The public as a definitive stakeholder of corporate environmental sustainability practices: A cross-national institutional approach

An emerging body of literature connects the well-known Varieties of Capitalism framework (and its variants) with the propensity of nations to move away from hydrocarbons. Our study extends this work by exploring how macro-level institutional configurations matter for public expectations towards corporate environmental sustainability practices. By linking survey data of public-as-stakeholders to institutional systems encompassing 16 countries (N = 7156), we use multi-level modelling to test the explanatory power of a theoretically well-refined recent construct, namely, the Varieties of Institutional Systems — and discover significant variations associated with public expectations across different institutional systems. The findings, however, defy the notion of a clear distinction between mature and emerging markets or that mature institutional systems consistently hold firms to higher environmental standards. Rather surprisingly and counter-intuitively, we find that public-as-stakeholders from State-Led institutional systems had the highest expectations towards corporate environmental sustainability practices. We outline some of the major theoretical and policy implications of our research findings

Baldrige Award announcement and long memory in shareholder wealth

In a competitive global market environment, the successful institution and implementa-tion of a comprehensive quality improvement programme is pivotal in attaining and sustaining business excellence. Tangible evidence of a company's level of excellence can be demonstrated by winning a prestigious quality award like the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA). While the intention to raise the level of competitiveness in all business sectors is lauded, two pertinent issues arise. Firstly, do investors or stock market participants share the belief that quality leads to business excellence. This implies that the stock market participants may have limited knowledge and experience in assessing the impact of quality improvement initiatives on performance (Easton &amp; Jarrell, 1998). Secondly, if investors do believe and are able to assess the benefits quality improvement initiatives bring, would they acknowledge the benefits these quality awards bring in terms of sustained returns? This paper, an extension from studies by Przasnyski &amp; Tai (2002) and Ramasesh (1998), attempts to investigate the long run sustainability of returns by recipient companies of the MBNQA from 1988 to 1996. Using long memory models commonly used in the financial econometrics literature, it was found that most recipient companies do not display long memory or, in short, recipient companies cannot sustain the previously generated significant abnormal returns on the day of announcement of winning the award.</p