Steven A. Rochlin

Gun Behind the Door? Ballot Initiatives, State Policies and Public Opinion

One of the most important claims about the ballot initiative process is that it makes government more responsive to public demands than would be the case under a purely representative system. This argument has not been subject to systematic empirical analysis. In this article we test the claim about enhanced responsiveness, drawing on public opinion data, measures of policy outcomes, and information about the use of initiatives in the American states. We find no evidence that initiatives make for more responsive policy. We also offer a number of possible explanations for this conclusion.

Next Generation Corporate Citizenship

Jack Welch, dubbed “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine in its review of twentieth-century business, multiplied General Electric’s market value from

Engaging Employees as Citizens

14 to

Corporate Citizenship in den USA

400 billion during his twenty-year tenure and he continues to be a role model for business leaders and certainly many of our M.B.A.s.1 But one of his final acts, according to insiders, “left GE looking like a bunch of slugs.”

Taking Citizenship to Market

In the United States, three of four young people entering the workforce want to work for a company that “cares about how it impacts and contributes to society.”1 The Center has, for several years, characterized employees as the “missing link” in corporate citizenship. Now a case is being made to engage employees under the mantle of citizenship—and in progressively deeper and more meaningful ways. Here’s why.

Integrating Citizenship into the Business

In a 2005 survey of U.S. business executives, 81 percent said corporate citizenship needs to be a priority for companies and 69 percent said the public has a right to expect good corporate citizenship. Yet the international perception is that U.S. businesses, supported and sheltered by laissez-faire policies, laws, and limited public interest, are resisting - if not actively undermining - corporate citizenship.

New Rules for Business Success

“Jella Sujatamma is part entrepreneur, part healthcare advisor, part hygiene specialist and part mother in the many villages in India that she visits each week as Unilever India’s most successful Shakti Amma [empowered mother],” writes Janet Roberts, one of the student reporters at the October 2006 Business and World Benefit Conference in Cleveland.1 Sujatamma, a weaver who lost work when synthetic fabrics came into popularity, became the first Shakti entrepreneur on

Defining What Matters

200 in borrowed startup funds. Even though she is illiterate and needs the assistance of her husband and sons to perform inventory and accounting functions, her sales have made her the top-earning woman in Project Shakti (between Rs. 3,000 and 7,000 or U.S.

Leading Next Generation Companies

60 to

Conclusion Can Business Step Up

150 per month). “Sujatamma takes her unique knowledge about what the village needs and which products are in demand,” adds Roberts, “and couples it with important lessons in sanitization and hand washing to prevent diarrhea and in the vital role that iodine, consumed through salt, can have in nurturing healthy children.”