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Environmental employee engagement programs promise to raise employee morale, improve social and environmental conditions and strengthen companies' financial performance. Such programs, however, sometimes fail to improve employee engagement, often because employees do not believe in the program's authenticity. This study evaluates peer communication as a mechanism for improving the credibility of employee engagement programs. We use a quasi-experimental research design in which employees from different regional offices of a single company were placed in either a treatment group that experienced a peer communication program or a control group that did not. Pre- and post-test surveys measured employees' affective, cognitive and behavioral engagement with their work. Treatment group employees showed increases in pride in the company's environmental initiatives and accomplishments, confidence in discussing its environmental record with external stakeholders, and awareness of and participation in its employee environmental programs. These changes were significantly greater than what occurred in the control groups, suggesting that the peer communication program was generally effective at improving employee engagement. These results demonstrate new modes of internal communication that can strengthen companies' environmental performance and improve employee-related outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) creates opportunities for multinational enterprises (MNEs) to diffuse corporate management practices from their countries-of-origin (home countries) to countries hosting their foreign operations. We examine conditions under which MNEs transfer corporate environmental practices from home countries to host countries. Our focus is on ISO 14001, the most widely adopted voluntary environmental program in the world. We examine inward FDI stocks and ISO 14001 adoption levels for a panel of 98 countries, and a subset of 74 developing countries, for the period 1996–2002. We find support for the country-of-origin argument in that inward FDI stocks are associated with higher levels of ISO 14001 adoption in host countries only when FDI originates from home countries that themselves have high levels of ISO 14001 adoption. Countries’ ISO adoption levels are associated not with how much FDI host countries receive overall but from whom they receive it. Three implications emerge from this study: (1) FDI can become an instrument to perpetuate divergence in corporate practices across the world; (2) economic integration via FDI can create incentives for firms to ratchet up their environmental practices beyond the legal requirements of their host countries; (3) instead of racing down to match the less stringent corporate practices prevalent in developing countries, developed countries can employ FDI outflows to ratchet up corporate practices abroad given that developing countries are net recipients of developed countries’ FDI outflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization critics argue that international trade spurs a race to the bottom among national environmental standards. ISO 14001 is the most widely adopted voluntary environmental regulation which encourages firms to take environmental action beyond what domestic government regulations require. Drawing on a panel study of 108 countries over seven years, we investigate conditions under which trade linkages can encourage ISO 14001 adoption, thereby countering environmental races to the bottom. We find that trade linkages encourage ISO 14001 adoption if countries' major export markets have adopted this voluntary regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary programs have become widespread tools for governments and nongovernmental actors looking to improve industry's environmental and regulatory performance. Voluntary programs can be conceptualized as club goods that provide nonrival but potentially excludable benefits to members. For firms, the value of joining a green club over taking the same actions unilaterally is to appropriate the club's positive brand reputation. Our analysis of about 3,700 U.S. facilities indicates that joining ISO 14001, an important nongovernmental voluntary program, improves facilities' compliance with government regulations. We conjecture that ISO 14001 is effective because its broad positive standing with external audiences provides a reputational benefit that helps induce facilities to take costly progressive environmental action they would not take unilaterally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent globalization discussions have revived the issue of regulatory convergence. Convergence advocates point to the structural pressures of the global economy on countries, while the divergence school points to the embeddedness of domestic regulatory institutions. This paper examines cross-national divergence in adoption rates of ISO 14001, an important international nongovernmental environmental regime developed with the cooperation of multinational firms. ISO 14001 offers a process-based system of voluntary regulation instead of an outcome-based system of public regulation that many firms find cumbersome. Our analysis of data from 59 countries suggests that ISO 14001 adoption rates are likely to be higher in countries whose trading partners have adopted this nongovernmental regime, which are embedded in international networks of nongovernmental organizations, whose governments flexibly enforce stringent environmental regulations with a less adversarial and litigious stance towards firms, and where consumers want mechanisms for identifying environmentally progressive firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their importance in theories of distributive spending, interest groups and other private and public organizations are largely absent from empirical research on the allocation of federal spending to subnational jurisdictions. We find that organized interests are significant determinants of the allocation of federal discretionary grants to states for 1991 through 1998 across seven policy areas. In contrast, we find only meager effects for supply-side variables suggested by the literature. We conjecture that supply-side effects are highly contingent on political circumstances and the type of spending being analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. To provide a descriptive analysis of asthma prevalence and costs in a Medicaid population and gauge the degree of adherence with expert guidelines for asthma medication management from the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program. Data Sources. Kentucky Medicaid administrative data for 1996. Study Design. A cross-sectional retrospective analysis was used to determine adherence with asthma medication guidelines and utilization of asthma-related health care services and costs. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the relationship between nonadherence with the guidelines and utilization of health care services. Principal Findings. Of the 530,000 Medicaid recipients, 24,365 (4.6 percent) were identified as having asthma. Average annual asthma-related costs (&dollar;616) accounted for less than 20 percent of total health care costs (&dollar;3,645). Nonadherence to the guidelines was prevalent. Less than 40 percent of the patients received a prescription for a rescue medication, and fewer than 10 percent of the patients who received daily inhaled short-acting beta-&sub2 agonists were regular users of inhaled steroids. Nonadherence to the guidelines was associated with an increased risk of an asthma-related hospitalization (odds ratio= 1.5,p<.05). Conclusions. Guideline nonadherence was widespread and associated with an increase in exacerbations of asthma that resulted in hospitalizations. Asthma prevalence and utilization of health care services in a Medicaid population were similar to previous estimates reported nationally and in health maintenance organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposes a theory of policy outputs and examines the dimensional structure of policy outputs. Indications that outputs are fundamentally multidimensional; Reflection of a high-dimensional structure of policy outputs; Low-dimensional structure similar to the legislative floor.

Hydrodynamic conditions can influence the distribution and abundance of aquatic species in many ways, including directly through disturbance and resource delivery, and indirectly by altering environmental cues and species interactions. In coral reef ecosystems, corallivory is an important top-down control of coral populations, while water motion can enhance coral performance via autotrophic and/or heterotrophic pathways. Using a large-scale field assay in Mo'orea, French Polynesia, we measured the extent to which the growth of a branching acroporid coral is influenced by hydrodynamics that deliver nutrients and food to corals but also impede corallivory. We explored two hydrodynamic properties that characterized our study system, mean current velocity and current velocity fluctuation (a measure of waves and turbulence). In treatments where predators were excluded, coral skeletal growth was positively related to mean current velocity, whereas no effect of velocity fluctuations was detected. In the presence of predators, growth was positively related to velocity fluctuations, but no relationship with mean velocity was detected. The major effect of velocity fluctuations was to reduce the attack rate of corallivores by lowering both their per capita bite rate and local density. Corals thus benefited directly from increased currents, probably through enhanced autotrophy and/or heterotrophy, and indirectly from velocity fluctuations through reduced corallivory. Our data indicate that for the coral and locale we examined, the indirect hydrodynamic effect on coral performance via reduction in corallivory was substantial, increasing daily growth rate by 4%. Hydrodynamic enhancement of acroporid coral growth via simultaneous direct and indirect effects can be important for the persistence of coral reefs as well as their recovery following disturbance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]