Carrot and stick? The role of financial market intermediaries in corporate social performance

In this paper we examine the role of intermediaries in financial markets in fostering corporate sustainability. Responsible Investment (RI) indices have been primarily identified as intermediaries that provide information regarding Corporate Social Performance (CSP) for investors and other stakeholders (Doh et al. 2010, Consolandi et al. 2009). We argue that the role of these intermediaries is not confined solely to information provision, but they may also incentivize high levels of CSP through mechanisms such as exclusion threats, signalling, and engagement. We rely on unique access to the archives of the FTSE4Good Index to examine the effects of these mechanisms on CSP. The study shows that companies facing exclusion threats and signalling are more likely to comply with the intermediary's criteria, and medium levels of engagement leads to higher levels of CSP. We contribute to the study of sustainability in financial markets by explicating the mechanisms that intermediaries and other financial actors could employ in order to foster greater corporate sustainability

Nokia on the slope: the failure of a hybrid open/closed source model

This case study explores the origins of Nokia’s decline in the mobile technology market, as an unsuccessful attempt to introduce an open-source strategy into the business. Nokia created a hybrid model, which codified conflicting principles taken from closed and open mode of collaboration. A series of implementation problems resulted in Nokia struggling to attract open-source partners, growing issues with managing in-house staff and ultimately failing to develop a new mobile operating system fast enough to stay competitive

GPs are from Mars, Administrators are from Venus: The Role of Misaligned Occupational Dispositions in Inhibiting Mandated Role Change

Research on mandated occupational role change focuses on jurisdictional conflict to explain change failure. Our study of the English National Health Service highlights the role of occupational dispositions in shaping how mandated role change is implemented by members of multiple occupational groups. We find that tension stemming from misaligned dispositions may emerge as members of different occupations interact during their role change implementation efforts. Depending on dispositional responses to tension, change may fail as members of the different occupations avoid interactions. This suggests that effective role change can be elusive even in the initial absence of conflicting occupational interests

Global Standards in Action: Insights from Anti-Money Laundering Regulation

As organizations have come under the increasing influence of global rules of all sorts, organization scholars have started studying the dynamics of global regulation. The purpose of this article is to identify and evaluate the contribution to this interdisciplinary field by the ‘Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research’. The latter’s key proposition is that while global regulation often consists of voluntary best practice rules it can nevertheless become highly influential under certain conditions. We assess how innovative this approach is using as a benchmark the state of the art in another field of relevance to the study of global regulation, i.e. ‘International Relations’. Our discussion is primarily theoretical but we draw on the case of global anti-money laundering regulation to illustrate our arguments and for inspirations of how to further elaborate the approach

The effect of carbon dissemination on cost of equity

This study examines whether firms can influence their cost of equity (COE) by broadly disseminating their carbon information over Twitter. We study firms' dissemination decisions of carbon information by developing a comprehensive measure of carbon information that a firm makes on Twitter, referred to as iCarbon . Using a sample of 1,737 firm‐year observations for 584 nonfinancial firms with a Twitter account and listed on the U.S. NASDAQ stock exchange over the period 2009–2015, we find that iCarbon is significantly and negatively associated with COE. Our results are consistent after determining the effect of Bloomberg's environmental and environmental, social, and governance disclosure. The findings also hold when using alternative measures of COE and iCarbon

Exploring the science–policy interface on climate change: The role of the IPCC in informing local decision-making in the UK

Building on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) review of how to make its Assessment Reports (ARs) more accessible in the future, the research reported here assesses the extent to which the ARs are a useful tool through which scientific advice informs local decision-making on climate change in the United Kingdom. Results from interviews with local policy representatives and three workshops with UK academics, practitioners and local decision makers are presented. Drawing on these data, we outline three key recommendations made by participants on how the IPCC ARs can be better utilized as a form of scientific advice to inform local decision-making on climate change. First, to provide more succinct summaries of the reports paying close attention to the language, content, clarity, context and length of these summaries; second, to better target and frame the reports from a local perspective to maximize engagement with local stakeholders; and third, to work with local decision makers to better understand how scientific advice on climate change is being incorporated in local decision-making. By adopting these, the IPCC would facilitate local decision-making on climate change and provide a systematic review of how its reports are being used locally. We discuss implications of these recommendations and their relevance to the wider debate within and outside the IPCC as to the most effective way the IPCC can more effectively tailor its products to user needs without endangering the robustness of its scientific findings. This article is published as part of a collection on scientific advice to government

Standardization as Institutional Work: The Regulatory Power of a Responsible Investment Standard

This paper conceptualizes standardization as institutional work to study the emergence of a standard and the deployment of its regulatory power. We rely on unique access to longitudinal archival data for exploring how the FTSE4Good index, a responsible investment index, emerged as a standard for socially responsible corporate behavior. Our results show how three types of standardization work - calculative framing, engaging and valorizing - support the design, legitimation and monitoring processes whereby a standard acquires its regulatory power. Our findings reveal new facets in the dynamics of standardization by approaching standardization as a product of institutional work and in showing how unintended consequences of that work can be recaptured to strengthen the regulatory power of the standard

Fiction and Organization Studies

The topic of fiction is in itself not new to the domain of organization studies. However, prior research has often separated fiction from the reality of organizations and used fiction metaphorically or as a figurative source to describe and interpret organizations. In this article, we go beyond the classic use of fiction, and suggest that fiction should be a central concern in organization studies. We draw on the philosophy of fiction to offer an alternative account of the nature of fiction and its basic operation. We specifically import Searle’s work on speech acts, Walton’s pretense theory, Iser’s fictionalizing acts, and Ricoeur’s work on narrative fiction to theorize about organizations as fictions. In doing so, we hope that we not only offer an account of the “ontological status” of organizations but also provide a set of theoretical coordinates and lenses through which, separately or together, the notion of organizations as fictions can be approached and understood

Valtion aluehallintovirastot ja niiden ylijohtajat: Pohjoiseurooppalainen analogia Ranskan prefeikteille

This chapter examines the closest Finnish analogy to the French function of the prefect. In Finland, since 2010, this function has been vested in the institution of the State Regional Administrative Agency (SRAA, aluehallintovirasto, ‘AVI’). There are six SRAAs, each headed by a Chief Director (ylijohtaja) nominated by the government. The study had four main findings. First, despite ambiguity in institutional terminology, classifications, boundaries and identities concerning the SRAA, one can discern few true functional or structural deficiencies. Second, the SRAA is a hybrid between an institution of its own and a territorial representative of either government ministries or government agencies, to which is related the fact that each SRAA has both responsibilities concerning its territory and nationwide responsibilities. Third, tensions between performance and institutional legitimation prevail in the institution of the SRAA, but again without serious deficiencies. Fourth, the 2010 substitution of the SRAA for the former Province comprised a radical institutional change. The 2015–2019 Finnish government intended to abolish the SRAAs, but the subsequent government abandoned that reform, and ultimately by mid-2020 it became clear that the institution of the SRAA was here to stay after all.Peer reviewe