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An experiment was conducted to examine the relationship between patient satisfaction and patients’ freedom to choose a physician and the outcome of a health service encounter. Each construct with corresponding measurements is discussed and their relationship with satisfaction is reviewed. Hypotheses were developed and tested for each relationship using pencil and paper scenarios of a patient’s service encounter at a health clinic. The study yielded four major findings. First, patients who experienced a good health outcome were significantly more satisfied than patients who received a bad health outcome. Second, patient satisfaction ratings differed significantly only in the bad outcome condition, suggesting an outcome bias. Third, patients who were given the freedom to select a physician but did not receive their chosen physician were least satisfied. Fourth, there was no difference in satisfaction between patients who had a choice of physician and those who did not.

This paper analyses the relationship between environmental protection and mid‐term financial performance, focusing on when and why this relationship is positive. In particular, the paper disaggregates environmental protection, differentiating between environmental management practices, environmental proactivity and environmental performance of the organization.

It uses a cross‐section survey of 2,122 Welsh companies to gather information on environmental practices and the FAME database to collect data on accounting based financial performance. The paper uses regression analysis on a combined sample of 186 Welsh companies to evaluate the effect on performance of different types of environmental protection.

On the whole, the results show a positive effect of environmental protection on mid‐term financial performance. Financial performance has a positive and significant correlation with environmental proactivity and with environmental performance, while it has a no significant relation with environmental management.

The paper presents a disaggregated analysis of environmental protection in relationship with financial performance. The paper differentiates between environmental management practices, environmental proactivity and environmental performance of the organization in their relationship with financial performance.

The paper's first objective is to develop a new conceptual framework for categorizing and designing cognitive, specifically comparative, causal mapping (CCM) research by building upon the theory‐centred and participant‐centred perspectives. The second purpose is to enable the discerned study prototypes by introducing a new CCM software application, CMAP3.

Building upon the distinction between theory‐centred (etic) and participant‐centred (emic) perspectives in social research, we first construct and apply a conceptual framework for analysing and categorising extant CCM studies in terms of their objectives and basic design. Next, after noting the important role and basic tasks in computerising causal mapping studies, we present a new CCM software application.

The theory‐centred/participant‐centred perspectives define four causal mapping study prototypes, each with different goals, basic designs and methodological requirements. Noting the present lack of widely accessible software for qualitatively oriented CCM studies, we introduce CMAP3, a new non‐commercial Windows application, and summarise how it is used in related research.

The framework and the studies representing the prototypes demonstrate the versatility of CCM methods and that the proposed framework offers a new, systematic approach to categorising and designing CCM studies. Research technically, CMAP3 can support the defined CCM‐prototypes, based on a low‐structured (inductive/qualitative) or a structured (nomothetic/quantitative) methodological approach/stance, and having therefore different needs of data acquisition, processing, coding, aggregation/comparison, and analysis of the emerging aggregated cause maps’ contents or structure.

It is commonly recognized that nowadays social and environmental aspects, and more in general stakeholder‐linked issues, are becoming important corporate value drivers. It is also rather clear that there is a strong relationship between the stakeholder perspective, and a number of concepts and practices which stress non‐financial aspects of company behavior, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability (including environmental respect) and corporate governance. Accordingly, these emerging company ideas and attitudes are here collectively referred to as “stakeholder responsible (or oriented) approaches”. Current literature underlines especially the importance and difficulty of the implementation phase of these approaches into concrete company actions, but it seems to largely overlook the impact which the reporting process has on both concepts and company actions. On the basis of an ad hoc theoretical model, the paper aims to provide insights into the “active role” subtly played by stakeholder oriented reporting (e.g. social and sustainability statements) in constructing and reconstructing the underlying ideas and notions, as well as company behaviors in this field. Far from being a neutral and “passive” mirror of the stakeholder responsible approach implemented, reporting carries out the decisive and constitutive role to concretize abstract concepts, and to visualize company activities, thus substantially contributing to make the “stakeholder philosophy” viable and reliable.