Purpose
This study examines the relationship between supply chain stakeholder pressure from customers and suppliers for the adoption of social and environmental sustainable supply chain management ...(SSCM) practices given the simultaneous conditional effects of both entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and sustainability orientation (SO).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a survey of US firms focused on their relationship with their top supplier or buyer by spend. This study used conditional process analysis to measure the relationship between stakeholder pressure and adoption of SSCM practices as well as the double moderation effects of EO and SO on this relationship.
Findings
The results show that both EO and SO simultaneously function as moderators of the effect of supply chain stakeholder pressure on the adoption of social and environmental SSCM practices. However, EO will only get firms so far in the adoption of SSCM practices. Once a strong SO takes effect, higher practice adoption ensues but the effect of stakeholder pressure weakens.
Practical implications
For those firms that have lower levels of SO, EO and supply chain stakeholder pressure are still essential drivers for the adoption of SSCM practice. The results of this study suggest that focal firms should work closely with suppliers to increase their levels of SO while also maintaining pressure for the adoption of SSCM practices.
Originality/value
This study shows the concurrent effect of two organizational level drivers on the adoption of SSCM practices, indicating that efforts in developing a strong SO are more likely to prepare firms for the adoption of SSCM practices.
Can mandated adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) improve firm value? Most CSR adoption is purely voluntary. However, governments regularly encourage CSR adoption with soft regulations ...that vary from simply endorsing and symbolically supporting CSR to requiring the adoption of specific practices. Governments have resisted fully mandating CSR because there is some concern universally that mandated CSR may reduce firm value. There is, however, no empirical clarity as to whether mandated CSR impedes or improves firm value. We address this uncertainty by analyzing the effects of the mandated adoption of CSR that the government of India legislated in 2014. Drawing on a sample of 1,526 publicly traded firms and deploying a combinative analytical framework comprising an event study, regression discontinuity design, and a difference-in-differences technique, we conclude that India’s CSR mandate did, in fact, increase value for all firms bound by the mandate. This value-enhancing effect was greater for foreign firms relative to domestic firms. Our results refute previous research showing that India’s CSR mandate diminished firm value.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore how business-only corporate responsibility coalitions (CRCs) help member firms manage sustainability issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This ...conceptual analysis of business-only CRCs, using the literature on sensemaking and social issues management, explores how participation in CRCs enhances firms’ capabilities for sustainability issues management by improving their sensemaking competencies, abilities to choose and adapt issue responses and efficiency in implementing issue responses through better issue response mechanisms.
Findings
Business-only CRCs help firms with high as well as low levels of sustainability orientation better manage sustainability issues by carrying out the exploratory aspects of issues management: scanning, identifying and evaluating issues and proposing responses to issues.
Practical implications
The widely applicable, nonbinding and scripted responses proposed by CRCs allow participating firms a high degree of autonomy to choose and adapt their responses. However, firms must approach their CRC memberships with collaborative intent and high transparency to achieve these benefits.
Social implications
Participation in CRCs can help scale up firms’ responses to sustainability issues through more efficient issues management processes that allow them to customize issue responses to their needs.
Originality/value
Research on the management of sociopolitical issues can be enriched if these issues are understood as collective, multilevel challenges rather than purely strategic issues faced by individual firms. This study contributes to the business collective action and issues management literatures by emphasizing the importance of collective management of sustainability issues and how it may improve firms’ capabilities for sustainability issues management.
This qualitative study indentifies how corporate responsibility (CR) practices are diffused to companies, as well as the factors that influence this diffusion process. Forest companies, industry ...associations, non-governmental organizations, and academics in Brazil, Canada, and the United States participated in this interview-based study. Data emerging from a grounded theory approach revealed three factors influencing the diffusion of CR practices to companies: (1) external contextual characteristics, (2) connectors, and (3) experts and expert organizations. These three factors influence each other, meaning that the diffusion process of CR practices is somewhat cyclic. These interactions are usually manifested by companies and expert organizations influencing each other's actions, being influenced by the external environment, and contributing to the CR trends that are observed in the external environment.
Display omitted
•Two new phenylbenzotriazoles, non-Cl PBTA-9 and PBTA-9, were synthetized.•Both compounds were more mutagenic and toxic for aquatic organisms than the parental dye DV93.•An analytical ...method for their simultaneous detection in surface waters was developed.•Non-Cl PBTA-9 was detected in sites under the influence of textile discharges.•No risk to aquatic life was verified in the preliminary risk assessment.
Phenylbenzotriazoles (PBTA) can be generated unintentionally during textile dyeing factories by reduction of dinitrophenylazo dyes and their subsequent chlorination in disinfection process. Eight non-chlorinated PBTAs (non-Cl PBTA) and their related chlorinated PBTAs have been found in rivers and presented mutagenic activity. No data on their aquatic toxicity are available. In this work, two new phenylbenzotriazoles, non-Cl PBTA-9 and PBTA-9, derived from the dye C.I. Disperse Violet 93 (DV93) were synthesized and chemically/toxicologically characterized. Both compounds were more mutagenic than the parental dye in the Salmonella/microsome assay in the presence of metabolic activation (S9). Mutagenicity studies in vivo with mammals would confirm their potential hazard to humans. The two compounds were acutely toxic to Daphnia similis. We developed an analytical method to simultaneously quantify non-Cl PBTA-9, PBTA-9 and DV93 in river waters. Non-Cl PBTA-9 was found in sites under influence of textile effluents but at concentrations that do not pose risk to the aquatic life according to the P-PNEC calculated based on the acute toxicity tests. PBTA-9 was not detected in any samples analyzed. More studies on the aquatic toxicity and water occurrence of PBTAs should be conducted to verify the relevance of this class of compounds as aquatic contaminants.
Background
Consumption of ultra‐processed foods (UPF) has progressively increased worldwide in the last 30 years. High intake of UPF is associated with cardiovascular disease and cancer and ...hypothesized to induce systemic inflammation and oxidative stress. Although UPF may also be a risk factor for cognitive decline through these pathways, little is lnown about the effects of UPF on cognition. We aimed to investigate the longitudinal association between UPF consumption and cognitive decline in the ELSA‐Brasil study during 9 years of follow‐up.
Method
Participants were evaluated in three study waves (2008‐10, 2012‐14 and 2017‐19).Data on diet measured by food frequency questionnaire was categorized according to degree of food processing using NOVA. Cognitive performance was evaluated using a standardized battery of tests ‐ the immediate recall, late recall, recognition, semantic and phonemic verbal fluency and the trail‐making tests. A global composite z‐score was derived from these tests. Association of consumption of UPF (% of total daily gram intake) with cognitive performance over time was evaluated using linear mixed effects models, adjusted for sociodemographic, lifestyle, and clinical variables.
Result
In 8,160 participants (mean 50.6±8.7 y, 56% women, and 55% white) during a median follow‐up of 9 years, the mean baseline calorie intake was 2,842±982 kcal, 28% (493g) of which came from UPF (Table 1). During follow‐up time, consumption of UPF in the fourth and fifth versus the first quintile were related to a decline in the executive funtion (β = ‐0.007, 95% CI = ‐0.013; ‐0.002, p = 0.004) and memory performance (β = ‐0.004, 95% CI = ‐0.009; 0.000, p = 0.048), respectively (Table 2). No association of UPF consumption and verbal fluency was observed (Table 2).
Conclusion
During nine years of follow‐up, high consumption of UPF was associated with cognitive decline, particularly in the memory and executive funtion domains.
Background
Lifestyle and cardiovascular risk factors were combined in the Life’s simple 7 (LS7) index to evaluate cardiovascular health, and this index has been previously associated with cognitive ...decline. The Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) is an update of LS7, which now includes sleep health as an additional factor. We aimed to verify the association between LE8 and cognitive decline during X years of follow‐up in 11,390 participants from a racially diverse sample.
Method
In this cohort study, LE8 score was measured based on diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep health, BMI, blood lipids, blood glucose, and blood pressure. Cognition was assessed in three waves four years apart from each other using the CERAD word list, semantic and phonemic verbal fluency, Trail Making Test B (TMT‐B), and a global composite score. We used inverse probability weighting to account for mortality and attrition bias and linear mixed models with random intercepts and slopes to verify the association between baseline LE8 score and cognitive decline. We tested the interaction between LE8 and age, sex, and race.
Result
The mean sample age was 51.4±8.9yo at baseline, 56% were women, and 43% Black. Higher baseline LE8 scores were associated with slower memory (β = 0.001; 95%CI = 0.000,0.002; p = 0.013), verbal fluency (β = 0.001; 95%CI = 0.000,0.002; p = 0.003), executive function (β = 0.004; 95%CI = 0.003,0.005; p<0.001), and global cognitive decline (β = 0.001; 95%CI = 0.001,0.002; p<0.001) (Table 1). Age (p < 0.001), sex (p < 0.001), and race (p < 0.001) were modifiers of the association between LE8 score and global cognitive decline (Figure 1), suggesting that in different socioeconomic profiles, this association might have different manifestations.
Conclusion
Higher baseline LE8 scores were associated with global and domain‐specific decline after eight years of follow‐up. Age, sex, and race were modifiers of this association, suggesting that it might differ based on the participant’s socioeconomic profile.
The ways in which companies understand and define corporate responsibility (CR) depend strongly on contextual characteristics. This study aimed to gain insight into how companies from a specific ...industry sector understand and define CR within specific contexts and to better understand how these contexts influence the choice of CR activities among companies. The forestry industry was our sector of choice. The results of this study indicate that large forestry companies—presumably the innovators in the sector—understand and define CR largely based on activities related to sustainable forest management and accountability. This study has also indicated that, while common themes of CR activities emerge among companies operating in different contexts, the degree to which they emphasise certain activities will vary according to the specific contexts within which they operate and the priorities that they establish.
