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The concept of sustainability deals with protecting and sustaining society and environment for future generations while trying to meet the maximization of market capitalization objective. Despite the increased awareness of corporate sustainability, questions remain on how to measure performance. The objective of this paper is to propose a new measurement method, which is Multimoora Sort, for corporate sustainability performance and make an empirical case with the 25 companies listed in Fortune 500 USA. We chose four economic subcriteria, two environmental subcriteria, and four social subcriteria for the methodology. The results of the study show that the proposed methodology is a practical and efficient decision method. The most important contribution of the study to the literature is to present a new evaluation method in the measurement of sustainability performance as well as the results of the empirical case are supported by the resource dependency theory, institutional theory, and stakeholder theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) are designed based on a win-win approach to environmental protection that reconciles environmental protection and economic performance. Despite the claims about VEPs, there has been an ongoing debate over their efficacy with regard to whether environmental goals are balanced by economic interests on both theoretical and empirical grounds. To resolve this controversy, this paper empirically investigates a public VEP by the US Environmental Protection Agency: Green Lights (GL). For this, the paper constructs a treatment effects regression model to account for the effects of non-random assignment for GL participants and non-participants. The proposed model can simultaneously estimate probit models that predict corporate participation in the GL program and linear models that test the extent to which this participation contributes to economic performance. The results indicate significant positive effects of corporate participation in the GL program on economic performance, providing support for the win-win perspective. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the impact of the corporate governance, using a plethora of measures, on the performance of the US investment banks over the 2000-2012 period. This time period offers a unique set of information, related to the credit crunch, that we model using a dynamic panel threshold analysis to reveal new insights into the relationship between corporate governance and bank performance. Results show that the board size asserts a negative effect on performance consistent with the ' agency cost' hypothesis, particularly for banks with board size higher than ten members. Threshold analysis reveals that in the post-crisis period most of investment banks opt for boards with less than ten members, aiming to decrease agency conflicts that large boards suffer from. We also find a negative association between the operational complexity and performance. Moreover, the CEO power asserts a positive effect on performance consistent with the ' stewardship' hypothesis. In addition, an increase in the bank ownership held by the board has a negative impact on performance for banks below a certain threshold. On the other hand, for banks with board ownership above the threshold value this effect turns positive, indicating an alignment between shareholders' and managers' incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide some empirical evidence about black-white differentials in the distribution of income and wellbeing in three different countries: Brazil, the USA and South Africa. In all cases, people of African descent are in a variety of ways socially disadvantaged compared with the relatively more affluent whites. We investigate the extent of these gaps in comparative perspective, and analyze to what degree they are associated with differences in the observed characteristics of races, such as where they live, the types of household they have, or their performance in the labor market. We undertake this analysis with the Oaxaca- Blinder decomposition at the means and with a propensity score approach at the entire distribution. Our results show how the factors underlying the racial divide vary across countries and income quantiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research acknowledged the importance of founders in affecting firm strategy and performance, but large empirical analyses of profiles of entrepreneurial founders are scant, in part because of the difficulty in collecting founder data. This study represents the first effort to study entrepreneurial founders across half a century. Using a hand‐collected unique and comprehensive dataset, this research sheds light on the demographic, educational, and career characteristics of founders for the venture capital (VC)‐backed initial public offering (IPO) companies during 1960–2015. The research has useful implications for researchers and practitioners. By understanding who the founders are and where they come from, this article scratches the surface of founder characteristics and firm performance from which further work could build on and provides useful information for founders who are likely to seek VC‐funding and IPO to build realistic expectations, VC firms who are interested in investing in potentially rewarding and promising new ventures to select good targets, and governments that struggle to promote entrepreneurial efforts and enhance economic development, in general, to come up with appropriate policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to study the determinants and performance‐outcome of the firm's capacity to maintain a loyal customer base. Therefore, this research investigates the influence of sustainable product development on the firm's capacity to maintain customer loyalty. Furthermore, this research investigates the moderating influence of marketing resource intensity on sustainable product development and the firm's capacity to maintain customer loyalty. Moreover, this research investigates the firm profitability as a performance outcome of the firm's capacity to maintain customer loyalty. This research uses the panel dataset of 433 manufacturing firms from the United States. The findings from fixed‐effect regression analysis confirm the significant positive influence of sustainable product development on the firm's capacity to maintain customer loyalty. The moderation analysis confirms the significant positive influence of marketing resource intensity on sustainable product development and the firm's capacity to maintain customer loyalty. The results also confirm the contribution of the firm's capacity to maintain customer loyalty to firm profitability. This study contributes to the customer loyalty literature stream by theorizing the capacity to maintain customer loyalty construct and empirically studying its performance outcome, the contribution of sustainable product development in the firm's capacity to maintain customer loyalty and the moderating role of marketing resource intensity in this regard, under the resource‐based view. Based on the study findings, this research suggests that managers need to emphasize sustainable product development in the firms to strengthen the firm's capacity to maintain customer loyalty and recognize the interactional role of marketing resource intensity in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the School of Advanced Studies (SAS), the doctoral college of University of Phoenix, Arizona. SAS grants practitioner degrees in both academic areas and professional disciplines. It aims to develop leaders who will create new models that explain, predict, and improve organizational performance.

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Research Summary : As a firm‐level attribute, entrepreneurial orientation (EO)'s beneficial relationship to firm performance has been established in the corporate sector; however, its implications in other sectors including university settings remain a rather underexplored area. Based on a sample of 107 universities in the United States, we examine the impact of EO on a wide range of university performance measures from commercialization of intellectual property to more comprehensive university performance metrics. Our findings underscore the critical importance of EO in the context of universities and also reveal the moderation effects of university characteristics such as size and the presence of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) focus. Managerial Summary : This study examines the impact of EO on university performance. Our findings can be of significance to higher education administrators in several ways. First, we draw attention to the need to recognize university EO as the glue that binds resources together for discovery and exploitation of opportunities. Furthermore, the evidence connecting EO to the U.S. News and World rankings demonstrates that leveraging university EO has potential to impact metrics that many of its stakeholders pay attention to. In addition, our findings suggest that large universities and those with a STEM focus are able to better leverage the EO shift upward in their rankings, which provides guidance for university administrators on how to strategically create and develop new academic programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically examines the effects of companies' environmental orientation on their long‐run financial performance. It also examines the mediating roles of environmental legitimacy and environmental performance. We use PLS‐SEM among a sample of large U.S.‐based companies. The results show that an environmental orientation that targets ecological sustainability is directly and positively associated with the debt ratio and with long‐run market value but to a lesser degree than what is obtained by not targeting ecological sustainability. Targeting ecological sustainability has a greater positive impact on environmental legitimacy than not targeting ecological sustainability. Environmental legitimacy, but not environmental performance, mediates the link between environmental orientation and long‐run profitability and market value. These findings suggest that targeting ecological sustainability is important for improving environmental legitimacy, but companies are not proactive in improving environmental performance. This study offers insights to managers for improving financial performance by targeting ecological sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administration scholars and practitioners uniformly agree that saddling agencies with multiple mandates breeds dysfunction and impedes performance. However, less is known about the mechanisms by which combining purposes has these effects. This study of a broad set of U.S. federal agencies finds support for the conventional wisdom by showing that agencies balancing greater numbers of programs perform worse. The analysis further suggests that such organizations struggle largely because they are more likely to be forced to simultaneously adopt conflicting stances toward program targets. Moreover, when programs force agencies into conflicts in which they are asked to both support and restrain the same target, the resulting uncertainty among personnel regarding agency priorities helps explain why operations are negatively impacted. Thus, it is not simply that accumulating missions impedes agency performance but rather how those competing mandates interact that can define whether an agency will struggle to achieve its objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study endeavors to enhance political marketing literature about the impact of lobbying on firm performance. Our sample is composed of 140 U.S. firms and spans the years 2007–2014 to encompass the 2007–2009 recession and the subsequent recovery period. Our findings indicate that lobbying expenses positively contribute to firm performance. Also, government contracts in both ways, dollar amount and number of government contracts, act as mediators between lobbying expenses and firm performance. In addition, organizational slack moderates the relationship between lobbying expenses and government contracts. The managerial implications suggest that lobbying expenses can be leveraged as a potent tool for firm performance. Firms with larger lobbying efforts acquired both, higher dollar amounts and a greater number of government contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adds clarity to inconclusive results in previous literature about the link between board characteristics and the level of social responsibility performance by using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. Specifically, we propose a new holistic framework based on the complexity theory. From a sample of 471 non-financial companies from the USA for the period 2008-2010, our findings support the four tenets of complexity theory: equifinality, complexity, asymmetry, and causal asymmetry . More concretely, they suggest that CSR performance depends on a complex configuration of some board characteristics, such as size, independency, diversity and activity, and other corporate attributes (i.e., company size, leverage, and growth opportunities). These factors play a key role as the ingredients of the recipe and, in a proper combination, contribute to obtaining high levels of social responsibility performance. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has demonstrated that management influences the performance of public organizations, but almost no research has explored how the success or failure of a public organization influences the decisions of those who manage it. Arguing that many decisions by public managers are analogous to risky choice, the authors use a well-validated model of relative risk aversion to understand how such choices are influenced by managers' perceptions of organizational performance. They theorize that managers will be less likely to encourage innovation or give discretion to employees when they are just reaching their goals relative to other performance conditions. Analyses of responses to the 2011 and 2013 Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys provide considerable support for these assertions. The findings have significant implications for our understanding of the relationship between management and performance in public organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stock exchanges perform governance activities, among these activities, monitoring is considered as one of the stock exchanges most distinctive and important activities, since it increases shareholders' ability to evaluate managerial performance, and put in place effective managerial incentive schemes; yet little research attention has focused on the effects of stock exchanges as an external mechanism on firm performance. This article provides empirical evidence on whether stock exchange monitoring is successful. Using a comprehensive measure comprising a range of stock exchange monitoring factors suggested by prior literature as important determinants of stock exchange monitoring role, the results indicate that the strength of stock exchange monitoring is positively associated with firm performance as measured by return on assets, return on equity and Tobin's Q. A more comprehensive analysis provides additional evidence suggests that U.S. firms are more likely to be influenced by U.S. stock exchanges monitoring than their non-U.S. counterparts and the incremental legal bonding benefit provided by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) for U.S. firms was exceeded by SOX's incremental costs. Finally, the findings of this study highlight a number of implications for academics, the SEC and other international standard setters, securities regulators, and stock exchange operators. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances a resource endowment theory of human capital and performance in government organizations. Building on research on human capital and firm location in business economics and task complexity in public management, the authors argue that an agency's ability to implement policy is determined both by its scale and by the human capital of the population from which it draws its employees. The authors cast labor as a factor of production in public agencies and argue that access to higher-quality labor improves government effectiveness. The effect of human capital on performance is especially pronounced when agencies are charged with the implementation of technically complex tasks. The empirical subject is U.S. municipal water utilities' compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Comparing records of compliance with more and less complex regulatory requirements provides evidence consistent with the general model. The findings carry important implications for public management and policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manuscript Type Empirical Research Question/Issue This study seeks to understand how the characteristics of executive directors affect the market performance of US banks. To explore the expected performance effects linked to executive characteristics, we measure any changes in the market valuation of banks linked to announcements of executive appointments. Research Findings/Insights Our study has two important findings. First, we show that age, education, and the prior work experience of executives create shareholder wealth while gender is not linked to measurable value effects. Second, these wealth effects are moderated by the level of influence of incoming executives, with their magnitude diminished under independent boards and higher if the incoming executive is also appointed as CEO. Our results are robust to the treatment of selection bias. Theoretical/Academic Implications By illustrating the wealth effects linked to executive appointments, our study contributes to the current debate on whether and how individual executives matter for firm performance and behavior. The findings also shed light on the value of human capital in the banking industry. Practitioner/Policy Implications This study offers important insights to policymakers charged with ensuring the competency of executives in banking. Our findings advocate policies that mandate banks to appoint highly qualified executives with relevant banking experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We find that subsequent to both US and domestic market gains, both Asian individual and insti-tutional investors increase their trading and that this effect is more pronounced in bull markets, in periods of relatively favorable investor sentiment, in periods of extremely high market returns, and in markets with short-sale constraints. We also find that individual investors trade more in response to market gains than institutional investors. Moreover, we find that further integration of Asian stock markets with US stock markets after the Asian financial crisis in 1998 is an important reason for Asian investors ' response to US market gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both supply chain relationships and process connections between organizational units have been studied in business research, to enhance the understanding of supply chain integration, and to explore the differential outcomes of both types of connections for business and functional performance. However, the extant research remains deficient in two ways: within individual studies, researchers have operationalized supply chain connectivity unidimensionally, with the concept of connectivity constrained to either social relations or operational/process ties while disregarding the other viewpoint. Additionally, researchers have persistently designed studies to evaluate dyadic structures, while foregoing the larger, more intricate structures representative of complex supply chains. We address these issues by modeling supply chain connectivity as having multiple relational- and process-based threads comprising linkages, and by empirically testing a set of theorized relationships describing vertical triadic supply chain networks (manufacturer, broker, retailer) within the U.S. restaurant industry. We find that increased supply chain connectivity improves chain performance, but this improvement is more directly attributable to process-based linkages than relational linkages, which impact performance only through the process mediator variable, suggesting that current theories of interorganizational relationalism may lack complete conceptualization. Implications of these findings for managers and the academy are highlighted, and areas of follow-on research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of corporate governance practices have been adopted by various world regulators in the past 20 years. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that mandating corporate governance practices and corporations' voluntarily use of Anglo-Saxon practices both seem to lead to suboptimal firm performance, whether those practices are principle based, as in the British system, or rules based, as in the American system. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the importance of tracking environmental sustainability performance at a national level in the U.S. It mentions that the tracking method could lead to appropriate indicators which further help in examining the applicability and functionality of existing assessment methodologies and employing scoring methods from performance frameworks. He also informs that process-oriented indicators reduce challenges associated with scaling assessments to the national level.

While multinational enterprises (MNEs) need to balance the global and local requirements of their global performance management (GPM) practices, GPM research lacks conceptual and encompass-ing comprehension of country-specific peculiarities. First, this article suggests a conceptualization of the elements of GPM (criteria, actors, methods, purposes, feedback). Then, an encompassing literature review provides evidence for the peculiarities of the identified elements of GPM and their underlying explanations in different contexts. On this basis, the authors analyze the GPM elements in three culturally and institutionally diverse major economies (Germany, United States, and China). They suggest country-specific GPM profiles that consistently and comprehensively capture the particulari-ties present in various national contexts. Testable propositions are suggested as a basis for further empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global supply chains are growing rapidly, and the ability to manage cross border logistics operations has become a necessity to maintain a competitive advantage in a dynamic environment. This research addresses current gaps in the literature by investigating the buyer-supplier integration dynamics in a global context with a focus on the antecedents and outcomes involved in the process. Empirical data from 320 U.S. based manufacturing companies that source from overseas was collected and used to test the framework. In addition to providing empirical evidence for the importance of orientation on collaboration, operational coordination, and integration this research explains how manufacturing companies can enhance the flexibility of their global suppliers and how that impact their logistics as well as overall firm performance. Managerial and research implications are provided as well as areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Environmental management (EM) issues have received substantial attention in operations management. While the link between EM practices and firm performance has been well studied, little is known about the competitive drivers of a firm''s EM activities. In this research, a Schumpeterian economics perspective is adopted to investigate competitive interactions among leader and challenger firms in the domain of EM, with a particular focus on operational EM activities. Using econometric methods, the empirical analysis of panel data from a broad cross-section of US manufacturing firms reveals that such rivalry does exist and that the effect of a rival''s past EM activity on a focal firm''s EM activity is greater for more profitable and smaller firms. In addition, firm characteristics such as market leadership, firm size and firm profitability are found to significantly affect the magnitude of a firm''s EM activities. This study presents theoretical and empirical evidence of rivalrous behaviors in the domains of EM and OM and, thus, has interesting implications for operations management research and practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

ABSTRACT This research utilized an event study method to assess how the stocks of publicly traded companies responded before and after announcing their partnership with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Climate Leaders program. Although the stocks exhibited an average non-significant positive abnormal return of 0.56% on the day of the announcement, the cumulative abnormal returns for the stock prices of the firms for two of the three event windows showed statistically significant negative returns. These results suggest that these firms' public announcements of joining the USEPA Climate Leaders partnership did not have a positive impact on stock performance. While no immediate financial benefit was found in this research, the practices implemented by these firms to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions may still bode well for long-term corporate earnings and attractiveness to investors. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response is provided to articles in the same issue of the journal which address additional data sources for cannabis markets, the legalization of the cannabis industry, and changes in cannabis policies as of 2017. The economic profitability of marijuana as a commodity is examined, along with the structure, performance, and conduct of an industrial organization. Company loyalty and frequent buyer programs are assessed, along with data mining and smart vaporizer pens.