals, and narrative analysis of transcripts of interviews undertaken since 2010, together with other textual artefacts.

The findings reveal that dispersed public leadership is problematic as a mode of crisis-governance. LEPs were adopted as a crisis-governance fix. These loose (or looser) constellations of many, varied actors, are considered to be more flexible, responsive and delivery-orientated than more traditional and statutory democratic-administrative mechanisms: lean, mean, crisis-tackling fighting machines. Flexibility is a primary trait of ‘fleet-of-foot’ configurations and perhaps the defining feature of LEPs.

The programme of research remains on-going, which reflects the continual shifts in the form and configurations of LEPs.

Detecting some of the primary weaknesses of ‘fleet-of-foot’ public leadership arrangements, the research draws attention to some of the dangers of pushing austerity down and through ‘fleet-of-foot’ formations. The practical implications are highlighted by examining the limits of LEPs to achieve efficient outcomes or to open up a shared leadership space.

Through an engagement with current conceptual and policy debates where austerity ‘blows out’ across Europe, it is observed that austerian politics may be pushing partnership bodies too far, thus risking the danger of overburdening and under-resourcing the very distributed leadership mechanisms that are expected to reconcile local economic crises and stimulate local growth. This paper also contributes to the literature on dispersed public leadership, which runs counter to traditional command and control leadership constructs.

The last two decades have witnessed a tremendous growth in the body of literature addressing the importance and the impact of contracting and public procurement within the context of devolution of government. The austere budgetary and financial outlooks of the future suggest that the significance of the area will only continue to grow. As such, generating explanatory frameworks, within dimensions such as decisionmaking and accountability in public procurement, becomes crucial. Drawing from original research this article suggests one possible frame for understanding administrative decision-making in complex environments. Based on semi-structured interviews with public procurement specialists, the study identifies two decision-making patterns— broker and purist. It is asserted that the decision-making dynamics exhibited by administrators are contingent on their perceptions regarding environmental instability, in particular the political volatility surrounding their work.

The last two decades have witnessed a tremendous growth in the body of literature addressing the importance and the impact of contracting and public procurement within the context of devolution of government. The austere budgetary and financial outlooks of the future suggest that the significance of the area will only continue to grow. As such, generating explanatory frameworks, within dimensions such as decisionmaking and accountability in public procurement, becomes crucial. Drawing from original research this article suggests one possible frame for understanding administrative decision-making in complex environments. Based on semi-structured interviews with public procurement specialists, the study identifies two decision-making patterns− broker and purist. It is asserted that the decision-making dynamics exhibited by administrators are contingent on their perceptions regarding environmental instability, in particular the political volatility surrounding their work.

The purpose of this paper is to examine public‐private partnerships with a particular focus on the impact that such partnerships have on territorial governance. These organizations are spread all over the world with the goal of promoting community participation and sustainable development, and engaging citizens and organizations in the decision making of local governance. This situation underlines important changes in governance and territorial governance models.

A mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches are used. Analysing the existing literature, the paper focuses on specific type of public‐private partnership: the Local Action Group (LAG). Specifically, this study focuses on 63 Italian LAGs, in order to highlight their role in the challenges that local governance has to face.

Findings suggest that public‐private partnerships can represent a new model of governance – the Partnership Governance – with features that differentiate this form from other models.

Through a relatively novel statistical technique, combined with interviews, document analysis and direct observations, on the one hand the public‐private partnership phenomenon is observed, and on the other hand, a new mode of governance that is affecting the worldwide scenario in a current era and that is introducing ethical principles in governance systems is conceived.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a crisis risk. The bulk of the current research on CSR and crisis examined the role of CSR as an asset in a crisis. CSR as crisis risk is a direct function of CSR’s increasingly important role in reputation management. CSR has become an important aspect of corporate reputations – it is one of the dimensions used to assess a corporation’s crisis. The value of CSR to reputations is illustrated in the RepTrak reputation measure from the Reputation Institute and the value it places upon CSR. If stakeholders can challenge CSR claims by arguing a corporation is acting irresponsibly, the stakeholders can erode the corporation’s reputational assets by creating a challenge crisis. A CSR-based challenge occurs when stakeholders redefine a corporation’s current practices as irresponsible. The CSR-based challenge can be risk because it can damage reputational assets and potentially escalate into a crisis. CSR becomes a leverage point for stakeholders seeking to engage in a challenge crisis. As corporations place more value on the CSR dimension of reputation, CSR-based challenge becomes an increasingly powerful leverage point.

The paper is conceptual with an emphasis on theory building.

The manuscript details the CSR-based challenge process. It examines the nature of CSR-based challenges, how they can become threats to corporations, and how corporations can respond to the threats. There is also an explanation of how CSR-based challenges indicate the shift to private politics/social issues management and the implications of this shift for advancing a neoliberal perspective.

CSR and crises have a much more complex relationship than current research has identified. CSR can be a crisis risk, not just an asset used to protect a reputation during a crisis. CSR can be the reason a crisis exists and threats a corporation – it is a crisis risk. The primary manifestation of CSR as a crisis risk is the challenge crisis premised on social irresponsibility, what the authors term the CSR-based challenge crisis. This paper will detail the process whereby CSR is transformed from a crisis resource to a crisis threat. The end result of this analysis will be set of insights into CSR-based challenge crises. These insights can help stakeholders seeking to create social change through a challenge and corporate managers seeking to address a challenge crisis.

Challenge crises are an example of private politics/social issues management, when stakeholders seek to create changes in corporate behavior by engaging the organization directly rather than through public policy efforts. The paper offers insights into how social issues management can work to create social change by altering problematic corporate behaviors.

There is limited research into CSR as a crisis risk and in understanding how challenge crises help to create social change. This paper will provide new insights into CSR as a crisis risk, challenge crises, and private politics. Ideas from public relations, corporate communication, and political communication will be fused to create a novel framework for illuminating these related topics.

Compensation refers to “all forms of financial returns and tangible services and benefits employees receive as part of an employment relationship” (Milkovich & Newman, 1999, p. 6). A more specific definition is provided by Edwin B. Flippo, who has defined compensation as “the adequate and equitable remuneration of personnel for their contribution to organization objectives.” He identifies its three components as: basic wage or salary (to attract qualified candidates); variable compensation (to motivate job performance); and supplementary fringe benefits (to retain talented staff) (Flippo, 1984, p. 281). Table 6.1 identifies the functions of these three components of compensation.