This paper makes a contribution to ongoing debates about whether and how we can empirically assess the potential, limitations, and actual impacts of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in developing countries. Several United Nations and bilateral aid agencies have called for the development of impact assessment (IA) methodologies that can help clarify when, how, where, and for whom partnerships work. This paper scrutinizes some of the key assumptions underlying this debate, arguing that no objective aEuro(1)truth' about the effects of PPPs can be discovered through the use of such methodologies. The paper then investigates what can actually be known about a PPP's effects by testing a PPP IA framework that is recommended by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This is done using a case study from Pakistan. The paper shows that IA methodology may provide an indication of how well a PPP has fared, but not why the PPP has turned out the way it has. At the same time, win-win and win-lose outcomes may exist simultaneously, even for the same stakeholder in the PPP. While the importance of ensuring proper design, monitoring, and IA of PPPs cannot be denied, their effects must be seen as an outcome of struggles between variety of actors over the distribution of social and environmental hazards associated with broader processes of economic development and industrialization.

This article examines corporate responsibility in the supply chains of four of the largest Scandinavian multinational corporations – IKEA, Nokia, Novo Nordisk, and StatoilHydro – and offers two key findings. First, these Scandinavian companies have all implemented responsible supply chain practices where suppliers in developing nations, and the communities of these suppliers, are engaged as key stakeholders and treated as partners. Second, these supply chain practices all share the common bond of having honesty and the establishment of trust-based relationships at their foundation. As a result, these Scandinavian companies have developed a ‘‘cooperative advantage’’ in their ability to form successful, long-term partnerships in their respective supply chains.

Scholarship on corporate social responsibility (CSR) shows both that the concept itself is interpreted in a multitude of different ways and that significant cross-cultural differences exist in the way that business approaches the question of social responsibility and ethics. Little comparative work, however, has yet been carried out that investigates the reasons behind such differences. The authors analyze the cases of Mexico and France by drawing on Enderle's practical, semantic, and theoretical dimensions of business ethics. The authors further integrate the concept of "normative institutions" to explore attitudes toward CSR and assess the likely future adoption of CSR practices in each country. The article concludes that despite similar institutional conditions in Mexico and France, the interplay of those institutions combined with the historical role of business and its relationship with society produces quite different articulations of CSR in each country. The article highlights the need for further studies that explore how institutions enable and constrain business' articulation of social responsibility.

Non-financial reports, such as sustainability, social responsibility and ethical reports, claim to make organizations accountable to a range of stakeholders. Yet, it has been argued that such reports are of limited value in the absence of structures that enable stakeholder response to the information provided and accordingly influence decision-making. The aim of this paper is to assess the materiality of non-financial reports to employees in the light of enterprise-level arrangements where employees potentially impact decision-making. The paper draws on interviews with Danish employee representatives and archival material in organizations that claim to be accountable to a range of stakeholders, including employees, through the preparation of non-financial reports. Denmark is an interesting empirical setting for this study as arrangements such as European works councils, employee board representatives, works councils and shop stewards are widespread and regulated. This paper suggests that, from the perspective of employees, formal reports represent a limited contribution to accountability and that institutional arrangements in the workplace appear more important for this stakeholder group. The paper illustrates that these arrangements are significant vehicles for employees to demand, receive and develop accounts of organizational affairs and that non-financial reports seem insignificant as a basis for pursuing impact on management decision-making.

The paper offers a critique of traditional methodical approaches to Information Systems Development (ISD), arguing that a number of assumptions ( for example, universality and rationality) underlying these approaches lead to incomplete ontological and epistemological considerations, and thereby contribute to IS failures in many cases. The paper proposes that ethical analysis undertaken in conjunction with traditional ISD approaches may be a way to address some of the limitations experienced during traditional ISD. Drawing upon ideas from postmodern ethics formulated by Zygmunt Bauman, the paper argues that increased focus on the moral responsibility of key ISD players ( such as the team of analysts) may improve the ISD process. Finally, this paper suggests how, consistent with the postmodern stance, such moral responsibility can be implemented in the context of ISD. The paper concludes with the contributions and future implications of this research.

This paper proposes a model of how incumbents and new entrants engage in sustainable entrepreneurship. We suggest that in the early stages of an industry's sustainability transformation, new entrants ('Emerging Davids') are more likely than incumbents to pursue sustainability-related opportunities. Incumbents react to the activities of new entrants by engaging in corporate sustainable entrepreneurship activities. While these 'Greening Goliaths' are often less ambitious in their environmental and social goals, they may have a broader reach due to their established market presence. This paper analyses the interplay between 'Greening Goliaths' and 'Emerging Davids' and theorizes about how it is their compounded impact that promotes the sustainable transformation of industries. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Inc.

We examine who the winners are in science problem-solving contests characterized by open broadcast of problem information, self-selection of external solvers to discrete problems from the laboratories of large research and development intensive companies, and blind review of solution submissions. Analyzing a unique data set of 166 science challenges involving over 12,000 scientists revealed that technical and social marginality, being a source of different perspectives and heuristics, plays an important role in explaining individual success in problem solving. The provision of a winning solution was positively related to increasing distance between the solver's field of technical expertise and the focal field of the problem. Female solvers-known to be in the "outer circle" of the scientific establishment-performed significantly better than men in developing successful solutions. Our findings contribute to the emerging literature on open and distributed innovation by demonstrating the value of openness, at least narrowly defined by disclosing problems, in removing barriers to entry to nonobvious individuals. We also contribute to the knowledge-based theory of the firm by showing the effectiveness of a market mechanism to draw out knowledge from diverse external sources to solve internal problems.

This study addresses challenges in intercultural management between corporate headquarters in Denmark and subsidiaries/alliance partners in Japan. It takes its point of departure in the prevalent cross-cultural stereotypes of 'national cultures', shows the limitations of using such stereotypes and offers a social constructivist framework that captures the complex processes of understanding others in intercultural collaboration. Based on interviews with 50 managers in five companies, this study presents lessons learned and describes how management practices in the intercultural workplace can result in several approaches from "ongoing culture clash" to situations where cultural differences are considered a strategic asset. It illustrates how some managers perpetuate stereotypes, how some managers move beyond stereotypes, and how others are actually able to "trump" them. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article presents a conceptual exploration of public opinion (PO) from the point of view of corporate social responsiveness (CSR2). The proposed PO-CSR2 framework encompasses four complementary means of framing public opinion: the philosophy of measurement of the market view (PO1); the action theory of the mobilization view (PO2); the negative, constraining mode of the social control view (PO3); and the proactive stance of the strategic enactment view (PO4). The article unfolds the particular characteristics of these four views and shows how they, individually and in conjunction, can serve as useful tools for understanding and analyzing corporate social responsiveness. Far from being a narrow concept that focuses attention mainly on the popular-and, some would say, superficial-aspects of responsiveness, the author argues that public opinion is a concept that embodies variety and provides a multifaceted point of departure for reflections on the relationship between business and society.