Michael W. Toffel’s research while affiliated with Harvard Medical School and other places

... To change the likelihood of a reaction, an intervention could entail removing environmental obstacles, changing a workstation, or introducing antecedents or consequences (Jones et al. 2024). Both during and after the intervention, the frequency, length, or rate of the target behaviour is recorded, and its results are compared to baseline assessments of behaviour (Viswanathan et al., 2024). ...

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Impact of Safety Behaviour in Labour-Intensive Sectors using Behaviour-Based Intervention

... It is worth highlighting that recent research has increasingly focused on the influence of climate change on business performance and sustainability [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Notably, a significant body of work has been dedicated to assessing the effectiveness of decarbonization in the oil and gas industry [6,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. ...

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A Comprehensive Model for Evaluating Ecological and Economic Effectiveness of Decarbonization Measures for Russian Oil and Gas Enterprises

... These issues have mostly been studied from an ex-post impact evaluation perspective. More closely related to our paper, a recent study by Johnson et al. (2023) applied ML methods to micro-level establishment data on workplace injuries to evaluate alternative targeting strategies to random inspection allocation. They find that machine predictions could have prevented as many as twice as many injuries by targeting inspections to workplaces with the highest expected averted injuries. ...

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'Dead Man Working': A Place-based Approach to Workplace Fatalities

... In recent years, sustainability has become a critical driver of corporate strategy, compelling firms to integrate environmentally responsible practices into their operations [1,2]. Heightened regulatory pressures, growing consumer awareness, and the rising costs of environmental degradation have created an urgent need for manufacturing firms to adopt green practices [3,4]. In response, companies are increasingly prioritizing a Green Competitive Advantage (GCA) and Green Innovation (GI) as essential components of long-term competitiveness in an environmentally conscious market. ...

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Influence of a Green Environmental Orientation on Corporate Sustainable Performance in the Manufacturing Sector

... Of the two studies using more rigourous observational research methods, Lafuente and Abad [8] found that OHSAS 18001 adoption was associated with significant reductions in the work injury rate and that the cumulative OHSAS 18001 experience (additional years of certification) was also associated with significant reductions in the work injury rate. Meanwhile, Viswanathan et al. [11] using a propensity score-matched difference-in-differences (DiD) model, found that firms with OHSAS 18001 certification experienced 20% fewer injury and illness cases than the matched control group over the follow-up period. ...

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Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System Certification Program on Firm Work Injury Rates in Alberta, Canada

... Researchers suggest that auditing systems are inherently ineffective due to the voluntary nature of implementation and compliance [26,32,33]. Likewise, researchers note the limitations of auditing practices for identifying labor rights violations in factories [34,35]. Further evidence supports this position by pointing out that both Tazreen Fashion in Bangladesh and Ali Enterpris in Pakistan passed audits shortly before disastrous factory fires kills hundreds of workers [31,36,37]. ...

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Establishing Operational Norms for Labor Rights Standards Implementation in Low-Cost Apparel Production

... Moreover, institutional investors are increasingly calling for robust climate risk disclosures. This demand enhances the quality of climate governance and streamlines investment decisions, ultimately reducing adverse selection costs and narrowing the bid-ask spread (Flammer, Toffel, & Viswanathan, 2021;Ilhan, Krueger, Sautner, & Starks, 2023). ...

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Firm-level climate risk exposure, ESG disclosure and stock liquidity. Evidence from textual analysis

... In Zusammenarbeit mit Lieferbetrieben und NGOs können Beschaffungs-und Forschungsprojekte zur Reduktion von Umweltbelastungen sowie von negativen Sozialwirkungen und Auswirkungen auf Tierwohl in den Lieferketten durchgeführt werden. Innovative Ansätze, beispielsweise zur Erhöhung der Wassernutzungseffizienz, zur Schließung von Nährstoffkreisläufen oder zur Förderung der Bodenfruchtbarkeit und Biodiversität in den landwirtschaftlichen Produktionssystemen können in der Praxis untersucht werden (Garnett, 2011;Springmann et al., 2018), ebenso wie Projekte, die beispielsweise die flächendeckende Umsetzung von Arbeitssicherheitsstandards, Einhaltung von Mindestlöhnen oder Tierhaltungsstandards fördern (Harvey & Hubbard, 2013;Short et al., 2020). Die erfolgreichen Produktionsmethoden können anschließend als Anforderungen an die Lieferbetriebe gestellt werden. ...

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Wie nachhaltig sind die deutschen Supermärkte? - Systematische Bewertung der acht umsatzstärksten Unternehmen des Lebensmitteleinzelhandels nach Umwelt-, Sozial- und Tierwohlkriterien

... Recent research found that shareholder pressure positively and significantly influences ESG disclosure [34]. Firms that voluntarily reveal climate change risks following ecological shareholder activism receive a better post-disclosure valuation, implying that investors value values transparency about firms' exposure to climate change risks [55]. [56] research also indicates that shareholders' pressure significantly influences environmental information disclosure. ...

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Stakeholders and sustainability disclosure: Evidence from an emerging market

... All over the world, regulatory authorities face the same problem: It is impossible to control everything (Blanc 2012). Despite the billions in annual regulator budgets (European Court of Auditors 2020; US 2021), each regulator has limited resources, and most have a budget sufficient to inspect only a small part of the regulated entities (Johnson et al. 2020). As an alternative to overcome this limitation, risk-based regulation is widely discussed in international publications. ...

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Risk-based regulation for all: The need and a method for a wide adoption solution for data-driven inspection targeting