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Businesses are among the largest consumers of freshwater worldwide. However, existing academic research has barely touched upon how companies manage actual water challenges. In consequence,there is an urgent need to establish the factors that foster and restrict companies’ water management practices. Based on contingency theory this research examines the extent to which different macrofactors might affect corporate water management practices of a sample of 3729 listed companies operating in 59 different countries. Results of quantile regression modelling reveal country population growth rates, extreme weather events and aridity are linked with corporate water management practices of leaders. None of the macro factors considered drive water management practices of laggards, and for the average company only aridity drives practice. Given the findings, suggestions to improve corporate water management are made for government policy makers and managers of companies with different quality of water management practices. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This article is devoted to the environmental factors, influencing the implementation of standardized management systems of the enterprise at the country level. The problem is considered from the perspective of systems theory and complexity theory. The research focuses on management systems created following ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards and their relationship with the external environment. The study involved 20 European countries with different levels of economic and innovative development. The formation and subsequent development of standardized management systems (SMSs) require considering environmental factors, the context of the enterprise, which is reflected in the provisions of standards for management systems. However, the issues of the influence of environmental factors on the decision of enterprises to implement standardized management systems have been insufficiently studied. The work contains three hypotheses: a) about the connection between environmental factors and the introduction of SMSs by enterprises; b) about the diversity and uniqueness of the configurations of environmental factors affecting the spread of the SMSs in different countries; c) regarding the presence of similar structures of environmental factors influencing the spread of the SMSs in separate countries, which would make it possible to identify the basic types of such configurations. The study resulted in confirmation that a connection between environmental factors on the implementation of the SMSs exists, and groups of aggregated factors along with their components were identified. The features of the configurations of factors influencing the SMSs in different countries were considered. A distinctive type of influence of the external environment on the SMSs board, common for several European countries, was revealed, and called as ‘denying’. Correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between the factorial and the resulting characteristics, the results of which were subjected to qualitative discussion. Further research in this direction should cover a larger number of countries and factors influencing the formation of the SMSs. This will allow identifying a greater number of basic types of external environment influence on the formation of SMSs for enterprises in different countries and regions

This study investigates the link between macro and non-macro explanatory factors and Chinese hotel stock returns. Macro variables include growth rates of industrial production and imports, discount rates, yield spread and inflation rate. In addition, growth rate of total foreign tourist arrivals ( Δ TA ) was introduced as another critical macro factor that may affect Chinese hotel stock returns, considering a tremendous growth of tourism in China. Empirical results indicated that the impact of Δ TA was positive, but insignificant. Thus, Chinese hotel stock returns were more sensitive to general macro variables. Non-macro events that could significantly impact Chinese hotel stock returns encompass financial crises, natural disasters, wars, terrorist attacks, political events, and sports mega-events. Discussions and conclusions are provided to guide hospitality investors.