Firm Commitment Research Articles

Firearm-Related Injuries and Deaths in Children and Youth.

Firearms are the leading cause of death in children and youth 0 to 24 years of age in the United States. In 2020, firearms resulted in 10,197 deaths (fatality rate 9.91/100,000 youth 0-24 years old). Firearms are the leading mechanism of death in pediatric suicides and homicides. Increased access to firearms is associated with increased rates of firearm deaths. Substantial disparities in firearm injuries and deaths exist by age, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation and gender identity and for deaths related to legal intervention. Barriers to firearm access can decrease the risk to youth for firearm suicide, homicide, or unintentional shooting injury and death. Given the high lethality of firearms and the impulsivity associated with suicidal ideation, removing firearms from the home or securely storing them-referred to as lethal means restriction of firearms-is critical, especially for youth at risk for suicide. Primary care-, emergency department-, mental health-, hospital-, and community-based intervention programs can effectively screen and intervene for individuals at risk for harming themselves or others. The delivery of anticipatory guidance coupled with safety equipment provision improves firearm safer storage. Strong state-level firearm legislation is associated with decreased rates of firearm injuries and death. This includes legislation focused on comprehensive firearm licensing strategies and extreme risk protection order laws. A firm commitment to confront this public health crisis with a multipronged approach engaging all stakeholders, including individuals, families, clinicians, health systems, communities, public health advocates, firearm owners and nonowners, and policy makers, is essential to address the worsening firearm crisis facing US youth today.

Changing understandings of waste reduction and avoidance in moralities of thrift: A comparison of Mass Observers’ narratives three decades apart

This paper explores shifting ideas of waste and recycling in narratives on thrift in the UK. Drawing on texts written by 33 respondents who answered two separate Mass Observation Directives on the subject of thrift in 1987 and 2016, it illuminates how waste reduction and avoidance is described by ‘ordinary people’. The ways in which these practices are framed are dependent on the temporal context in which the narrative is set. Two key findings are presented. Firstly, respondents explain motivations for such practices differently, depending on whether their examples relate to what they were exposed to during their upbringing or to their own practices at present. Between these two contexts, the moralisation of thrift through practices of waste reduction and avoidance shifts from a focus on financial hardship towards consciousness/satisfaction, which indicates that current understandings of thrift combine values of ethical consumerism and hedonism. Secondly, responses to the 1987 and 2016 directives differ in terms of how thrift through waste reduction and avoidance of disposable items is accounted for. In 1987 writings, thrift was associated with efforts to find ways to use single-use multiple times, whereas in the 2016 writings, thrift is associated with a firm commitment to household waste recycling through municipal services. This indicates that since the 1980s, material and infrastructural changes have led to a shift of norms in dealing with single-use products and recycling. The findings point towards critical considerations of how moralities of thrift are employed in the context of material culture in the 21st century.

The influence of government support over environmental protection investment on SMEs: R&D collaboration and financial aspects

AbstractThis paper aims to improve knowledge about the main factors influencing firm environmental commitment, by examining empirically the relationship between public support for R&D for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their investment in environmental protection. The empirical analysis was developed using a sample of 1594 Spanish firms, and a binary logistic regression to evaluate the existence of dependency relationships between the analyzed variables. The results show that those companies receiving direct funding from local public entities and those collaborating with research centers and universities, invest more in environmental actions to protect the natural ecosystem. The paper contributes to the academic literature by analyzing the main factors that influence the SMEs environmental commitment. Moreover, showing practitioners and policy makers the effectiveness of different types of financial support depending on the origin of the funds and the form of action taken; showing managers the advantages of collaborating with public administrations, as well as with other research organizations, to obtain better ECSR results.

E&P Notes (November 2022)

E&P Notes (November 2022)

Harold B. Lee and Mormonism's Black Priesthood and Temple Ban

Harold B. Lee and Mormonism's Black Priesthood and Temple Ban

Journalistic ethics and persuasive communication in the face of post-truth: credibility in the face of the challenges of Social Networks

The issue of post-truth and the disinformation that goes with it poses serious risks to the ethical principles of journalism. In this sense, the work of journalists is essential to ensure the establishment of democratic societies and free citizens through their commitment to the truth of the facts. The processes carried out by certain political actors such as Putin in the war in Ukraine in 2022, Trump in the US elections in 2020, the multiplication of destabilising messages related to COVID-19 coming from countries such as Turkey or China, promote the urgency of rethinking the deontology of journalism professionals in today's information society. This work brings together the most recent research on the work of journalists in the current information landscape -especially in social media- and allows us to delimit transcendental phenomena for the development of quality journalism, such as post-truth, false information and disinformation, all of this in relation to persuasive communication and the emotional aspects inherent on many occasions to these processes of distortion and falsification of reality. The conclusions point to the main challenges facing the journalism of the future as it seeks to counteract the effects of post-truth, while analysing a business management model for news organisations that must necessarily be reinvented. The opportunities for improvement lie in the development of critical thinking, a firm commitment to professional ethics and investment in media literacy among users.

Corporate Reputation in Brazil: The Effects of the Shareholding Control Configuration, Corporate Governance, and Corporate Social Responsibility

The study aims to analyze the influence of firm agency conflicts, taking into account shareholding control, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility, on the corporate reputation of the Brazilian firm. The results show that the configuration of shareholding control does indeed impact firm reputation. Dominant control has a direct negative influence on corporate reputation, while a shareholder agreement to control the firm is capable of improving it. Firm commitment to social and environmental concerns is also an important driver of corporate reputation. It is outstanding that the dominant control has also an important moderating unfavorable effect given that it reduces the positive relation between reputation and both corporate governance and social responsibility. Thus, dominant control destroys any favorable impression stakeholders may have regarding the corporate governance system in relation to reputation which means that stakeholders interpret such firm behaviors as strongly influenced by controlling shareholders interests. On the other hand, shared control has also a beneficial moderating effect considering that it moderates positively the relation between both corporate governance and social responsibility, and corporate reputation. That signals that corporate governance and CSR seem to improve reputation of firms with such control configuration. Thus, shareholder control configuration, specifically dominant and shared control, is indeed relevant for firm reputation in Brazil, having a direct and moderating effect on the relation between both corporate governance and social responsibility, and corporate reputation. This means that stakeholders perceive control configuration as influential for firm behaviors.

Influence of Stakeholder Involvement on Performance of Large Manufacturing Firms in Kenya

Large Manufacturing firms are critical to the economic development of a nation and the wellbeing of its citizens. However, most large manufacturing firms in Kenya have recently recorded a decline in performance. Thus, the study sought to examine the influence of stakeholder involvement on the performance of large manufacturing firms in Kenya. The specific objectives were to examine the influence of commitment, staff participation in the CER process and attendance in CER & implementation forums on the performance of large manufacturing firms in Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive and explanatory research designs. The target population for the study was 499. A sample size of 336 was obtained using the Yamane formula. The study used questionnaires to collect the data. The results and discussion included the reliability results, factor analyses, correlation, hypotheses testing and regression analysis. The findings of the study showed that staff participation in the CER process and attendance at CER & implementation forums explain 20.7% of the variations in the performance of large manufacturing firms in Kenya. The commitment and performance of large manufacturing firms in Kenya are positively and significantly related. Staff participation in the CER process and the performance of large manufacturing firms in Kenya are positively and significantly related. Similarly, attendance at CER & implementation forums are positively and significantly related to the performance of large manufacturing firms in Kenya. The study recommended that large manufacturing firms in Kenya should support environmental innovation such as collaborating and networking to enhance performance. It is recommended that the firms need to allocate resources to fund corporate environmental responsibilities. The top management in the firms needs to be highly committed to supporting the initiatives that safeguard the environment.  Keywords: Commitment, staff participation in CER process, attendance in CER & implementation forums, performance, large manufacturing firms, Kenya

A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey in Kenya (NTDS)-A Baseline Study of Transgender Persons in Kenya: Life experiences and Access to Health Services

The study contained the underpinnings on protection issues against violence and discrimination. The theme of this report deconstructs how discriminatory laws and sociocultural norms continue to marginalize and exclude intersex and gender-diverse persons. The report established that they are excluded from education, healthcare, housing, employment and occupation and other sectors giving rise to a host of other problems in a context where access to economic, social and cultural rights is hampered resulting in poverty and exclusion. They have a lower social-economic status due to the limiting access to assets that are essential to enjoy the full range of human rights. A glance at these issues quickly affirms the intersectionality of all human rights grounded in the firm commitment of leaving no one behind under the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development Goals. This report offers a window opportunity through which to gauge the character and scale of anti- discrimination data and the linkage with root causes, dialogue, consultation and cooperation with state and non-state actors, including implementation of international instruments, with identification of good practices and gaps. National and county governments have a fundamental responsibility to respect, protect and promote the human rights of transgender people in Kenya by taking action to ensure timely access to appropriate primary health care in public-funded health programs. There is need of development of guidelines on achieving universal access to acceptable, competent, appropriate, and affordable care. Moreover, there is the need of taking action to ensure laws, policies, programmes and procedures do not discriminate against transgender people through an effective and accessible legal and services framework. In addition, there is the need of taking action to allow individuals change their legal name and gender, including the gender markers on official documents, put in place quick, accessible and transparent procedures aimed at providing transgender people with official national documents. There is the need of taking action to ensure equal protection under the law, adopting positive legislative, judicial, administrative, educative, and other appropriate measures to protect these rights. Also, it is recommended there is the need to ensure freedom from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of transgender people. Keywords: Transgender Persons, Life experiences, Access to Health Services, Kenya

The Tobacco Endgame-A New Paradigm for Smoking Cessation in Cancer Clinics.

Smoking cessation represents an untapped resource for cancer therapy. Many people who smoke and have cancer (tobacco-related or otherwise) struggle to quit and as a result, jeopardise response to treatment, recovery after surgery and long-term survival. Many health care practitioners working in cancer medicine feel undertrained, unprepared and unsupported to provide effective smoking cessation therapy. Many institutions and healthcare systems do provide smoking cessation programs, guidelines and referral pathways for cancer patients, but these may be unevenly applied. The growing body of evidence, from both retrospective and prospective clinical studies, confirms the benefit of smoking cessation and will provide much needed evidence for the best and most effective interventions in cancer clinics. In addition to reducing demand, helping cancer patients quit and treating addiction, a firm commitment to developing smoke free societies may transform cancer medicine in the future. While the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC) has dominated global tobacco control for the last two decades, many jurisdictions are starting to develop plans to make their communities tobacco free, to introduce the tobacco endgame. Characterised by downward pressure on tobacco supply, limited sales, limited access and denormalization of smoking, these policies may radically change the milieu in which people with cancer receive treatment, in which health care practitioners refine skills and which may ultimately foster dramatic improvements in cancer outcomes.

PENGARUH UKURAN PERUSAHAAN, PROFITABILITAS, LEVERAGE DAN PENGUNGKAPAN MEDIA TERHADAP PENGUNGKAPAN CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PADA PERUSAHAAN MANUFAKTUR DI SEKTOR INDUSTRI BARANG KONSUMSI YANG TERDAFTAR DI BURSA EFEK INDONESIA TAHUN 2016-2018

Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure is a firm commitment toparticipate in the sustainable economic development to improve the quality of lifeand give benefit for environment or the company itself, the local community andsociety. The framework of social responsibility reporting concept which can beused is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in the form of sustainability reports.However only few companies have disclosed their social responsibility activitiesin a sustainability report. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence offirm size, probability, leverage and media exposure to corporate socialresponsibility disclosure. The dependent variable is corporate socialresponsibility. Independent variable are firm size, profitability, leverage andmedia exposure. This study was used secondary data from annual reports andfinancial reports of manufacturing companies which were listed in Indonesiastock exchange in 2016-2018 period. Samples were 60 manufacturing companies.This study used purposive sampling method and multiple linear regression as theanalysis method. Before being conducted by regression test, it was examined byusing the classical assumption test. The results of this study indicate that firm sizeand profitability not have significant influence to the CSR disclosure meanwhilethe leverage and media exposure have a positive significant influence to CSRdisclosure.

THE ANTI-OLIGARCHY POPULAR CONSTITUTION

THE ANTI-OLIGARCHY POPULAR CONSTITUTION

Digital reputation and firm performance: The moderating role of firm orientation towards sustainable development goals (SDGs)

This study analyzes the link between a firm's digital reputation and performance and the conditions under which its orientation towards sustainable development can moderate this link. The manuscript deals with relevant topics such as the digital tools that support the implementation of the firm's sustainability strategy, concerning the firm's commitment to deploying Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Using a sample of firms from the Fortune 500 list from 2015 to 2019, the findings show that digital reputation positively impacts a firm's financial and non-financial performance. Furthermore, results reveal that breadth (the variety of SDG-related themes covered) and concentration (the distribution of non-financial disclosure among the SDGs) operate as moderators in the above relationship. On the other hand, depth (the total volume of the SDG-based information) appears not to be significant. Finally, this study enriches the debate by providing a new data operationalization process to measure the firm's commitment to the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda.

Corporate Misconduct and CSR: The Roles of CEO Compensation and Institutional Ownership

Prior studies have examined the importance of CSR in long-term firm performance and its impact on various stakeholders. Nevertheless, there is still a call for more CSR studies at the multilevel of analysis and how actors’ motives at different levels interact to influence firm commitment to CSR. Specifically, we draw on signaling theory to examine whether a reputational challenge arising from a CSR-related corporate misconduct in the industry will induce firms to increase investments in CSR as an observable signal to protect their reputation. Furthermore, we examine internal and external governance mechanisms, which are CEO compensation and institutional ownership, as boundary conditions that can impact the extent that firms are motivated to increase investments in CSR. We test the hypotheses on a sample of firms listed in the S&P 500 index from 2009 to 2013, and we find substantial support for the theoretical arguments.

An introduction to ‘Making the city “home”: Practices of belonging in Pacific cities’

It is estimated that by 2050, 50% of Pacific peoples will be living out their full lives in cities and towns throughout Oceania and around the world. Over the last 35 years, previous patterns of circular migration have been giving way to permanent urban settlers and to generations born and raised in urban places. These ‘urbanites’ demonstrate a firm commitment to urban living in both the present and the future. In the cities, Pacific people have been building roots and making the city ‘home’. This special issue focuses on some of the diverse practices Pacific urbanites employ in creating ‘home’, which we define as the context where they centre their social, cultural and economic worlds and the place in which they see themselves living out their aspirations and future life course. Practices range from the use of graffiti, sharing music, playing reggae, the role of artists and exhibitions, and mobile phone use. In doing so, this special issue contributes to a growing body of work focused on the ways urban-based Pacific peoples contest essentialising stereotypes that deny their legitimacy and dismiss their urban experiences as less authentic. The collection of papers demonstrates how Pacific peoples are imagining and demonstrating their identities as Pacific urbanites reflecting their commitment to an urban Pacific, national, cultural and political belonging.

“Technocratic Socialism”: The Political Thought of Lee Kuan Yew and Devan Nair (1954–1976)

Despite initially expressing a firm commitment to socialism and its ideals, the People’s Action Party’s socialist roots remain curiously under-explored. To take a first step in reconstructing the party leadership’s understanding of socialism from 1954 to 1976, this article investigates the socialist political thought of two of their key figures – founding Secretary-General Lee Kuan Yew and stalwart union leader Devan Nair. This article reconstructs Lee and Nair’s theory of socialism that it terms “technocratic socialism.” It draws from the historiographical method of Quentin Skinner to read Lee and Nair as intervening in their specific Cold War and decolonisation context, where socialism was dominated by Marxism-Leninism. Four key overlapping tenets of the theory are posited: (i) a loose form of historical materialism; (ii) a conception of the technocratic elite as the privileged subject; (iii) equality of opportunity as a moral principle; and (iv) a geo-political position which emphasised non-alignment, material development, and power politics. The article concludes with discussion of technocratic socialism’s socialist credentials.

Spanish Republicanism: Zuruck zu Kant?

Some Spanish republican theorists argue for recovering Immanuel Kant’s philosophy for the left, rescuing him from his unwarranted appropriation by the right and correcting his neglect by progressivism. This article argues that this project is misguided in three ways. First, the implication that conservatism has claimed Kant for its camp is simply wrong, given that intellectuals on the right have long explicitly rejected him. Second, it rests on a faulty premise: that the left and right disagree about abstract concepts. Rather, conservatism represents an ad hoc defense of existing power structures without any firm theoretical commitments. Third, Kant is clearly progressive, as he wrote against conservative contemporaries. To conclude, I claim that the progressives’ ill-founded attempt to recover Kant is symptomatic of a broader misunderstanding in how progressives define progressivism and conservatism. I propose rethinking these definitions.

“We Look Ahead Where his Thoughts Never Reach”: Pakistani Mothers’ Agency to Expand Educational Opportunities for Their Daughters and the Theorisation of Negative Capability

ABSTRACT Juxtaposed against literature that views mothers’ role for their daughters’ education as a human capital this paper reimagines their role by foregrounding Pakistani mothers’ agency in contexts with limited opportunities. This is achieved by theorising negative capability (NC) as an analytical framework drawing on available theorisations of the concept and define it as an agentive passive refusal to be intellectually paralysed by disadvantage. We demonstrate how the concept can be applied for empirical analysis. The paper takes an ethical stance that researchers should acknowledge that regardless of contextual difficulties people’s agentive and intellectual faculties remain intact. Structural inequalities need to be challenged but their agentive potential also recognised. With a firm commitment that opportunities need to be made equal this paper builds on the second point to argue that even in the face of extreme disadvantage mothers’ intellectual capacities to progress towards goals remain functional. We challenge the objectification of the marginalised and propose an analytical approach to understand difficulties faced as well as agency exercised by mothers facing socio-economic constraints. This work has implications for the capability approach that falls short of addressing issues of power, and policy that fails to understand the context.

Board gender diversity, corporate social commitment and sustainability

AbstractBuilding a sustainable organization is one of the most important goals in business. To build sustainability, firms need to have strong social commitment to establish value‐creating stakeholder relationships. As boards of directors play a critical role in setting strategy, providing management oversight and monitoring, it is also their responsibility to ensure the firm's commitment to its social responsibilities. With the right composition, boards can be effective in driving long‐term vision and creating good stakeholder relationships, contributing to firms' social capital. In this paper, we analyze board characteristics of publicly listed US firms and find evidence that support the diversity theory. In particular, that board gender diversity (proportion of female directors) is positively associated with firms' social commitment to human rights, product responsibility, and their community and workforce, evidencing female directors' contribution to firms' sustainability. To ensure the robustness of our analysis, we conduct additional analyses including propensity score matching, entropy balancing, and instrumental‐variable analysis.

The Inferences of Ibn Batriq al-Hilly on the Famous Exegetic Methods of the Exegesis of Ibn Abbas

Stressing the textual criticism of hadiths and documenting them relying on solid evidence related to their original sources is a characteristic of the studies that are carried out by the twelver-shia scholars of all time. This study confirms this fact by presenting a part of it through the heritage of the famous scholar from the Hawza of Hilla, Yahya bin Hassan known as Ibn Batriq al-Hilly. The Inferences of Ibn Batriq on the Famous Exegesis of Ibn Abbas through well-known references is the best sample in which the intended purpose is achieved. The person who is familiar with the remaining of scientific heritage of Ibn Batriq finds a firm commitment and keenness to document his references when quoting from Ibn Abbas' exegesis through main resources in a way that deserves to perused and studies in a special method.