External Discipline Research Articles

Study on the role of the Civil Code in promoting the legalization of corporate social responsibility

The promulgation and implementation of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China provides important legal guarantees for corporate social responsibility (CSR), marking a key process in the transformation of corporate responsibility from moral constraints to legal norms. This paper takes the Civil Code as the core to explore its role in promoting the legalization of corporate social responsibility. First, by analyzing the provisions related to corporate responsibility in the Civil Code, this paper reveals its requirements for the standardization of corporate social responsibility. Secondly, this paper points out that the Civil Code promotes enterprises from self-discipline to external discipline through institutional innovation and responsibility balance mechanism, and promotes the balance between economic development and social interests of enterprises. At the same time, this paper analyzes the impact of the Civil Code on corporate social responsibility and the challenges faced by enterprises in the process of implementation, such as the lack of awareness of legal obligations by enterprises and the legal risks when fulfilling their responsibilities, etc. Finally, this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions for further improving the legalization of corporate social responsibility, including strengthening legal supporting measures, improving corporate responsibility awareness and government-driven policy support, in order to provide theoretical support and practical reference for promoting the legalization of corporate social responsibility in my country.

Is bank misconduct related to social capital? Evidence from U.S. banks

This paper investigates whether social capital plays a role in bank misconduct. I find that U.S. banks headquartered in high social capital areas, as indicated by the strength of civic norms and the density of social networks, are less likely to face enforcement actions. This relationship is mainly significant for banks with a lower geographical dispersion, and it holds in a range of robustness and endogeneity tests. I run additional tests based on classes of enforcement actions, components of social capital, risk-taking, opacity, and bank actions associated with negative externalities. These tests deliver results supporting the idea that the main findings of the paper are largely attributed to social capital's role in exerting external discipline, which prevents misconduct-related behaviors in banks.

О когнитивном компоненте дисциплинированности личности (на примере курсантов образовательных организаций ФСИН России)

Introduction. The development of professionally important qualities of an employee of the penitentiary system is possible on the basis of such characteristics as responsibility and self-discipline being developed well in advance of the employee’s joining the service. Little attention is paid to the discipline of the Federal Penitentiary Service employees either at the stage of recruitment or during their service.
 The purpose of the article is to reveal the significance of the cognitive component in the structure of self-discipline, which reflects the individual’s ideas about discipline, understanding its meaning and role during job activity, as well as the differences between discipline and self-discipline.
 Methods. The study used general scientific research methods aimed at data collection, analysis, systematisation and generalisation, in particular, the analysis of literature sources directly related to the study of discipline as an individual characteristic; the authors’ questionnaire and the “Awareness” scale in the “Discipline” methodology (V. P. Pryadein, N. V. Vorotnikova) were used to test the cognitive component.
 Results. The analysis of the cognitive component of self-discipline of the cadets of the Academy of FSIN of Russia and Vladimir Law Institute of the Federal Penitentiary Service allowed to determine that the cadets are generally characterised by a scientific understanding of self-discipline. They realise the necessity of discipline, and also divide internal, motivated discipline and external, demonstrative discipline. The findings correspond to the data of the scale “Awareness” of the methodology “Discipline”.
 The cadets perceive discipline as something given, being ordered them, but it is not connected with the idea of maintaining discipline as a characteristic of their personality. Based on the obtained results, we can draw conclusions about the importance of diagnostics of the cognitive component of personal discipline, as the revealed predominance of the cadets’ understanding of the importance of external discipline over internal discipline should be considered as a negative moment, which will certainly affect their future professional activity.

The usage of Eval and Viyankol verbs in Purananuru

Purananuru is one of the books from the Ettuttokai Compilation from the eighteen books of classical Tamil literature Patinen Merkanakku. There are four hundred poems in Purananuru from various poets and various places compiled as one book. Among Tamils, life was surrounded by four main concepts which are virtue, wealth, love, and the afterlife, this book of poems consists of three main concepts of life as stated before which is a virtue, wealth, and the afterlife as related to Puram. Everyone knows that the word Puram means outside. But here the word has been used in the position of the external discipline of life. It was called Purananuru because it has four hundred poems about external discipline. This study aims to find the verbs of eval and viyaṅkol in these four hundred poems and explain their usage. The researcher has found such verbs in twelve places from the poems and explained their usage. He has also analyzed the connection between the sections of the poems (tinai) and the words found earlier. The origin and meaning of eval and viyankol verbs found in poems were discussed in this study. It has been found that these types of verbs are included in these poems that praise the king and the hero because the verb eval and viyankol appear only in the Munnilai. Through this research, the researcher has learned the duty of analyzing such morphological elements with Tamil literary texts and bringing the needs of the times to the youth through this literature. Ancient Tamil language can also be studied through this along with vocabulary.

Aid allocation: The role of external discipline

Using an approach that embodies an explicit tradeoff between need and governance considerations, we propose an optimal aid allocation formula. We first assume exogenous, then endogenous governance. In the former case, a central concept is need-adjusted aid effectiveness while in the second case the donor has policing instruments under the form of monitoring and sanctioning capacities. We show that external disciplining has two advantages when the donor is sensitive enough to poverty intensity: (1) to cater to poor countries to a greater extent than is possible when local governance cannot be influenced by external forces, and (2) to respond (non-perversely) to improvements in the local governance of a country by raising its aid share. In institutionally weak countries, populations should welcome wisely applied donor's discipline as a way not only to get access to financial support but also to constrain their elites to refrain from abusing their position excessively. Imposing discipline when the release of externally-provided development funds is at stake seems more acceptable than aid directed to the explicit purpose of combatting corruption.

Competition Laws and Earnings Management: International Evidence

By exploiting the staggered change of legal competition environment in 58 non-US countries, we find that firms tend to inflate their earnings when domicile countries adopt stricter competition laws, which supports the pressure effect of legal competition threats. This result is robust to alternative measures of earnings management and stringency of competition laws. Consistent with the pressure effect, firms inflate more earnings under the strength of competition laws when they face greater external pressure, receive less external discipline, and lack information transparency. In cross-country analyses, the impact of competition laws on earnings management is mitigated in IFRS countries and countries with stronger investor protection. By showing earnings inflation under stricter competition laws, this paper finds a side effect of competition laws on firms in terms of financial reporting quality, which should not be neglected by policymakers.

The relation between product market competition and corporate tax avoidance: evidence from Korea

This paper examines the effect of industry-wide factors such as product market competition on corporate tax avoidance. Specifically, the focus is on the moderating role of corporate governance in the relationship between product market competition and tax avoidance. To conduct an empirical analysis, a sample of public companies that are listed on the Korea Stock Exchange between 2001 and 2016 is used. The empirical analyses provide the following results. First, product market competition is negatively related to tax avoidance. This suggests that competitive markets act as external corporate governance mechanisms and discipline managers to decrease tax avoidance. Second, the negative association between product market competition and tax avoidance is more pronounced for firms with more independent board of directors and firms with audit committee consisting of outside directors. These findings imply that product market competition acts more effectively when the firm has strong internal governance mechanisms such as board independence and audit committee independence. Therefore, we provide evidence on a complementary relationship between internal governance system and product market competition. The results may be of interest to policy makers and regulators like Korea Fair Trade Commission and Financial Supervisory Service who are involved in promoting market competition, monitoring any abuse of market dominance, and supervising financial reporting quality.

Komix Kountermedia (1969)

Komix Kountermedia (1969) Paul Buhle (bio) The left's mixed reception of komix is an interesting indication of the schism in attitudes toward "cultural" subjects. On the one hand, people (including myself) who believe that the New Left is only part of a much larger but more amorphous New Culture movement are excited to see an intrusion of radical attitudes into "classic" areas of modern cultural mediations, comic strips and comic books. For us it seems to promise another step toward an organic New Left, striking root in society deeper than the level of "politics" (elections, parties, organizers, etc.). On the other hand, plenty of fine, even good-humored radicals are plainly distressed to see the excitement over komix. One extreme tendency is indicated by a dealer in an old, CP1-oriented bookshop who wrote me that all "underground culture" was a new attempt by the ruling class to pervert the revolutionary threat. Another attitude, common among people sympathetic to New Left culturalists, is that komix are interesting but not to be taken seriously in political terms. A considerable amount of the confusion about komix and the Left is their newness, with their power to irritate or excite. Not that comic strips have been unknown to the Left: […] strips have often been offered in radical newspapers. But komix, as drawn by such creative figures as Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and S. Clay Wilson, are more than simply instruments of the political New Left; they are subversive thrusts at capitalism coming right out of a popular cultural tradition. More fundamentally the confusion about komix is symptomatic of important misunderstandings about the meanings of culture and art. Bourgeois aesthetics has taught us that these are leisure customs associated with the elites, rather than organic aspects of popular life. But if we accept the anthropological definition of culture as the style and organization of day-to-day life and of art as a more self-conscious aspect of "culture," then content, how popular "culture" and "art" relate to the values of society's rulers, becomes an important political question. As yet, the New Left does not possess the theoretical tools for a full analysis of modern (hence popular) culture and its art forms (certainly less for comic strips than for America's other two distinctive contributions to twentieth[-]century culture, cinema and jazz) under capitalism in the mass market epoch. Certain critics, like Marshall McLuhan, attempt to deal with the meaning of various communications media in contemporary society; but for me the most heuristic insights were offered by Walter Benjamin over thirty years ago, in his brilliant essay, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." [End Page 199] Art, as Benjamin understood, could not remain unchanged in the new era of mass production and consumption: its traditional "aura," its quality of craft refinement, of rarity, could not survive immersion in the "commonness" of the masses and their daily life. Indeed, to have any élan or vitality of its own art had to associate with and give expression to the existence of the people it now reached. Even poor Mona Lisa, reproduced on a half million postcards, simply wasn't enough. But Benjamin also perceived that the possibilities for new, popular arts were emerging at the very time when bourgeois cultural vitality had long passed even though their nascent forms were subject to the influences of the decay of bourgeois culture. On the other hand, he believed that the threads of art's resurrection nevertheless lay within popular culture, in the essence of their content that commercial forms so thoroughly violated. In one sense, the forms of the future were stretching their fingers into a repression-ridden present; in another, mass art, like politically revolutionary forces, was maturing, as it had to, within the womb of the culture of the old social system. Drawing on Benjamin's notion of a cultural dialectic, I have noted three rough stages for the emerging modern art form which also describe the growth of twentieth[-]century comic strips: (1) an early, highly experimental period, where the very newness of the form permits the "eccentric" visionaries to practice before internal and external discipline are fully introduced; (2...

Labor Unions and Strategic Corporate Governance: A Balancing Act of Managerial Power and Entrenchment

This paper investigates the relation between unionization and corporate governance practices in the United States. For unionized firms to secure a bargaining advantage, we hypothesize that the managers of such firms will optimally adopt structures of governance that increase managerial power and reduce the influence of union-backed dissident shareholders. We also recognize a force that counteracts this power and avoids provoking quiet-life problems, leading to the prediction that unionized CEOs will face greater exposure to external discipline. Using a matching estimator with hand-collected data on unionization, we find support for our hypotheses. Unionized firms are more likely to unify the CEO and chairman positions, avoid voting mechanisms that increase the power of minority shareholders (e.g., cumulative voting), and install a younger board (i.e., a board that is more exposed to the market for directors). Finally, unionized firms are less likely to adopt golden parachutes and/or poison pills.

Internal and external discipline: The effect of project leadership and government monitoring on the performance of publicly funded R&D consortia

R&D consortia have been regarded as an effective means of promoting innovation. Several R&D consortia obtain public financial support, which may affect their governance structure and performance. This study investigates the governance mechanisms of publicly funded R&D consortia and their effects on innovation performance. Few studies have empirically addressed the effect of project monitoring by the government or the role of project leadership in R&D consortia. Focusing on a major support program for R&D consortia in Japan and using a sample of 251 firms that participated in publicly funded R&D consortia from 2004 to 2009, we empirically confirm that to enhance firms’ innovation performance, both project leadership as internal discipline and government monitoring as external discipline matter. Our results show that project leadership directly improves firms’ innovation performance, while firms’ commitment indirectly affects performance. Project leadership and government monitoring also promote commitment. Furthermore, both factors are complementary: consortia members are more willing to accept a project leader’s coordination under stricter government monitoring.

Optimal management of transfers: An odd paradox

This paper considers the case of transfers when there exists a serious preference misalignment between the transfer-maker and the beneficiary. The former wants to reduce the resulting outcome discrepancy through monitoring the use of the transfer and imposing sanctions if the discrepancy proves too large. This external discipline combines with the ’internal discipline’ of the beneficiary, that is his/her willingness and ability to align with the transfer-maker's objective. Besides the fact that costs of monitoring and sanctioning are explicitly taken into account, an original feature of our model specification is that the two types of discipline are made comparable: they can be summed up to obtain an aggregate discipline. We show that, paradoxically, an (exogenous) improvement of internal discipline may be over-compensated by a fall of external discipline. Total discipline thus decreases and the discrepancy between the actual and the intended uses of the transfer increases instead of decreasing. Another consequence is that the relationship between internal and total disciplines may be non-monotonic. These results generalize to alternative specifications of the basic model.

Private Governance, State Regulation and Employment Standards: How Political Factors Shape their Nexus in Australian Horticulture

The global weakness of collective bargaining and state regulation has spawned growing interest in employment protection though private governance. However, scepticism about the efficacy of unsupervised codes of conduct has triggered debate about external discipline through state regulation. This article seeks to contribute to debates about the processes that shape the nexus between private governance and state regulation. It is based on an empirical study of Australian harvest workers who formally benefit from state regulation of pay and occupational health and safety (OHS). However, industry changes have undercut standards. Product market pressures from supermarkets squeeze growers’ capacity to pay. Also, the labour market is increasingly supplied by vulnerable Asian temporary migrants (including undocumented workers), often supplied to growers by unscrupulous temporary work agencies. While pay and OHS practices vary, many harvest workers are exploited. Nor is private governance (which extends to horticulture through the codes of conduct of supermarkets and peak temporary work agency bodies) effective. All codes draw their standards from minimum legal employment conditions, and all possess loopholes allowing breaches to escape attention and rectification. In 2015, media and political attention fell on the working conditions of temporary migrants in horticulture. Government inquiries found evidence of exploitation, but were divided over solutions. Progressive politicians (influenced by unions) favoured stronger state enforcement powers and temporary work agency licensing. Conservative politicians (influenced by business lobbies) claimed these steps would fail, and favoured the status quo. Political reform therefore stalled. This study illustrates the importance of political processes in shaping the nexus between state regulation and private governance. In this case, a political stalemate leaves both regulation and governance deficient. Lacking protection from either source, harvest workers remain exposed to exploitative employment conditions.

Internal governance and performance: Evidence from when external discipline is weak

The effect of internal governance on performance is potentially economically significant but may be difficult to identify because of confounding external disciplinary mechanisms and the endogenous choice of internal governance. This study addresses those difficulties by using nonprofit hospitals as an economic environment with muted external disciplinary mechanisms and instrumenting for internal governance using governance spillovers of geographically local public firms. Using patient heart attack survival as a measure of performance, a one standard deviation increase in strength of internal governance reduces the probability of death by 0.89 percentage points after controlling for patient characteristics.

Board Independence, Audit Quality and Earnings Management: Evidence from Egypt

Using a unique dataset for Egyptian firms, we investigate the relationship between board independence, audit quality and earnings management. We test whether firm-level corporate governance provisions matter in an emerging market setting characterised by weak legal enforcement and inadequate external discipline by the market for corporate control. Our results cast doubt on the notion that a higher ratio of non-executive members is associated with lower earnings management. We find that the effect of board independence on earnings management practices is contingent on the levels of ownership held by executive directors and large shareholders, as well as the composition of audit committee. In addition, the results are consistent with the view that high-quality auditors are effective in reducing earnings management. JEL Classification: M41, M48

Governance provisions and managerial entrenchment: evidence from CEO turnover of acquiring firms

Prior studies often assume that governance provisions restrict shareholders’ ability to replace managers. However, current literature provides no evidence that firms with a higher number of provisions are less likely to replace the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). This study examines CEO replacements following corporate acquisitions. It documents that CEOs of firms with a higher number of provisions make acquisitions that generate negative bidder returns; however, these CEOs are less likely to leave the firm within 5 years after the acquisition announcement. Some evidence suggests that governance provisions reduce the sensitivity of CEO turnover to bidder returns. The results are especially strong for the staggered board indicator. Acquiring CEOs of firms with staggered boards are less likely to leave the firms voluntarily; they are less likely to face internal discipline from the board of directors and external disciple from the takeover market. Thus, the deployment of governance provisions weakens internal and external discipline of acquiring CEOs.

The ideal of Lebensraum and the spatial order of power at German factories, 1900–45

Industrial experts, engineers and architects in the early twentieth century faced the so-called ‘factory problem’. It had two important components that were interrelated: on the one hand, the plant's spatial order; on the other, the quest for more effective ways of exercising power at the workplace. Both were centred on a new interest in the human factor of production. Workers were no longer regarded as mere objects of discipline but rather as individuals whose individuality was to be utilised. In this context a new discourse on work environment began. Some of the most important German architects and engineers were determined to beautify the factory and to create a human habitat (Lebensraum) inside, not least because of the increasing number of female labourers. Accordingly, notions of efficiency were combined with the new concept of beautification: rationalisation was ‘humanised’. The problem experts faced was how to create an atmosphere of trust which would promote the efficient usage of workers' abilities. In this context, external discipline had to be more and more replenished by chosen workers' self-discipline. It had been most important to humanise the workplace, respect the worker as subject of production and create conditions which increased working morale.

Lobbying, Corporate Performance, and the Moderating Effects of Governance and Industry Concentration

Lobbying through political donations is prolific. We show that lobbying increases a firm’s operating performance by 8%, on average. Firms with worse governance (as proxied by antitakeover provisions, a classified board, and CEO-chair duality) are more likely to engage in lobbying, but gain significantly less from lobbying expenditure. Lobbying is less beneficial for firms in concentrated industries, consistent with the idea that industry concentration reduces the external discipline on managers. We take steps to mitigate endogeneity and sample-selection concerns. We use the 2006 reforms to the Lobbying Disclosure Act as a natural experiment to examine the impact of restrictions in lobbying through more stringent disclosure requirements and find no association between lobbying and performance following the 2006 reforms.

The Euro – the Beginning, the Middle … and the End?

The UK decided not to join the euro on economic grounds. This was a decision which met with approval from the vast majority of UK liberal economists and which has been proved right by the course of events. Indeed, even the major supposed benefit of the euro – reduced currency volatility – is questionable when the volatility of sterling and the euro against other world currencies is considered.The euro zone – even without the UK – was not an optimal currency area. Many proponents of the euro thought that it would evolve into an optimal currency area through structural reform and economic convergence. This has not happened in practice.Differences in financial systems between euro zone members meant that their economies responded very differently to global economic shocks and to the ECB’s monetary policy operations. This helped to create the financial imbalances that became unsustainable.With the possible exception of Ireland, product and labour markets in euro zone members are too rigid to respond adequately to economic shocks. The result has been high unemployment and low or negative economic growth in a number of euro zone countries.In general, floating exchange rates are likely to deal with economic shocks at lower cost than fixed exchange rates or single currency arrangements. This was not the major consideration, however, when countries decided to join the euro. Many of the countries that joined the single currency did so because it was thought that external discipline on domestic governments would have beneficial long-term effects.Historical evidence suggests that monetary unions that have not been followed by political unions have tended to fail. This does not mean that such unions are impossible. In this respect, however, the euro was an experiment. It might be possible to proceed from the current position to a euro zone made up of a smaller number of countries. Any countries participating in a single currency should, however, examine carefully their long-term fiscal balance sheets if the strong are not to become responsible for the debts of the weak. This process should include careful analysis of pension and other long-term liabilities. Indeed, if the euro survives the current crisis, it could be brought down by government indebtedness caused by pension liabilities.It is very difficult for countries to leave the euro although members could be suspended. Suspension should happen in the case of Greece, at least. This could be followed by the adoption of parallel currency systems whereby the euro can be used alongside new domestic currencies in those member states that are suspended. Currency competition would complement a more general agenda for decentralisation in the EU.If there is a break-up of the euro, it is extremely important that it happens in an orderly way. This will be difficult to achieve because the EU elite are unwilling to countenance the possibility that the euro might break up and will therefore not plan for such an eventuality. A break-up of the euro must go hand in hand with vigorous promotion of free trade in the difficult political environment that will exist.An alternative solution to the euro crisis would be to return the euro to its founding principles. There could be very strict enforceable ex ante rules that all member countries had to meet. Countries that did not abide by the rules would take no part in the economic and monetary policy decisions of the EU or would be suspended from membership.EU states could also decide that monetary policy should be decoupled from government altogether. The euro has not succeeded as a single currency with its current institutional mechanisms, and state currencies have often proved to be inflationary. On the other hand, free banking systems create the right incentives for bankers to act prudently and to not inflate the money supply.

Resilience Can Be Learned, but How Does It Happen?

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical & Research NewsFull AccessResilience Can Be Learned, but How Does It Happen?Aaron LevinAaron LevinSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:20 Jul 2012https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.47.14.psychnews_47_14_18-aAbstractResilience lies at the heart of current thinking about stress, yet even defining the term is not easy.“Resilience can be relative resistance to environmentally risky experiences, or overcoming stress and adversity, or just having a relatively good outcome afterward,” said child psychiatrist Sir Michael Rutter, M.D., at APA’s annual meeting in Philadelphia in May.That multi-optioned definition may reflect the great individual differences observed in response to all kinds of environmental hazards, said Rutter, a professor of developmental psychopathology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London.“Resilience is not a single, temperamental trait,” he said. “It is a process which involves a response to stress. People may be resilient to some outcomes or in some contexts or at some times of their lives, but not others.”Genes play a role, but rarely in a direct way, he noted.Individual differences in response to adversity may reflect biological pathways influenced by genes but also include an environmental risk factor and an environmental mediator, along with evidence of substantial genetic risk.For instance, studies of 5-HTT alleles by Avshalom Caspi and colleagues found no significant main effect for the genes. However, the s/s allele, when combined with childhood abuse, produced a higher risk of major depression.There were behavioral examples, as well.Adoption is generally a neutral influence, but becomes protective only if a child has suffered neglect or abuse. Good quality, nonmaternal day care benefited children from disadvantaged families but had no effect on other children, Rutter explained.Another hypothesis, still under study, suggests that the same genes that make things worse for people can also make things better, said Rutter. “Genes may not confer vulnerability for adversity but may influence responsivity to all environments, good or bad.”Brief exposure to risk may “inoculate” a person to stressors, analogously to the acquisition of biological immunity to pathogens. “We can’t avoid stress, and it may be valuable,” he said. “Children who lived through the Depression in the 1930s learned to cope with adversity.”But can people learn to be resilient?Rutter’s research has indicated that planning, self-reflection, thinking about one’s experiences, a sense of agency, taking responsibility, and a commitment to social relations were protective for young people.Those can be fostered by activities— such as academics, sports, or the arts— outside the family that foster a sense of accomplishment, he suggested.Late recovery from early adversities may also stem from “turning-point” experiences that “knife off the past” and provide new opportunities.For example, studies in Great Britain showed that marriage was protective against engaging in criminal activity.The mechanism of action involves more than love, he said. “The wife may offer a source of external discipline, and marriage brings a young man into a new kin group and a new peer group with different values.”Other research indicated that military service can similarly serve to separate a young man from his troubled past, showing, for instance, that enlistment postponed life decisions by a disadvantaged 18-year-old for several years, created a broader range of career options, and allowed the prefrontal cortex to develop, as well. Military benefits that include further education or training also might contribute to Rutter’s ideals of planning, self-reflection, and personal agency as building blocks of resilience.In any case, he concluded, “They must not focus on what happened in their past, but must look for a positive way forward.” ISSUES NewArchived

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