Breathe and let breathe: Breathing as a political model of organizing

International audienceTake a deep breath. Although nothing is more natural or essential to human bodies than breathing, this simple yet vital act is the critical result of complex organizational, material, and political processes. We suggest that breathing can be thought of as a political model of organizing insofar as it shapes questions of life and death while rooting these ‘operationally’ in immediate, urgent, collective and more-than-human intra-action. Breathing is also a social act because the self is bound up with others in a fabric of relations upon which each person depends, and so breathing can serve as a trope for regenerating and rethinking social structures, institutions and organizing blueprints. We take the act of breathing – its literal and metaphorical (im)possibility and collective organization – as the focus of a reflection on relations among humans and between other living beings, humans, and their ecological surroundings. Re-thinking the question of whose breathing we care about and whose breathing counts, we offer a political model that embraces the mutuality principle for post-humanistic and post-anthropocentric organizing and community building. We thereby hope to ‘inspire’ and materialize new social and political realities for organizing our shared future, conceptualized as building a (scholarly) community of breathers who breathe and let breathe

Cleaning the carbon market! Market transparency and market efficiency in the EU ETS

International audienceThis paper revisits the informational efficiency of the EU ETS at a micro level, by introducing a novel time variant structural decomposition of variance. The new modelling introduces GARCH-like effects into a structural price modelling. With this, all variance components, including public information and price discreteness, can be estimated, for the first time, in a continuously updated setup that is free of sampling bias. The empirical findings report that although all variance components decrease in magnitude, this is primarily due to higher overall market liquidity that results in less price discovery per trade. On a proportional basis, though, the EU ETS appears to be increasingly inefficient prior to the introduction of MiFID II rules, with the situation reversing after their implementation. This is evidence that transparency is vital in rendering emission allowances a policy rather than a speculative instrument

The virtual store: a new shopping channel that generates value and well-being for Gen Z customers

International audienceThe increasing adoption of virtual reality in the retail sector has spurred academics and professionals alike to understand shopping experiences in virtual stores. Unlike existing studies that used this technology only as a research tool, this research considers the virtual store as a full-fledged shopping channel with multichannel or omnichannel logic. An experiment involving 193 respondents showed that the virtual store generates value and well-being for Gen Z customers, where value is positively or negatively determined by ease of use, empowerment, cognitive effort and a lack of privacy. The influence of these antecedents on the perceived value is more or less important, depending on the shopper’s presence in the virtual store (through an avatar with full body versus hands only). Although the full-body avatar (n=96) provides ease of use (when moving around the virtual store and selecting products), it diminishes the experience because it is perceived as less privacy compliant. In contrast, an avatar with hands only (n=97) increases the empowerment felt during the shopping experience, even if it demands more cognitive effort to apprehend the virtual store’s operations

Disabled individuals facing and reacting against identity threat during school-to-work transition

International audiencePurposeIn a context in which disabled people are stigmatized, the school-to-work transition threatens the occupational identity to which disabled individuals aspire. This study highlights how students with a disability face and react against identity threat, using identity management strategies and, specifically, identity threat responses when intending to integrate into the workplace.Design/methodology/approachStudents in transition or having recently integrated into the workplace were interviewed to relate their transitioning experience, resulting in a qualitative study based on 31 semi-structured interviews.FindingsThe study reveals that identity threat is experienced during the school-to-work transition process and that disabled individuals do not remain passive but actively fight against it. The participants used four identity management strategies to attempt to counteract such threats. The strategies displayed include identity threat mechanisms such as identity-protection and identity-restructuring responses. The outcomes of these strategies are presented in terms of their positive and backlash effects.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the identity management literature and, more specifically, to the identity threat literature by showing how disabled individuals combine several identity threat responses, which they use as resources to reduce potential harm. New identity threat responses that are particularly crucial in a career management strategy are also highlighted.</p

International evidence on household affordability of deep decarbonization

International audienceWe document international evidence on household affordability of deep decarbonization by applying a simple formula for an affordability index to publicly available market data. We conclude that economy-wide deep decarbonization policies are affordable for average households of the International Energy Agency’s member regions and therefore politically feasible for these regions

Portfolio optimisation under prospect theory with an empirical test

International audienceBarberis et al. (2016. “Prospect Theory and Stock Returns: An Empirical Test.” The Review of Financial Studies 29:3068–3107. https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhw049.) show that a stock whose past return distribution has a high (low) prospect theory value (TK) earns a low (high) subsequent return on average. In this paper, we investigate whether portfolio optimisation techniques can make high-TK stocks (both long and short positions) more appealing to investors. Following the literature, we remove the probability distortion part of prospect theory to find a closed-form solution under the well-justified assumptions of a piecewise exponential value function and normally distributed returns for multiple risky assets in a single-period setting. We show that the optimal portfolio is proportional to the well-known Markowitz mean–variance portfolio. Our numerical results demonstrate that our portfolio optimisation approach yields higher subsequent gains for groups of stocks with high TK and lower gains for those with low TK in the US market. TK at the portfolio level is an important driver of portfolio returns under our optimisation approach, even after controlling for well-established stock return predictors, and it negatively affects portfolio returns

Lead Investor Nominee in Equity Crowdfunding

International audienceThe lead investor nominee structure in equity crowdfunding (ECF) integrates the strengths of the pure ECF and angel ECF models. By committing their own capital, lead investors address two key challenges: mitigating adverse selection through thorough due diligence and reducing moral hazard by monitoring the firm post‐campaign to secure returns. The digital nominee governance structure ensures equal ownership and voting rights for all investors, resolving potential conflicts between angels, accredited investors and the crowd. This model fosters collaboration between professional investors and the crowd, leveraging their respective strengths. Analysis of extensive UK data shows that nominee ECF campaigns outperform direct ownership campaigns in both the short and long term. These findings provide valuable governance insights for platform managers and policymakers

Political sentiment and corporate payouts

International audienceWe provide empirical evidence of the impact of firm-level political sentiment on dividend policy. Using a sample composed of over 34,000 firm years, we find that a high level of political sentiment is associated with a lower level of dividend payout. The evidence is robust and survives several tests that address potential endogeneity. Our results suggest that managers consider investors' political sentiment in setting dividend policy. When political sentiment is negative, they pay higher dividends to assuage investors' concerns regarding future prospects. Our results are also consistent with the view that firms pay higher dividends to address the agency cost issue that arises from the free cash flow problem during periods of negative political sentiment

Poetry from the factory: “On the Line,” by Joseph Ponthus

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Accounting for Social and Environmental Sustainability

International audienceFor a company, managing its social and environmental performance is no longer just a matter of reducing its impact; it must also be able to assess its contribution to resolving or aggravating social and environmental problems. This book argues that the current work on accounting for sustainability has not yet given organisations a tool to integrate their performance within the planetary and social framework that conveys actual "planetary and social budgets", and that business organisations lack the possibility to go beyond incremental performance measurement.It offers an in‑depth examination of multi‑capital accounting, which has already been integrated within the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and will follow on from sustainability reporting. The LIFTS model (Limits and Foundations Towards Sustainability Accounting Model) used in this book combines various scientific and practical contributions to develop budgets for environmental impacts and social obligations on an organisational scale. It proposes an accounting mechanism that enables an organization to manage each of its budgets and measure variances between forecast and actual. It provides an introduction to the principles of this model and its conditions of application and describes its implementation in numerous companies.While the main audience for the book is academics, advanced students and researchers in accounting for sustainability, business and management and economics, it will also appeal to practitioners, policymakers, national standard setters, think tanks and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license