Abstract not available.

This thesis attempts to analyze some prominent linkages between trade and the environment. More specifically, the thesis seeks to elucidate the endogenous determination of environmental policies in the context of North-South and North-North relations when pollution generated in one country can cross the border and flow into another country. It also provides a theoretical framework to analyze the political influence of environmental lobbies on environmental policies, environmental damages, and the strategic behavior of domestic firms in making political contributions and investments in environmental R&D. This thesis adopts the political-support approach formalized with the help of the game-theoretic framework of a first-price menu auction formulated by Bernheim and Whinston (1986). In the political process, environmental interest groups that seek to influence environmental and trade policies set by politicians will face other lobby groups. By contrast, domestic firms in imperfectly competitive industries will press for protectionist trade policies and laxer environmental regulations. We find that an equilibrium emission tax depends on the cost and emission per unit of output, the weight that an incumbent government attaches to social welfare, the amount of pollution that countries transfer to each other, and the type of environmentalists. This thesis shows how interactions between different interest groups and their national governments may prevent the adoption of socially optimal levels of environmental policies. Moreover, it shows that environmentalists might be pressing for more stringent environmental policies if they care only about their own local environment and might have common cause with protectionist tendencies if they believe that liberalized trade will result in more pollution. With some exceptions, it is found that the presence of environmental lobbies improves the quality of their local environments. The exceptions arise when environmentalists also care about the global environment and pollution spills over from one country to another. This thesis shows that the presence of environmental lobbies may raise environmental R&D investments in the North, lower the profits of domestic firms, and improve the quality of their home and the world environments by inducing their incumbent government to adopt more stringent environmental policies. The thesis also finds that a more stringent environmental regulation, if properly set, may induce a domestic firm to undertake R&D investments, but it fails to confirm that this will raise the firm's profitability or competitiveness. Indeed, we show that an increase in a pollution tax causes the domestic firm to either cut back its output or raise its R&D expenditure. In either case, the profit of the domestic firm declines.

During the 1980s a large number of food/tobacco manufacturing firms were actively engaged in major corporate restructuring through mergers, acquisitions, leveraged and management buyouts, and selloffs. This study focuses on the cumulative effect of restructuring activities on the firm's structure and performance. In particular, the study examines how the restructuring activities in the 1980s have affected the degree and direction of corporate diversification and their performance implications. Recent studies have suggested that firm performance is positively correlated with related diversification and proposed the pursuit of related diversification over unrelated diversification as the goal of recent corporate restructuring. The purpose of this study is to test these propositions in an industry-specific context. Two alternative measures are used to describe the diversity of the firm's businesses. The industry participation index counts the number of four-digit SIC industries the firm operates. The entropy index not only takes into account the number of industry segments in which a firm operates, it also gives weights to each segment according to its share in total sales. In addition to industry counts and the entropy diversification index, this research also incorporates descriptive and qualitative information on sample firms' acquisition and divestiture histories. Multiple performance measures are used to evaluate firm performance from the perspectives of different stakeholders. The results of this study indicate that the accepted wisdom about the nature of restructuring activities among large firms in the 1980s appears to be only partially true. While these firms in general concentrated on related diversification, this concentration was not coupled with widespread shedding of unrelated business lines. Instead, sample firms were more concerned about their competitive positions in both related and unrelated lines. Several distinct patterns of restructuring emerged from the restructuring activities, each representing a significant portion of the sample. No one group consistently outperformed all other groups. Instead, it is apparent that different restructuring strategies were based on firms' unique strengths and competencies.

This dissertation analyzes the use of taxes or fees to regulate the external costs of solid waste. Such costs include the environmental impacts of producing and disposing the materials that become waste, and the monetary costs of collecting and disposing trash. A theoretical model estimates the welfare impacts of imposing externality taxes while varying supply and demand conditions, the size of the external costs, and the error in estimating those costs. The impacts on consumers, producers, government tax revenues, and external costs are shown separately. Two chapters extract empirical information from the literature. First, evidence on the market structure in one relevant industry--plastics--is summarized. Second, studies on price elasticities of demand for final consumers and industry purchasers of materials are reviewed. Next I summarize recent research that estimates the external costs, in dollars per ton, of the materials in solid waste--glass, ferrous metal, aluminum, paper, and plastic. I then combine this information with my own survey data on the prices of consumer products, and the weights of materials contained in those products. Assuming that a tax is set equal to the external costs, this procedure yields the average tax as a percent of price for categories of consumer goods (food, beverages, appliances, etc.). The (tax/price) results are combined with elasticity data to estimate the responses by consumers and industries to imposition of a tax. Such responses include reduced sales of products, less material used per product, conversion from one material to another, and conversion from virgin to recycled materials. Finally, I investigate the impacts of such a tax on households, and ways of mitigating these impacts. The average dollar cost per U.S. household, divided into income quintiles, is estimated. This tax incidence is compared to the incidence of income, sales, and property taxes. I conclude that an externalities tax would significantly affect materials use, principally in those industries where it is a large percentage of costs to consumers and producers. The tax would be regressive, and so equity would require compensating reductions in a tax with similar incidence, such as property taxes.

This research examines what strategies firms choose when their operations will have adverse impact on the natural environment and what influences that choice. It is an exploratory study in a new research area aimed at building theory from case studies. The natural environment is very prominent among social and political controversies and the condition of the environment has both direct and indirect strategic significance. Yet the management literature has for the most part neglected it. As the literatures from ecology, game theory, and other social sciences illustrate, however, the natural environment presents a paradoxical decision-making situation that all organizations face, whether aware of it or not. Because in this situation there is no "rational" criterion for what strategies "should" and at the present time no theory for what strategies "will" be chosen, this paradoxical structure constitutes a challenge to the individualistic, utility-maximizing rationality norms at the basis of strategic management. Electricity generating firms are studied because they have detrimental environmental effects and because they face technological choices with a range of environmental impact. Five U.S. utilities, two Canadian utilities, and one U.S. non-utility generator are sampled across a range of government regulation and ownership regimes. Data were collected from fourteen interviews with top executives in each firm, and from firm publications, secondary sources, and interviews with executives at two industry organizations. These were content analyzed to identify relevant corporate strategies, models of the environment, environmental attitudes, and government relations, as well as for structural and programmatic commitments to environmental issues. The findings suggest that all firms are aware of environmental issues, some much more than others. Non-utility generators aggressively adopt energy conservation and less-polluting technology to capture strong economic advantages and avoid regulatory risks. Among utilities, explicitly environmental regulation and government ownership are associated with greater environmental sophistication and greater strategic commitments, most notably voluntary collaborative, consultative relationships with regulators, environmentalists, and the public. These utilities also have strong conservation programs, which cause difficulties for those with excess capacity. Canadian firms appear vastly more sophisticated environmentally than U.S. firms.

No description available.

<p> As a critical infrastructure, the US electricity grid supplies electricity to 340 million people within eight separate regions. The power infrastructure is vulnerable to many types of disasters capable of severing supplies of electricity. The impact on the employees and communities when small- and medium-size enterprises are shut down due to disasters can be severe. The purpose of the quantitative comparative study was to explore small- and medium-size enterprises crisis management strategies in the case of power infrastructure vulnerabilities. Perceptions of small business leaders were probed about crisis management planning relevant to three secondary factors: prior experience of crises, threat perceptions, and planning self-efficacy. Participants completed an adapted questionnaire instrument based on a five-point Likert scale for six sub-factors including resilience through planning, financial impact, operational crisis management, the perfect storm, the aftermath of survival, and atrophy. The instrument also measured three additional factors to include, prior experience of crises, threat perceptions, and planning self-efficacy, across seven types of crises. The results of this study indicated that of the 276 respondents, 104 had no crisis plans, but 172 did have crisis plans. Of those who had implemented crisis plans, 19% had specific provisions to address power outages or attacks on the electrical grid. Of the respondents who had not planned for power outages nor experienced significant losses of power, a statistically significant number acknowledged an external threat to their business. The majority of respondents indicated that long-term planning was related to resilience; however, the migration of crisis understanding into the planning process or implementation was not implemented. This heightened awareness of potential crises without the corresponding development and implementation of mitigation crisis plans requires additional research to understand drivers effecting the decision making process with crisis managers.</p>

<p> Small businesses support local economies by creating jobs and providing products and services, yet 50% of them fail within 5 years and only 30% of them survive for 10 years or more. The purpose of this qualitative explanatory case study was to explore how bookkeeping strategies helped 1 small business owner to sustain business growth over time. The sample was comprised of 1 small business owner who has been in business at least 5 years, experienced success, and achieved sustainability in Wake County, North Carolina. Systems theory served as the conceptual framework for this study. The data were collected through a semistructured interview and review of company documents. Transcript review and member checking were completed to strengthen credibility and trustworthiness. Based on methodological triangulation of the data sources collected, 3 themes emerged: the accountant as an advisor, the accounting system and processes, and the relationship between owner and accountant and between accountant and employees. The findings from this study may contribute to social change by providing insights and strategies for small business owners, accountants, and academics to rethink how to approach business. Accountants with advisory and management accounting skills could benefit small business owners. Future accounting students could prepare to help small business owners by gaining advisory and management accounting skills. The data from this study may contribute to the success of small business owners&rsquo; growth, sustainability, and prosperity and, subsequently, benefit their local economies.</p>

<p> The ability to sustain small businesses operating in war-torn areas is important not only to the business owners, but also to foreign communities receiving United States contract services for recovery from widespread decimation. While all small businesses address a wide range of issues, businesses operating in war-torn areas also face cultural diversity, local regulations, and potential threats to employee safety. The conceptual framework for this exploratory multiple case study was transformational-transactional leadership theory, guiding the research to discover traits and strategies of successful leaders in the population of small businesses that were profitable beyond 5 years while operating in the war-torn area of Afghanistan. In addition to participant questionnaires and review of the businesses&rsquo; balance sheets, income statements, and tax returns, data were collected from 3 CEO participants in face-to-face, semistructured interviews. Participants&rsquo; verbatim comments were analyzed via thematic analysis. The coding system evolved from applying preliminary codes to a small sample of data and reiteratively refining the codes as prominent themes emerged. Participants identified unique challenges of working with a multinational workforce. There were 3 primary findings: successful leaders used elements of both transformational and transactional leadership; the most important strategy was gaining knowledge of regional infrastructure and customs; and successful leaders used management assistance. These findings may contribute to social change by prompting small business leaders to re-examine their perspectives on workforce diversity; they will also enable leaders who provide services overseas to realize profitable business goals while contributing to foreign local economies.</p>

Thesis (M.S. in Information Technology Management)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Thomas Housel, Glenn Cook. Includes bibliographical references (p. 87-90). Also available online.