Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Guenther (2008) analyzed the expansion steps of
firms and the way of reaching their level of diver-
sity. Hutzschenreuter and Guenther (2009) exam-
ine the factors that have impacts on a firm's rate
of expansion and the major sources of complexity
that are associated with managing and expanding
assets. Hutzschenreuter and Gröne (2009) assessed
the influence of foreign competition on vertical
integration strategies of U.S. and German compa-
nies. They used the value-added-to-sales approach
of Adelman (1955), adjusted value-added-to-sales
ratios developed by Buzzel (1983) and Tucker &
Wilder (1977), and Fan & Lang (2000) methods
in their analyses. They compared these methods
and concluded that input-output based method of
Fan & Lang is more advantageous than the other
value-added-to-sales based methods. Acemoglu
et al. (2009) explores the main effects of financial
development and contracting costs on the verti-
cal integration level across 750,000 firms in 93
countries.
This index is reviewed with a questionnaire an-
nually to ensure that it represents the leading
sustainable companies. This index also utilizes
information from the company documents, such
as, sustainability, environmental, social, financial,
and health-safety reports. Appendix A-1 presents
the set of criteria and weightings that is used to
assess the economic, environmental, and social
aspects of the companies.
The second set is the “The Global 100 Most
Sustainable Corporations” list which has been
compiled by the Corporate Knights magazine since
2005. After eliminating overlaps, we obtained 38
companies by combining 2005-2009 lists. The aim
of this list is to emphasize the global firms which
are successful in managing environmental, social,
and governance issues. The annual list of Global
100 is announced each year during the World
Economic Forum in Davos. The performance
indicators that are developed by Corporate Knights
Research Group are given in Appendix A-2.
Corporate Knights examine the 300 companies,
which are the top 10% of 3000 developed and
emerging market stocks, based on these indica-
tors. The Global Sustainability Research Alliance
compiles the economic, social, and governance
performance indicators from ASSET4, a Thomson
Reuters business, The Bloomberg Professional,
and FactSet Research Systems databases.
The third set, “SB20: The World's Top Sus-
tainable Business Stocks,” has been created by
Progressive Investor for 9 years. We eliminated the
overlapping companies and obtained 23 sustain-
able businesses in the combined list. Progressive
Investor is a monthly and online investing news-
letter that provides financial information about
leading green companies and instructs investors
about all green funds. The newsletter works with a
group of judges, who are stock analysts, to select,
nominate, and discuss companies. The SB20 list
includes various sizes of companies and these
companies must be competitive based on both the
sustainability and financial strategies to be in the
SAMPLE, DATA COLLECTION,
AND MEASUREMENT
Sample
Our sample was drawn from the union of three
firm sets. The first set is the “Dow Jones Sus-
tainability United States Index” and consists of
116 U.S. firms. These firms integrate long-term
economic, environmental, and social aspects
into their business strategies. A sustainability-
focused strategy increases long-term shareholder
value and sustainable companies show superior
financial performance (Russo and Fouts, 1997;
Schaltegger and Synnestvedt, 2002; Filbeck and
Gorman, 2004; Claver et al., 2007); consequently,
Dow Jones Indexes, STOXX Limited, and SAM
Group launched the Dow Jones Sustainability
Index (DJSI) to quantify the firms'
economic
,
environmental
and
social
developments to assess
