			Home About us Contact

Corporate Level (corporate + level)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	60%

Selected Abstracts

The Global Reporting Initiative and corporate sustainability reporting in Swedish companies

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2003
Carl-Johan Hedberg
With empirical evidence from Swedish companies, this paper analyses the phenomenon of corporate sustainability reporting (CSR) in general and the use of CSR guidelines developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in particular. The main questions at issue are why companies have chosen to use the GRI guidelines and how this has affected corporate social responsibility and environmental management. From interviews with all Swedish companies that use the guidelines, we have found that companies produce CSRs mainly to seek organizational legitimacy, and that the main reason for use of the GRI guidelines is an expectation of increasing credibility of the CSR, but also that it provides a template for how to design a report. Moreover, we have found that the CSR report and the GRI guidelines are of more help for internal than external communication at this stage of development. It could help corporations to learn about themselves and to see what has actually been done in the organization. In all, the GRI guidelines would have the potential for gaining visibility and control of the triple bottom line on a corporate level, but they are in need of further development, not least in relation to the issue of verification. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]

Modeling an HR shared services center: Experience of an MNC in the United Kingdom

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2006
Fang Lee Cooke
An increasing number of large and multinational organizations are moving to shared services models in delivering the human resource function. It is commonly believed that the adoption of an HR shared services model can transform the role of HR by enabling the HR function to be more strategic at the corporate level and more cost-effective at the operational level. However, few academic studies have been carried out to investigate challenges to implementing an HR services center successfully and the impact of adopting an HR shared services model on different groups of employees. Through a case study of a multinational corporation, this article reveals that there remains a significant gap between literature espousing the efficacy and utility of HR shared services and the extent to which the adoption of such a model is successful. The financial and emotional cost of moving to a shared services model can outweigh the tangible cost savings predicted by firms. The idea of separating the HR function into strategic, operational, and administrative components may prove to be too simplistic, although it underpins the initiative of HR shared services. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

Management Ethics and Corporate Policy: A Cross-cultural Comparison

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 3 2000
Terence Jackson
This paper reports the results of a cross-cultural empirical study that investigated differences in the clarity of corporate attitudes towards ethical ,grey areas' and their influences on managers' ethical decision making. The study encompassed managers in France, Germany, Britain, Spain and the USA working in over 200 companies operating in these countries. Comparisons are made at both individual manager level and at corporate level. At the former level significant differences are found among nationalities of managers themselves. For the latter, differences are found among companies according to the nationality of their home country rather than the host country. Despite identifying national differences in areas of gift giving and receiving, loyalty to company, loyalty to one's group, and reporting others' violations of corporate policy, the study presents evidence that clarity of corporate policy has little influence on managers' reported ethical decision making. The perceived behaviour of managers' colleagues is far more important in predicting attitudes towards decision making of managers across the nationalities surveyed. This has implications for the efficacy of the growing popularity of corporate codes across Europe. Companies should place more emphasis on intervening in peer dynamics rather than trying to legislate for managers' ethical conduct. [source]

Analysis of corporate social responsibility in the service sector: does exist a strategic path?

KNOWLEDGE AND PROCESS MANAGEMENT: THE JOURNAL OF CORPORATE TRANSFORMATION, Issue 2 2008
Armando Calabrese
This paper proposes a strategic path managers might follow in order to optimise the outcome of the implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. As a starting point, we analysed the practice of CSR and its impact within a service industry, namely the Italian banking sector. Our aim was to understand the impact of CSR on the service company both externally and within the company itself and consequently our research was conducted on two different levels. The corporate level considers CSR as it is perceived by top management, and the operational level takes into account the perspectives of the front line employees and customers. Analysis at the corporate level was carried out by means of a thorough examination of the social reports and Internet sites of the service companies concerned, whereas the front line was studied by administrating a structured questionnaire, issued both to employees and to customers in a sample of bank branches. The research demonstrates that service companies are in fact implementing CSR initiatives and that stakeholders have a considerable interest in such initiatives. However, should the CSR initiatives be used as a tool solely to improve the brand equity rather than to improve relationships with their main stakeholders (employees and customers), then a boomerang effect is produced whereby the stakeholders pinpoint the CSR initiatives as one of the main reasons for their discontent with the service company. Although top managers invest in CSR initiatives in order to increase the satisfaction of the stakeholders, should the main stakeholders be unsatisfied with the management of the service company core business, the CSR initiatives might be rendered rather ineffective. As a result, the CSR initiatives may be a sign of underlying rift between top managers and the front line employees within the company, which in turn might also damage the relationship between bank and its customers. The implications of the findings in this paper provide a managerial tool for use in the implementation of CSR. This tool dictates a specific path to be followed which also requires precise timing for its success. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

MEASUREMENT ERROR IN RESEARCH ON HUMAN RESOURCES AND FIRM PERFORMANCE: ADDITIONAL DATA AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2001
PATRICK M. WRIGHT
Gerhart and colleagues (2000) and Huselid and Becker (2000) recently debated the presence and implications of measurement error in measures of human resource practices. This paper presents data from 3 more studies, 1 of large organizations from different industries at the corporate level, 1 from commercial banks, and the other of autonomous business units at the level of the job. Results of all 3 studies provide additional evidence that single respondent measures of HR practices contain large amounts of measurement error. Implications for future research into the HR firm performance relationship are discussed. [source]