We examine the equity valuation effect of press releases of upgrades or downgrades reflected in the Covalence Ethical Quote, an index ranking the ethical performance of multinational firms. The index is updated quarterly and is comprehensive enough to include 45 criteria reflecting working conditions, impact of product, impact of production, and company institutional impact. Thus, it captures many dimensions of firms’ ethical performance that are not accounted for in previous research. Our research encompasses a joint test of the value relevance (...) of the index itself and the impact of ethical reputation on a firm’s value. We find first a significant causal relationship between stock market reactions and changes in the CEQ. Specifically, disclosures of positive changes in firm ethical performance cause increases in firm value. Second, cross-sectional analysis indicates a positive association between changes in firm ethical performance and both its financial performance and its financial reporting quality. Collectively, these results suggest that the CEQ conveys information that is useful to investors. Further, corporate measures taken to increase ethical performance are associated with positive benefits to shareholders. Finally, investors have concluded that good news about their firms’ efforts to be ethical is worth the cost. (shrink)

The term sustainability has become one of the most significant in the current era. It seems to be ubiquitous amongst academics, politicians, business leaders, media personnel and even the general public. It is no exaggeration to state that it is considered all over the world to be the most pressing issue to be addressed for the long-term future of the planet and its inhabitants. The topic is of course complex, and the issue of sustainability is under much debate as to (...) what it actually is and how it can be achieved, but it is completely certain that the resources of the planet are fixed in quantity and, once used, cannot be reused except through being reused in one form or another. At present, much of the discourse of sustainability has focused upon the environment and in particular upon climate change and the effects that this is having. Thus, the discourse has tended to be about mitigation. Sustainability of course requires all three pillars of the triple bottom line—economic, environmental and social—to be addressed. Indeed, it might be considered that the effects upon the social, and how we choose to live our lives, might well be the most profound effect of achieving sustainability. This book therefore focuses upon some of the many aspects of the social and how we can adapt our lives to accommodate the requirements of sustainability. it therefore takes a very different approach to addressing the issues of sustainability, while of course not ignoring the other pillars. This book therefore sets out to examine various aspects of the changes to personal, corporate and institutional behaviour which may have to come about in our search for sustainability. It is tended to address some of the issues and how they are being dealt with in various parts of the world. As always, our concept is to share best practice and thereby enrich both the discourse and our progress towards sustainability. Thus, we focus upon the current situation while also considering the extent to which the focus is changing so much that we need to think about new approaches to our understanding of behaviour and differing effects in practice. The international origins of the contributors to this book make this an original contribution taking some of the best ideas from around the world. This book therefore addresses these issues from a perspective not generally addressed by researchers, or even by politicians and the press. It therefore provides fresh perspectives upon the important issue of our common future. As always, this approach is based on the tradition of the Social Responsibility Research Network srrnet.org (a worldwide body of scholars with membership of several thousand), which in its 20-year history has sought to broaden the discourse and to treat all research as inter-related and relevant to business. This tradition has always been to explore the subject widely and to seek relevant solutions, while also sharing best practice. This book is based primarily upon some of the contributions from the network at our recent conference and shows both commonality and diversity in approaches and effects. (shrink)

A person's action is coerced when he is forced into the action. He does not act voluntarily and coercion is a kind of unfreedom. However, it is not easy to understand how someone can be forced into doing something against his will. At least in many instances of purported coercion, it appears that the individual being coerced could have resisted the person who coerced him. Since he did not resist, his action must have resulted from his own choice. Hence, the (...) appearance of his having been forced is a mere illusion.Aside from pathological cases which will only be briefly mentioned at the end of this paper, I believe that most people, most of the time can resist attempts to coerce them. Nevertheless, on many occasions they do not resist, and so perform actions they do not want to perform. The following is an attempt to explain how this is possible. (shrink)

This paper examines the market response to the events leading up to the passage of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to explore whether investors value mandatory human rights disclosures of conflict mineral usage. Using a sample of 3639 US registrants from January 1, 2008 to September 30, 2014, we document a significant negative stock market reaction to the passage of the Act. Using a sample of 1206 filers, we also find a negative market (...) reaction to conflict mineral disclosures under the Act. The market reaction is more negative and limited to companies that source their minerals from the DRC and adjoining countries, companies with prior records of human rights violations, and companies with ambiguous disclosures. However, the market appears to reward firms that use risk-mitigation strategies. This paper provides preliminary evidence that the mandatory disclosure of conflict mineral information on Form SD poses a threat to firms’ legitimacy, resulting in a net cost to investors. The results of this study provide economic justification for companies with poor records of conflict mineral sourcing to improve their practices for the purpose of avoiding the high costs that will arise if they are forced to disclose human rights abuses related to conflict mineral use. (shrink)

This study investigates how Human Factors is applied when designing and developing Immersive Visual Technologies, including Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, and Virtual Reality. We interviewed fourteen people working at different organizations, that develop IVT applications in the Nordic region. We used thematic analysis to derive themes from the interviews. The results showed an insufficient knowledge and application of HF in IVT development, due to the lack of awareness of both scope and significance of HF, resource allocation strategy, market inertia, stakeholder's (...) involvement, standardization of HF application and IVT uses, and technology maturity. This situation could be improved by allocating experts, adjusting organizational strategy to balance resource allocation, training developers and user organizations to raise awareness and to encourage co-creative design and knowledge sharing, create a sense of ownership amongst stakeholders, and ensure the usefulness of the technology to the user's work. (shrink)

To rethink history from the perspective of an economy of affects as they are engendered by beings ousted from the definition of the human, I will draw on two Caribbean texts, Anim-Addo's Imoinda: Or She Mho will Lose Her Name and Philip's Zong!. This essay discusses how these two Caribbean texts counterwrite the history of the slave plantation by staging and embodying the work of what I call an affective memory drawn from the history of the black subject as a (...) history of absence and reconstellated in the present as a history of being and community. This affective memory represents the being of the ‘living corpse’ and her making of a community as the subject of a new polity, the polity of decolonised beings. By drawing on these texts to demonstrate how they write the history of spectres, ruins and other communities, I discuss affective memory not as the absolute possession of a body, but rather as the alienated property of the body that can be reclaimed only by a community that, precarious and tentative as it is for it is a community of slaves and subjected bodies, remains the only promise for the future. (shrink)

Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence (1973) is now half a century old. Despite being one of the most important contributions to poetic theory in the twentieth century, its formal innovations remain understudied. This essay examines the legacy of The Anxiety of Influence through its relationship to the burgeoning genre of "creative criticism." It looks at the various formal genres that Anxiety draws on, including the fragment, parable, and manifesto, before providing a theory of creative criticism through a reading of (...) Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson. (shrink)

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 2, Page 163-168, April 2022. Citation is an essential practice in scientific publishing. However, it is mandatory that citing the sources in a scientific work is performed in a proper manner. Manipulating citations in research articles is one form of academic research misconduct that violates publication ethics. Citation manipulation simply occurs for the purpose of increasing the number of citations of a researcher or a journal. Unfortunately, there has been a growing trend for this type (...) of misconduct recently and this has not received much attention from the science community. The most effective solution to prevent the growth of such unethical practices is for reputable journals to impose stricter rules on reference evaluation criteria in order to emphasize on the appropriateness of the citations. (shrink)

This paper provides a stagewise overview of the important issues that play a role in technology adoption and use in organizations. In the current literature, there is a lack of consistency and clarity about the different stages of the technology adoption process, the important issues at each stage, and the differentiation between antecedents, after-effects, enablers, and barriers to technology adoption. This paper collected the relevant issues in technology adoption and use, mentioned dispersedly and under various terminologies, in the recent literature. (...) The qualitative literature review was followed by thematic analysis of the data. The resulting themes were organized into a thematic map depicting three stages of the technology adoption process: pre-change, change, and post-change. The relevant themes and subthemes at each stage were identified and their significance discussed. The themes at each stage are antecedents to the next stage. All the themes of the pre-change and change stages are neutral, but the way they are managed and executed makes them enablers or barriers in effect. The thematic map is a continuous cycle where every round of technology adoption provides input for the subsequent rounds. Based on how themes have been addressed and executed in practice, they can either enhance or impair the subsequent technology adoption. This thematic map can be used as a qualitative framework by academics and practitioners in the field to evaluate technological changes. (shrink)

Delivering healthcare to undocumented migrants presents a complex challenge for healthcare providers. Integrating advocacy efforts into their daily practices can be ambiguous in practical terms, stemming from the intricate task of addressing the health needs of this population while simultaneously advocating for their health rights within the constraints imposed on them. This study seeks to consolidate findings from literature regarding the advocacy approaches employed by healthcare providers and the correlated ethical challenges. We conducted a scoping review of qualitative literature by (...) systematically searching four databases—PubMed/Medline, Embase, Cinahl, and Cochrane Library. For developing our search strategy, we employed the PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) scheme. Our analysis followed the qualitative content analysis approach proposed by Graneheim and Lundman. 30 studies were included, revealing a cumulative total of 915 healthcare providers who were interviewed. A total of 30 themes emerged comprising 14 advocacy approaches and 16 ethical challenges. Healthcare providers made a deliberate choice to engage in advocacy, responding to injustices experienced by undocumented migrants. The spectrum of advocacy initiatives varied, encompassing voluntary participation in healthcare provision, empathetic understanding, and healthcare-focused strategies. We also identified numerous correlated ethical challenges, necessitating healthcare providers to strike a balance between their eagerness to assist and their professional competence, respect the autonomy of undocumented migrants, and establish trust with them. These findings not only offer practical guidance for healthcare providers to enhance accessibility to healthcare services for undocumented migrant patients but also foster awareness of the ethical challenges that may arise in their advocacy roles. (shrink)

At the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo lamented in a sonnet dedicated to his beloved Vittoria Colonna that in carving sculptures he could only create dead forms and was powerless to create a living thing:My pitiful geniusIn love can call forth only death.

Yes, Aristotle was named ‘Aristotle’. I want to show that since ‘Aristotle’ is a proper name, this is true by definition. My theory of proper names is a version of Russell's, a theory that a name is equivalent in meaning to definite description which single out the individual, if there is one, to which the name refers. Braithwaite at one time said that the proper name ‘Aristotle’ meant the description ‘the individual named “Aristotle” ’. This theory, which makes it contradictory (...) to suppose that Aristotle was not named ‘Aristotle’ I will argue is the correct one. This will involve some explanation of what naming is, which I will carry out in the first two sections. My contention is that naming is an activity that can be done either explicitly or non-explicitly. And names can be conferred either on the basis of acquaintance or by associating the name with descriptions. (shrink)

The JDC-Lauder International Jewish Youth Camp at Szarvas is perceived today as the single most important Jewish outreach and educational programme in Central and Eastern Europe; it is a key symbol for Eastern European Jewry. This paper emphasises the importance of the Szarvas camp, located some 170 km south-east of Budapest in Hungary, and its impact on the Jewish identity of the Central and Eastern European participants, and by extension on their families and communities. It focuses on the camp’s history (...) and uniqueness, and includes a personal experience on the part of the author, who has participated in the camp and today works as its programme director. It also presents information collected from those who have experienced the impact of the camp on themselves. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 225 Seiten: 141-165.

Features essays that invoke Said and Derrida's rigorous examination of humanism in their works. This title addresses social change and political questions and analyze humanism from the perspectives of literature, theory, history, gender studies, and art in view of the intellectual impact of Said and Derrida on contemporary philosophy.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Social bots are computer programs that act like human users on social media platforms. Social bot detection is a rapidly growing field dominated by machine learning approaches. In this paper, we propose a complementary method to machine learning by exploring bot detection as a model checking problem. We introduce Temporal Network Logic (TNL) which we use to specify social networks where agents can post and follow each other. Using this logic, we formalize different types of social bot behavior with formulas (...) that are satisfied in a model of a network with bots. We also consider an extension of the logic where we explore the expressive power of including elements from hybrid logic in our framework. We give model checking algorithms for TNL and its hybrid extension, and show that the complexity of the former is in p and the latter in pspace. (shrink)

This research investigated the organizational challenges related to the development and implementation of virtual reality technology for operation in a conservative heavy machinery industry. The incorporation of a VR solution for heavy machinery equipment enhanced the safety and convenience of operation under dangerous work conditions. However, the development and implementation processes faced challenges. Furthermore, the adoption of the solution by users was perceived to be slower than anticipated. We aimed to explore the main challenges that the developer organization faced and (...) how it also influenced user organizations. Due to the exploratory nature of the research, qualitative analysis was chosen, interviews were conducted, and thematic analysis was applied. The themes and subthemes were identified and discussed. The results showed the existence of challenges related to technology maturity, managerial challenges regarding communication and support coordination, workload, and multiple stakeholder management. The findings emphasize the importance of attending to the existing and potential organizational challenges before and throughout technological innovation. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed, and a future research agenda is suggested. (shrink)

Recent advances in life-sustaining treatments and technologies, have given rise to newly-emerged, critical and sometimes, controversial questions regarding different aspects of end-of-life decision-making and care. Since religious values are among the most influential factors in these decisions, the present study aimed to examine the Islamic scholars' views on end-of-life care. A structured interview based on six main questions on ethical decision-making in end-of-life care was conducted with eight Shiite experts in Islamic studies, and was analyzed through deductive content analysis. Analysis (...) revealed certain points in Islamic views on the definition of death and the persons making decisions about end-of-life care. According to the participants, in addition to conventional criteria such as absence of heartbeat and respiration, the irreversible cessation of human voluntary acts are considered to be the criteria in establishing death. The participants also recognized physicians as the main authorities in verifying signs of death. Furthermore, it was emphasized that life preservation and continuation of care must be sensible, and the patient can request not to have death-prolonging procedures started or continued. In the view of participants, patient's autonomy cannot be the sole basis for all measures, but Islamic ethical and jurisprudential principles should be relied upon to make correct and sensible decisions whether to continue or stop terminal patients' care. Final decisions should be made by a team of experts, and physicians must be at the center of such a team. Finally, we suggest that a guideline in keeping with Islamic norms on human life and death, purpose of life, God's will, boundaries of man's authority, and the physician's ethical duties and obligations should be developed. (shrink)

In the social system in which we live, the imaginary body is an able body. The able-bodied has established its representations that are the projection of able-bodied subjectivities. In this article, I shall develop a psychoanalytic account of physical disability in order to open up possibilities for physical disability beyond its position as castrated able-bodiedness. Psychoanalysis, to me, is not simply about `sexuality' but can also be used to analyse `physical disability', indeed all aspects of one's subjectivity. I shall propose (...) the appropriation of psychoanalysis to explain the construction of subjectivity, whether it is able-bodied or disabled, in a way that parallels the male/female dichotomy. Within an able-bodied symbolic, in which the able-bodied takes itself as normal, it is impossible to illustrate the multiplicity of the disabled. Following Irigaray's claim that the ambiguity of female sexuality does not conform to male notions of sexuality, I argue that the complexity of the disabled body does not fit into the able-bodied norm of subjectivity. In this article, I shall be drawing on Irigaray's theory of embodied subjectivity to argue against the masculine-able-bodied-based theory of subjectivity found in Freud and Lacan. (shrink)