Sustainable Business Fischer, Manuel; Foord, Daniel; Frecè, Jan ...
2023, 2023.
eBook
Odprti dostop
This open access book is a compact guide to the development of sustainable business, which has become the central concept in discussions about the future development of humanity and planet earth. It ...provides basic terminology and concepts on sustainable business and offers insights into a new management paradigm that integrates social and environmental dimensions into business models, strategies, and operations. New business concepts such as the donut economy, the circular economy, social innovation and sustainable leadership are introduced and the book outlines how they influence the way we run businesses today and in the future. This book lays the foundation for new management thinking in business and academia, making it a essential reader for professionals and students alike.
This study investigates how business strategy moderates the effect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on over-investment. We provide new evidence on the moderating effect of business strategy ...between CSR and over-investment. Using a sample of over 3000 US firms with 14,375 observations for the period 1996–2016, we show that high CSR involvement firms tend to over-invest. We demonstrate that both Defend and Prospect strategies can mitigate over-investment by interacting with high CSR firms. The Defend strategy effect on over-investment CSR firms is more pronounced for non-immorality stressed and non-high tech industry firms. We find that the strategy's moderating effect is channeled through agency problems and information asymmetry. The results show that business strategy plays an important role in shaping firms' investment behavior and efficiency.
•We provide evidence on the moderating effect of business strategy between CSR and over-investment.•High CSR involvement firms tend to over-invest.•Both Defend and Prospect strategies can mitigate over-investment by interacting with high CSR firms.•The effect of the Defend strategy on overinvestment firms is more pronounced for non-immorality and non-high tech firms.•Strategy's moderating effect is channeled through agency problems and information asymmetry.
This study proposes and validates a new industry taxonomy to understand the use of IT that generates superior economic returns based on the specific economic and competitive characteristics of four ...different industry types and the strategic role of IT in each of these industry environments. Our findings extend the well-established industry taxonomy on the strategic role of IT (Automate, Informate, Transform) by considering how IT is changing the nature of the product/service in industries where transformational logics prevail. We found that in industries where the product/service is digital in nature, the firms that achieve higher economic returns are those where IT is used to support dual strategies based on the integration of cost leadership and differentiation. Conversely, in other industries – with the exception of those producing commodities – the firms that achieve superior returns are those that use IT to support differentiation. The results of this study can help managers make intelligent decisions about competitive strategies and IT investments, depending on the business environment of the sector in which the firm operates and the generative potential of emerging technologies to do new things.
By analyzing internationalization as a dynamic process, we attempt to explain the speed of international operations in terms of learning acquired in the course of past international activities. We ...consider that the speed of the internationalization process depends on the type of experiential learning that results from decisions implicit in the internationalization process: choice of location and modes of operation. Firms develop two types of learning activities with respect to the selection of foreign markets and modes of operation: diversity and depth of accumulated international activities. We propose that depth of international activities has an inverted U-shaped impact on the speed of the internationalization process, while diversity of international activities has a U-shaped influence on the speed of internationalization process. The results of our longitudinal study of 889 firms over 23 years (1986-2008) suggest that diversity of international activities promotes long-term learning by exposing the firm to richer experiences, although such learning only takes place over time. Depth of international activities may accelerate the internationalization process in the short term, but it eventually restrains its potential for development in the long term. Our research highlights the short-term vs long-term consequences of different types of decisions related to the internationalization process.
This paper draws on a decadal dataset of 250 farms in south-western Australia. These farms, when categorised according to their type of farming system and business strategy, faced different trends in ...their terms of trade. Profitability measures of these farms for the period 2002/3 to 2011/12 were compared. Most farms, other than some highly crop dominant ones, applied a strategy of maintaining or increasing their cropping intensity and farm size over the decade. The strategy of a greater commitment to cropping was supported by cropping technologies and beneficial change in agronomic practices. Increased cropping was universally profitable among all types of farming systems, providing a statistically significant increase in operating surpluses. By contrast, irrespective of their underpinning farming system, farms which did not strategically increase their intensity of cropping generated statistically significant less returns to their business equity. By maintaining rather than increasing their cropping intensity these businesses failed to capture the operating surplus upside available from increased cropping. Overall, the results show that management of farming systems is not solely about tactics and flexibility. Strategic management can additionally influence the nature and profitability of farming systems.
•Business strategies applied to different Australian farming systems are assessed.•The strategy of increased cropping is consistently significantly profitable.•Managing farming systems is not solely about tactics and flexibility.•A beneficial strategy can greatly add to farm business wealth and profit.
Drawing on institutional theory, this study examines the question of how host country institutions affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) adoption by multinational enterprises (MNEs). I propose ...that CSR encompasses a set of practices that MNEs draw on to signal legitimacy in different kinds of institutional contexts – contexts that vary in how they shape issue salience and stakeholder power in a given issue field. Building on ideas related to field opacity and the managerial implications of CSR, I study why MNEs adopt two distinct types of CSR policies: standards-based CSR in response to contexts marked by issue salience, and rights-based CSR in response to contexts marked by stakeholder power. To test these hypotheses, I use subsidiary and firm-level data from a sample of 540 Western European MNEs in the issue field of labor rights. Results show that MNEs strategically adopt these CSR policies related to their presence in distinct institutional contexts. The study offers implications for how MNEs manage the legitimacy of their global operations and how CSR, as a form of private governance, can emerge as both a substitute and complement to requlatory institutions.
This study examines the relationship between firm-level business strategy and environmental inefficiency, measured by the total amount of chemical releases reported to the U.S. Environmental ...Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Based on Miles and Snow’s (1978, 2003) organizational theory, we consider the environmental inefficiency of Prospector and Defender business strategy types. Using a large sample of U.S. data spanning the period 1990–2014, we find that prospector-type firms reduce their toxic chemicals, relative to defender-type strategy firms. Our findings remain robust to fixed effects regression, 2SLS analysis, and the Granger-Causality test. This study offers useful insights to environmentally concerned policymakers, regulators, and investment strategists. From a practical point of view, our results suggest that a firm’s business strategy could determine how it responds to the need for protecting the natural environment. By integrating strategic management and environmental sustainability research, we offer new insights into how business strategies shape firms’ responses to environmental efficiency.
Display omitted
•We examine the relationship between firm-level business strategy and environmental inefficiency for a sample of U.S. firms.•The amount of total chemical releases reported to the TRI is used to measure environmental inefficiency.•Using regression analysis, we document a negative relation between business strategy score and toxic chemical releases.•Prospector-type firms are more likely to reduce their toxic chemicals, relative to defender-type strategy firms.•A ‘one-size-fits-all’ kind of environmental compliance regulation may not be suitable for many firms.
Modern‐day corporations are under intense stakeholder pressure to incorporate environmentalism, particularly biodiversity initiatives, into their business strategy. Building on upper echelon and ...gender socialization theories, we investigate the effect of board gender diversity (BGD) on the biodiversity initiatives undertaken by firms for the restoration and rehabilitation of damaged ecosystems and/or to minimize their environmental impacts. Using data on 2406 US firms covered in the ASSET4 database for the period 2002–2018 (15,337 firm‐year observations), we document a significant positive association between BGD and both biodiversity restoration protection and impact reduction initiatives. Our findings are consistent for exploitative and nonexploitative industries, as well as for the pre‐ and post‐UN resolution on conservation of biodiversity periods. We further develop a causal relationship through the positive impact of BGD on management environment training and environmental partnerships—possible mechanisms by which BGD may impact biodiversity initiatives. The results suggest that BGD is vital for developing strategies concerning the restoration, protection and impact reduction of biodiversity and ecosystems. Our findings are of interest to legislators and regulators who are interested in assessing biodiversity initiatives, improving environmental policies and promoting gender diversity in company director boards.
The
Management International Review
(
MIR
) celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020. In commemoration of this event, we use a bibliometric analysis to present a retrospective on the journal by ...analyzing its content for the years between 2006 and 2020. We find that the collaboration culture in
MIR
has risen over time with the increase in the median size of author teams. Moreover, the collaboration network has become more global over time. The methodology used in the journal is predominantly empirical and quantitative with archival data sources most commonly used. The bibliographic coupling of the
MIR
corpus reveals that the major themes in the journal revolve around “culture,” “emerging economies,” “innovation, knowledge transfer, and absorptive capacity,” “internationalization process,” “culture and entry modes,” and “internationalization and performance.” A comparison with other leading international business journals provides distinct pathways in which
MIR
may continue to grow. Finally, it is important to note that while the share of conceptual studies has decreased significantly in the last 15 years, the
MIR
editors want to see more novel and theoretically grounded conceptual articles in the journal.
The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of using the EFQM model in Czech companies on business success. The study is based on primary data collected from top managers of selected 477 ...Czech private companies which are incorporated and located in the Czech Republic. Primary data were collected by the method of oral questioning. The companies under research were selected with the method of non-probability purposive sampling, or more precisely by assumption and occasional selection. The research was carried out in the Czech Republic between October 2018 and January 2019. The relationships are analyzed using relevant regression techniques. From the results generated by research methodology, the EFQM model has a very important weight and plays a key role in the strategic planning of the company. This fact is confirmed by the high direct effect, as well as by the high indirect effect between both variables. These results indicate that the using of the EFQM model constitutes a key piece in the strategic planning of the company to achieve of business success.
PDF
