The open cut: Mining, transnational corporations and local populations

The rapid expansion of the mineral and metal mining sector in the past decade was accompanied by an increase in social conflicts. What are the impacts of large-scale mining operations? What are the strategies used by transnational corporations to gain access to underground resources and legitimize their activities? And how do local and indigenous communities confronted with mining react to, negotiate with and resist these activities? This book covers 13 case studies of copper, gold, uranium and other mining operations, situated in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Switzerland. With an extensive introduction to the subject and a systematic comparison across mining operations in different phases of development and social contexts, it serves as a primer and reference book for activists, students and researchers alike.

Firms, do you know your currency risk exposure? Survey results

This paper surveys the currency risk management practices of Swiss industrial corporations. We find tha industrials do not quantify their currency risk exposure and investigate possible reasons. One possibility is that firms do not think they need to know because they use on-balance-sheet instruments to protect themselves before and after currency rates reach troublesome levels. This is puzzling because a rough estimate of at least cash flow exposure is not a prohibitive task and could be helpful. It is also puzzling that firms use currency derivatives to hedge/insure individual short-term transactions, without apparently trying to estimate aggregate transaction exposure.

The Nestlé crash

On November 17, 1988, the board of directors of Nestlé AG decided to allow foreign investors to hold Nestlé registered stock, reversing a longstanding practice. This decision had a tremendous impact on the prices of the firm's three classes of common stock, as well as on the prices of several other corporations traded on the Zürich stock exchange. These price changes can be explained by the hypothesis that demand curves slope down.

Executive compensation and the performance of the firm

A sample of large industrial corporations is examined to determine whether there is a relationship between the levels of compensation received by the senior executives of those firms and the firms' economic performances. We find consistent evidence of such a relationship, with differences across firms in the total compensation of their three highest-paid officers being positively related to differences in both the common stock returns and operating profitability of the firms. The implication is that compensation packages are designed to reduce agency costs.

Corporate acquisitions by listed firms: the experience of a comprehensive sample

The sample used includes tender offers, mergers, acquisitions of privately held corporations, and comprehensive acquisitions of other firms' assets. According to the results, the majority of bid announcements prompt significant stock price increases, especially when controlling for partial anticipation problems and relative acquisition size. Furthermore, there is little evidence that firms that engage in "bad" acquisitions are more likely to be taken over.

Schul-, Praxis- und habituelles Herrschaftswissen. Bildung ländlicher Eliten mit Blick auf die korporative Selbstverwaltung in der frühmodernen Schweiz (18. und 19. Jahrhundert)

Knowledge taught at schools, everyday skills and practical know-how. The relevancy of formation for local elites and the corporative self-government of Early Modern Switzerland Daniel Schläppi, Bern There were different kinds of rural elites in Early Modern Switzerland. The diverse parts of the country developed in very dissimilar ways politically and economically. Some regions were dominated by traditional types of agriculture. Some territories were ruled by major cities. In some of the rural Cantons like Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Glarus and Zug a political elite took control over generations and practiced a cultural lifestyle comparable to the famous aristocracies in cities like Bern, Basel, Freiburg, Luzern, Solothurn and Zurich. Intense proto-industrialization formed a completely different sort of elite with strong affinities to industry and trade in other regions. Meanwhile the habitants of the valley close-by stayed farmers like their ancestors (like in Appenzell). In the most conservative parts of the country mercenary business played an important role till the very end of the Ancien Regime and even furthermore. In summery the variety of historical circumstances caused heterogeneous elites all over. Such socio-political diversity provoked a variety of educational backgrounds. I an academic understanding of the term we know only little about literacy in local rural elites. But there is strong evidence that a lively culture of reading and story-telling existed. This means that even simple countrymen seem to have been in possession of some books. The organisation and capacity of the school system is subject of controversial discussions among up to date researchers. The state of research makes us suppose that the people designed to political careers learned their essential skills not only in school but also in everyday life or on the job. Based on the fact that every community and countless public corporations managed their affairs by their own it’s evident that the local elite’s key-players had a large repertoire of techniques and skills like writing, calculating, strategic thinking or knowledge of oral tradition, old usage or important rituals. Unfortunately the historical actors left not that many sources that would tell us precisely how knowledge and know-how were transferred in former times. Hardly any private account books or common correspondence have been conserved. But a huge bunch of sources that originate from corporative self-administration shows us that most local elites were well-educated and had the necessary skills anyway. Above all other sources like for instance the «Topographische Beschreibungen» (topographic descriptions) that were initiated by the «Ökonomische Gesellschaft» of Berne since the sixties of the 18th century provide an insight into pre-modern classrooms. More important information on the historical formation-reality can be gained by the autobiography of the famous poor peasant Ulrich Bräker (1735‒1798) or some of the novels by Albert Bitzius (1797‒1854, better known as Jeremias Gotthelf). The pedagogic writings by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746‒1827) and the influences by his mentors Johann Rudolf Tschiffeli (1716‒1780) or Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg (1771‒1884) are quite illustrative as well.

Business and Public–Private Partnerships for Sustainability: Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility?

This article analyses public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the field of sustainable development from an international relations perspective with insights from the business and ethics literature. We argue that the role of business in these types of arrangements has not been sufficiently explored. After presenting three ways of approaching PPPs to stress the many facets of partnerships across the public–private divide, we discuss the emergence of these novel forms of governance from a demand side and contrast such a functionalist reading with the supply side. Then we look at the micro-economic incentives for corporations to engage in such endeavours. We develop arguments derived from the dominant literature to provide an analytical framework for explaining business participation. Finally, we discuss the role of PPPs in light of input and output legitimacy. We conclude by alluding to the emergence of an expectation-capacity gap and normative issues related to the global PPP architecture.