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Corporate Responses (corporate + response)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	62%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	25%

Selected Abstracts

Corporate response to CSO criticism: decoupling the corporate responsibility discourse from business practice

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2010
Jenny Ählström
Abstract The general objective of this paper is to further research on the interaction between civil society organizations (CSOs) and corporations. The aim is to analyze how corporations are responding to demands to enlarge the responsibility sphere. A case is presented in which CSOs are putting pressure on the garment retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) to be responsible for safeguarding workers' rights in the outsourced production of H&M garments. The conclusion of the paper, derived from analyzing the empirical context using discourse theory, is that: (1) CSOs represent a challenging discourse (responsible business) attempting to change the dominant corporate discourse (profitable business); (2) If the challenging discourse is threatening the legitimacy of the corporation, a responsible business discourse is created; and (3) Responding to the demands of the CSOs is done to keep the business practice intact, hence practice is decoupled from the responsible business discourse. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]

Choosing strategic responses to address emerging environmental regulations: size, perceived influence and uncertainty

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, Issue 8 2008
Bruce Clemens
Abstract How companies respond to impending regulations is a significant aspect of corporate strategy. Regulations, especially environmental regulations, are expanding quickly and increasingly important to firm success. The threat of impending environmental regulation forces companies to choose levels of strategic responses on a continuum from passive to active. Using practitioner oriented research and existing theoretical models of corporate response, this study finds that the type of strategic response is negatively related to size, positively related to state uncertainty and negatively related to effect/response uncertainty. Based on existing literature and the results of this study, the paper suggests that simplifying the uncertainty construct could lead to more definitive findings in future research. The study results also suggest that a curvilinear relationship may exist between managerial perception of influence and level of strategic response. Most importantly, the findings could have a significant impact on firm decision making regarding environmental investments. For example, it is hoped that firms will be able to use the findings of this study to further understand and anticipate their competitors' decisions. Practitioners may also benefit from the conclusions on uncertainty in that they may be able to more cleanly parse the types of uncertainty immersed in impending environmental regulations. Finally, firms may be better able to understand decisions by their own managers and their competitors' managers in terms of their perceived influence over the regulatory process. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]

How warm is the corporate response to climate change?

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, Issue 1 2008
Evidence from Pakistan, the UK
Abstract In response to growing consensus among scientists and governments to act fast to avoid dangerous impacts of climate change, many industries have started to prepare for a carbon-constrained world. However, this response is far from being uniform. Often action is predicated on economic, technological, organizational and institutional drivers and barriers, which vary between countries and across industrial sectors. In order to understand the effectiveness of industry response, it is therefore important to analyse corporate response across different sectors in different countries. Focusing on the nine most energy-intensive and greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting industrial sectors, this paper compares corporate responses to climate change in Pakistan and the UK. By analysing the divergence of strategies adopted by industries across different sectors in two countries, the paper examines the key factors influencing corporate adoption and implementation of GHG reduction and energy-efficiency strategies in Pakistan and the UK. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]

A Neo-Gramscian Approach to Corporate Political Strategy: Conflict and Accommodation in the Climate Change Negotiations*

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 4 2003
David L. Levy
ABSTRACT A neo-Gramscian theoretical framework for corporate political strategy is developed drawing from Gramsci's analysis of the relations among capital, social forces, and the state, and from more contemporary theories. Gramsci's political theory recognizes the centrality of organizations and strategy, directs attention to the organizational, economic, and ideological pillars of power, while illuminating the processes of coalition building, conflict, and accommodation that drive social change. This approach addresses the structure-agency relationship and endogenous dynamics in a way that could enrich institutional theory. The framework suggests a strategic concept of power, which provides space for contestation by subordinate groups in complex dynamic social systems. We apply the framework to analyse the international negotiations to control emissions of greenhouse gases, focusing on the responses of firms in the US and European oil and automobile industries. The neo-Gramscian framework explains some specific features of corporate responses to challenges to their hegemonic position and points to the importance of political struggles within civil society. The analysis suggests that the conventional demarcation between market and non-market strategies is untenable, given the embeddedness of markets in contested social and political structures and the political character of strategies directed toward defending and enhancing markets, technologies, corporate autonomy and legitimacy. [source]

Explaining Corporate Environmental Performance: How Does Regulation Matter?

LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 1 2003
Robert A. Kagan
How and to what extent does regulation matter in shaping corporate behavior? How important is it compared to other incentives and mechanisms of social control, and how does it interact with those mechanisms? How might we explain variation in corporate responses to law and other external pressures? This article addresses these questions through an study of environmental performance in 14 pulp and paper manufacturing mills in Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia, and the states of Washington and Georgia in the United States. Over the last three decades, we find tightening regulatory requirements and intensifying political pressures have brought about large improvements and considerable convergence in environmental performance by pulp manufacturers, most of which have gone "beyond compliance" in several ways. But regulation does not account for remaining differences in environmental performance across facilities. Rather, "social license" pressures (particularly from local communities and environmental activists) and corporate environmental management style prod some firms toward better performance compliance than others. At the same time, economic pressures impose limits on "beyond performance" investments. In producing large gains in environmental performance, however, regulation still matters greatly, but less as a system of hierarchically imposed, uniformly enforced rules than as a coordinative mechanism, routinely interacting with market pressures, local and national environmental activists, and the culture of corporate management in generating environmental improvement while narrowing the spread between corporate leaders and laggards. [source]

Civil Service Law in the People's Republic of China: A Return to Cadre Personnel Management

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 3 2007
Hon S. Chan
Despite the outward appearance of depoliticization, the civil service in China today is actually being repoliticized. This paper compares the 1993 Provisional Regulations on State Civil Servants with the Civil Service Law approved by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in April 2005. The 2005 reform formalized what had been a historical pattern,the Communist Party holds tight control over leadership change and management at various levels. The Civil Service Law has turned the Communist Party of China into a political institution that has become the source of both civil service empowerment and control. Although civil service reform in China differs markedly from approaches adopted elsewhere, China is clearly expanding its political control to ensure greater leverage over the bureaucracy. In this regard, China is in line with the global trend. That said, civil service reform in China has focused on structural elements and formal reorganizations, whereas most industrialized democracies have engaged in a dialectic between individualist and corporate responses to managerial questions. An understanding of the Chinese ability to adopt reforms,while strengthening its traditional hold,provides key perspectives not only on the world's largest nation and a rapidly emerging force in global political and economic relationships but also on the Chinese experience with important public sector reforms that have occurred in many other countries over recent decades. [source]