As Social Economy financial institutions, credit unions have traditionally been considered less efficient than traditional banking entities. However, like banks and savings banks, they have to be as efficient and competitive as possible to survive in today’s business environment, especially at times of crisis. To date, there have been very few studies on their efficiency and practically none for the crisis period. Moreover, almost all the existing studies assess only financial efficiency, without considering their social function. This study examines the (...) levels of both financial and social efficiency in Spanish credit unions as well as their main determinants during the recent crisis. We apply the two-stage double bootstrap data envelopment analysis methodology based on panel data corresponding to all the credit unions active in Spain between 2008 and 2013. The empirical results indicate that financial and social efficiency achieved an acceptable level, although on average the former was slightly greater than the latter. We also find that both age and merger and acquisition activity were positively influential on the financial efficiency of credit unions but had a significant negative effect on their social efficiency. Moreover, the regional location of such entities and the financial crisis were also crucial determinants of both types of efficiency. Our findings are therefore useful for all the stakeholders of credit unions to know if these entities have been efficient according to a double bottom line accounting in the crisis period and hence to maintain successful social management that is compatible with satisfactory financial efficiency. (shrink)

India is the emerging country with the world’s greatest social banking program, so Indian banks are required to finance the weaker sectors of society that are excluded from the traditional financial system, while also providing mainstream banking services to non-priority sectors. For social banks to promote the ethical–social management of their dual mission and to be successful in today’s business environment, they must be as efficient as possible in both dimensions of their banking activity. Whereas the efficiency of Indian banks (...) in the financial dimension is well understood, to date there has been no research evaluating their double bottom-line of achieving social and financial goals. Our study applies an innovative Network Slack-Based DEA model to evaluate how efficient Indian public banks are when providing credit to priority and non-priority sectors. We also explore the main factors influencing bank efficiency. Results suggest that Indian public banks have performed relatively well in both activities, although social efficiency has been slightly greater than financial efficiency. Moreover, their commitment to priority sector lending has not come into conflict with the profit-seeking objectives of mainstream banking services. As regards determinants of social and financial efficiency, there are countervailing forces played by regional wealth, bank size, branch networks, and rural location. Our findings are therefore useful for stakeholders of Indian public banks as they indicate if these entities have adequately managed their double bottom-line, and hence if they are critical for poverty alleviation and development in India. (shrink)

Drawing on the Agency-Stewardship approach, which suggests that manager profile may range from the agent model to the steward model, this article aims to examine how important CEOs are to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Specifically, this exploratory study proposes the existence of a relationship between manager profile and CSR practices and that this relation is mediated by the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility. After applying a mediated regression analysis using survey information collected from 149 CEOs in Spain, results (...) show that those closer to the steward model are more inclined to attach great importance to ethics and social responsibility, and to implement CSR practices in their companies. Results also provide support for the suggested mediating effect. Thus, this article extends research in understanding top managers as drivers for CSR and suggests new ways to deal with this issue empirically. (shrink)

As Social Economy financial institutions, credit unions have traditionally been considered less efficient than traditional banking entities. However, like banks and savings banks, they have to be as efficient and competitive as possible to survive in today’s business environment, especially at times of crisis. To date, there have been very few studies on their efficiency and practically none for the crisis period. Moreover, almost all the existing studies assess only financial efficiency, without considering their social function. This study examines the (...) levels of both financial and social efficiency in Spanish credit unions as well as their main determinants during the recent crisis. We apply the two-stage double bootstrap data envelopment analysis methodology based on panel data corresponding to all the credit unions active in Spain between 2008 and 2013. The empirical results indicate that financial and social efficiency achieved an acceptable level, although on average the former was slightly greater than the latter. We also find that both age and merger and acquisition activity were positively influential on the financial efficiency of credit unions but had a significant negative effect on their social efficiency. Moreover, the regional location of such entities and the financial crisis were also crucial determinants of both types of efficiency. Our findings are therefore useful for all the stakeholders of credit unions to know if these entities have been efficient according to a double bottom line accounting in the crisis period and hence to maintain successful social management that is compatible with satisfactory financial efficiency. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the connections between semiotics and biology by examining the behaviors of both humans and non-cognizant agents, using Bayesian and heuristic inference. The argument is that higher-level organisms use complex predictive reasoning to deal with uncertainty, while non-cognizant species, such as SARS-CoV-2, rely on an economy-driven heuristic to enter host cells. From this viewpoint, the current pandemic is characterized as a clash of representations resulting from the anthropocentric construction of the self, which neglects (...) the complexities of the natural world. (shrink)

Reseña bibliográfica del libre de José Antonio Marina (2022). _El deseo interminable: Las claves emocionales de la historia. _Editorial Ariel, 304 páginas. ISBN: 8434435462.

A partir de la hermenéutica de Gadamer, en este artículo se interpretan las posiciones que asumen Grondin, Zabala y Ortiz-Osés, acerca del sentido del ser como creación o dación, mediación y responsabilidad. La condición de ser y estar en el mundo es filosóficamente un modo de existencia compartida ..

Agent causation, roughly stated, is the view that an agentcan stand in direct causal relation to (at least some subsetof) her actions. Although agent causation has had a patchy reputation throughout much of contemporary analytic philosophy, it is now considered by many to be a viable theoretical option in various domains in action theory. That said, agent‐causalists continue to grapple with a number of important issues. This paper focuses on one such issue—namely, how to integrate motivating reasons into a picture (...) of agent causation. More specifically, I canvass anumber of options for the agent‐causalist, focusing inparticular on various causalist accounts, and flaggingvarious problems along the way. I conclude with some brief considerations about how to move forward. (shrink)

In recent decades, the expansion of economic activity has been accompanied by negative environmental impacts. In response, there have been dramatic changes worldwide in terms of an increased demand for environmentally friendly products and services. To achieve these eco-innovations, firms have sought to acquire knowledge and implement operational flexibility by cooperating with different agents such as universities through a value cocreation system that is also expected to enhance firms’ performance. Using a sample of 250 companies, the present paper examines the (...) role of cooperation with universities in the development of diverse environmental innovations and building operational flexibility and, through this, improving firm performance. Results show that firms that value cooperation with universities develop a wider range of environmental innovations and increase their sales and benefits. (shrink)

The objective of the communication is to analyze the characteristics of the training projects and their relationship with the development of collaborative work in Higher Education Institutions. As a study methodology, a documentary investigation was carried out, through the review and obtaining of information in various bibliographical sources. The results indicate that training projects are a strategy aimed at training people who, in a collaborative way and with the support of new technologies, are able to mobilize their knowledge in solving (...) their most pressing context problems, so they differ from traditional educational practices, in which knowledge are transmitted by the teacher in an academic manner. In conclusion, it is necessary to continue carrying out theoretical and empirical studies that enable the educational change required by the society of our time. (shrink)

The recognition of Africa's contribution to American culture involves accepting an inheritance that is both part of the national heritage and part of the identity and cultural profile of each of our societies. By encouraging its complete assimilation into our history, this recognition also involves the study and dissemination of the culture, which in turn will enable the millions of Afro-Americans spread across the continent to participate in the process of building the future. Once properly recognized, this cultural heritage will (...) produce a rich form of métissage and generate pluralism. (shrink)

In the predominant pedagogical frameworks of our days, rationalist, voluntarist or sentimentalist reductionisms are seen, from which it is about educating people regardless of their Origin and the singular and unrepeatable originality with which they have been given to existence. Faced with this anthropocentric confinement, Sensitive Education arises so that every person, regardless of their culture and creed, remains sensitive to their Origin and captures their own originality, which in the end is what they must accept and try to manifest (...) with education. When educational systems are not sensitive to the original, they develop falsehood. With the aim of consolidating the validity of the pedagogical-anthropological foundation of Sensitive Education, this study seeks to show how Edith Stein’s argument explains Sensitive Education, although Stein, after her conversion, uses explicitly Christian terminology. Stein’s direct terms serve to describe Education Sensitive to the Holy Spirit, but for those who do not start from a Christian worldview, Education Sensitive to Origin can be a more non-denominational way of approaching the Original. To achieve this objective, an analytical-synthetic methodology has been followed in which essential features of Sensitive Education are proposed and in a hermeneutic manner, arguments are extracted from the writings of Edith Stein that offer support for these essential features. In conclusion, it is sufficiently shown that Edith Stein’s thought provides a pedagogical foundation to Sensitive Education. (shrink)

The Liar Paradox is a classic argument that creates a contradiction by reflection on a sentence that attributes falsity to itself: ‘this sentence is false’. In our paper we will discuss the ways in which the Liar sentence (and its paradoxical argument) can be represented in first-order logic. The key to the representation is to use first-order logic to model a self-referential language. We will also discuss several related sentences, like the Liar cycles, the empirical versions of the Liar and (...) the Truth teller sentences. (shrink)

The dynamic development of technology, as well as of AI’s, raises the fundamental question: can machines think? At the beginning of the 20th Century the Austrian philosopher wonders about this problem and analyses it from a logical-philosophical conception which conveys the need to recognize all the elements comprised in the thought-language relationship. An ethical-religious dimension is revealed in certain uses of language. This dimension, which shows the human’s attitude to the world, stems from the human tendency to search for explanations. (...) This attitude does not extend to machines. (shrink)

El objetivo principal de este artículo es diseñar un método para detectar qué cosas pueden considerarse “evidentes”. Comienza analizando cómo se ha entendido la evidencia en la tradición aristotélica y tomista hasta nuestros días. Después del estudio histórico, en el Capítulo III se procede a realizar un análisis sistemático de la noción de evidencia y sus clases. En este trabajo se descubren diez características que aparecen en las cosas evidentes (en las ideas, en los primeros principios, nociones más básicas, pruebas, (...) etc.). Definidas estas diez características, la forma de diseñar una prueba de evidencia resulta fácil. El Capítulo IV hace esto: primero se diseña un test negativo, que muestra que algún argumento no es evidente, y luego un test positivo, que indica que alguna idea, principio, prueba, etc. parece ser evidente. Terminamos este trabajo con algunas consideraciones sobre cómo este test-dual puede funcionar en la ciencia del derecho. (shrink)

Desde la perspectiva de su coincidencia histórica con Alonso de Veracruz, se presenta el contexto de la los rasgos más sobresalientes del pensamiento de D. Báñez: su opción por una fidelidad estricta al pensamiento de Santo Tomás, y la controversia de auxiliis. Se señalan sus planteamientos acerca de la cuestión americanista, la doctrina jurídica, la configuración de la enseñanza autónoma de la Metafísica, y la doctrina por la que suele ser identificado en la historia del pensamiento: la premoción física.

Cis‐regulatory elements govern gene expression programs to determine cell identity during development. Recently, the possibility that multiple enhancers are orchestrated in clusters of enhancers has been suggested. How these elements are arranged in the 3D space to control the activation of a specific promoter remains unclear. Our recent work revealed that the TGFβ pathway drives the assembly of enhancer clusters and precise gene activation during neurogenesis. We discovered that the TGFβ pathway coactivator JMJD3 was essential in maintaining these structures in (...) the 3D space. To do that, JMJD3 required an intrinsically disordered region involved in forming phase‐separated biomolecular condensates found in the enhancer clusters. Our data support the existence of a relationship between 3D‐conformation of the chromatin, biomolecular condensates, and TGFβ‐driven response during mammalian neurogenesis. In this review, we discuss how signaling (TGFβ), epigenetics (JMJD3), and biochemical properties (biomolecular condensates nucleation) are coordinated to modulate the genome structure to guarantee proper neural development. Moreover, we comment on the potential underlying mechanisms and implications of the enhancer‐mediated regulation. Finally, we point out the knowledge gaps that still need to be addressed. (shrink)

El presente escrito explora algunas ideas marxianas sobre la subjetivación a partir de sus críticas a la filosofía hegeliana y posthegeliana, de Feuerbach y Stirner fundamentalmente, y presenta su humanismo materialista y crítico como un nuevo modo de subjetivación que se sitúa en la estela del materialismo sensualista ilustrado, retomado por Feuerbach, que combina con la idea del hombre trabajador, el homo faber, utilizador de instrumentos, de la tradición de la economía política inglesa, al que dotan de la capacidad revolucionaria (...) retomada de los primeros románticos y de la tradición de los comunistas y socialistas utópicos. (shrink)

Intentamos mostrar las líneas genealógicas de la estructura político-legislativa de nuestro mundo a través del juego dinámico entre el Derecho natural y el Derecho positivo. El Derecho positivo de los grupos sociales implica una pseudo especialización cultural social a partir de la cual se justifica la guerra. Por otro lado, la guerra nunca puede ser justificada a través del derecho natural. En este trabajo vamos a tratar los siguientes aspectos: I) La Historia del Derecho Natural; II) El inicio de los (...) valores sociales de la época moderna en el lusnaturalismo clásico español: Fr. Suárez, Fr. de Vitoria y Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas; III) Valores como la libertad, la igualdad y la solidaridad (propiedad común). (shrink)

Este artículo, escrito en clave autoetnográfica, recupera mi experiencia en la práctica de las artes marciales. Se centra en el sentido que adquiere la masculinidad entre mis compañeros varones, así como en mi propia transformación física y emocional para integrarme a ese mundo estrictamente masculino. El escrito supone un doble desafío: en la dimensión teórica, pretende arrojar luz sobre el sentido de la práctica marcial y su relación con las regulaciones que orientan la masculinidad. En la dimensión metodológica, busca explorar (...) la práctica de la autoetnografía, sus potencialidades y limitaciones. (shrink)

The starting point of this essay is the logical and political objection that Plato made against poetry, as well as the lack of distinction that he specified as the origin of its dangerousness, and which modernity converted into the condition of possibility of certain egalitarian forms of sensible experience and material life. I will then look at the function that the historical rearticulation of Platonic idealism has fulfilled from Romanticism to the present day in the age-old dispute between philosophy and (...) poetry, paying particular attention to the different readings of Hölderlin and Mallarmé carried out by Benjamin, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Agamben as symbols of the disfiguration of poetry. I will analyze the tension between sense and sound as the founder of an irreducible territory that opens a potentiality indicative of its political force. Lastly, I will turn to Michel Foucault’s The Government of Self and Others to analyze the function of messianism and parrhesia in the contemporary characterization of political poetry and its conflicts with the truth-telling of philosophy. (shrink)

The acoel worm Symsagittifera roscoffensis, an early offshoot of the Bilateria and the only well‐studied marine acoel that lives in a photosymbiotic relationship, exhibits a centralized nervous system, brain regeneration, and a wide repertoire of complex behaviors such as circatidal rhythmicity, photo/geotaxis, and social interactions. While this animal can be collected by the thousands and is studied historically, significant progress is made over the last decade to develop it as an emerging marine model. The authors here present the feasibility of (...) culturing it in the laboratory and describe the progress made on different areas, including genomic and tissue architectures, highlighting the associated challenges. In light of these developments, and on the ability to access abundant synchronized embryos, the authors put forward S. roscoffensis as a marine system to revisit questions in the areas of photosymbiosis, regeneration, chronobiology, and the study of complex behaviors from a molecular and evolutionary perspective. (shrink)

Se trata de una reseña del libro de Modzelewski, Helena Emociones, educación y democracia: una proyección de las emociones de Martha Nussbaum. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México, 368 páginas. ARK: ark:/s18537960/i6kdhhn1o.

We distinguish two pathways people may follow when they join violent groups: compliance and internalization. Compliance occurs when individuals are coerced to join by powerful influence agents. Internalization occurs when individuals join due to a perceived convergence between the self and the group. We searched for evidence of each of these pathways in field investigations of former members of two renowned terrorist organizations: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and Islamist radical groups. Results indicated that ex-fighters joined LTTE for reasons (...) associated with both compliance and internalization but that ex-fighters joined Islamist radical groups primarily for reasons associated with internalization. When compliance occurred, it often took the form of coercion within LTTE but involved charismatic persuasion agents within Islamist groups. This evidence of systematic differences in the reasons why fighters enter violent groups suggests that strategies for preventing radicalization and fostering de-radicalization should be tailored to particular groups. (shrink)

This article discusses how the Generic Model of Psychotherapy can help to organize the psychotherapy research and the knowledge in the field of psychotherapy for sexual and gender minority patients. The structure that this traditional model provides is a good foundation for research in this field, inasmuch as it stresses macrosocial aspects that determine the provision of psychotherapy and contextualize its outcomes. Each one of the main components offered by the Generic Model of Psychotherapy – Determinants, Processes, and Consequences – (...) are specified for psychotherapy with LGBT patients and are illustrated with a selection of already existing research in the field of sexual minorities; they are also stress areas marked by knowledge gaps that require future developments. In addition, a set of questions are proposed to contribute to new studies, including the clinical implications that can be derived from this model. (shrink)

El estudio tuvo por objetivo establecer el grado de influencia de ideogramas cuaternarios como técnica didáctica en la formación de relaciones conceptuales matemáticas en universitarios. Los datos fueron recogidos con pruebas validadas para contrastar las hipótesis estadísticas de diferencia de medias con el estadístico z en un diseño cuasiexperimental con pre y posprueba, y grupo de control. Se concluyó que el uso de ideogramas cuaternarios influye significativamente en la formación de relaciones conceptuales, considerando un nivel de confianza del 95%, lo (...) que indica que la técnica didáctica promueve el desarrollo de habilidades conceptuadoras matemáticas desde una perspectiva constructivista. (shrink)

El presente estudio se desarrolla en el Noroeste Mexicano en las comunidades de Guaymas, Sonora y Puerto San Carlos, Baja California Sur. Dichas comunidades representan la pesca de sardina en el Proyecto denominado “Unidades Representativas de Producción del Sector Pesquero y Acuícola” desarrollado por SAGARPA y AGROPROSPECTA, tiene como objetivo evaluar políticas públicas gubernamentales en los mercados agroalimentarios de México incluyendo recientemente al sector pesquero. Los datos se obtuvieron por medio de paneles de información donde participaron productores de sardina con (...) datos del año 2008 como base. Se trabajó con el modelo de simulación económica desarrollado para México MexSim, desarrollado en la Universidad de Texas A&M con indicadores económicos de ingresos y egresos. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que la URP desarrollada en Guaymas proyecta una situación económica general favorable para la actividad, mientras que la URP desarrollada en San Carlos proyecta una situación económica general moderada. (shrink)