The concept of sustainable and responsible (SR) investments expresses that every investment should be based on the SR investor’s code of ethics. To a large extent the allocation of SR investments to more sustainable companies and ethical practices is based on the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) scores provided by rating agencies. However, a thorough investigation of ESG scores is a neglected topic in the literature. This paper uses Thomson Reuters ASSET4 ESG ratings to analyze the influence of firm (...) size, a company’s available resources for providing ESG data, and the availability of a company’s ESG data on the company’s sustainability performance. We find a significant positive correlation between the stated variables, which can be explained by organizational legitimacy. The results raise the question of whether the way the ESG score measures corporate sustainability gives an advantage to larger firms with more resources while not providing SR investors with the information needed to make decisions based on their beliefs. Due to our results, SR investors and scholars should reopen the discussion about: what sustainability rating agencies measure with ESG scores, what exactly needs to be measured, and if the sustainable finance community can reach their self-imposed objectives with this measurement. (shrink)

Joining voluntary thematic initiatives can be a means for firms to legitimate their business activities. However, a lack of review mechanisms could create incentives for free-riding. This might lead to a lower commitment to the initiative’s principles, and endanger its credibility and its members’ legitimacy benefits. Whether members of voluntary initiatives take advantage of the opportunity to free-ride has not been analyzed empirically so far. To fill this research gap, we investigate from an institutional theory perspective the actual implementation behavior (...) of publicly listed signatories of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI) in a difference-in-differences and an event study setting. Our empirical results show that, after signing, UN PRI signatories integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria in their business activities significantly more than matched non-signatories from the financial sector, indicating the commitment of the signatories to the UN PRI in general. However, while the initial members show a high commitment to the initiative’s principles by increasing their ESG integration performance substantially, new members signing at a later stage of the initiative perform considerably less, and thus undermine the UN PRI’s credibility. We derive implications for voluntary thematic initiatives to avoid such a development. (shrink)

Die Rede von einem Zwischenreich des Dialogs deutet hin auf den intermedHi. ren Charakter des Dialogs, in dem zwischen uns zustande kommt, was keiner fur sich zustande brachte. Stehen wir immer schon im Dialog, so ist fur jeden der Weg zu sich selbst nicht der kurzeste, sondern der langste, er ginge durch die Welt sowohl wie durch die Andern. Dieser Gesichtspunkt ist keines wegs selbstverstandlich, doch selbst dort, wo er sich Geltung ver schafft, wird er vielfach verdunkelt durch die Verwandlung (...) von Verschiedenem in Gegensatzliches, wenn etwa interpersonale Be ziehung und soziale Verhaltnisse, interpersonales Ereignis und anonyme Prozesse und Strukturen, personliche Umkehr und so ziale Veranderungen gegeneinander ausgespielt werden. N eigt die sogenannte Philosophie des Dialogs dazu, reine zwischenmensch liche Beziehungen abzulosen von der mundanen und sozialen Wirklichkeit, so tendiert ein Denken, das von Geschichte und Gesellschaft ausgeht, dahin, einzig den konkreten Entwicklungs gang einer Menschheit in Rechnung zu stellen. Der wechselseitig erhobene Vorwurf, man verliere sich hierin der AuBerlichkeit des Offentlichen und der bloBen Geschichte, man fluchte sich dort in die Innerlichkeit des Privaten und des bloBen Augenblicks, ware dann nur der Ausdruck dafur, daB entweder das Ganze ohne das Urspriingliche oder das Ursprungliche ohne das Ganze gesucht wird. Was hier auseinanderstrebt, nicht nur in der Theorie, sondern auch in der Lebenspraxis, sind zwei Weisen des mitmenschlichen Umgangs. (shrink)

We discuss conceptual change and progress within mathematics, in particular how tools, structural concepts and representations are transferred between fields that appear to be unconnected or remote from each other. The theoretical background is provided by the frame concept, which is used in linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence to model how explicitly given information is combined with expectations deriving from background knowledge. In mathematical proofs, we distinguish two kinds of frames, namely structural frames and ontological frames. The interaction between (...) both kinds of frames can drive mathematical interpretation. We first discuss two examples where structural frames (formulaic notation) drive ontological development (the discovery or exploration of mathematical objects). The development of Boole’s Boolean algebra may at first appear as a metaphorical treatment of the (then) new area of logic. In the analysis, we discuss how different (aspects of) certain algebraic frames change in the transfer, how arising difficulties are solved and overall argue that Boole uses the numerical algebra frame as a research template for the discovery of a system for calculations in logic. Following Ifrah, we analyse the discovery of zero as an extension to the number ontology as driven by the development of notation. Both structural and ontological frames are extended and simplified as notation progresses. Finally, we discuss two examples from infinite combinatorics, viz. topological graph theory, and one foundational issue. In both examples, the two simultaneous frames about one object are maintained independently. They motivate different research questions, but may also fruitfully interact: shifting between multiple synchronously maintained perspectives acts as a motor of innovation. The analysis shows how a frame-based approach allows to model how different perspectives drive mathematical innovation because they highlight different aspects, questions and heuristics. (shrink)

This paper investigates the interaction between semantic theories for cp-laws (roughly, laws that hold “all things equal”) and metaphysical theories of kinds in the special sciences. Its central conclusion is that cp-laws concerning kinds behave differently from cp-laws concerning non-kinds: “ravens are black” which concerns the kind corvus corax, behaves differently from from “albino ravens are white” which concerns the non-kind grouping of albino ravens. I argue that this difference is in the first instance logical: the two sorts of cp-laws (...) give rise to different inferential patterns. I draw two further conclusions. The difference in logical behavior poses a severe problem for extant semantic theories of cp-laws, and: we cannot elucidate the distinction between kinds and non-kinds by suggesting that only kinds can appear in laws. (shrink)

Twenty Years After Communism is concerned with the explosion of a politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, and it takes a comparative look at the ways that communism and its demise have been commemorated by major political actors across the region.

We further develop a previously introduced method of constructing forcing notions with the help of morasses. There are two new results: (1) If there is a simplified (ω 1 , 1)-morass, then there exists a ccc forcing of size ω 1 that adds an ω 2 -Suslin tree. (2) If there is a simplified (ω 1 , 2)-morass, then there exists a ccc forcing of size ω 1 that adds a 0-dimensional Hausdorff topology τ on ω 3 which has spread (...) s(τ) = ω 1 . While (2) is the main result of the paper, (1) is only an improvement of a previous result, which is based on a simple observation. Both forcings preserve GCH. To show that the method can be changed to produce models where CH fails, we give an alternative construction of Koszmider's model in which there is a chain 〈X α | α < ω 2 〉 such that X α ⊆ ω 1 , X β — X α is finite and X α — X β has size ω 1 for all β < α < ω 2. (shrink)

O presente artigo parte da ideia de que o conceito conservativo-conservador de sustentabilidade (das florestas, por exemplo) deve ser combinado com a ideia inovadora do ponto de vista tecnológico-económico de desenvolvimento sustentável de modo a formar uma ideia reguladora de desenvolvimento sustentável de acordo com um modelo aberto. O artigo defende que o desenvolvimento tecnológico pode do ponto de vista cultural e institucional ser organizado de uma forma mais sustentável, muito embora a sustentabilidade não tenha ainda sido alcançada tanto do (...) ponto de vista global como do regional Para o autor do artigo, o conceito de desenvolvimento sustentável não é umo ideologia, muito embora a mera consideração anti-capitalista do problema da protecção do ambiente seja passivel de ser considerada ideológica. Segundo o artigo, a protecção da sobrevivencia não deve ser vista em oposição ao desenvolvimento sustentável, antes sim como um ponto de partida para a busca de estratégias e caminhos de sustentabilidade no desenvolvimento. Uma ética do futuro tampouco constitui modelo unilateral relativo às questões de etica ambiental. Segundo o autor, porém, todos os componentes do modelo de desenvolvimento sustentdvel tornados em conjunto resultam numa heuristica de busca pragmáticamente suficiente e adequada para todo e qualquer processo de desenvolvimento sustentável. /// The conservative-conserving concepts of sustainability (offorestry, f. e.) should be combined with the innovative technological-economical idea of sustainable development to a regulative idea of sustainable development according to an open model. Technological development could institutionally-culturally be organised in a more sustainable way, even though sustainability has neither globally nor regionally been reached yet. The concept of sustainability is no ideology, while a simple anticapitalistic view of the conservation problem appears to be ideological itself. Protection of survival is not to be seen as an opposition to sustainable development, but as a starting point of search-strategies for paths of sustainable development. Future-Ethics is also not an explicit search-pattern for questions of ecological ethics. The combined components of the model of sustainable development result in a pragmatically sufficient Search-Heuristics for sustainable development. (shrink)

We define a generalized notion of rank for stable theories without dense forking chains, and use it to derive that every type is domination-equivalent to a finite product of regular types. We apply this to show that in a small theory admitting finite coding, no realisation of a nonforking extension of some strong type can be algebraic over some realisation of a forking extension.

We show when and how the principles of efficiency and equality might come together and develop a fairness compensation test. A simple graphical analysis is applied. If the faimess compensation test fails, efficiency and justice cannot be fully connected and a wedge between econornic and faimess principles remains. We discuss how important this wedge might be and argue that there does not exist a principle of systematic antinomy between efficiency and faimess.

Models are one of the main instruments in scientific research. Disciplines have developed a different understanding of the notion, function and purpose of models. We thus need a systematic approach in order to understand, to build and to use models. This book gives an insight into the disciplinary modelling know-howand is a starting point to develop a general model approach that generalises and combines for an interdisciplinary use.

The spatial organization of genomes is becoming increasingly understood. In mammals, where it is most investigated, this organization ties in with transcription, so an important research objective is to understand whether gene activity is a cause or a consequence of genome folding in space. In this regard, the phenomena of X‐chromosome inactivation and reactivation open a unique window of investigation because of the singularities of the inactive X chromosome. Here we focus on the cause–consequence nexus between genome conformation and transcription (...) and explain how recent results about the structural changes associated with inactivation and reactivation of the X chromosome shed light on this problem. (shrink)

Im Rahmen der interdisziplinären DFG-Forschungsgruppe Medien und Mimesis wird die Kulturtechnik der Mimesis vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Medienforschung untersucht. In diesem Band sind die Ergebnisse zum Thema Metamorphosen der Fläche versammelt. Es geht darum, Trompe-l'OEils im Rahmen eines Prozesses der medialen Ausdifferenzierung als Figuren zu entziffern, durch die die zweidimensionale Buchseite (z. B. der mittelalterlichen Stundenbücher ) selbstreferentiell ihre Flächigkeit thematisiert, und die - indem sie zwischen Zwei- und Dreidimensionalität changieren - medial hybride Räume erzeugen. Damit wird die Beziehung (...) von Zeichen und Dingen, Bildraum und Bildträger ambivalent und dadurch gerade hochinteressant für medientheoretische Reflexionen. (shrink)

We present a modal logic for the class of subset spaces based on discretely descending chains of sets. Apart from the usual modalities for knowledge and effort the standard temporal connectives are included in the underlying language. Our main objective is to prove completeness of a corresponding axiomatization. Furthermore, we show that the system satisfies a certain finite model property and is decidable thus.

The idea that the city is a place of sin and immorality is as old as urban civilization. But what does anti-urban thought mean in societies which are highly urbanized under the conditions of modern industrialism? Furthermore, is anti-urbanism in the interwar period a German völkisch phenomenon––one further stride on Germany's special path? And what does rural revival and the “back-to-the-land” cult mean in Great Britain, the first industrial nation? This article seeks to provide an answer to these questions by (...) exploring anti-urbanist writing between the End of the First World War and 1933 in Germany, and 1939 in Britain. By examining two key themes it aims to show that the clear-cut distinction between German anti-urban radicalisation and the West's coming to terms with urbanisation cannot be maintained. Firstly, attention will be drawn to the ambiguity of perceptions of the city in the writings of “Conservative Revolutionary” authors in the Weimar Republic. In a second step, the British “back-to-the-land” movement, whose advocates developed comprehensive anti-urban third-way theories in the interwar period and were themselves part of a broader popular anti-industrial movement and a rural cult throughout the 1930s, will be examined. (shrink)

Search engines have become an integral part of our Internet use. They shape the way we look at the world, they provide orientation where there is none; but the maps they draw are too often hijacked by commercial interest. Search engines are less black box than black foam; functional decoupling, parasite technologies, and the embedding in the greater context of culture and society render the search act subject to overdetermination. Control is thus diluted into a dense network of human and (...) non-human “actants” and the power of the search engine is located in a control zone rather than a control center. In order to shift power back to the public, this paper proposes the concept of “symmetry of confidence”, a new relationship between search engine companies and their users. (shrink)

This research commentary proposes a conceptual framework for studying big tech companies as “technical systems” that organize much of their operation around the mastery and operationalization of key technologies that facilitate and drive their continuous expansion. Drawing on the study of Large Technical Systems (LTS), on the work of historian Bertrand Gille, and on the economics of General Purpose Technologies (GPTs), it outlines a way to study the “tech” in “big tech” more attentively, looking for compatibilities, synergies, and dependencies between (...) the technologies created and deployed by these companies. Using Google as example, the paper shows how to interrogate software and hardware through the lens of transversal applicability, discusses software and hardware integration, and proposes the notion of “data amalgams” to contextualize and complicate the notion of data. The goal is to complement existing vectors of “big tech” critique with a perspective sensitive to the specific materialities of specific technologies and their possible consequences. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of Bernhard Waldenfels’s responsive phenomenology for the discipline of cultural anthropology or ethnology, insofar as it understands itself as the “science of the culturally Other”. It discusses Waldenfels’s own engagement with ethnology and shows the compatibility of his approach with discussions within the discipline. The intertwining of ownness and alienness that is central to Waldenfels’s account of experience is applied to the problem of culture in ethnology. This leads to an acknowledgement of a domain (...) between cultures, a genuine interculturality, as the fundamental field of ethnological research, which, however, can only be addressed through indirect forms of representation. Such forms are identified in the practice of ethnographic citation, and through a reinterpretation of Horace Miner’s classical satire “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, thus demonstrating the possibility of a prospective “responsive ethnology”. (shrink)

We live in a technologically mediated lifeworld and culture. Technologies either magnify or amplify human experiences. They can change the ways we live. Technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different cultures. German phenomenologist philosopher Bernhard Irrgang for than 2 decades engaging with the questions, what role does technology play in everyday human experience? How do technological artefacts affect people's existence and their relations with the world? And how do instruments, devices and apparatuses produce and (...) transform human knowledge? Along with Albert Borgmann, Larry Hickman, Don Ihde, Carl Mitcham, Hans Poser, Peter-Paul Verbeek, Walther Zimmerli, contemporary German philosopher of technology Bernhard Irrgang provides a useful vocabulary for understanding the ways we relate to technology and to the world through technologies in different cultures. (shrink)