T he ISO 9000 series of quality management systems standards, introduced in 1986, has been adopted at over 560,000 locations worldwide. Anecdotal evidence suggests that firms can achieve internal benefits such as quality or productivity improvements or that certification can help firms maintain or increase their market share, or both. Others argue that the standard is too generic to cause performance improvement but can be seen as a signal of good management. In this paper, we track financial performance from 1987 to 1997 of all publicly traded ISO 9000 certified manufacturing firms in the United States with SIC codes 2000-3999, and test whether ISO 9000 certification leads to productivity improvements, market benefits, and improved financial performance. We employ event-study methods, matching each certified firm to a control group of one or more noncertified firms in the same industry with similar precertification size and/or return on assets. We find that firms' decision to seek their first ISO 9000 certification was indeed followed by significant abnormal improvements in financial performance, though the exact timing and magnitude of this effect depend on the specification of the control group. Three years after certification, the certified firms do display strongly significant abnormal performance under all control-group specifications. The degree to which the precise results vary across control-group specifications indicates that event studies should always include extensive sensitivity analysis, for instance matching by size and performance separately and jointly, using both single firms and portfolios as controls.

Within the context of environmental voluntary agreements (VAs), this paper analyzes the determinants of the degree of participation by firms in collective corporate political strategies that aim to shape government policy. We demonstrate that substantive cooperative strategies are more likely to be pursued by firms that enter a VA close to its initiation, while symbolic cooperation is more likely behavior by late joiners. We show that late joiners and early joiners within VAs adopt different cooperative strategies because they face different institutional pressures. Our analysis is based on the strategies of firms participating in the Climate Challenge program (1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000) established by the U.S. Department of Energy and representatives of the national electric utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our results show that early joiners were subjected to higher levels of political pressure at the state level and were more dependent on local and federal regulatory agencies than late joiners were. Early joiners were also better connected to the trade association and more visible. Late joiners had undertaken significantly less investment in environmental improvements than early joiners. Our paper also illustrates the difficulty involved in using VAs to try to induce improved environmental outcomes when there are no sanctioning mechanisms. Although early entrants reduced their emissions more than nonparticipants, our results show no significant difference overall between participants and nonparticipants in the reduction of their emissions.

This paper analyzes how economic deregulation impacts firm strategies and environmental quality in the electric utility industry. We find evidence that the deregulation introduced to this historically staid industry has stimulated environmental differentiation. Differentiation is most likely to appear where its point of uniqueness is valued by customers, and we confirm this relationship in our sample. Specifically, utilities that served customers who exhibited higher levels of environmental sensitivity generated more ‘green’ power. The tendency for firms to differentiate in this way is lessened if they are relatively more dependent on coal‐fired generation or relatively more efficient. Thus, there is evidence that firms sort themselves into either differentiation or low‐cost strategies as the competitive realities of a deregulated world unfold. Deregulation and the ensuing environmental differentiation illustrate how utilities exploited formerly unmet customer demand for green power. The result has been greater levels of renewable generation and, hence, a cleaner environment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

a b s t r a c tOver the past decade, state policies on renewable energy have been on the rise in the U.S., providing states with various options for encouraging the generation of renewable electricity. Two promising policies, the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and the Mandatory Green Power Option (MGPO), have been implemented in many states but the evidence about their effectiveness is mixed. In this paper, we argue that recognizing the natural, social, and policy context under which MGPO and RPS are adopted is necessary in order to measure their true effectiveness. This is because the context rather than the policy might lead to positive outcomes and there is the possibility for sample bias. When controlling for the context in which the policies are implemented, we find that RPS has a negative impact on investments in renewable capacity. However, we find that investor owned utilities seem to respond more positively to RPS mandates than publicly owned utilities. By contrast, MGPO appears to have a significant effect on installed renewable capacity for all utilities regardless of the context in which it is implemented. IntroductionAddressing climate change has become an important priority for the U.S. administration. In the U.S., greenhouse gas emissions come primarily from the combustion of fossil fuels in energy use. Energy related carbon dioxide emissions, resulting from the combustion of petroleum, coal, and natural gas, represented 82% of total U.S. anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2006. 1 While the U.S. generates 3% of its electricity from renewable resources, 2 other developed countries such as Denmark, Germany, Spain, and New Zealand generate 25%, 20%, 16%, and 8% of their electricity from renewables, respectively. 3 In addition, all of the European Union member states have aggressive renewable energy percentages they plan to reach by 2020, while the U.S. has no federally defined targets for renewable generation. 4 While there are current debates about the implementation of a federal renewable policy, U.S. states have taken a leading role in establishing renewable energy policies since the late 1990s. These include Renewable Portfolio Standards, the requirement to sell green products, disclosure policies, and subsidies. Analyzing the effectiveness of state renewable policies can be helpful to inform the current policy debate at the federal level.Recent research has started to look at the effectiveness of state policies on the generation of renewable electricity but has found mixed results. While some studies have found positive results (Bird et al., 2005;Menz and Vachon, 2006;Zarnikau, 2003;Yin and Powers, 2010), others have found no significant results (Carley, 2009).Furthermore, most of these studies provide little information on the natural and institutional conditions under which state renewable policies are adopted, which could have an impact on their effectiveness. For example, the relationship between installed renewable capacity and a state's resource endowment (e.g., sun, biomass...

A "third wave" of environmental policy has recently emerged that emphasizes information provision as an integral part of the risk mitigation strategy. While theory suggests that information programs may correct market failures and improve welfare, the empirical effectiveness of these programs remains largely undetermined. We show that mandatory information disclosure programs in the electricity industry achieve stated policy goals. We find that the average proportion of fossil fuels decreases and the average proportion of clean fuels increases in response to disclosure programs. However, the programs also produce unintended consequences. Customer composition and pre-existing fuel mix significantly affect program response, suggesting that effective information disclosure policies may not be efficient.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of smart city initiatives and big data on supply chain management (SCM). More specifically, the connections between smart cities, big data and supply network characteristics (supply network structure and governance mechanisms) are investigated. Design/methodology/approach – An integrative framework is proposed, grounded on a literature review on smart cities, big data and supply networks. Then, the relationships between these constructs are analyzed, using the proposed integrative framework. Findings – Smart cities have different implications to network structure (complexity, density and centralization) and governance mechanisms (formal vs informal). Moreover, this work highlights and discusses the future research directions relating to smart cities and SCM. Research limitations/implications – The relationships between smart cities, big data and supply networks cannot be described simply by using a linear, cause-and-effect framework. Accordingly, an integrative framework that can be used in future empirical studies to analyze smart cities and big data implications on SCM has been proposed. Practical implications – Smart cities and big data alone have limited capacity of improving SCM processes, but combined they can support improvement initiatives. Nevertheless, smart cities and big data can also suppose some novel obstacles to effective SCM. Originality/value – Several studies have analyzed information technology innovation adoption in supply chains, but, to the best of our knowledge, no study has focused on smart cities.

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Companies increasingly need to work with their partners to address sustainability issues, but benefits from environmental R&D cooperation can be limited by the complexity of its management. This paper examines how the interplay between dyadic and network relationships can contribute to increase the success of environmental R&D cooperation. Using secondary data, we examine whether the positional embeddedness in the supply network structure of partners engaged in environmental R&D cooperation amplifies the effects of cooperation on product performance. Non-monotonic effects of environmental R&D cooperation and embeddedness are also tested. The results indicate that the positional embeddedness of partners triggered by multiple sourcing strategy amplifies the effects of environmental R&D cooperation on product environmental performance. The interaction effects become however insignificant in the presence of increasing complexity and excessive environmental R&D cooperation.