Suchergebnisse

RésuméNotre article traite des apprentissages issus d'organisations visant à gérer des enjeux sociaux complexes, soit les processus multipartites de collaboration (PMC). Notre analyse comparative de deux cas de PMC dans le domaine de l'environnement corrobore la thèse selon laquelle la diversité de perspectives de leurs participants contribue à l'émergence d'apprentissages et d'innovations. Cependant, il appert que le groupe multipartite, en tant qu'organisation, est limité dans sa capacité d'implanter des idées nouvelles et de poser des actions. Par contre, les acteurs peuvent par la suite agir sur la base des connaissances acquises et des nouveaux concepts développés au cours du PMC. De plus lorsque la diver sité de perspectives est temporairement limitée par la création de sous‐groupes de travail, des actions peuvent aussi être entreprises.AbstractOur paper addresses the issue of learning occurring in organizations put in place to manage complex social issues, namely multistakeholder collaborative processes (MCP). Our comparative analysis of two environmental MCP cases supports the thesis that the diversity of the participants' perceptual framework contributes to learning and innovation. However, it appears that the multistakeholder setting, as an organization, is limited in its capacity to implement new ideas and to engage actions. Nevertheless, our analysis suggests that participants could later on take actions on the basis of the knowledge acquired and new concepts developed through the MCP. Furthermore, when the diversity of perspective is temporarily reduced through the creation of small task teams, actions can also be taken.

Amid concerns for a regulatory void in transnational fields, the principle of private regulation has become institutionalized. Many sectors have seen the emergence of multiple and overlapping standards. When comparing the sectors, there is considerable variation in standard multiplicity. We build on three institutional perspectives that have been put forward to explain the emergence of sustainability standards – the economic, idealist and political-institutional perspectives – to analyze the phenomenon of standard multiplicity. Each perspective reflects a different kind of action logic and is simultaneously present and accessible to various parties involved. Based on a cross-sector analysis of standards multiplicity in the forestry, coffee and textile sectors, this article seeks to make two contributions. First, whereas these three perspectives have been presented as competing, we propose that they are complementary in offering partial explanations for different episodes in the dynamics underlying standards multiplicity in different sectors. Second, whereas most studies have analyzed standard setting in single sectors and thus have understood it as being an intra-sector phenomenon, our cross-sector analysis of the dynamics of standard setting suggests that it is propelled by both sector-specific contingencies and experiences as well as by the experiences from other sectors.

Issu des initiatives de commerce alternatif, le commerce équitable d'aujourd'hui propose une nouvelle façon de faire du commerce. Le commerce équitable prétend même favoriser le développement durable. L'objectif de cet article était de voir les limites et les contributions du commerce équitable au développement durable à partir du cas d'une organisation de producteurs de café équitable au Mexique. Partant d'une conception tripolaire hiérarchisée du développement durable, nous démontrons que le commerce équitable tel qu'il est vécu s'éloigne de cette conception. Si le commerce équitable permet l'amélioration des conditions de vie des producteurs, à long terme, le virage commercial dans lequel il s'engage risque de compromettre la portée du commerce équitable à réellement instituer le développement durable.

AbstractWe compare the traits of companies receiving social policy shareholder resolutions with those of a set of matching firms. We show that targeted firms tend to be much larger and riskier, less profitable and less socially performing than their counterparts. The five largest investors in firms receiving social proxies tend to hold a lower stake in those firms vis‐à‐vis the matching firms. Firms in both samples, however, are not statistically different in terms of percentages of shares held by institutional and insider investors. We provide possible explanations for our results.

ABSTRACTWe examine shareholder initiated social policy proposals' capacity to exert pressure on management to force it to adopt the suggested changes in policy. We show that social proposals, filed under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Rule 14a‐8, have a more limited capacity to change corporate social policy than it has been previously reported. However, the capacity to exert pressure on firms can be substantially higher for some types of filers, notably pension funds and mutual funds. The analysis also suggests that the capacity to influence management is higher for some types of issues presented in the resolution, such as those related to board diversity, energy and environment, and international laborand human rights. We also provide suggestions explaining why shareholder activism is a persistent practice despite its limited results.

This paper reports on comparative research on how textual representations of issues related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in corporate annual reports from Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands have changed over time. The results show a substantial increase on a number of topics that can be linked to the general CSR-discourse in the 2001 sample in comparison to the 1991 and 1981 samples. The rise in the CSR-discourse appears to be related to a drop in other discourses related to issues of social responsibility regarding the social, economic and political development of a company's native country.

This article examines the relation of culture to the propensity for, and potential effectiveness of, both internal reporting and whistle-blowing as ethics management tools within a North American context. Samples from a total of 10 regions in the US, Canada and Mexico increased the accuracy and meaningfulness of the findings. Hofstede's cultural dimensions uncertainty avoidance and power distance had the most consistent and significant relationship to propensity for both whistle-blowing and internal reporting, while collectivism was not found to be significantly related to either ethics management tool. Managers who better understand the cultural links to ethics management are more likely to craft the most effective organizational ethics strategies. Researchers can gain from increased insight, allowing departure from assumptions to an empirically based examination of how cultural dimensions might influence ethics management instruments.