Institutional Attributes Research Articles

How does CEO pay slice influence corporate social responsibility? U.S.–Canadian versus Spanish–French listed firms

AbstractConsidering specific contextual differences (in laws, governance attributes, and CEO pay policies) found between the Anglo‐American and the European corporate governance models and controlling for institutional attributes, ownership structures, and firm's features characterizing the two settings, we aim to explore if there is a link between CEO pay slice (CPS) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). We follow Bebchuk et al. () to measure CPS. We consider sustainability indicators as proxy to capture CSR. Sustainability indicators are gathered from Global Reporting Initiative of sustainability standards (GRI's) report. Data cover the period 2010–2017 and consist of 1,440 U.S.–Canadian and Spanish–French firm‐year observations. American and Canadian (Spanish and French) firms are considered as to refer to the Anglo‐American (European) corporate governance model. Durbin–Wu–Hausman test is ruled to address endogeneity problem of dual variables and supports consistent null hypotheses of fixed effects model. Under the agency theory's “bright side” paradigm, univariate and multivariate cross‐country analysis supports that CPS is positively associated with firm's initiatives to engage in CSR and that sustainability is more pronounced under stronger investor protection, strict law enforcement, and higher corporate governance quality. Robustness checks reveal that (a) the deferred CPS–CSR causal effect seems higher for option‐based compensation than that for stock‐based compensation and (b) within the options (stocks) rewards, unvested options (restricted stocks) are the most effective to enhance firm's CSR practices.

Probing the role of institutional stereotypes in Americans’ evaluations of hazard-managing institutions

Potential effects of institutional stereotypes on trust in hazard-managing organizations have been little explored. Americans’ views of attributes of government agencies, corporations, and non-profit advocacy groups (which try to influence policy) were probed in three surveys 2014–2016. Top-down ratings of positively and negatively phrased institutional attributes were based upon either perceived beliefs of ‘most Americans’ or the respondents themselves. Advocacy groups were rated most positive and least negative, and agencies the reverse, with corporations largely in the middle. Inter-individual differences in demographics, political ideology and interest, and worldviews produced modest variations in these views, supporting attributes’ culturally shared (i.e. stereotypical) nature. Explained variance in trust in institutions significantly increased (if with small to moderate effects) with the addition of stereotypes, particularly positive ones, controlling for other predictors. Institutional stereotypes may hold promise as complementary heuristics in citizen judgments of trust in hazard-managing organizations when they lack motivation or opportunity for situation-specific information; their effects when controlling for the latter (e.g. salient value similarity) remain to be tested.

Meta-ranking to position world universities

ABSTRACTUniversity rankings have proliferated in recent years and have been diverse, with a variety of profiles. This paper deals with the task of obtaining one single summarized ranking based on a selection of the most widely known rankings, in short, a meta-ranking. Five of the best-known rankings were selected and a database compiled with the major world universities that appear in at least four of the five rankings chosen. A meta-ranking was constructed, which differentiates between two dimensions, identifying the positions of universities in each and checking bias. The positioning of the universities is shown and seven clusters of world universities are identified, differences examined according to size, quality of scientific production, level of internationalization, features of the economic context and institutional attributes (staff-to-student ratio and percentage of female students). These results are useful for benchmarking by universities and national university systems, with a view to planning decisions.

Factors of regional poverty reduction in Colombia: Do institutional conditions matter?

AbstractColombia has a unique history, which has been heavily conditioned by armed conflict lasting more than 50 years. This study examines the institutional conditions for success and failure in reducing poverty in Colombian departments by considering changes that took place between 2003 and 2014. Fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis identifies the changes in regional conditions that reduce poverty over time. The pathways for poverty reduction are multidimensional, and many involve changes in institutional attributes such as government transparency, absence of violence, and electoral turnout. The framework developed in this paper can be used to monitor necessary and sufficient pathways in regional clusters.

Employment Trends Among Public Health Doctoral Recipients, 2003-2015.

To examine postgraduation employment trends among graduates of doctoral programs in public health from 2003 to 2015. We analyzed pooled cross-sectional data from a census of graduates receiving a research doctorate from US accredited institutions. The outcome of interest was employment status. Covariates included public health discipline, sociodemographic characteristics, and institutional attributes. Of 11 771 graduates, nearly two thirds secured employment in either academic (34.8%) or nonacademic (31.4%) settings at the time of graduation. The proportion of those still seeking employment increased over time. Individuals who were White, younger, trained in either biostatistics or epidemiology, or from an institution with the highest level of research intensity were significantly more likely to secure employment. Academic employment was the most common setting for all 5 public health disciplines, but we observed differences in employment patterns (e.g., government, nonprofit, for-profit) across disciplines. Certain characteristics among public health doctoral recipients are correlated with postgraduation employment. More research is needed, but the observed increase in individuals still seeking employment may be attributable to increases in general public health graduates from for-profit institutions.

Impact of global financial crunch on financially innovative microfinance institutions in South Asia

The wave of global financial crises (2008–2009) caused a surge in the capital flows of developed countries particularly, between developed and developing countries. The crunch hit all financial sectors with unanticipated severity. The study evaluates the role of a country’s political practices in moderating the impact of global financial crunch on microfinance performance. Using the fixed effect panel regression method on the dataset comprising of 95 MFIs operating in South Asia from 2003 to 2012, we determine that microfinance operational capability shares a positive relationship with the institutional attributes of a country and our output reveals that impact of country’s political practices is pervasive on the financial output of MFIs, liable to different levels of implementation. The findings further reveals that MFIs situated in countries having vigorous political practices are less severely affected by the economic crunch.

Best practices for aligning university brands with fundraising campaigns

For a higher education institutional brand to most effectively position the institution and drive missionand business-critical results, it must effectively convey distinctive institutional attributes to three important audiences: students, alumni and donors. Institutions that are able to foster alignment of the brand and positioning among these three audiences are more likely to see investments in brand development result in improvements in market positioning and revenue generation. Two case studies demonstrate best practices. University of Toronto adopted its CAN $2bn ‘Boundless’ campaign as its brand across academic and administrative units. Georgia State’s US$300m ‘Burning Bright’ campaign leverages its main brand attribute — student success.

ATTITUDE AND PERCEPTION OF EMPLOYEES TOWARDS TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

Training and Development is one of the crucial differentiator for business especially manufacturing industries. The training and development system in manufacturing industries in Ahmednagar as needs a systematic overhaul. The present training and development programs lack a systematic approach especially in regards to design and planning approach. If the testimony of the employees is to be believed then manufacturing industries lack a clear policy of training and development and seldom are employees deputed to external organizations. The attitudes towards training are influenced due to individual and institutional attributes

Interdisciplinary Dissertation Research Among Public Health Doctoral Trainees, 2003-2015.

Given the call for more interdisciplinary research in public health, the objectives of this study were to (1) examine the correlates of interdisciplinary dissertation completion and (2) identify secondary fields most common among interdisciplinary public health graduates. We analyzed pooled cross-sectional data from 11 120 doctoral graduates in the Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2003-2015. The primary outcome was interdisciplinary dissertation completion. Covariates included primary public health field, sociodemographic characteristics, and institutional attributes. From 2003 to 2015, a total of 4005 of 11 120 (36.0%) doctoral graduates in public health reported interdisciplinary dissertations, with significant increases observed in recent years. Compared with general public health graduates, graduates of environmental health (odds ratio [OR] = 1.74; P < .001) and health services administration (OR = 1.38; P < .001) doctoral programs were significantly more likely to report completing interdisciplinary dissertation work, whereas graduates from biostatistics (OR = 0.51; P < .001) and epidemiology (OR = 0.76; P < .001) were less likely to do so. Completing an interdisciplinary dissertation was associated with being male, a non-US citizen, a graduate of a private institution, and a graduate of an institution with high but not the highest level of research activity. Many secondary dissertation fields reported by interdisciplinary graduates included other public health fields. Although interdisciplinary dissertation research among doctoral graduates in public health has increased in recent years, such work is bounded in certain fields of public health and certain types of graduates and institutions. Academic administrators and other stakeholders may use these results to inform greater interdisciplinary activity during doctoral training and to evaluate current and future collaborations across departments or schools.

Cross-country determinants of ownership choices in cross-border acquisitions: Evidence from emerging markets

We examine the cross-country determinants of bidder ownership choices regarding (i) government quality, (ii) economic freedom, (iii) international trade, (iv) financial development, and (v) cultural distance, in cross-border acquisitions of emerging markets-located targets. The sample comprises 16,806 acquisitions across 41 emerging markets in the 2000–2015 period. We find that the likelihood of a planned (and completed) minority acquisition relative to a majority or full acquisition is higher if the target operates in a country with poorer government quality, inferior economic freedom, stronger restrictions on international trade, lower financial development, and greater cultural distance with the bidder country. Differences in these institutional attributes between bidder and target countries similarly are informative of bidder acquisition decisions. The results suggest that bidders actively assess cross-country characteristics as part of their acquisition planning, including risk, benefits and acquisition likelihood. The findings provide potential mechanisms for countries to further increase foreign investment through cross-border acquisitions.

Postgraduate Nutrition Education in India

Background: Capacity building in nutrition has been viewed as an important strategy in accelerating undernutrition reduction in low and middle income countries. This paper investigates whether current nutrition programmes in India are aligned well enough to tackle the nutrition needs of the community.&#x0D; Objective: Nutrition curricula of postgraduate modules in India are analyzed to examine whether the current nutrition programs are in accord with the three pillars of nutrition (nutrition specific, nutrition sensitive and nutrition enabling environments).&#x0D; Methods: Combination of internet search, email and telephonic enquiries were used to collect the names of universities offering master’s degree in nutrition in India. The variables quantified include types of modules taught with respect to three nutrition pillars (nutrition specific, sensitive and enabling environment), quality of teaching materials, and reading lists and institutional attributes. Descriptive and bivariate analyses were used to accomplish the objectives of the study.&#x0D; Results: 116 universities in India offered 146 masters’ programmes in nutrition. Each program’s modules were listed (duplicates removed). Of these 680 modules, about two thirds were nutrition specific, 5% were underlying / basic and merely one tenth focused on public health nutrition. Further analysis of reading list available for 186 modules, suggests that of the total 2235 reading lists, only 4.2% were published in journals and 9.2% were recent publications.&#x0D; Conclusions: Nutrition curricula in Indian universities are dated, skewed towards the immediate determinants and over reliant on books. There is an urgent need to update and align readings to current thinking on how best to accelerate undernutrition.

Corporate Social Responsibility, Institutional Environments, and Tax Avoidance: Evidence from a Subnational Comparison in China

We examine the association between mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and economic contribution (tax payments) in China, where we expect this association to be affected by a region's institutional attributes. Exploiting a dataset that shows cross-regional variations in institutions, we find that in regions with lower institutional quality, firms claiming to be socially responsible actually avoid taxes, whereas CSR disclosure in other regions is more aligned with the social responsibility aspect of tax compliance. Our study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that in the absence of proper institutions, CSR disclosure is likely to remain a form of window dressing.

My way or the highway? Framing transportation planners’ attitudes in negotiating professional expertise and public insight

Transportation planning continues to expand beyond traditional engineering and economic performance measures toward a broader scope of impacts across space and society. However, the attitudes of transportation planners as they balance their expert knowledge against public insights are not well-understood. We test a two-dimensional attitudinal framework using survey data from 311 U.S. and Canadian transportation planners. We reveal four attitudinal categories using principal component analysis, and hypothesis testing shows significant differences in personal and institutional attributes across these categories. We discuss what our results mean for training and regulatory measures striving to influence planner attitudes before proposing future directions for research.

Loan - Loss Provisions in Indian Banks : An Appraisal of Institutional Attributes

The financial systems of a nation, being the lifeline of its economy, are expected to have ample preparation to confront and mitigate any shock inherent in a market - driven business. Loan - loss provisioning is a systematic way of handling risks rationally, signaling managerial prudence. Banks across the globe follow a dynamic provision policy. Sometimes, a well - designed policy is not enough to safeguard the interests of all the stakeholders. One such prominent and time - honored modus operandi to face contingencies is the rate of provisioning to be set aside annually to meet any contingencies. The proposed study attempted to report the chronological trend in provision in Indian banks in the latest decade. Data for the study were collected from CMIE online database. Bank size and nature of ownership were considered to be the predictors of provision. The findings of our study revealed that the size of the banks influenced the rate of provisions set aside. The study also revealed a clear distinction among the banks ranked high on the basis of size than medium and low ranked banks. We also recognized the global economic downturn as an incontestable constituent to increase the percentage of provisions across all the sectors of the financial industry.

Strategic Interaction Among Overlapping Local Jurisdictions

This article explores the strategic interactions between overlapping counties and school districts within the context of property tax policy. Overlapping local governments share either part or all of their property tax bases and therefore may take into account each other’s tax policies when deciding their annual property tax rate. A dynamic model is developed to analyze how property tax rate determination is influenced by the fiscal policies of both overlapping and neighboring local jurisdictions. The results suggest a short-term mimicking effect that is largely canceled out the following period. These findings help to develop a more complete understanding of how the broader set of environmental and institutional attributes of local governments influence their fiscal policies.

Measuring the effectiveness of two-year colleges: a comparison of raw and value-added performance indicators

ABSTRACTResearchers in higher education frequently evaluate institutional effectiveness as the difference between an actual and predicted graduation rate, but little is known about whether such a method is reliable or valid. This study examines the measurement properties of effectiveness scores derived from regression residuals for community colleges in the United States (n = 875). The test–retest reliability of the resulting effectiveness measure over two consecutive years was acceptable to good (r = .63 to .72). A test of convergent validity indicated that effectiveness scores were positively associated with students’ perceptions of a supportive campus environment (r = .26). A test of discriminant validity revealed relatively small correlations between effectiveness scores and institutional attributes, such as the percent of low-income students (r = −.01). The results support the use of effectiveness scores as a complementary performance indicator for community colleges to better articulate the value added to the student experience.

Women’s Crucial Role in Collective Operation and Maintenance of Drinking Water Infrastructure in Rural Uganda

ABSTRACTOperation and maintenance of communally owned water sources in Uganda still pose challenges despite the devolution of water management from the state to user communities. Using a mixed-methods approach and a gender-sensitive collective action analytical framework, this article quantifies the role of women in drinking-water governance and identifies barriers to women’s participation. The findings show that women not only are more willing to contribute but have also stated higher actual contribution than their male counterparts. The article outlines the institutional and individual attributes constraining women’s effective participation in water management and suggests how to enhance women’s participation in water governance. We argue that a strategy built on water users’ collective action in Uganda has to be built on women’s participation through effective rules and monitoring mechanisms, as well as on long-term sensitization and awareness creation on gender stereotypes that hitherto hinder women’s participation.

State Audit in the Modernization of National Governance: Institutional Guarantees and the Logic of Practice

The national audit is produced and developed to meet the objective requirements of national governance, and is a basic institutional arrangement within the governance system. In terms of its institutional attributes, legal status and functions, the national audit is the cornerstone of national governance and an important guarantee driving the modernization of governance. In this new historical era, the national audit needs to be appropriate to the new situation and new requirements of comprehensively deepening reform and enhancing the rule of law. We must accelerate the improvement of the audit system, enhance the breadth of coverage of audit supervision, comprehensively increase audit capacity, give greater effect to the functional role of audit and boost the modernization of the national governance system and governance capability.

Examining Co-management of National Parks through the Lens of Common-pool Resource Design Principles: A Comparative Case Study of Liwonde and Majete in Malawi

Co-management which was founded on common-pool resource design principles has been popularized in solving sustainability challenges of nat ional parks. Co-management was im-posed on all national parks in Malawi under the 2000 Wildlife Policy. However, such a top-down approach might neglect the local contexts that influenced policy implementation. The objective of this study was to examine the implementation of co-management and determine the extent of conformity to Ostrom’s eight design principles. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework was engaged through a qualitative case study of Liwonde National Park and Majete Wildlife Reserve. Based on co-management documentations and key informant interviews, the research found varied extents of conformity in the two cases despitea unified national policy framework. Majete was more supportive to the design principles than Liwonde because of resource, user and institutional attributes. The study proposed fine tuningthe implementation process towards contextualizing these attributes for long term delivery of perceivable biodiversity and livelihoods benefits.

Farmers’ perception on causes, indicators and determinants of climate change in northern Ethiopia: Implication for developing adaptation strategies

Even though climate change is recognized as a major challenge for the economic growth of developing counties such as Ethiopia, little information has been documented about climate change from local people perspectives. The objectives of this study are to describe socio-economic, biophysical and institutional characteristics of farmers, and assess the causes, indicators and determinant factors of climate change based on farmers’ perception in northern Ethiopia. Systematic sampling technique was used to select 60 sample household head farmers. The sample farmers were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive, chi-square (χ2) and logistic regression analysis. This study revealed that farmers’ socioeconomic, farm and institutional attributes influence their perception on climate change. Significantly higher proportions of farmer respondents perceived that deforestation (93%) followed by soil degradation (88%) are the main causes of climate change. Higher proportions of the respondents also identified that the most commonly used indicators of climate change are variability in rainfall (92%), erosion rate (90%), temperature (85%) and agricultural outputs (85%). The success of logistic regression model overall prediction is described by model χ2 = 81, p = 0·003, indicating that the independent variables significantly explained the dependent variable. The success of the regression model prediction level is also described by a strong association between the perception of farmers on climate change and the group of the explanatory variables by coefficient of determination of 83%. Among the explanatory variables, access to rain-fed agriculture, experience on soil management and water harvesting structures were significantly important determinants of farmers’ perception on climate change. It is thus suggested that introduction of comprehensive activities tailored to show in-depth examples of local and global causes and indicators of climate change, considering the determinant variables can enable farmers to design suitable adaptation strategies to climate change (.e.g., land-use based on its suitability, intensifying moisture and water harvesting practices, introducing high yield but short season variety, drought, pest and diseases tolerant crop varieties).