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Cultural Issues and Supply Chain Sustainability of Multinational Companies
No full textSince its foundation, the debate regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) has
been dominated by large companies (Carroll 1999) and strongly associated with
MNCs’ global strategy and their international development (Carroll and Shabana
2010; Collier and Wanderley 2005).
More recently, the literature has addressed the strategic role of suppliers in the
achievement and development of MNCs’ goals and their responsibility mandate
(Reuter et al. 2010). Hence, the importance of suppliers in the MNCs’ CSR policy
planning and its key role in the supply chain (Andersen and Skjoett-Larsen 2009;
Carter and Jennings 2004; Carter and Rogers 2005; Murphy and Poist 2002). Carter
and Rogers (2008) have clearly demonstrated the triple bottom line of economic,
environmental and social goals that lead supply relationships and the importance of
suppliers in improving the long-term success of companies and their partners.
Different authors (Krueger 2008; Preuss 2009; Wittstruck and Teuteberg 2012)
have stressed ethical sourcing as a social feature of companies’ sustainability and
suggested a definition of supply chain management sustainability (SSCM) that
emphasizes this aspect in the supply chain; others (Leire and Mont 2010;
Park-Poaps and Rees 2010) have focused on the strategic dimension of collaboration
with supply partners by emphasizing the importance of integrating internal
and external relationships for a more effective sustainability strategy.Some researchers (Pagell et al. 2010) have shifted their focus to the requirement
for efficiency in managing sustainable flows, stating that this aspect is essential
throughout the lifecycle of firms’ products or services. These studies have flourished
mainly within the environmental literature considering that firms have control
over environmental performance at each production stage, including the performance
of their main suppliers (Pagell et al. 2010).
Other researchers (Trent and Monczka 2003) have started to debate the effectiveness
of the conventional command-and-control approach of MNCs to sustainable
supply chain strategy. Studies from different authors have shown that major
suppliers’ compliance could not be achieved by strengthening MNCs’ monitoring
activities, which, on the contrary have often proven to be prejudicial to the so-called
buyer–supplier relationship over time. Moreover, suppliers’ involvement and
engagement have always been seen as crucial factors for successful MNC cooperation
(Russo-Spena and De Chiara 2012; Wiemer and Plugge 2007), since they
provide suppliers with the opportunity to demonstrate their contribution to and
increase their commitment towards the sustainability goals of multinational companies
(Fliess et al. 2007). Thus, MNCs best practice has generally focused on the
development of CSR strategies in consultation with salient suppliers and other
stakeholders.
On the other hand, many other MNCs noncompliant behaviours (e.g. the Mattel
case1) have resulted in poor CSR strategic planning due to underestimation of their
partners’ cultural differences (Roloff and Aßländer 2010). MNCs operate through
complex networks and globally dispersed units. This implies the need to find a
balance between diverse stakeholders’ environments and to increase the ability to
manage the diversity of values and social practices across countries (Husted and
Allen 2008).
At present, research has only marginally addressed the sociocultural issues
involving MNCs’ business relations with host countries (Logsdon and Wood 2002;
De Chiara and Russo Spena 2013). These studies focus on cultural conflicts,supporting the idea of MNCs using their power to improve the ethical standards of
the host country that provides the market in which they operate (DeGeorge 1993;
Parker 1996). If MNCs have the power to influence standards in the host country
for the better, then they have an obligation to do so (Hamilton and Knouse 2001).
A well-known branch of business research emphasizes how norms and cultural
values can affect and determine partners’ behavioural patterns, their grouping
attitudes and preferences (Hofstede 1980, 2001).
More recently, studies on cross-cultural dynamics, especially the sociocultural
factors in the supply chain management have been considered significantly
important to understanding the nature and the extent of business relations (Cannon
et al. 2010; Zhao et al. 2011).
However, the nature of relationships between MNCs and different sociocultural
business contexts still stand somewhere on the fringe in the contemporary discussion
on CSR, although CSR itself seems to be a consequence of how this
relationship is understood. The responsibility debate cannot be separate from
questions of cultural meaning; thus, there is a need to provide a starting point for an
in-depth analysis of business relationships in dispersed and differentiated contexts.
To fill this gap, this chapter aims at deepening the role of cultural factors in the
sustainability management of MNCs’ supply chain. In more depth, the study aims
at identifying whether and to what extent the dimensions of culture are relevant in
shaping MNCs’ supply sustainability practices. The analysis underlines the sustainability
approach adopted by MNCs during their interaction with suppliers and
provides an initial insight into sociocultural issues indicated in the literature, as
being crucial for supply chain sustainable management.
The rest of the chapter is organized as follows: The first part analyses the
concept of culture in relation to the supply chain and the study of CSR; the second
part mainly focuses on empirical research, reports findings, conclusions and
discussions
Relationship between environmental disclosures and corporate characteristics: a study of large manufacturing companies in India
No full textPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the influence of selected company- and industry-related variables on environmental disclosure practices (EDPs) of the large manufacturing Indian companies. Design/methodology/approach – The work was done in three phases. In the first phase, an index of environmental disclosure was constructed consisting of 23 items of environmental information. Opinions of chartered accountants were obtained on the importance of each of these items in making sound investment and other decisions. Using this index, in the second phase, EDPs in the annual reports of 91 large manufacturing companies were examined for a period of three consecutive years. Environmental disclosure score (EDS) percentages were calculated for each of the companies for all the three years. The relationship between EDS percentages and ten selected variables was analyzed with the help of the multiple regression technique in the last phase. Findings – The results provide strong evidence in support of the influence of variables size, profitability, sector, industry and environmental performance on EDPs. Research limitations/implications – The work involves analysis of EDPs of large manufacturing companies in India only. Non-manufacturing and small companies were excluded from the scope of the work. Disclosure of environmental information by other media like stand-alone corporate environmental report (CER) and internet was not considered. It was felt that further research was necessary to find the impact of other factors like country origin, organizational culture, experience with pressure groups and media profile on disclosure practices. Practical implications – It was felt that environmental reporting should be made mandatory in India at least in the major polluting industries. Companies should also voluntarily try to provide audited environmental information in the annual reports to build credibility and trust among corporate stakeholders. Originality/value – The paper presents empirical evidence of EDPs of large manufacturing companies in India. It provides an insight into the factors that cause a difference in these practices.Accountants, Annual reports, Disclosure, India, Manufacturing industries
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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