Business orientation toward sustainable development goals and the circular economy are relevant research topics today in business theory and practice. The waste recycling sector is a key industry in the circular economy framework for promoting clean production and environmental sustainability. This study analyzes business performance in the recycling sector, focusing on efficiency indicators. The associations between firm efficiency and risk variables were also evaluated. The study goes through several methodological stages, including a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) multistage method and (...) multivariate modeling: tobit regression, bootstrap models, and generalized method of moments (GMM). The main results indicate that the average efficiency of waste recycling firms is at a medium level. Large-sized firms achieve higher levels of efficiency than medium-sized and small firms, supporting the economies of scale hypothesis. The evidence also suggests that risk variables (rating score and Zscore) and capital structure are key determinants of firm efficiency in the waste recycling industry. (shrink)

Although interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in emerging markets has increased in recent years, most research still focuses on developed countries. The scant literature on the topic, which traditionally suggested that CSR was relatively underdeveloped in emerging markets, has recently explored the context specificity, suggesting that it is different and reflects the specific social and political background. This would particularly apply to local companies, not so much to foreign subsidiaries of multinationals active in emerging markets. Thus far, empirical research (...) that systematically documents a range of CSR activities of local companies and their performance has been scarce. This paper reports the results of a survey conducted among companies in the Mexican auto industry. CSR performance was investigated across three dimensions: environmental, labor, and community, using measures from existing research and global, ' Western' standards of practice, to identify the type of CSR activities and the level of CSR performance that exists, if at all, in the emerging-market context. Results show that local companies do engage in the type of CSR activities commonly associated with CSR in developed countries. To the extent that comparisons could be made, our findings also indicate that CSR activities and levels among the sample are comparable to what is known about CSR in developed-country settings. Moreover, six of the nine CSR dimensions are intercorrelated, which suggests that CSR in the Mexican auto parts industry is more structural than incidental. (shrink)

We ought to perform our best option—that is, the option that we have most reason, all things considered, to perform. This is perhaps the most fundamental and least controversial of all normative principles concerning action. Yet, it is not, I believe, well understood. For even setting aside questions about what our options are and what our reasons are, there are prior questions concerning how best to formulate the principle. In this paper, I address these questions. One of the more interesting (...) upshots of this inquiry is that the deontic statuses (e.g., obligatory, optional, and impermissible) of individual actions are determined by the deontic statuses of the larger sets of actions of which they are a part. And, as I show, this has a number of interesting implications both for normative theory and for our understanding of practical reasons. (shrink)

Performance is an essential part of music education; however, many music professionals and students suffer from music performance anxiety (MPA). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a 10-minute expressive writing intervention (EWI) can effectively reduce performance anxiety and improve overall performance outcomes in college-level piano students. Two groups of music students (16 piano major students and 19 group/secondary piano students) participated in the study. Piano major students performed a solo work from memory, (...) while group/secondary piano students took a sight-reading exam of an eight-measure piano musical selection. All students performed twice, at baseline and post-EWI, with two or three days between performances. During the EWI phase, students were randomly divided into two groups: an expressive writing group and a control group. Students in the expressive writing group wrote down feelings and thoughts about their upcoming performances, while students in the control group wrote about a topic unrelated to performing. Each student’s pulse was recorded immediately before performing, and each performance was videotaped. Three independent judges evaluated the recordings using a modified version of the Observational Scale for Piano Practicing (OSPP) by Gruson (1988). The results revealed that, by simply writing out their thoughts and feelings right before performing, students who had high MPA improved their performance quality significantly and reduced their MPA significantly. Our findings suggest that EWI may be a viable tool to alleviate music performance anxiety. (shrink)

The performance appraisal process is increasingly seen as a key link between employee behaviour and an organization’s strategic objectives. Unfortunately, performance reviews often fail to change how people work, and dissatisfaction with the appraisal process has been associated with general job dissatisfaction, lower organizational commitment, and increased intentions to quit. Recent research has identified a number of factors related to reactions to performance appraisals in general and appraisal satisfaction in particular. Beyond the appraisal outcome itself, researchers have (...) found that appraisal reactions are affected by perceptions of fairness and the relationship between the supervisor and the employee. To explain the relationships among these factors, the present article proposes a moral cognition perspective. We suggest that employees judge a performance appraisal from the perspective of its moral justifiability, and that appraisal reactions will be determined, at least in part, by the perceived moral justifiability of the process. The proposal was supported by results from a survey of government employees using measures of performance ratings, leader–member exchange, perceived utility, and organizational justice. (shrink)

Performance-based epistemology conceives the normativity involved in epistemic evaluation as a special case of a pattern of evaluation that can be applied to any domain where there are agents that carry out performances with an aim. This volume presents new essays by leading epistemologists who discuss key issues concerning the foundations and applications of this approach. The essays in Part I examine some foundational issues in the conceptual framework. They address questions central to the debate, including the compatibility (...) of apt success with some forms of luck; the connection between aptness and a safety condition for knowledge; the fallibility of perceptual recognitional abilities; actual-world reliabilism and reliabilism about epistemic justification; the nature of the agency required to make a cognitive success truly one's own; the basic conceptual framework of performance-based epistemology. Part II explores Sosa's epistemology of a priori intuition; internalist objections to Sosa's views on second-order knowledge; the roles that epistemic agency is meant to play in performance-based epistemology; the value that second-order reflection may have; epistemic incompetence; and the problem of epistemic circularity and criticises Sosa's alternative solution. (shrink)

A partir do horizonte de uma pesquisa mais ampla acerca do que há de próprio ao discurso filosófico, pretende-se demonstrar, neste trabalho, a necessária condição performática da filosofia em sua origem. Toma-se aqui o conceito de ‘performance’ para estabelecer uma aproximação entre a poética dos aedos gregos, estudada na primeira parte, e a matriz da investigação filosófica, iniciada por J. L. Austin, sobre os enunciados performáticos, entendidos como decisivos para a compreensão das situações de fala, e sobretudo dos enunciados (...) declarativos que neles se comunicam. Desde o enfoque dessa aproximação, o Diálogo de Platão assume, pela dramatização da fala originária de Sócrates, ao mesmo tempo a indicação da necessária preocupação filosófica com situações de fala (apropriada a toda verdadeira reflexão sobre o que enunciados efetivamente dizem) e a condição de que a reflexão filosófica, ela mesma, acontece em razão da poética do ato de dizer a verdade entendida como efeito purgativo do exame de si. Em outras palavras, o discurso filosófico precisa ser concebido, desde o paradigma do Diálogo platônico, enquanto capaz de realizar a performance do exame de si como um trabalho de reflexão sobre atos e seus contextos de fala, cujo interesse ético-político e educativo se faz finalidade última de toda análise. (shrink)

Background: The research on nursing professionals in Clinical Ethics Committees and Nursing Ethics Commissions occurs in different parts of the world; however, little information on this subject is found in the literature. Objective: This study analyzed national and international publications in relation to the participation of nursing professionals in Clinical Ethics Committees. Research design: This was an integrative review of articles published in national and international journals between 1994 and 2016 which described the participation of nursing professionals in ethics commissions. (...) Participants and research context: A total of 35 articles were selected. Discussion and conclusion for this article: The thematic categories were the need for time to discuss ethical issues; ethics committee to reduce the moral suffering of professionals; competencies required for participation; and barriers/difficulties and facilitators for implementation/ performance. It was concluded that professionals recognize the need for ethics committees to foster discussions. However, barriers hamper operation and fundamental competencies for participation. Communication of committee activities to professionals and educational activities may be major allies to improve the functioning of these committees. (shrink)

This study assesses the causal relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and financial performance (FP). We perform our empirical analyses on a sample of 179 publicly held Canadian firms and use the measures of CSP provided by Canadian Social Investment Database for the years 2004 and 2005. Using the “Granger causality” approach, we find no significant relationship between a composite measure of a firm’s CSP and FP, except for market returns. However, using individual measures of CSP, we find (...) a robust significant negative impact of the environmental dimension of CSP and three measures of FP, namely return on assets, return on equity, and market returns. This latter finding is consistent, at least in the short run, with the trade-off hypothesis and, in part, with the negative synergy hypothesis which states that socially responsible firms experience lower profits and reduced shareholder wealth, which in turn limits the socially responsible investments. (shrink)

In recent years, the microfinance industry has received a substantial amount of cross-border funding from both public and private sources. This funding reflects the increasing interest in microfinance as part of a more general trend towards socially responsible investments. In order to be able to secure sustained interest from these investors, it is important that the microfinance industry can show evidence of its contribution to reducing poverty at the bottom of the pyramid. For this, it is crucial to understand (...) under what conditions microfinance institutions are able to reduce poverty. This paper contributes to this discussion by investigating the relationship between the extent to which social capital formation is facilitated within different societies and the financial and social performance of MFIs. This focus on social capital formation is important, because in many cases MFIs use group loans with joint liability to incentivize asset-poor borrowers to substitute the lack of physical collateral by their social capital. Hence, the success of a large part of the loan relationship between MFIs and their borrowers depends on the social capital those borrowers can bring into the contract. We carry out a cross-country analysis on a dataset containing 100 countries and identify different social dimensions as proxies for how easy social capital can be developed in different countries. We hypothesize that microfinance is more successful, both in terms of their financial and social aims, in societies that are more conducive to the development of social capital. Our empirical results support our hypothesis. (shrink)

Accountability and performance optimization are intended to improve the performance of homecare services (HS) but do not seem to have the desired effects. The lack of decision-making latitude of professionals and, consequently, their insufficient responsiveness would be at fault. This responsiveness is, however, part of their role as change agent, a role that is poorly invested. This article has three objectives : 1) To synthesize knowledge on the role of accountability and performance optimization in the practice (...) of HS professionals ; 2) To describe the role of change agent ; and 3) To explore its teaching. (shrink)

Performative methods have been part of history of science research and education for at least three decades. Understood broadly, they cover every methodology in which a historian or philosopher of science engages in embodied interaction with sources, tools and materials that do not traditionally belong to historical research, with the aim of answering a historical research question. The question no longer appears to be whether performative methods have a place within history and philosophy of science research, but what their (...) place is, could, or should be; when and how they can and cannot be used. Because although performative methods are seen as an enrichment of the field by many, their growing popularity also raises questions: what new insights and challenges has the increased use of performative methods in the history of science brought us? How has it changed the field? Should performative research methods become a mandatory part of the training of new generations of historians of science? In this special issue, historians and philosophers of science for whom performative methods play an important role in their work reflect on these questions from their own research and teaching practices. (shrink)

Il s’agit de proposer une confrontation entre deux pensées au premier abord sans grand rapport : les travaux critiques de J. Butler qui mettent au jour le rôle constitutif et assujettissant de normes sociales qui passent pour naturelles d’une part et, d’autre part, la pensée stoïcienne, indéniablement naturaliste et conservatrice. C’est le motif de la performance – exhibition du Cynique ou du drag, incarnation des normes de genre chez Butler ou d’un rôle par l’acteur stoïcien – qui (...) retient notre attention. On cherche à montrer qu’une certaine articulation est possible entre des usages stoïciens et des usages contemporains de la performance et que cette articulation est féconde pour notre manière de comprendre notre actualité. (shrink)

The present study examines the prevalence, localization, frequency, and intensity of playing-related pain in a sample of high-performing young musicians. We also address coping behavior and communication about PRP between young musicians, teachers, parents, and other people, such as friends. The aim is to provide information on PRP among high-performing musicians in childhood and adolescence, which can serve as a basis for music education, practice, and prevention in the context of instrumental teaching and musicians’ health. The study is part (...) of a large-scale study with highly musically gifted participants at the national level of the “Jugend musiziert” contest. For data analyses, we used descriptive statistics, correlations, Chi2-tests, principal component analysis, Kruskal–WallisHtests, and multivariate regression. About three-quarters of the surveyed participants stated that they had experienced pain during or after playing their instrument. Female musicians were significantly more frequently affected than male musicians. With increasing age, the prevalence of PRP rises from 71 percent to 85 percent. Regarding localization of pain, results are in line with many other studies with musculoskeletal problems the most common. Furthermore, data show a clear relationship between the duration of practice and the prevalence of PRP. Our study found averages of 7:18 h/week, whereas mean values of the duration of practice vary considerably between different instruments. The variance in practice duration is very large within the different instruments. Thus, when researching PRP, it is necessary to consider both the differences between different groups of instruments in the average duration of practice as well as the very large inter-individual variation in the duration of practice within a given instrument group. While just over half of the young musicians felt they had been taken seriously, 32 percent felt that their complaints were not completely taken seriously, and 12 percent did not feel taken seriously at all. Therefore, it is necessary to improve communication and information about PRP to prevent PRP and counteract existing complaints. (shrink)

Typically, students are assessed on elements of their performance, and it is assumed that the sum of marks for these elements will be just as impressive as the students' whole performances. Examiners might expect more for a particular grade if they only see parts of the students' work separately. Two experiments were carried out comparing examiners' judgements of the grade-worthiness of candidates' A-level examination work at question paper level and at subject level. The results of both studies suggested that (...) examiners may have compensated to some extent for the different aspects of the subject tested in different question papers when they made holistic judgements, but did not make this compensation when they made question paper judgements. Tunnel vision effects are likely to be greater in the AS/A2 examinations than those found here, because the examinations will be broken into smaller parts. (shrink)

The idea of “performance legitimacy” is sometimes proposed as a distinctive source of legitimacy, according to which a government may attain legitimacy by means of good performance. Jiwei Ci (2019) argues that the idea of performance legitimacy is not merely an empirically inaccurate description of how actual existing governments seek to attain legitimacy. Rather, Ci argues that good performance can never be a source of legitimacy, even if a government can maintain good performance indefinitely. My (...) aim in this article is to evaluate Ci’s criticism of performance legitimacy. I will identify three distinct arguments in Ci’s criticism. I will argue that the first two are unsuccessful, while the third points to a problem for performance legitimacy that is serious, though perhaps not fatal. The main difficulty for performance legitimacy turns out to be its capacity to generate a type of civic agency that enables citizens to conceive of themselves as part of a single body politic, rather than a mere collection of individuals. (shrink)

‘Performative’ transcendental arguments exploit the status of a subcategory of self-falsifying propositions in showing that some form of skepticism is unsustainable. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between performatively inconsistent propositions and transcendental arguments, and then to compare performative transcendental arguments to modest transcendental arguments that seek only to establish the indispensability of some belief or conceptual framework. Reconceptualizing transcendental arguments as performative helps focus the intended dilemma for the skeptic: performative transcendental arguments directly confront the (...) skeptic with the choice of abandoning either skepticism or some other deep theoretical commitment. Many philosophers, from Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas to Jaakko Hintikka, C.I. Lewis, and Bernard Lonergan, have claimed that some skeptical propositions regarding knowledge, reason, and/or morality can be shown to be self-defeating; that is to say, they have claimed that the very upholding of some skeptical position is in some way incompatible with the position being upheld, or with the implied, broader dialectical position of the skeptic in question. Statements or propositions alleged to have this characteristic also sometimes are called ‘self-falsifying,’ ‘self-refuting,’ ‘self-stultifying,’ ‘self-destructive,’ or ‘pointless.’ However, proponents of the strategy of showing skepticism to be self-defeating have not in general adequately distinguished between two types of self-defeating proposition: self-falsifying and self-stultifying. In the first part of this paper I distinguish between self-falsifying and self-stultifying propositions, and introduce the notion of performative self-falsification. In the second part I discuss classical transcendental arguments, ‘modest’ transcendental arguments, and objections to each. In the third part I introduce two types of transcendental argument—each labeled “performative”—corresponding to two types of performatively self-falsifying proposition, and I compare them to modest transcendental arguments. (shrink)

Female genital mutilation/cutting is a multifaceted, culturally entrenched issue. In response to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ resources dealing with the issue of FGM/C, this paper explores what resources sexual ethics can provide Catholic hospitals facing this issue, specifically with regards to the request for reinfibulation. FGM/C ought not to be treated as a univocal medical practice; rather, in natural law evaluations of the act, the practice of reinfibulation ought to be separately acknowledged. Reinfibulation cannot be properly considered (...) a mutilation in the same way that other types of FGM/C are. Thus reinfibulation should be performed in Catholic hospitals for those women who request it, as part of delivering culturally competent care, justifiable through the principle of material cooperation. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of performance circuits as a means for understanding economic transactions. The concept of the performance circuits emphasizes the script-like sequences and the existing cultural narratives that enable the believable performances of those scripts. The concept of performance circuits allows for Zelizer’s concept of relational work to be applied in ethnographic studies of economic life, decomposing the constituent parts that enable the accomplishment of value in the marketplace. The paper opens with a dramaturgical (...) performance at the United States Federal Reserve and then turns to microstudies of handicraft production, modern art markets, and neighborhood branding to demonstrate how one can study market dramas unfolding, sometimes unremarkably, emotions being generated, and background representations making loosely scripted actions understandable. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 89-93 [Access article in PDF] Richard Shusterman, Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (New York: Cornell University Press, 2000) Performing Live can be ascribed to post-modern American pragmatism in its widest expression. The author's intention is to revalue aesthetic experience, as well as to expand its realm to the extent where such experience also encompasses areas alien to traditional (...) aesthetics (for example, popular art or the somatic arts of self-improvement), reaching "the art of living" and reclaiming life itself as performance.After the introduction, titled "Aesthetic Renewal for the Ends of Art: An Overture," the text is organized in two main parts: "Aesthetic Experience and Popular Art" and "Soma, Self, and Society." Along with its ambitious title, the book's organization and structure promise a consistency of approach and narrative that somewhat dissolves during the reading. Shusterman recognizes that the stylistic problems that arise from a compilation of articles spanning ten years, mixing newly written and revised articles, but appeals to the reader's appreciation of the "quality of the mix" (11). Despite this feature, he is a lucid and thoughtful communicator and his writing style is excellent.In order to propose new or revitalized alternatives for the ends of art, Shusterman [End Page 89] explores the crisis in traditional visions of art, pointing to the compartmentalization and lack of credibility in current artistic thought and practice. Hegel, Walter Benjamin, Gianni Vattimo, and Arthur Danto provide him with the philosophical arguments accounting for the modern "exhaustion" of art. He supports a dialectical approach, both naturalistic and historicist, and builds a solid case for the possibility of alternatives in aesthetic thought and experience. He proposes two alternatives in his introduction: The two most prominent sites for today's aesthetic alternatives are clearly the mass-media popular arts and the complex cluster of disciplines devoted to bodily beauty and the art of living as expressed in today's preoccupation with aesthetic lifestyles. (7) It is unclear why these alternatives are "clearly" "the two most prominent." The author does not build a case for this assumption or for the "newness" of these alternatives. The "compilation style" mentioned above and this lack of justification for one of the most original elements in the book make this text often read as a philosophical drafting board. Keeping these characteristics in mind and also critically pondering the degrees of success in the enterprise, the reader must give Shusterman credit for taking risks while suggesting concrete examples for an experiential, holistic philosophy. In this sense, he mentions (in a different context) that "all of us [are caught] between conceptual history and futuristic speculation" (145), and he takes to heart this situation and its challenges.The first chapter in Performing Live aims to redeem or revalue the concept of aesthetic experience. For Shusterman, the loss of "felt experience" in art makes the interest in this concept utterly relevant for art's survival. He traces the lineage of this aesthetic philosophy to John Dewey, Monroe Beardsley, Nelson Goodman, and Arthur Danto. Besides focusing on these authors, his analysis revisits some of the main currents of thought in Western philosophy on the topic (for example, Plato, Hume, Kant, Dickie, Adorno, Benjamin, Gadamer). He concludes that a pragmatic approach to aesthetics, applying the concept of aesthetic experience directionally (as a means towards the actual experience rather than as a definable concept), can provide new paths for revitalizing art. Throughout the text this concept is also used expansively. The post-modern justification of the proposed aesthetics, by allowing the extension of aesthetic experience to embrace "the art of living," can leave the reader wondering if Shusterman has not simply turned Kierkegaard's existentialist stages to self-realization upside down.The second chapter is an open defense of popular art, carried out by contesting the main complaints found in current art criticism. Shusterman's defense is not directed to the products of popular art, but against the claim that popular art is aesthetically "worthless." His definition of "popular art... (shrink)

This Article aimed to study this paper aims to analyze the impact of professional skills involved in singing on performers by studying the environment, conditions, and historical development when performing Italian chamber vocal music works, clarifying the skills and knowledge that performers need to master. This study will delve into the diversity of Italian chamber vocal music works and extract their unique values and characteristics. Through a mixed research method combining qualitative and quantitative research, this study helps researchers better understand (...) the characteristics and musical value of Italian chamber vocal music and provides methodological guidance for other researchers. The sample was two parts: one part consists of 110 teachers and students specializing in chamber vocal music at Italian music and other part is 200 amateurs with a strong interest in Italian chamber vocal music in society academies. They was selected by learn the art of Italian chamber vocal music performance through educational activities. The instrument for collecting data was by questionnaire Format. Analysis data by Descriptive statistics and Content Analysis. The research results were found as follows: 1.The Italian chamber vocal music has grown over time, with evolving techniques, styles, and cultural traits enriching its legacy. 2.In the 21st century, globalization and technological advances easy to promote Italian chamber vocal music. New media technologies offer opportunities for its dissemination. 3.The talent pool for Italian chamber vocal music is aging and shrinking. As a specialized art form with a limited audience, it's challenging to attract new talent. Therefore, nurturing new vocal talents is crucial. (shrink)

This article forms part of a larger project on the apocryphal Book of Judith. It explores the performative nature of turmoil, trauma and tenacity as found in the second half of the book (9–16). The impetus for this investigation is the work done by same author on chapters 1–8 of Judith while focusing on a similar theme. The present article suggests that the exploration of the turmoil, trauma and tenacity to be found in chapters 1–8 does not comprehensively represent (...) all aspects that this topic has to offer to the reader of Judith. The contention here is that the theme of turmoil, trauma and the resultant tenacity in the second half of Judith needs further scholarly exploration as it reveals contrasting developments regarding two rivalling camps, that is, the Israelites and the Assyrians. From a speech act interpretive angle, the article asserts that turmoil, trauma and tenacity are intentionally utilised as a literary tool for indicating honour (Israelites) and shame (Assyrians). This has the potential to persuade the reader to make choices and/or decisions as they read the story.Contribution: The article is a continuation of my work on the first part of Judith (chapters 1–8), as indicated. Its main contribution rests on its unique approach to investigating the performative nature of trauma, turmoil and tenacity in the second part of the book, namely, chapters 9–16. The study of the theme of trauma, turmoil and tenacity in Judith is insightful and thought-provoking and does advance research around this fascinating book. (shrink)

Social constructionist explanations of human thought and behavior hold that our representations produce and regulate the categories, thoughts, and behaviors of those they represent. Performative versions of constructionist accounts explain these thoughts and behaviors as part of an intentional, strategic performance that is elicited and regulated by our representations of ourselves. This paper has four aims. First, I sketch a causal model of performative social constructionist claims. Second, I articulate a puzzling feature of performative claims that makes them (...) seem especially implausible: the puzzle of intention and ignorance. Like other constructionists, performative constructionists are especially interested in explaining thoughts and behaviors that are widely but mistakenly believed to be the unintentional consequences of membership in a natural kind. But why doesn’t the intentional performance of a category undermine this ignorance? My third aim is to resolve this puzzle. I suggest that a plausible understanding can be found in the failure to locate one’s mental states in a causal explanation of one’s thoughts and actions. Finally, I argue that this model implies that the sorts of theories we offer of particular behaviors can create or destroy agency and responsibility with regard to those behaviors. (shrink)

Performance philosophy commences with an impertinent gesture when it describes itself as inaugurating a ‘new field’ of study. Accompanying that claim is a radical proposition that ‘performance thinks’; that it should be counted as a form of philosophising in its own right. But in what sense can performance be construed as ‘genuinely’ philosophical thought? Taking my cue from Laura Cull’s alignment of performance philosophy with Laruelle’s practice of ‘non philosophy’ – and specifically, with its introduction of (...) ‘democracy’ into the dispositives of ‘standard’ philosophy in order to challenge its transcendental authority over the Real – I argue that performance philosophy might be seen to enact a similar disruption of the ‘dispositives’ of performance theory. This, however, is only partly what is at stake in the fundamental proposition of performance philosophy, and I conclude by suggesting that a more radical proposal lies behind its assertion of a new ‘field’ – one that does not reduce it to an empirical fact, but grasps it as a radical ‘utopian’ hypothesis designed to ‘open up’ the philosophical dimension of performance itself; utopian because what performance offers – seen in this way - is not simply another system of representation but a possible democratic thought of the Real itself. (shrink)

Ankeny and Leonelli propose “repertoires” as a new way to understand the stability of certain research programs as well as scientific change in general. By bringing a more complete range of social, material, and epistemic elements into one framework, they position their work as a correction for the Kuhnian impulse in philosophy of science and other areas of science studies. I argue that this “post-Kuhnian” move is not complete, and that repertoires maintain an internalist perspective, caused partly by an asymmetrical (...) emphasis on the scientists’ side of practice. If we compare “repertoires” to alternative frameworks, like “sociotechnical imaginaries” of Jasanoff and Kim, it is evident that repertoires are missing two specific things. First, I argue that the framework needs to include the role of audience, without whom the repertoires of science are unintelligible. Second, I suggest that the framework also lacks an explicit place for ethical and political imagination, which provide meaning for otherwise mechanical promotion of particular research programs. With these modifications, Ankeny and Leonelli’s framework might fulfill its post-Kuhnian potential. (shrink)

Black beauty shame emerges within the Black/white binary because of the beauty values sedimented in our structure of feeling since African enslavement. This article does not start from white beauty as the ideal, but focuses on the performativity of Black beauty shame as it transforms or intensifies the meanings of parts of the body in Jamaica and its UK diaspora. Using extracts from interviews with UK Jamaican heritage women, the discussion illustrates how Black beauty shame produces such intensification. First, where (...) white beauty is iconic and reproduces the Black other as ‘ugly’, and second, where the Black ‘mixed race’ body is constructed as ‘other’ because of Black Nationalist discourses on beauty. The women’s critique of the shaming event shows that shame is undone through dis-identification as speakers draw on alternative beauty discourses to produce new beauty subjectivities. Dis-identification illustrates the transformational potential of shame as new Black beauty positionings emerge within the diaspora, drawing on beauty ideologies and models from Jamaica and thus destabilising the Black/white binary. (shrink)

Los Alamos, New Mexico has an enduring and complicated relationship with its past. During World War II, its residents worked to create the world’s first atomic weapons. The nuclear legacies of the Manhattan Project are global, but in contemporary Los Alamos the Project is often primarily considered a local history before a national or international one. The community’s modern identity is constructed in part through creating its history, and this article studies two children’s performances of the Manhattan Project past. (...) The plots of these performances attempt to sidestep difficult history by avoiding nuclear weapons, which can ironically raise their uncanny specter in the imagination of the audience. The community history created in the performances privileges white scientist perspectives and at times flattens differences between past and present. This performed Manhattan Project is not only domestic – Los Alamos domesticates its complex history through these performances. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to complete, and build on, the theories of a certain number of scholars, chiefly philosophers of previous generations, and a few eminent performers of classical music who all bring to the fore the essential link between music and play. Because of their impulse value and appealing character, tones and other elements of the performance could generate a playful attitude in the musicians. Play is understood as a reciprocal interaction with something that plays with (...) the player: indeed, tones play with the musicians and, reciprocally, the musicians play with them. While engaging in a musical play, they draw on the remarkable creative abilities of their body, namely its spontaneity, sensibility, and “imaginative” anticipation. The satisfaction provided by the playful activity comes, in part, from the possibility of experiencing the body as a source of creative power and original performance. (shrink)

Corporate social performance (CSP) has been studied extensively by business and society scholars, yet most approaches to its measurement continue to be ambiguous, controversial and difficult to use (Wood, 2010). In this paper, we propose measuring CSP via the construct of stakeholder satisfaction through social media like Facebook and Twitter. We argue that the satisfaction of stakeholder expectations can be explained with organizational justice theory particularly in the exercise of voice by stakeholders when they perceive unjust behavior on the (...) part of the firm. We test our idea using event study methodology with a sample of 5,440 observations from ten U.S. companies: We found some evidence for the sensitivity of social media to social events of interest to Twitter users. (shrink)

As an advanced network calculation mode, cloud computing is becoming more and more popular. However, with the proliferation of large data centers hosting cloud applications, the growth of energy consumption has been explosive. Surveys show that a remarkable part of the large energy consumed in data center results from over-provisioning of the network resource to meet requests during peak demand times. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem by constructing a dynamic energy-efficient resource management scheme. As (...) a way of saving energy as well as maintaining cloud user’s quality of experience, the scheme presents a multitier cloud architecture by configuring physical machines into two pools: a hot pool and a warm pool. Each PM is configured with a resource search engine that finds an available virtual machine for the request, and a synchronous sleep mechanism is introduced to the warm pool. To analyze the end-to-end performance of the cloud system’s service with the proposed scheme, we establish a hybrid queueing system composed of three stochastic submodels by using a matrix-geometric solution. Accordingly, the average latency of requests and the energy-saving rate of the system are derived. Through numerical results, we show the influence of the synchronous sleep mechanism on the system performance. Moreover, from the perspective of economics, we build a system cost function to study the trade-off between different performance measures. An improved Salp Swarm Algorithm is presented to minimize the system cost and optimize the sleep parameter. (shrink)

In this research, we shed new light on the empirical link between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) via the application of empirical models and methods new to the CSP–CFP literature. Applying advanced financial models to a uniquely constructed panel dataset, we demonstrate that a significant overall CSP–CFP relationship exists and that this relationship is, in part, conditioned on firms’ industry-specific context. To accommodate the estimation of time-invariant industry and industry-interaction effects, we estimate linear (...) mixed models in our test of the CSP–CFP relationship. Our results show both a significant overall CSP effect as well as significant industry effects between CSP and CFP. In conflict with expectations, the unweighted average effect of CSP on CFP is negative. Our industry analysis, however, shows that in over 17% of the industries in our sample, the effect of CSP on CFP for socially responsible firms is positive. We also examine the multidimensional nature of the CSP construct in an industry context by exploring the CSP dimension–industry nexus and identify dimensions of social performance that are associated with either better or worse financial performance. Our results confirm the existence of disparate CSP dimension–industry effects on CFP, thus our results provide important and actionable information to decision makers considering whether and how to commit corporate resources to social performance. (shrink)