Beyond the “silo view” of strategic management and corporate governance: evidence from Fiat,Telecom Italia and Unicredit

While corporate governance and strategic management have for a long time suffered from artificial separation and, therefore, generally been tackled in a secluded manner, their combined organizational impact makes them stringently related to one another in the firms’ evolution. In this paper, we argue that, transcending the “silo view” of corporate governance and strategic management, time has come to acknowledge that, depending on circumstances and time periods, within a firm is possible to detect the relative dominance of corporate governance over strategic management, rather than the leadership of strategic management over corporate governance. Drawing on a contingency approach, we dissect the relationships (and the mechanisms that control it) between the strategic function (i.e., which defines the firms’ strategy and supervisions its implementation) and the governance function (i.e., the congruence assessment between the firm strategy selected and the interests of the ownership and of other relevant stakeholders represented in the board of directors and the effectiveness appraisal of the entrepreneurial action). Then, by performing a thorough retrospective qualitative analysis of three relevant case-histories of Italian firms (Fiat, Telecom Italia and Unicredit) operating in three different industries (automobile, banking and telecommunications), we surmise that, either in corporate governance (board) oriented or in strategic management (CEO) oriented companies, the ‘real’ problems arise when the quality of corporate governance or strategic management is poor. Interestingly, we eventually suggest to adopt a value-based approach to the relationship between corporate governance and strategy that may fruitfully complement the contingency perspective taken at the onset of the work.     

A weak convergence criterion for constructing changes of measure

Based on a weak convergence argument, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition that guarantees that a nonnegative local martingale is indeed a martingale. Typically, conditions of this sort are expressed in terms of integrability conditions (such as the well-known Novikov condition). The weak convergence approach that we propose allows to replace integrability conditions by a suitable tightness condition. We then provide several applications of this approach ranging from simplified proofs of classical results to characterizations of processes conditioned on first passage time events and changes of measures for jump processes.     

Evaluating the impact of lean practices on environmental performance: evidences from five manufacturing companies

Abstract

Previous evidence suggests that lean practices help organizations to enhance environmental performance. However, the impact of lean practices on the environment is still unclear. This study, therefore, aims to analyse the relationship between lean and environmental performance in two main stages: first, a review of the relevant literature was developed, followed by a multiple case study analysis conducted in five manufacturing companies. Onsite data were collected from the firms during a 5 years’ time span of research and developing semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that the environmental performance of the companies analysed is generally enhanced in the long-term after the implementation of lean. Moreover, the results suggest that the environmental performance of the firms investigated is mainly improved by using JIT and TQM practices in a lean transformation context. The research findings provide further results remarking the possible negative impact of Kanban deliveries, 5S and TPM on various environmental performance indicators.     

Barriers in Green Lean implementation: a combined systematic literature review and interpretive structural modelling approach

Green Lean has recently emerged as an alternative strategy for organisations to pursue both operational and sustainability excellence. The interest on this approach has rapidly risen in both academic and industry circles. However, despite this interest, very limited research has focused on its implementation, and no research has investigated the barriers that hinder the success of such activity. This study investigates the Green Lean implementation barriers and their contextual relationships and effects on the integration and deployment of this approach. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR), Interpretative Structural Modelling and fuzzy Matriced’ Impacts Croise’s Multiplication Appliqée a UN Classement (MICMAC) analyses were carried out. Fifteen barriers were extracted from the SLR and then validated in consultation with industry and academic experts. The Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) method was used to understand the relationship between the fifteen barriers and to develop a hierarchical model of these. The different barriers were classified into ‘linkage’ and ‘dependent’ barriers by using MICMAC analysis. The results suggested that all the identified barriers play an important role, and hence can equally act as a significant hurdle to the implementation of Green Lean projects. This study can help managers and policy-makers in better understanding these barriers. Thus, they can be assisted in managing and prioritising barriers towards the successful implementation of Green Lean initiatives for better financial and environmental performance.     

The Dynamics of Multidimensional Poverty in Contemporary Australia

Progressively more researchers argue that successfully measuring social inequalities requires moving from income-based to multidimensional poverty indicators, but evidence on Australia is still largely reliant on the former. Using long-running panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey we examine trends in multidimensional poverty in Australia between 2001 and 2013. We find that this has been relatively stable, with some evidence of an upwards trend following from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. However, a closer examination of the individual components reveals a more dynamic picture. Deprivation concerning health, material resources, social support and education increased over the 13-year observation period, offsetting decreases in deprivation concerning safety perceptions, employment and community participation. Additionally, using counterfactual simulations, we examine the relative roles of different poverty domains in explaining changes in Australian multidimensional poverty. We find that recent year-on-year changes in multidimensional poverty are mainly driven by fluctuations in social support, health and material resources. Altogether, our findings suggest that Australian poverty-reduction policies would enhance their effectiveness and efficiency by focusing on improving disadvantage in the domains of health and material resources.     

Fisheries Trade and Social Development in the Philippine‐Malaysia Maritime Border Zone

Weakly regulated natural‐resource trading activities in the remote borderlands of developing countries are commonly viewed both as a means of improving economic development and as a way of smuggling valuable natural resources. Based on data from the Philippine‐Malaysia maritime border that focus on the trade in high‐value live reef fish, this article points to the need to situate such cross‐border activities more closely within the context of local perspectives and priorities. A locally‐grounded perspective is necessary in order to understand the context of social‐development challenges that mediate both macroeconomic and environmental policy outcomes.     

Size matters: vegetation patch size and surface temperature relationship in foothills cities of northwestern Argentina

Urbanization is one of the most extreme forms of land alteration. Energy fluxes are severely affected and cities tend to have the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon, although vegetated areas inside cities could have a positive effect in mitigating UHI effect. Our main objective was to analyze the relationship between vegetation characteristics, patch size and land surface temperature (LST) in three urban areas of northwestern Argentina. We selected 38 green spaces of different size distributed in four cities, all located in the eastern foothills of the subtropical mountain forests. We used Landsat TM satellite images to calculate Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and LST. We assessed the net effect of patch size on LST by computing a Difference Temperature Index. At the regional scale, our results showed that vegetation patch size had a direct effect on reducing the LST of the green space. At a local scale, the analysis of the relationship between vegetation on urban green spaces and LST along a gradient of urbanization showed that green spaces with more vegetation tends to reduce LST. The results showed that largest green spaces were between 1.5 and 2.8 °C cooler than the surrounding built. In order to mitigate the UHI effect in cities, larger green spaces appear to be a possible solution.     

Marshall–Olkin bivariate Weibull distributions and processes

In this paper we introduce a new probability model known as type 2 Marshall–Olkin bivariate Weibull distribution as an extension of type 1 Marshall–Olkin bivariate Weibull distribution of Marshall–Olkin (J Am Stat Assoc 62:30–44, 1967). Various properties of the new distribution are considered. Bivariate minification processes with the two types of Weibull distributions as marginals are constructed and their properties are considered. It is shown that the processes are strictly stationary. The unknown parameters of the type 1 process are estimated and their properties are discussed. Some numerical results of the estimates are also given.     

Perseverance and passion for achieving long-term goals: transcultural adaptation and validation of the Grit-S scale / Perseverancia y pasión por la consecución de objetivos a largo plazo: adaptación transcultural y validación de la escala Grit-S

The objective of this study was to undertake the transcultural adaptation and validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit-S) to measure university students’ levels of perseverance and passion for achieving long-term goals. To accomplish this, the Grit-S scale was linguistically and culturally adapted from English to Spanish via the Translation, Review, Adjudication, Pre-testing and Documentation method. After that, the adapted scale was administered to a convenience sample of 1,129 university students comprised of 29.6% males and 70.4% females with a mean age of 21, and finally, its psychometric properties were analysed and compared to the original version. The results reveal acceptable values for the internal consistency of the total scale (α = .71) and outstanding fit indexes for the proposed two-factor structural model (i.e., Consistency of Interest and Perseverance of Effort) (RMSEA = .041, CFI = .96), and the parameters of transcultural adaptation were similar to those in its original version.     

Risk factors, clinical features and outcome of treatment of work related musculoskeletal disorders in on-site clinics among IT companies in India

Workrelated musculoskeletal disorders among the IT professional is a common area of concern worldwide. This study was taken up to analyze the prevalence of risk factors, clinical features and outcome of treatment in onsite clinics in vaious information technology companies in India. Result revealed poor office ergonomics (54%), lack of keyboard tray (25%), lack of mouse tray (35%), lack of foot rest (60%), improper monitor height (80%) were the major self reported risk factors. Major identified MSD were Myofascial Pain Syndrome (49.20%), Thoracic outlet syndrome (25.02%), Fibromyalgia syndrome (8.5%). Majorly affected body regions were neck (64.9%), shoulder (42.1%), lower back (56.5%) and thigh (34.2%). The results were comparable with the literature. Feedback of the participants also revealed most of the participants were well satisfied with SHARAN's protocol.