Research

Do training programs promote socioeconomic prosperity among the disenfranchised? This paper answers this question through the case of Banco da Providência, a NGO dedicated to reducing extreme poverty in Rio de Janeiro favelas. This research combines a randomized controlled trial (RCT), computational text analysis, and interviews. 

KEYWORDS: Business capabilities development, diversity and inclusion, social stigma, randomized controlled trial, computational text analysis, and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Polycentric governance involves aligning incentives of stakeholders to overcome collective action problems (Ostrom, 1990, 2005).  Achieving this alignment is particularly difficult in disenfranchised communities.  The study then lays out an agenda on how theories of polycentrism, and more broadly, theories of management, must be adapted to the interests of stakeholders who are vulnerable, disadvantaged, impoverished, and otherwise less than wholly considered in the resolution of grand challenges and other collective action problems.

KEYWORDS: Polycentric governance, stakeholder theory, disenfranchised communities, collective action, grand challenges

To what extent can organizations’ capabilities promote individuals’ well-being? In this theoretical article, we argue that organizations are essential to free people from socioeconomic exclusion, using their resources and capabilities – e.g. duty, design, governance – to produce an inclusive approach towards disenfranchised stakeholders. We do so by developing a model based on the “poverty traps” literature that explains how organizations may pull individuals out of what we call “the exclusion traps.” 

KEYWORDS: Individuals’ capabilities, organizations’ capabilities, exclusion traps, stakeholder theory, and socioeconomic development.  

In this paper, we examine Natura Co., a company in the cosmetic industry that developed a complex web of open vertical and horizontal relations (a “netchain”) to procure natural inputs from the Amazon rainforest. Using an in-depth case study methodology, we argue that instrumental and normative explanations of stakeholder-oriented strategies are complementary and that the so-called shareholder primacy may actually help as long as shareholders (or whoever holds control rights) implement morally informed principles guiding those relational strategies.

KEYWORDS: Stakeholders, normative stakeholder management, relational governance, supply chains, and netchains. 

This study tests whether agribusiness leaders are heroes or villains in the Amazon region. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) methodology on elections with a margin of victory close to zero, we show that marginally elected agribusiness leaders increase the number of new firms in their municipalities more than their marginally elected non-agribusiness counterparts. Nevertheless, surprisingly, the development of these new businesses was not followed by different deforestation trends in comparison to non-agribusiness municipalities. This was possible through progressive fiscal policies and investments in local infrastructure, which are under the control of these local leaders. 

KEYWORDS: Sustainability, Amazon rainforest, Regression Discontinuity Design, Trade-off economy-ecology.

In this paper, we empirically explore water provision as one of the grand challenges of present times by examining the effect of public versus private clients in promoting desalination technologies. Based on a population-level data of all desalination projects worldwide from 1950 to 2015, we find that public demand-side promotion of desalination leads to a higher rate of adaption of more sustainable desalination technologies over time. Our models illustrate a public client as two to three times more likely to implement such technology than a private client. Moreover, using an instrumental variable approach, we find this effect is moderated by the institutional development of the countries, with more effective responses in moments of hydric crises (i.e., following droughts) from governments in developed institutional contexts.

KEYWORDS: Water scarcity, droughts, comparative governance, instrumental variable model.

This paper explores the impact of EMR on the healthcare of HIV/AIDS patients in Malawi. Using an staggered differences-in-differences methodology, we show that EMR implementation by Baobab Health Trust led to an increase in the number of patients in care and a gradual reduction in deaths. Field interviews suggest that EMR allowed a better tracing of lapsed patients, and therefore, helped bring more patients back into care. Heterogeneity analysis shows that these results are stronger for patients with a preference for more privacy.   

KEYWORDS: Electronic medical records (EMR), healthcare, HIV/AIDS, development, and staggered differences-in-differences.

This paper explores conditions and combinations of conditions that enable healthcare clinics in resource-constrained settings to achieve superior performance, measured by the number of patient visits. We use the context of the North Star Alliance, an independent nonprofit organization that provides access to healthcare such as HIV/AIDS prevention and health treatment services for mobile populations across East, West, and Southern Africa. Using a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) we found that clinics might achieve superior performance by (1) nurturing intensive relationships with either external or internal stakeholders or (2) using indirect coordination, gaining external resource support and internal information exchange without high costs. 

KEYWORDS: Resource-scarce communities, networks, healthcare, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA).

Through a combination of text analysis, sentiment analysis, and image processing techniques, we evaluate firm environmental disclosure. Results suggest intertemporally, firms increase the amount of environmental text, with more emotional content (both positive and negative), and higher use of green pixels on their reports. This time trend is particularly prevalent among firms operating in contested areas, such as the Amazon rainforest. Interestingly, while reports become literally “greener,” firm ESG controversies score declines, suggesting a decoupling between reported actions and the true behavior of firms. 

KEYWORDS: Environmental disclosure, greenwashing, non-market strategy, text analysis, sentiment analysis, and image processing.

This study discusses how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) individual factors can affect firm performance heterogeneously both across and within industries.  We do so by analyzing ESG scores and the profitability of U.S. public corporations in a configurational way.  Through a fuzzy-set QCA application, we identify heterogeneous patterns by which ESG factors combine, leading some firms to superior financial performance compared with their industry peers.  Our approach reveals that different industries have distinct ESG configurations (aka. paths) that lead to higher performance.  Similarly, within the same industry, more than one ESG configuration may be associated with higher profitability.  

KEYWORDS: Nonmarket strategies; Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG); Financial Performance; Industry Heterogeneity; Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA).