Factors that influence the competitiveness of SMEs in the commerce and services sector in the Municipality of Palmira, Colombia

Drawing on the legitimacy theory framework, this study introduces an alternative means to spot “fuzzy reporting” signals as a way to detect greenwashing at the firm level. Its approach is based on the way the sustainability reporting process can mislead stakeholders after critical incidents take place. In order to do so, a single environmental incident, which took place in Colombia, is analyzed in light of what happened before, during and afterwards, with special emphasis on the corporate disclosure process performed by the company involved. Results obtained give support to the assumption that fuzzy reporting can be objectively detected not only through the analysis of annual sustainability reports, but also by tracking other forms of corporate messages when a specific concern is carefully followed. This study’s contribution is two-fold. First, it builds on the theoretical notions of greenwashing and fuzzy reporting by illustrating a practical and objective way to identify some deceiving corporate practices. Second, it empirically evaluates this approach in a sensitive context in order to obtain better illustration and prepare the groundwork for further studies.

The paper presents a review of the literature and advances a set of propositions concerning the employees’ perceptions on the relationship between human resource management and organizational performance. The study is aimed at filling the gap in the literature on the employees’ perception regarding human resource policies and the relationship to organizational performance. Social information processing theory is used to advance the insights on how employees’ performance about human resource policies may influence the organizational performance. The review indicated that there is a positive relationship between the employees’ perceptions of human resource policies and overall performance of a given organization. A positive perception of the implemented policies influences various individual outcomes such as commitment, engagement, and satisfaction, amongst others. Shared perceptions among the employees are also considered to have a considerable impact on the organizational performance. Nevertheless, there is a need for further research to explore the relationship between human resource management and organizational performance in more detail.

The crisis caused by COVID-19 has increased interest to the subject of integrity in organizations. The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the opinions on the value of honesty, broken down by the group of supervisors and subordinates during the crisis caused by COVID-19. The analysis was carried out in Poland among undergraduate students pursuing a bachelor’s degree in fields representing disciplines other than management. The paper used a survey method; 102 respondents took part in the survey. 9.52% of men and 5.00% of women in the group of subordinates did not have opinions on this subject. In the group of supervisors, the situation was completely opposite: 6.25% of women and 4.76% of men showed such a result. Significant discrepancies were noticed in the assessment of the importance of honesty depending on the education field of the respondents. The difference between the highest assessments of the importance of this value was 33.70 percentage points in the supervisors’ group, and 38.64 percentage points in the subordinates group. Drawing attention to this problem, which affects all participants of an organization to a different extent, may help to shape the ethical attitudes of future managers and, in consequence, manage their organizations better.