Business Commons^™

What Role Does Government Procurement Play In Manufacturing In The Uk And Internationally And How Might This Change In The Future, Barbara Morton, Gregg Paget, Carlos Mena

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

This report, commissioned by the Government Office for Science, has the general aim of reviewing the available evidence concerning the impact and role of public sector procurement on UK manufacturing. Specifically the report addresses the following questions:

1. What is the current framework for Government procurement in the UK?
2. How does Government procurement directly and indirectly impact on manufacturing activities?
3. How do UK procurement frameworks compare to other competitor nation procurement in terms of supporting manufacturing?
4. In what ways could co-ordinated procurement (procurement that meets multiple Government departmental goals) catalyse and support UK Manufacturing?

Previous research has shown that public procurement …

Beyond The Technology Revolution: Putting Practice Into Context, Jesse F. Dillard, Kristi Jane Yuthas

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

As accounting information systems become more and more central to the technique and practice of accounting, it becomes crucial that our understanding expand beyond the technical aspects of development and application. Drawing on Habermas' social theory, arguments are presented that facilitate a significant expansion in the issues considered and participants involved. We illustrate how the theory can be used to formulate alternative views and to provide a basis for explicit recognition of the assumptions and ideologies that underlie systems applications.

Globalization And Environmental Sustainability: An Analysis Of The Impact Of Globalization Using The Natural Step Framework, Joyce S. Osland, K. Kathy Dhanda, Kristi Jane Yuthas

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Globalization is becoming an increasingly controversial topic as shown by recent protests around the world. To date, however, U.S. business scholars have seldom questioned the basic assumptions of globalization, opting instead to describe the phenomena and focus on best practices. The purpose of this literature review is to broaden the boundaries of the debate on globalization and increase our understanding of its impact beyond the economic sphere into the realm of environmental sustainability. The Natural Step framework is used to organize an analysis of the existing empirical research. It describes four basic system conditions required for sustainability: 1) substances from …

Ethics-In-Action: An Application Of Structuration Theory In Professional Service Firms, Jesse F. Dillard, Kristi Jane Yuthas

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

A theoretical base for studying ethics in action is developed. In previous work, we propose a responsibility ethic, normative stakeholder theory, and discourse ethics as components of ethical decision making within organizational contexts. Here, we argue that structuration theory provides theoretical depth and conceptual integration to the ideas presented in our earlier work. The previous work is briefly discussed and structuration theory is reviewed. Ethically informed action is formulated within the context of structuration theory as a consideration and instantiation of structural features. Ethical action is predicated on the agent’s accountability within the context of an ongoing community. Accountability requires …

Director Ownership, Governance, And Performance, Sanjai Bhagat, Brian Bolton

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

We study the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the relationship between corporate governance and company performance. We consider 5 measures of corporate governance during the period 1998–2007. We find a significant negative relationship between board independence and operating performance during the pre-2002 period, but a positive and significant relationship during the post-2002 period. Our most important contribution is a proposal of a governance measure, namely, dollar ownership of the board members, that is simple, intuitive, less prone to measurement error, and not subject to the problem of weighting a multitude of governance provisions in constructing a governance index.

Replication School: Scaling Social Innovation Through Dissemination Training, Jacen Greene, Cindy Cooper, Carolyn Mcknight, Impact Entrepreneurs, School Of Business Administration, Institute For Sustainable Solutions

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper describes a training methodology to scale social innovation through dissemination undertaken in 2012 by Portland State University’s (PSU) Impact Entrepreneurs for the award-winning social enterprise Digital Divide Data (DDD). It begins with descriptions of some commonly used terms in the field — social innovation, social entrepreneurship, replication, and impact sourcing — and illustrates how each of these concepts was integrated into the development and delivery of a training program for replication of Digital Divide Data’s impact sourcing model. Program outcomes are reviewed, including findings that dissemination training is a viable, cost-effective method for replicating successful social innovations.

Madécasse: Competing With A 4x Fairtrade Business Model, Scott Marshall, Darrell Brown, Bex Sakarias, Min Cai

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Brett Beach and Tim McCollum, co-founders of Madécasse, spent two years as Peace Corps volunteers in Madagascar. During that time, they fell in love with the country and its people. Recognizing the need of the Malagasy for stable jobs and fair wages and the connection between poverty and environmental destruction, Brett and Tim discussed possibilities for a social enterprise in the country.

Madagascar presents a beautiful yet challenging place to operate a business. It has a wide range of flora and fauna, approximately 70% of which are found nowhere else on Earth and it produces coffee, vanilla, sugar, cotton, pepper, …