Business Commons^™

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, …

Analyzing Sustainability Impacts, Kristi Jane Yuthas, Marc J. Epstein

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Financial managers need basic models that incorporate the most significant variables, are robust enough to accommodate a wide variety of decisions, and provide results that are simple to communicate. We attempt to help fill this gap by providing a simple and familiar cost-benefit approach that's enhanced and improved through the addition of sustainability outcomes. We developed the cost-benefit tool presented here specifically with the needs of financial managers in mind. It allows them to simultaneously consider the financial and social outcomes of potential decisions without the need for advanced knowledge of sustainability models or methods. The tool is built on …

'Negotiated' Transparency? Corporate Citizenship Engagement And Environmental Disclosure, Scott Marshall, Darrell Brown, Marlene Plumlee

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Corporate stakeholder relations are historically typified by power imbalances and mistrust, but in recent times, they are increasingly characterized by 'dialogue' based on mutual understanding and creative action. In this paper we consider corporate engagements with two external stakeholder groups, citizenship-focused non-governmental organizations (NGO) and institutional investors, and examine the potential association between these engagements and corporate disclosure of environmental information. Based on a sample of 183 firms over a three-year time period, we analyze the relationships between NGO engagement, investor activism and the quality of corporate voluntary environmental disclosure. Our findings suggest that engagement with skills-focused NGOs and the …

An Environmentally Enlightened Accounting, Jesse Dillard, Darrell Brown, Scott Marshall

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Environmental stewardship must become a primary concern if management is to adequately fulfill its societal responsibilities. Management and accounting information systems must aggressively respond to these emerging requirements in order to support adequately the associated information needs as well as to design organizational systems that motivate and facilitate desired behavior. Our purpose here is to consider a framework useful for developing environmentally enlightening management and accounting information systems that take into account alternative environmental perspectives. The framework can be used to develop prototypes representing different levels of environmental enlightenment and, as such, can provide general guidance for moving collectives and …

The Strategy Of Sustainability: A Systems Perspective On Environmental Initiatives, Scott Marshall, Darrell Brown

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

The article presents a systems perspective on environmental initiatives as they relate to the efforts of firms looking to become environmentally sustainable. To achieve environmental sustainability, firms need to implement principles, policies, and practices (such as budgeting systems, job design, recruitment and selection, and organizational structures) from the standpoint of long-term ecosystem viability. Because this process requires firms to establish challenging goals, managers are often confronted with significant conflicts between the financial and the environmental and social considerations when introducing socially or environmentally oriented decision making. The author recommends the adoption of a commonly shared corporate vision to allow for …