María Dolores Vidal Salazar

Are Companies Maintaining Social Benefits in Constrained Economic Times

Is the current economic crisis affecting the quality of working conditions within organisations? More specifically, due to constrained economic times, are organisations reducing the social benefits they offer to employees? This study analyses whether the current situation of economic downturn influences companies’ maintenance of social benefits. Social benefits are those remunerations in kind voluntarily offered by an employer beyond what is established in labour laws and collective agreements.

La Internalización de los Costes Medioambientales en el transporte de mercancías por carretera

Spanish Abstract: La literatura existente senala el potencial de una gestion medioambiental proactiva en la generacion de capacidades organizativas relativas a la minimizacion de costes. Ademas, durante los ultimos anos, la internalizacion de los costes medioambientales de la industria transportista ha sido un importante objetivo en el desarrollo de politicas publicas. Por tanto, este trabajo pretende, en primer lugar, conocer como las empresas transportistas pueden afrontar el reto de la creciente importancia adquirida por los denominados costes medioambientales mediante la internalizacion de los mismos y, en segundo lugar, mostrar como las empresas medioambientalmente proactivas estaran capacitadas para afrontar con exito futuras regulaciones mas estrictas en relacion a la problematica presentada. Para ello, se ha efectuado un analisis cualitativo basado en una empresa transportista espanola. La conclusion principal obtenida es que, a pesar de que en la actualidad las empresas transportistas afrontan el reto medioambiental conforme los requerimientos legales van apareciendo, una actitud medioambiental proactiva refuerza un crecimiento empresarial sostenible.English Abstract: Prior literature noted the potential that advanced environmental management might have in the generation of valuable organizational capabilities regarding costs minimization. Moreover, during last years, one of the most important objectives in the development of transport public policies has been the internalization of environmental costs. Thus, this study attempts, firstly, to analyze how transport companies could successfully face the challenge of internalising environmental costs, and second, to highlight how the existence of an environmentally proactive pattern of behaviour might reduce the environmental costs on transport sector. In doing so, a case study in the Spanish industry of road freight transport has been elaborated. Despite nowadays companies face the environmental challenge not beyond legal requirements, the main conclusion of this study is that an environmentally proactive behaviour reinforces the sustainable development of companies.

LA INNOVACIÓN FRUGAL ECOLÓGICA: CÓMO HACER MÁS CON MENOS EN TIEMPO DE CRISIS

ABSTRACT: The dependency of society on the proper functioning of critical infrastructures (CIs) has been highlighted in recent natural disasters. CIs set up complex and interconnected systems and consequently a failure in one CI can spread to other dependent sectors. This represents a further complication in the response phase of a crisis, increasing the impact of natural disasters and seriously affecting the welfare of society. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the important role that CIs have on the overall impact of a crisis caused by a natural disaster. For that reason, a simulation model that represents the effects of a storm on an island with interdependent CIs has been developed. This simulation model has a pedagogical purpose in which the effects of applying different crisis management policies can be simulated. This type of simulation models can represent different crisis scenarios. Therefore, simulation models can be used by crisis managers allowing them to identify good practices and areas of improvement in face of future events. Keywords: Crisis management, impact evaluation, critical infrastructure, interdependencies, natural disaster.