Environmental sustainability and internationalization of the European food manufacturing industry

Confederación Granadina de Empresario

Efficiency and the Scope of Outsourced Services: A Client Firm’s Absorptive Capacity Perspective of Knowledge Intensive Services

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article: This research has been partially funded by the research grants ECO2016-75909-P (Spanish Ministry of Science, Education, and Universities), PID2019-106725GB-I00/SRA (Spanish Research Agency/10.13039/501100011033), and A-SEJ-291-UGR18 (FEDER, Regional Government of Andalucia).Purpose Strategic literature has focused on how economies of scale in a firm offering outsourcing may generate incentives for clients to increase the outsourced services, but there has been limited research on how the clients’ features may influence the scope of services that they hire with an outsourcing provider. This study analyzes whether a client’s efficiency motivates it to increase ties with a specific provider of knowledge-intensive services in the context of business process outsourcing (BPO). We further explore whether industry conditions moderate the relationship. Design/methodology/approach A research framework is developed consisting of three main hypotheses. We combine industry data and proprietary and financial data from a longitudinal sample of 107 client firms of a multinational outsourcing service provider to test our hypotheses. Findings We find that more efficient firms hire more services from an outsourcing provider and that the munificence of the client firm’s industry positively moderates this relationship. Our results suggest that efficient clients can better keep transaction costs under control when accessing, assimilating, and exploiting the knowledge embedded in an expanded set of services provided by an outsourcing supplier. Originality/value This study extends the absorptive capacity perspective by showing that a client’s efficiency reinforces its opportunities to absorb knowledge-intensive services from a supplier when expanding the range of operations in the context of BPO.Spanish Ministry of Science, Education, and Universities ECO2016-75909-PSpanish Research Agency/10.13039/501100011033 PID2019-106725GB-I00/SRAFEDER, Regional Government of Andalucia A-SEJ-291-UGR1

Does international experience help firms to be green? A knowledge-based view of how international experience and organisational learning influence proactive environmental strategies

Early research on environmental strategy in international firms focused predominantly on direct investment as an expansion strategy for multinationals. However, we know relatively little from a strategic management perspective about exporting, which is the most prevalent form of international expansion. For this reason, we examine whether the knowledge that export firms acquire abroad influences their environmental strategies. Using a sample of export firms from the food industry, we show that the number of years spent in developing export activities does not contribute to developing a proactive environmental strategy; however, a more complex experience of environmental international diversification is positively related to a firm’s proactive environmental strategy. Finally, organisational learning capability moderates the positive relationship between environmental international diversification and environmental proactivity

Independent directors and environmental innovations: How the visibility of public and private shareholders' environmental activism moderates the influence of board independence

While independent directors focus on preserving the shareholders' interests, their individual preferences may differ with regard to how environmental innovations have to be considered. A growing importance of shareholders' environmental activism has sought to influence firms' environmental practices through public proposals and private negotiations with executives. Using a sample of 7111 firms listed in the S&P 1500 index between 2006 and 2019, we examine how the visibility of shareholders' environmental proposals moderates the relationship between board independence and environmental innovations. Our findings show that public and private shareholder activism related to community issues and external reporting reinforces the positive influence of independent directors on firms' environmental innovations. However, private dialogues between executives and environmental activists focused on emissions from company operations diminish the influence of independent directors. Our study sheds light on how the external visibility of the topics involved in the activists' environmental proposals reinforces the interest of independent directors in advancing environmental innovations.Spanish Research Agency (Ministry of Science and Innovation), Grant/Award Numbers: PID2019-106725GB-I00, PDC2021-120953-I00, TED2021-129829B- 100Unit of Excellence Advanced Research in Economics and Business at the University of Granada, Grant/Award Number: ExcelEB202

Avoiding relapses after crises: Exploring the influence of firm investors’ characteristics on organizational resilience

Many firms may successfully navigate an organizational crisis, but may find themselves entangled in another soon after. Building on a resource-dependence perspective, this study evaluates how certain investor characteristics foster organizational resilience during a crisis by preventing a relapse following recovery. Drawing on data from 2014 to 2019, we analyzed 359 firms that faced a crisis in 2015, as indicated by their Altman Z-score values. Our findings reveal that diversity and patience of investors prevent firms from relapsing into upcoming crises; however, the probability of relapse increases when concentrated investors boost the firm’s capital during the in-crisis period. We bridge the gap between the resource-dependence theory and literature on organizational resilience and contribute by extending previous analyses on the relevance of investors to recover from a crisis to identify how in-crisis investors’ features also state the foundations to avoid future relapses.Grant PID2019- 107767GA-I00 and Grant PID2022-138331NB-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033ERDF/UEGrant TED2021-129829B-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/5011 00011033European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTRGrant C-SEJ-069-UGR23 funded by Consejería de Universidad, Investigación e InnovaciónERDF Andalusia Progra

The link between foreign institutional owners and multinational enterprises’ environmental outcomes

Many institutional investors claim to be leaders in their commitment to sustainability, yet their real impact is undetermined. We look at the relationship between the presence of foreign institutional owners and the firm’s environmental outcomes in terms of performance and innovation. We argue that foreign institutional owners seek to mitigate their exposure to reputational risks by encouraging their investee firms to move towards better environmental performance. However, these owners are less likely to engage in long-term investments derived from environmental innovations. We examine these paradoxical motivations in the context of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the chemical industry across 33 countries in emerging and developed markets and further explore how these investee firms’ international diversification affects these relationships. Our findings contribute to international corporate governance and sustainability research by uncovering that, contrary to institutional owners’ popular claims, foreign institutional owners have a positive effect on their investees’ environmental performance, but their influence is not statistically significant on environmental innovation. Specifically, the influence of foreign institutional owners on environmental performance is strong for MNEs with a low level of international diversification and marginal for those with a higher level of internationalization; meanwhile, domestic institutional owners are committed to advancing both environmental performance and innovation in their MNE investees. In sum, we show that environmental concerns are still quite localized.The University of Granada authors recognize the partial funding from PID2019-106725GB-I00 and PID2019-107767GA-I00 research grants (Spanish State Research Agency—Innovation and Science Min istry, 10.13039/501100011033), and the A-SEJ-291-UGR18 grant (Regional Government of Andalucia, European FEDER funds, and University of Granada)

Innovating for Good in Opportunistic Contexts: The Case for Firms’ Environmental Divergence

This research work is partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Funds (Grant No. ECO2016-7509-P), the Spanish State Research Agency (Grant No. PID2019-106725GB-100; doi 10.13039/501100011033), Montpellier Research in Management (Grant No. EA 4557), and LabEx Entrepreneurship (Grant No. ANR-10-Labex-11-01).Opportunistic behaviors are considered ethically and strategically troublesome since they disrupt otherwise mutually beneficial relationships. Previous literature has shown that firms attempt to protect their investments from opportunism by generating a large amount of patented marginal innovations in domains central to their industry. However, this approach may generate some ethical dilemmas by preventing firms and societies from more radical, collaborative, and much-needed environmental progress. We extend the environmental innovation literature using strategic and ethical lenses to analyze the potential of an alternative, divergent way to provide financial opportunities for a focal firm without aiming to prevent innovative opportunities for competitors. Our longitudinal analysis of 6768 environmental patents from 59 large companies worldwide in the electrical components and equipment industry shows that high levels of innovation intensity, environmental scope, bargaining power, and environmental expertise increase the incidence of patented environmental innovations related to domains in which industry competitors are less focused (i.e., technological divergence). We also show a positive relationship between this divergence and market-based firm performance. Our results suggest that pursuing innovative divergence to avoid opportunism may make ethical and market sense and we also identify the organizational factors that can support these efforts.Spanish Ministry of Economy and CompetitivenessEuropean Regional Development Funds ECO2016-7509-PSpanish State Research Agency PID2019-106725GB-100; doi 10.13039/501100011033Montpellier Research in Management EA 4557LabEx Entrepreneurship ANR-10-Labex-11-0

Agglomerations around natural resources in the hospitality industry: Balancing growth with the sustainable development goals

Many tourism agglomerations are situated near natural resources, which implies a need to balance business growth with environmental preservation. Our analysis of the location decisions of 295 luxury beach hotels in Spain between 1960 and 2015 reveals two main findings. First, we confirm the positive relationship between the existence of demandrelated urbanization services around natural resources and the attractiveness of agglomerations to new entrants. Second, we find that an agglomeration’s attractiveness negatively affects the density of firms in the agglomeration if that attractiveness hinders firms’ access to the same natural resources. Our results contribute to the strategy literature on agglomerations and provide a better understanding of how the tourism industry can work toward achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs).Spanish State Research AgencyInnovation and Science Ministry PID2019-106725GB-I00Ministry of Science and Innovation through the FEDER funds from the Spanish Pluriregional Operational Program 2014-20, LifeWatch-ERIC action line LifeWatch-2019-10-UGR-0

The importance of the environmental costs management and its relationship with environmental strategies: a case study applied to the transport industry

La actividad empresarial afecta al medio ambiente tanto por el consumo de materiales y energías como por la generación de residuos y emisiones contaminantes, y este hecho da lugar a unos costes medioambientales que son soportados por las empresas (Gibson & Martin, 2004). En los últimos años, la literatura de gestión medioambiental ha realizado importantes contribuciones que denotan el potencial que puede tener una gestión medioambiental avanzada en la generación de capacidades organizacionales valiosas en relación a la reducción de costes empresariales (Hart, 1995; Hart & Ahuja, 1996; Nehrt, 1998; Christmann, 2000; Darnall & Edwards, 2006). Por tanto, dada la creciente importancia de los costes medioambientales tanto en el ámbito académico como en la vida práctica empresarial, cabe la posibilidad de que las empresas que se anticipan a la aparición de este tipo de costes persigan estrategias medioambientales proactivas (Aragón-Correa, 1998). En consecuencia, los principales objetivos de este trabajo son dos. En primer lugar, explicar en qué consisten este tipo de costes y, en segundo lugar, mostrar la relación existente entre el grado de atención o interés prestado por parte tanto de las instituciones públicas como de los directivos a determinados costes medioambientales y la existencia de un patrón de comportamiento empresarial de estrategia medioambiental proactiva. Para ello, el presente estudio ha realizado una revisión teórica sobre los distintos costes medioambientales a los que se enfrentan las organizaciones en la actualidad y se ha efectuado una tipología de los mismos. Tras esta revisión, se ha considerado cómo afrontan las instituciones y las empresas dicha temática mediante un estudio del caso en el sector del transporte de mercancías por carretera. Las principales conclusiones que se pueden destacar del análisis efectuado son dos. En primer lugar, cuanto mayor es la importancia otorgada por parte de las instituciones públicas y los directivos a los costes medioambientales, mayores son los indicios de proactividad medioambiental en sus estrategias. En segundo lugar, y centrando la atención en la industria transportista, los resultados indican que los temas medioambientales en el sector objeto de estudio quedan relegados a una prioridad secundaria en el ámbito institucional y, por este motivo, las empresas van enfrentándose a los mismos según los requerimientos legislativos. Combinando ambas conclusiones se obtiene que dado el escaso interés que suscita el hecho de anticiparse a los costes medioambientales por parte de los organismos competentes y las empresas, dicho sector actúa bajo un patrón de comportamiento medioambiental reactivo.The Environment is affected by business activity through the consumption of materials and utilities and the generation of wastes and emissions; this fact represents significant costs that have to be paid by companies (Gibson & Martin, 2004). In the last decade, prior literature related to environmental management have made important contributions which noted the potential that advanced environmental management might have in the generation of valuable organizational capabilities regarding costs minimization (Hart, 1995; Hart & Ahuja, 1996; Nehrt, 1998; Christmann, 2000; Darnall & Edwards, 2006). As a consequence of the increasing importance of environmental costs in the academic literature and business practice, those organizations which are interested in anticipating this type of costs pursue proactive environmental strategies (Aragón-Correa, 1998). Thus, two are the main aims of this paper. Firstly, to indicate what environmental costs are and, second, to highlight the relationship between the degree of concern about this type of costs by both public authorities and managers and the existence of a behavioural pattern due to proactive environmental strategy. With these purposes, the current study presents a theoretical review about different environmental costs and, as a result, a classification of them. After this, it was considered how public authorities and organizations face environmental costs through a case study in the industry of road transport of products. The main conclusions of the current paper are two. Firstly, the more importance the environmental costs have to public authorities and managers, the more proactive the environmental strategy is. Second, and more focused in the transport sector, our findings showed that environmental issues in this industry are relegated to a secondary priority by public authorities and, as a result, organizations face environmental issues according to legal requirements. Combining prior conclusions, due to the undersized interest showed about environmental costs by public authorities and managers, the road transport sector acts under a reactive environmental pattern

Creating trusting behaviours through the corporate webpage: general and specific beliefs

Existen multitud de situaciones en las que el hecho de que un agente decida confiar en otro agente que le es desconocido puede venir influido por la existencia de creencias acerca del comportamiento que ese agente desconocido tendrá si se confía en él. Estas creencias determinan una intención que, posteriormente, se traducirá en un comportamiento. Este trabajo va incluso más allá que los trabajos existentes en la literatura, introduciendo como novedad una diferenciación entre las creencias generales y las creencias específicas. En este artículo se analiza, por un lado, la influencia que las creencias generales ejercen sobre la intención de confiar y, por otro lado, el papel que desempeñan las creencias específicas en la intención de confiar. Para ello, se desarrollan dos tipos de análisis. En primer lugar, un análisis teórico, con un modelo de investigación en el que se presentan las relaciones entre las variables, así como las hipótesis de investigación propuestas. En segundo lugar, un análisis empírico basado en un experimento de laboratorio, en el cual se estudian las creencias acerca de la fiabilidad del otro a través de la información recogida en la página web corporativa de una empresa química. Las principales novedades aportadas en este artículo son tres. En primer lugar, el establecimiento de una diferenciación entre las creencias generales y las creencias específicas y la influencia que cada una ejerce a la hora del desarrollo de un potencial comportamiento basado en la confianza. En segundo lugar, el desarrollo de este esquema en un entorno online, mediante un análisis empírico basado en un experimento sobre una empresa de la cual los individuos sólo conocen la información contenida en su página web. Y en tercer lugar, la aplicación de esta metodología a una empresa química. Entre las principales conclusiones extraídas de este trabajo, cabe destacar las siguientes. Primera, la información contenida en la página web corporativa puede ser un a herramienta tan eficaz en la generación de creencias acerca de la fiabilidad de una empresa que incluso un individuo puede estar dispuesto a trabajar en una empresa que desconoce, basando su decisión en las creencias acerca de la fiabilidad de la empresa, que ha elaborado basándose en la información contenida en la página web corporativa. Segunda, queda demostrado que las creencias generales que se forja el individuo a través de la información disponible en el entorno puede potenciar la intención de confiar en una empresa que desconoce físicamente y sólo conoce a través de la información disponible en su página web. Tercera, queda demostrado que las creencias generales de un individuo acerca de la fiabilidad de la información corporativa contenida en la página web de una empresa guardan una relación positiva con la intención a confiar en dicha empresa.There are many situations where the fact that an agent decides to trust another unknown agent can be influenced by the existence of beliefs about the behaviour that this unknown agent will have once the other agent has trusted in him/her/it. These beliefs determine an intention that, later, will result in a behaviour. This work goes beyond the existing studies in the literature, by introducing a new distinction between the general beliefs and the specific beliefs. This article examines, firstly, the influence that general beliefs exert on the intention to trust and, secondly, the role that specific beliefs play on the intention to trust. To do this, two types of analysis are developed. First, a theoretical analysis, with a research model in which the relationships between the variables are presented, as well as the researched hypotheses proposed. Secondly, an empirical analysis based on a laboratory experiment, which examines the beliefs about the reliability of the other agent through the information gathered in the corporate website of a chemical company. Three are the main news introduced in this article. First, establishing a distinction between general beliefs and specific beliefs, and the influence that each exerts on the development of a potential behaviour based on trust. Secondly, the development of this scheme in an online environment, through an empirical analysis based on an experiment on a company from which individuals only know the information contained on its website. And thirdly, the application of this methodology to a chemical company. Among the main conclusions drawn from this work, the following can be highlighted. First, the information contained on the corporate website can be such a effective tool to generate beliefs about the reliability of a company that even an individual may be willing to work for an unknown company, basing his/her decision on his/her beliefs about the reliability of the company, beliefs that have been developed on the basis of the information contained on the corporate website. Second, it is shown that the general beliefs that an individual elaborates from the information available in the environment can enhance the intention to trust an unknown company. Third, it is shown that an individual's general beliefs about the reliability of corporate information contained on the website of a company have a positive relationship with the intention to trust that company