DECOUPLING OF STANDARD IMPLEMENTATION FROM CERTIFICATION: DOES QUALITY OF ISO 14001 IMPLEMENTATION AFFECT FACILITIES’ ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE?

The literature on certifiable management standards has not paid sufficient attention to implementation of standard requirements in certified firms. Firms that obtain standard certification to achieve the legitimacy benefits of certification may not implement standard requirements sufficiently to realize the standard’s intended performance outcomes. We argue that such decoupling of implementation from certification threatens the effectiveness of certifiable standards as governance mechanisms for firms’ environmental conduct because standard certification may not accurately signal firms’ superior environmental performance to external stakeholders. Empirical findings based on the ISO 14001 standard at the facility level support this view: Quality of standard implementation affects facilities’ environmental performance, and environmental performance of certified and non-certified facilities does not differ significantly for the overall sample and low-quality implementers, while high-quality implementers have better environmental performance than their non-certified counterparts. We provide recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of governance systems for firm conduct based on certifiable standards

Expertise – Förderung von Lesekompetenz

Die in vielen Facetten unbefriedigenden Ergebnisse zur Lesekompetenz von Jugendlichen in Deutschland stellen den Ausgangspunkt für die vorliegende Expertise zum Thema „Förderung von Lesekompetenz“ dar, die vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung in Auftrag gegeben wurde. Das Ziel der Expertise gilt dem Nachweis, welche Möglichkeiten der Förderung von Lesekompetenz existieren, die die umfangreichen Länderaktivitäten der Förderung sinnvoll ergänzen. (DIPF/Orig.

Consequences of leveraged buy-outs

Available from Bibliothek des Instituts fuer Weltwirtschaft, ZBW, Duesternbrook Weg 120, D-24105 Kiel C 168985 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Europe 1992: value added taxation aspects of the internal market

Available from Bibliothek des Instituts fuer Weltwirtschaft, ZBW, Duesternbrook Weg 120, D-24105 Kiel C 165975 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

The relative influence of country conditions, industry structure, and business strategy on multinational corporation subsidiary performance

Two competing theories of firm performance have been proposed in the business strategy literature, the industry structure view and the resource-based view of the firm. Empirical studies have estimated the relative contribution of industry structure, corporate, and business unit effects to business unit performance. These studies, however, have been restricted to using only single-country data. Missing from this debate is an international dimension that includes the relative importance of country conditions as a determinant of firm performance. The objective of this article is to fill this void by adding country characteristics to the analysis. Using cross-country data of four large multinationals in a single industry, we estimate the relative importance of country characteristics in addition to industry structure, corporate characteristics, and subsidiary strategy as determinants of subsidiary performance by using multiple regression analysis. This analysis also will contribute to the discussion on environmental determinism versus strategic choice. Country and industry characteristics are mainly outside the control of management, whereas corporate characteristics and subsidiary strategy are under management's control. Results show that country characteristics are by far the most important determinant of subsidiary performance, followed by industry structure, subsidiary strategy, and corporate characteristics. Thus, country conditions are a very important determinant of firm performance that so far has been overlooked in previous studies. These results indicate that subsidiary performance is determined mainly by conditions outside the control of subsidiary management. In terms of competing theories, these results support the environmental determinism view more than the strategic choice view and the resource-based view of the firm more than the industry structure view. These results also have important implications for multinational corporations' selection of countries for entry and investment and for performance evaluation of subsidiary management.Multinational corporations Subsidiaries Performance Statistical analysis

Governance and Sustainability: Changes and Challenges

Scholars and practitioners recognize the central importance of corporate governance mechanisms and the nature of the institutional contexts in which firms and their suppliers operate as important drivers for understanding how firms respond to rising societal expectations. Accordingly, the symposium proposes to bring together a panel of scholars to examine a series of interrelated research on the role of corporate governance vis-à-vis firms’ involvement with sustainability practices: How do governance mechanisms promote sustainability practices? Do different owners exhibit diverging degrees of compliance with societal norms contingent on the expected legitimacy derived from different institutional logics? What firm- level and institutional factors facilitate firms’ voluntary regulation of their environmental and social conduct? How does the relationship between corporate governance and sustainability change across countries? Drawing on the panelists’ rich expertise in this vast topic area, the proposed symposium would create an opportunity to develop a multilevel picture of the governance systems that guide the management of sustainability issues within firms. In doing so, it would contribute to shedding light on the governance settings that can likely encourage the adoption of sustainability solutions within firms and ensure more sustainable outcomes