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- 2022
- Article
Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium
By: Nathan Wilmers and Letian Zhang
Employers often recruit workers by invoking corporate social responsibility, organizational purpose, or other claims to a prosocial mission. In an era of substantial labor
market inequality, commentators typically dismiss these claims as hypocritical: prosocial...
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- February 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Huazhu: A Chinese Hotel Giant's Journey of Digital Transformation
By: Feng Zhu, Yulin Fang, Bonnie Yining Cao and Duan Yang
Based in Shanghai, China, Huazhu Group, the world’s third-largest hotel operator, was known for its standardized IT system. It helped the company boost efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Digital Officer Xinxin Liu also faced some longer-term challenges:...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Do Safety Management System Standards Indicate Safer Operations? Evidence from the OHSAS 18001 Occupational Health and Safety Standard
By: Kala Viswanathan, Matthew S. Johnson and Michael W. Toffel
Problem definition: In light of the enormous disruptions and costs associated with occupational injuries, companies and buyers are increasingly looking to voluntary occupational health and safety standards to improve worker safety. Yet because these standards...
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- March–April 2020
- Article
What's Really Holding Women Back? It's Not What Most People Think
By: R. Ely and Irene Padavic
Ask people to explain why women remain so dramatically underrepresented in the senior ranks of most companies, and you will hear from the vast majority a lament that goes something like this: High-level jobs require extremely long hours, women's devotion to family...
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- July–August 2019
- Article
Coupling Labor Codes of Conduct and Supplier Labor Practices: The Role of Internal Structural Conditions
By: Yanhua Bird, Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
Exploitive working conditions have spurred companies to pressure their suppliers to adopt labor codes of conduct and to conform their labor practices to the standards set forth in those codes. Yet little is known about whether organizational structures such as codes...
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- November 2017
- Case
Loss Prevention at Mac's Convenience Stores (A)
By: Francesca Gino, Katherine DeCelles and Olivia Hull
Faced with a persistent robbery problem at his convenience store company, Sean Sportun, security and loss prevention manager at Mac’s of Central Canada, looked to standardize safety measures and devise a new way of preventing employee injury. But as a 32-year old with...
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- October 2017 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
JetBlue: Relevant Sustainability Leadership (A)
By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg
In 2017, JetBlue, the airline founded on the mission to “bring humanity back to air travel,” was considering becoming one of the first companies to report its sustainability performance according to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards. SASB...
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Keywords:
Sustainability;
Metrics;
Leadership And Change Management;
Airlines;
Innovation;
Purpose;
ESG;
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Sustainability Reporting;
Change Management;
Leadership;
Financial Reporting;
Environmental Sustainability;
Mission and Purpose;
Reports;
Competitive Strategy;
Measurement and Metrics;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Air Transportation Industry;
United States
- September 2017 (Revised August 2018)
- Supplement
The Ready-Made Garment Industry: A Bangladeshi Perspective (D)
By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Saloni Chaturvedi
This supplements the (A) case by summarizing key developments in the Bangladesh ready-made garment industry after the fire at Tazreen Fashions factory, including formation of the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Accord (“Accord”) and the Alliance for Bangladesh...
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- 2017
- Working Paper
The Importance of Unemployment Insurance as an Automatic Stabilizer
By: Marco Di Maggio and Amir Kermani
We assess the extent to which unemployment insurance (UI) serves as an automatic stabilizer to mitigate the economy's sensitivity to shocks. Using a local labor market design based on heterogeneity in local benefit generosity (defined as the percentage of household...
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- September 2015
- Article
Codes in Context: How States, Markets, and Civil Society Shape Adherence to Global Labor Standards
By: Michael W. Toffel, Jodi L. Short and Melissa Ouellet
Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs—like certification regimes and codes of conduct—that diffuse global standards. But little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We...
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- 2014
- Report
Bridge the Gap: Rebuilding America's Middle Skills
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Jennifer Burrowes, Manjari Raman, Dan Restuccia and Alexis Young
The market for middle-skills jobs—those that require more education and training than a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree—is consistently failing to clear. That failure is inflicting a grievous cost on the competitiveness of American firms...
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- 2016
- Working Paper
Signaling without Certification: The Critical Role of Civil Society Scrutiny
By: Susan A. Kayser, John W. Maxwell and Michael W. Toffel
In response to stakeholders' growing concerns, companies are joining voluntary environmental programs to signal their superior environmental management capabilities. In contrast to the literature's focus on certification programs that require a third-party audit, we...
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Keywords:
United Nations;
Labor Standards;
Supplier Relationship;
Procurement;
Sustainability;
Sustainability Management;
Quality And Safety;
Risk;
Globalization;
Globalized Markets and Industries;
Governance;
Working Conditions;
Supply Chain Management;
Supply Chain;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Quality;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Safety;
Reputation
- July 2014
- Article
Smart Money? The Effect of Education on Financial Outcomes
By: Shawn A. Cole, Anna Paulson and Gauri Kartini Shastry
Household financial decisions are important for household welfare, economic growth and financial stability. Yet, our understanding of the determinants of financial decision-making is limited. Exploiting exogenous variation in state compulsory schooling laws in both...
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- September 2013 (Revised June 2014)
- Supplement
Rana Plaza: Workplace Safety in Bangladesh (B)
By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez
In the aftermath of the Rana Plaza building collapse, a group of international retailers and labor unions partnered to create a proposal for more stringent inspections and enforcement of safety standards in Bangladesh garment factories. The proposal was met by...
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- December 2012
- Article
Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880–1965
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
Recent literature on the historical determinants of African poverty has emphasized structural impediments to African growth, such as adverse geographical conditions, weak institutions, or ethnic heterogeneity. But has African poverty been a persistent historical...
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Keywords:
Living Standards;
Real Wages;
Labor Market;
Colonial Institutions;
Economic Growth;
Wages;
History;
Africa
- 27 Jun 2012
- Conference Presentation
Private Enforcement of Labor and Environmental Standards in Global Supply Chains
- December 2010
- Article
Happiness Adaptation to Income and to Status in an Individual Panel
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
We study adaptation to income and to status using individual panel data on the happiness of 7,812 people living in Germany from 1984 to 2000. Specifically, we estimate a "happiness equation" defined over several lags of income and status and compare the long-run...
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- June 2010
- Article
Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers
By: David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel
Several studies have examined how the ISO 9001 Quality Management System standard predicts changes in organizational outcomes such as profits. This is the first large-scale study to explore how employee outcomes such as employment, earnings, and health and safety...
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Keywords:
Quality;
Management;
Standards;
Employees;
Wages;
Organizations;
Profit;
Safety;
Health;
Policy
- February 2010
- Article
The Optimal Taxation of Height: A Case Study of Utilitarian Income Redistribution
By: N. Gregory Mankiw and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Should the income tax include a credit for short taxpayers and a surcharge for tall ones? The standard Utilitarian framework for tax analysis answers this question in the affirmative. Moreover, a plausible parameterization using data on height and wages implies a...
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