Pension fund finance and sponsoring companies: Empirical evidence on theoretical hypotheses

This study presents empirical evidence on the influence of sponsoring companies on the funding and portfolio allocation of pension funds, an issue on which most extant literature is theoretical. We use a unique microdataset of 550 Dutch defined benefit company pension funds and 100 sponsoring firms over 1996-2005 to test the relevance of the main theoretical hypotheses, the first paper to do so in a comprehensive manner. We find that pension funds have lower cover ratios when (1) their sponsoring company is highly leveraged, (2) the fund’s return on assets is relatively low, and (3) the sponsoring firm is small. Further, defined benefit pension funds are found to invest more in shares when their sponsoring companies are highly leveraged. These links in general suggest higher risk in the sponsor leads to correspondingly higher risk in the fund, and warrant close attention by regulators

Conceptualising the adoption of sustainable procurement: An institutional theory perspective

Sustainable procurement and supply chain management studies are growing; however several scholars have criticised the lack of theoretical development accompanying this literature. Sustainable procurement and supply chain management activities form part of an organisation's path to adopt sustainability. Some scholars have suggested examining the application of management theories to describe the introduction of corporate sustainability to address this gap. Institutional theory is frequently used to describe how new practices are adopted in organisations and has also been applied to several corporate social responsibility studies. This conceptual paper examines the applicability of institutional theory to describe the adoption of sustainable procurement and concludes by presenting three theoretical propositions to explain sustainable procurement adoption. © 2014 Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand Inc

Semi-formale Darstellung des Prozessmodells von VOFI

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Controllingkonzeptionen

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Erwartungen der Praxis an CAL:Ergebnisse einer Expertenbefragung

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Roughness and multiscaling of planar crack fronts

We consider numerically the roughness of a planar crack front within the long-range elastic string model, with a tunable disorder correlation length $\xi$. The problem is shown to have two important length scales, $\xi$ and the Larkin length $L_c$. Multiscaling of the crack front is observed for scales below $\xi$, provided that the disorder is strong enough. The asymptotic scaling with a roughness exponent $\zeta \approx 0.39$ is recovered for scales larger than both $\xi$ and $L_c$. If $L_c > \xi$, these regimes are separated by a third regime characterized by the Larkin exponent $\zeta_L \approx 0.5$. We discuss the experimental implications of our results.Comment: 8 pages, two figure

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Vorgehensmodelle bei der Entwicklung von CAL-Software

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Fracture Roughness Scaling: a case study on planar cracks

Using a multi-resolution technique, we analyze large in-plane fracture fronts moving slowly between two sintered Plexiglas plates. We find that the roughness of the front exhibits two distinct regimes separated by a crossover length scale $\delta^*$. Below $\delta^*$, we observe a multi-affine regime and the measured roughness exponent $\zeta_{\parallel}^{-} = 0.60\pm 0.05$ is in agreement with the coalescence model. Above $\delta^*$, the fronts are mono-affine, characterized by a roughness exponent $\zeta_{\parallel}^{+} = 0.35\pm0.05$, consistent with the fluctuating line model. We relate the crossover length scale to fluctuations in fracture toughness and the stress intensity factor