Is Gastronomy A Relevant Factor for Sustainable Tourism? An Empirical Analysis of Spain Country Brand

Tourism has become a fundamental industry for the economic growth of many countries. Due to this, there is growing competitiveness among the different destinations to attract as many tourists as possible. As a result, disciplines such as marketing have developed tools to differentiate some destinations from others and concepts such as place branding and country brand have emerged. One of the key factors forming the country brand is gastronomy, as food tourism is one way to reduce the growing problem of sustainability in tourism, as it impacts different aspects of the country’s environment. However, there is a great lack of scientific works that relate both variables. In this paper, we propose to establish that, in the case of Spain, tourists’ perception of Spanish gastronomy is a key element of its country brand. To do that, this study relies on the use of Partial Least Squares Structural Equations Modeling (PLS-SEM) using a 496 cases data set

The Assessment of Real Estate Initiatives to Be Included in the Socially-Responsible Funds

The acknowledgment of the ongoing economic and financial crisis involving real estate, creates the need to formulate proposals and scenarios (in real estate) with the characteristics of socially responsible investments. These kind of investments aim towards “sustainable” development both environmentally (safeguarding the shortage of resources such as land, energy, and natural elements), and socially (protecting the population and raising its level of well-being) according to so-called “ethical finance”, instead of a mere “speculative” investment. Effectively, real estate is still an investment sector only marginally explored by the socially-responsible funds. Based on these premises, this paper will: (i) briefly analyze the nature of socially-responsible investments, setting their characteristics apart from “traditional investments”; and (ii) propose a possible procedure (of the multi-criteria type) which aims to assess socially-responsible investments in real estate. This will be applied to a case study regarding a social housing initiative in the municipality of Anguillara Sabazia (Rome, Italy)

Corporate Environmental Disclosure Practices in Different National Contexts: The Influence of Cultural Dimensions

The influence of different national contexts, including the effects of cultural environments, on corporate environmental disclosure practices has yet to be properly addressed in the literature. The purpose of this research is, therefore, to analyse how cultural factors affect the environmental disclosure practices of companies in different countries. This research is supported by the diversity of cultures across countries. Given that a cultural framework prompts different organisational actions and strategies, the question to be answered through this research is as follows: How do cultural aspects affect corporate environmental disclosure? Cultural factors are precisely those that can explain similarities and differences between stakeholders’ actions and preferences. The sample used in this research comprises companies in 28 countries and 9 economic sectors for the period 2004 to 2015. Our main findings show that companies operating in countries with individualist, masculine and indulgent cultures are less likely to disclose environmental information. Contrary to our predictions, cultures with a longterm orientation also discourage the reporting of environmental information, while uncertainty avoidance contexts tend to promote more environmental reporting

The Impact of Sustainability Reporting on Firm Performance : Empirical Evidence from Finland

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure has emerged as a crucial component of modern corporate communication, due to the growing expectations that firms exhibit accountability in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) domains. However, the academic literature regarding the relationship between CSR disclosure and firm performance presents mixed and often contradictory evidence, showing positive, negative, or statistically insignificant effects. This study investigates this ongoing discussion by examining publicly listed companies in Finland, a renowned sustainability leader in northern region and across the globe, that ranked first out of 193 nations according to Sustainable Development Goals Index in 20024 with a score of 86.35. The study explores whether ESG transparency results in better operational, financial and market outcome, drawing on theories of stakeholder, legitimacy, and agency. The study employs fixed effects regression models to investigate the effects of ESG disclosure scores, obtained from Bloomberg, on Return on Equity (ROE), Return on Assets (ROA), Tobin's Q, and annual stock returns using a panel dataset of 88 firms over a six- years period (2018–2023). The results show that the relationship between ESG disclosure and firm performance is largely statistically insignificant, with some dimensions even revealing a negative relationship. These findings suggest that while ESG reporting may serve legitimacy purposes in high-standard CSR environments like Finland, it does not necessarily yield measurable financial advantages. That said, the robustness test suggests that the link between ESG disclosures and firm performance can differ depending on the industry and timing of the ESG impacts. These results highlight the importance of considering the broader context when analysing the impact of ESG disclosures. This opens opportunities for future research to explore how ESG disclosures influences companies differently across sectors and over extended time periods. By focusing on Finnish firms, this study provides country specific insights to the growing body of CSR literature and highlight the need for further investigation into the qualitative and strategic dimensions of ESG practices within organizations

Role of innovation in relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance

The focus of the thesis is an analysis of the influence of corporate social performance (CSP) on the corporate financial performance (CFP) of a firm and role of innovation in this relationship. The primary research problem is the fact that there is not established relationship between CSP and CFP and unspecified role of innovation in this relationship. Previous researches found mostly positive CSP-CFP relationship, but there is still lack of understanding in role of innovation, as most of studies, which explored role of innovation in CSP-CFP relationship, got a neutral result. To address this gap, the researched question formulated is: what is the effect of innovation and their interaction CFP? The data for this study was acquired from CSR Hub dataset, The Eikon datasetand Amadeus dataset, and it focuses only on 2017. The data includes 312 companies. The findings highlight that CSP has a positive impact on CFP; however, innovation shows negative influence in CSP-CFP relationship. The key theoretical contribution of the thesis is an attempt to build new theoretical framework to test CSP-CFP relationship, using currently established datasets such as CSRHub and The Eikon datasets. For practioners, it is concluded that it is more effective to a focus on either CSR or the innovation alone, or adjusting them to consider, include, and account for the complex interconnections and implications in both dimensions instead

An evaluation of sustainability in large British companies

This article undertakes an assessment of the sustainability efforts of some of the largest companies that are listed on the FTSE 100 (a share index composed of the 100 largest companies that are listed on the London Stock Exchange according to market capitalisation). It provides empirical insights into how large listed British companies are addressing sustainability and their efforts in terms of incorporating sustainability factors into their business operations. The study was based on an extended content analysis of each company’s annual and sustainability reports. Our findings demonstrate that companies are trying to integrate sustainability in their business strategies even though there are variations in their efforts. There are indications that the majority of the companies have been able to embed sustainability in their strategy and operations and are now attempting to establish goals for further improvement. We found strong evidence of willingness to engage with relevant stakeholders to evaluate which sustainability issues are of importance to the particular companies and then to communicate to those relevant stakeholders the measures that have been taken to integrate sustainability in their business strategies. However, our findings also revealed areas where there is a need for further improvement such as compliance with international standards for sustainability reporting and establishment of better frameworks to enhance their sustainability efforts

ESG complementarities in the US economy

This paper investigates ESG from the perspective of changes in input elasticities of substitution and complementarity. Rather than compute these elasticities from the cost function, we compute them from the Input Distance Function (IDF). Our data are from Refinitiv Eikon Datastream database. We focus on the US economy due to her global role in the world economy and hence spillover effects of uncertainties on the rest of the world. The data consist of 5,798 companies comprising 38 US industries that span for 12 years from 2009 to 2020 and include: (i) financial data on sales, capital and employees; (ii) two financial ratios and (iii) three main ESG indicators. We compute Antonelli Elasticity of Complementarity (AEC) and Allen-Uzawa Elasticity of Substitution (AES) from the translog of IDF function. We find that the standard inputs have positive AEC elasticities; however, ESG cross-elasticities exhibit negative signs, classifying them as q-substitutes. Therefore, an increase in one of the ESG values leads to a decrease in the marginal value of the other. On the other hand, AES elasticities have a negative sign only for the Governance-Environment “doublet'; the rest of the pairs are positive implying that they are p-complements

Understanding Resilience in the Context of Sustainable HRM and the Human–Nature Relationship

This study proposes that the deepening ecological crisis requires novel frameworks of resilience at work so that it considers the human–nature relationship. Increased sustainability reporting provides a platform to disclose how organizations practice sustainable HRM as a part of the SDGs. The research questions are: How are resilience approaches illustrated in sustainable HRM reporting? What argumentation is used for resilience approaches? What HRM practices are associated with different resilience approaches? The sustainability reports of 10 well-known Finnish organizations were studied using reflexive thematic analysis. The results identified that resilience is well addressed in the organizations’ SHRM at the individual and human interaction levels. However, the ecocrisis is not the challenge for which organizations are preparing SHRM in practice. Despite the good intentions of SHRM, the pursuit of resilience can lead to contradictions in terms of socioecological resilience. More conceptual guidelines are needed to emphasize the connection with the human–nature relationship