State pension funds and corporate social responsibility: do beneficiaries’ political values influence funds’ investment decisions?

This study explores the underlying drivers of US public pension funds’ tendency to tilt their portfolios towards companies with stronger corporate social responsibility (CSR). Studying the equity holdings of large, internally-managed US state pension funds, we find evidence that the political leaning of their beneficiaries and political pressures by state politicians affect funds’ investment decisions. State pension funds from states with Democratic-leaning beneficiaries tilt their portfolios more strongly towards companies that perform well on CSR issues, and this tendency is intensified when the state government is dominated by Democratic state politicians. Moreover, we find that funds which tilt their portfolios towards companies with superior CSR scores generate a slightly higher return compared with their counterparts. Overall, our findings indicate that funds align their investment choices with the financial and non-financial interests of their beneficiaries when deciding whether to incorporate CSR into their equity allocations

The management of environmental performance in the supply chain: an overview

The Environmental Supply Chain Management (ESCM) has become a buzz-word nowadays. This is in part due to the increasing awareness of companies that the environmental performances need to be managed beyond the organizational boundaries. The ESCM is derived from the integration of environmental management and supply chain management concepts (Srivastava 2007;Thun and Muller 2010; Head and Iraldo 2010). The environmental management is based on the principles of prevention, environmental protection, transparency and participation. Its basic goals are the identification of environmental issues at the enterprise level, the adoption of best environmental technologies, the reduction of environmental impacts and the use of prevention systems to avoid and/or treat adequately the potential environmental hazards due to specific production activities processes. the ESCM needs to be integrated with the other managerial systems and in particular the performance measurement system. This is relevant in order to support managers in the decision-making, the evaluation of performance and to assess the efficacy and coherence of output with the strategy. In the literature ESCM and the performance measurement tend to be studied in a separate way, despite having several contact points and calls are made to study them in conjunction (Melnyk et al. 2014). The present paper aims at contributing to the extant literature through a comparative analysis of some frameworks that attempted to connect the performance measurement with the ESCM. From a methodological point of view, the paper is based on a literature review using as keywords the environmental performance management system and supply chain. Three main framework for the performance measurement ESCM, in details: the Beamon Model (1991), the Hervani et al. (2007) and the Balanced Scorecard variation proposed by Espstein and Wisner (2001). In so doing, we suggest possible commonalities and differences, arguing the need for further research to develop and understand the way companies manage the environmental performance of their supply chain

The contribution of creativity of action to safety: the key role of requisite imagination

International audienceThe aim of this paper is to show that requisite imagination by designers and more broadly by all workers – the ability to wonder and imagine key aspects of the future we are planning/designing – can be considered as a manifestation of creative action in organization and should be encouraged. We conducted an intervention in a nuclear power plant facing with a new nationwide policy seeking to extend the lifespan of nuclear facilities through important alterations. The first alteration made turned out badly, due to poor anticipation and a focus on technical effects, whilst organizational aspects were largely excluded. We decided to facilitate the conduct of a collective inquiry with the stakeholders involved with these ongoing evolutions, to discuss organizational design and stimulate requisite imagination. We discuss our main finding from three perspectives: theoretical, methodological and practical

Sunken CSR and SMEs

Summary Despite the increased recognition and emphasis attributed to CSR, numerous problems and scandals involving large corporations continue to emerge. This contradiction nurtures a growing interest in intrinsic CSR rooted in ethical concerns spread among the company’s culture. While larger companies have to consider the expectations of shareholders and multiple stakeholders, SMEs do not need to be accountable to stakeholders through a systematic and formalized approach grounded on the adoption of sustainability reports useful to assess and demonstrate their CSR performance. However, the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic CSR is often very difficult (first) to understand and (second) to bridge and some authors advocate that the extrinsic and the intrinsic motive for CSR could evolve and be integrate

Doing well or doing good? Extrinsic and intrinsic CSR in Switzerland

Arguably, within Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) the intrinsic motive is more significant than the extrinsic because the former induces a stronger involvement. Others showed that a behaviour attributed to extrinsic motives is mostly perceived as dishonest and misleading. This highlights how important the underlying motivation is for the perception, and thus, design and effectiveness of CSR frameworks. This study discusses these divergent motives with two focus groups: together with seven owner-managers of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) and seven managers of large companies. The results show that CSR implementation in Swiss SMEs is related more strongly to moral commitment than to profit-maximisation. Accordingly, small business CSR emerges from the nexus of mission and value-set and the sociological tradition of the stewardship concept. This contrasts the extrinsically motivated approach of the large companies under research. In sum, this study showed that CSR is meaningful and justifiable even if it is not profitable in the first place

The Contribution of Management Control Systems to Environmental Capabilities

International audienceA growing number of companies are implementing proactive environmental strategies with the objective of gaining competitive advantage through an enhanced reputation, the reduction of production costs and a first-mover advantage in the green product market. Yet according to the natural-resource-based view, the development and maintenance of unique and valuable environmental capabilities are the central elements allowing companies to gain financial benefit from their proactive environmental strategy. In this context, management control systems can contribute to the development of environmental capabilities by focusing attention on strategic priorities and stimulating dialogue. Through a single case study, and building on Simons' (1995) four levers of control, we propose a conceptual framework of management control levers that show how companies can enhance (1) stakeholder integration capability through the joint use of belief, boundary and diagnostic control systems; (2) shared vision capability through the joint use of the belief and boundary systems; (3) organizational learning capability through the use of interactive control systems and to a lesser extent diagnostic control systems; and (4) continuous innovation capability through the use of interactive control systems, belief systems and to a lesser extent diagnostic control systems