A Lesson Plan for Partnerships: Insights from Leading STEM Nonprofits

In 2013, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation conducted research to better understand partnerships between corporations and nonprofits. The research, which was conducted through its Corporate Citizenship Center (CCC), looked at a specific set of nonprofit organizations. Each organization works to improve education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), and all received grants from the Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund.The goal of the research was to discover two things: (1) how leading nonprofits effectively partner with corporations, and (2) how nonprofits measure their success and share it with corporate donors. While STEM nonprofits were chosen for this study, the findings in this paper may apply to other types of nonprofit relationships

Private Sector Investment and Sustainable Development: The Current and Potential Role of Institutional Investors, Companies, Banks and Foundations in Sustainable Development

This paper seeks to provide the Financing for Development process with a perspective on the role institutional investors, companies, and foundations can play in the design and implementation of a financing strategy for global sustainability. This will help bridge the terminology and investment approaches of institutional investors, companies, foundations, and governments. The paper highlights ongoing efforts among private investors to increase the impact of their investments. It concludes with a set of key actions facing investors, companies and foundations in their transition towards investment practices that contribute to sustainable development

Real options analysis as a decision-making tool - A preliminary investigation of the real estate investment executive perspective

This paper attempts to identify literature where real options analysis (ROA) has enhanced real estate investment analysis and decision-making as well as to conduct a preliminary investigation of how ROA is known and perceived by senior real estate investment executives. The research is carried out as an exploratory study where the data for the research is gathered via semi-structured interviews with senior executives in real estate investment companies. All of the interviewees expressed that they would welcome ROA into their investment decision process and into the industry as a general method. The results indicate that the findings from earlier often theoretical ROA research do have practical interest, which hopefully encourages researchers to study the topic further together with practitioners. The perceived complexity of real options valuation could be overcome by communicating the benefits of ROA with results where the option values are transparent approximations. The interviews focusing on the role of ROA in investment decision making process with real estate investment executives are the first of its kind and provide new understanding regarding both the overall potential of ROA for real estate investments as well as where the next research questions should focus, especially concerning the practical viability of the method

Scorecarding and Heat Mapping: Tools and Concepts for Assessing Strategic Uncertainty

The dramatic changes occurring throughout the agriculture industry are creating new and different uncertainties that result from a turbulent business climate. The objective of this paper is to present a methodology to understand, assess and evaluate, and manage strategic uncertainty. The approach is to present a mental model that frames assessment of strategic uncertainty from a potential and exposure perspective. Scorecarding and heat mapping assessment tools operationalize the mental model. Participants in an executive agribusiness educational workshop applied this mental model and the assessment tools to one of three hypothetical seed companies. The participants then provided an evaluation of the usefulness and effectiveness of uncertainty scorecarding and heat mapping.Uncertainty, scorecarding, strategic uncertainty, heat mapping, potential, exposure, likelihood, Risk and Uncertainty,

Investment appraisal and evaluation: preserving tacit knowledge and competitive advantage

This research asks if intuitive investment appraisal and evaluation are appropriate under conditions of rapid change, uncertain outcomes, limited information, and when competitive advantage derives from tacit knowledge. Measures and rational approaches to appraisal and evaluation require distal knowledge made explicit in documents and techniques. Converting valuable tacit knowledge, residing in individuals and organisational context, into coded distal knowledge, which is more easily replicated, risks jeopardising the uniqueness of competencies and capabilities that underpin competitive advantage. The research investigates e-learning projects in higher education and finds little evidence of formal rational investment appraisal and evaluation in IS projects characterised by uncertainty and a lack of clear information

Managing Water under Uncertainty and Risk: The United Nations World Water Development Report 4

This report introduces new aspects of water issues: 1) it reintroduces the 12 challenge area reports that provided the foundation for the first two World Water Development Reports (WWDR); 2) 4 new reports on water quality, groundwater, gender, and desertification, land degradation and drought; 3) in recognition that the global challenges of water can vary considerably across countries and regions, a series of 5 regional reports have been included; 4) a deeper analysis of the main external forces of freshwater resources and possibilities for their future evolution; 5) managing water under uncertainty and risk

Built to Last: Focusing Corporations on Long-Term Performance

This report addresses the increasingly short-term focus by many business leaders that is damaging the ability of public companies to sustain long-term performance. This trend is hampering growth in the American economy. The report offers recommendations for corporations to improve performance by focusing on long-term goals. "Short-termism" is defined as an undue focus on meeting quarterly forecasts and a lesser emphasis on long-term planning

Cutting carbon, not the economy

A drastic change in the way we produce and consume energy is necessary to contain the risk of global environmental catastrophe. For its part, the EU has set agreed to a greenhouse gas reduction target of 80-95 percent by 2050, compared to 1990. However, with the current fuel mix, even the most ambitious improvements on incumbent technologies are unlikely to be sufficient for reaching the reduction targets. Meeting the targets requires low-carbon transition. However, the process of transition will likely be littered with market failures. Hundreds of more-or-less proven low-carbon technologies are competing for market share in the low-carbon system. In order to bring about the transition to a low-carbon energy and transport system at the lowest cost, policymakers should rely as much as possible on private action to choose, develop, and deploy low-carbon technologies. For those market failures that might only be overcome with technology-specific measures, governments should set up a transparent and predictable mechanism for selecting technologies. This Policy Contribution largely draws on research conducted for The great transformation: decarbonising Europeâ??s energy and transport systems. The research leading to these results has received funding from the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FCH.

Climate change and individual behavior : considerations for policy

Climate change is anthropogenic - the product of billions of acts of daily consumption. That solutions need to be anthropogenic too is well accepted. Yet, suggested solutions are normally cast in the realms of finance and technology, often neglecting the primal root of the problem: individual behavior. An emerging body of social-psychology scholarship has examined the barriers and drivers of individual behavior in relation to both adaptation and mitigation. This paper reviews some of its conclusions, and suggests policy areas that should be considered in devising appropriate interventions.Environmental Economics&Policies,Climate Change,Transport and Environment,Energy Production and Transportation,Environment and Energy Efficiency