Fundamental Dimensions Research Articles

BeingGoodorBeingBadADemand-basedView ofCustomerDemandLandscape andCorporateSocial(Ir)Responsibility

While researches on the disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and irresponsibility (CSiR) recognize the influence of between stakeholder group heterogeneity and multiplicity, less attention has been given to the within stakeholder sub-group demand heterogeneity and the relative importance of these demands. We develop a framework wherein CSR reporting is viewed as an organizational response to features of one of the most significant stakeholder groups of a firm—its customers. Drawing upon the demand-based view and stakeholder theory, we argue that two fundamental dimensions of customer base—customer heterogeneity and customer concentration—help explain how firms make balance along multiple social demands. We propose that customer heterogeneity drives firms to invest in diverse types of CSR activities (i.e., higher level of CSR strength) and restricts CSiR activities (i.e., lower level of CSiR strength) to gain customer legitimacy and support. While customer concentration allows firms to invest in limited CSR activities (i.e., lower level of CSR strength) and initiate more types of CSiR activities (i.e., higher level of CSiR strength) for efficiency considerations. Our framework was supported through a longitudinal analysis between 1991 and 2008. Our study contributes to the literature on strategic CSR, stakeholder theory, and demand-based view.

The Influence Of Emotionally Linked Odors On Motor Reaction

Many studies have been investigating the effects of odor on motor actions. However, the effect of odor-induced emotions is less well understood. Arousal and valence, representing fundamental dimensions of emotion, may affect motor reaction differently. PURPOSE: To investigate the influence of odor on reaction time and related muscle activity during elbow flexion when one has a high level of arousal or valence. METHODS: Seven healthy young males (21.7 ± 2.4 yrs) who gave a response of high arousal and negative valence to the odor of ammonia (AMN), and an opposite response to the odor of orange (ORG), were selected as subjects. The subject was quietly seated, wore a plastic mask with a vapored odor-injection pipe, and breathed naturally each of the AMN and ORG odors. A no aroma condition was also included in the test as a control. The subject placed his right arm on the desk while bending the elbow about 90 degrees, and placed his wrist on a load cell secured on the desk. The subject pressed the load cell as quick as possible after hearing a beep sound through a headphone. They repeated the elbow flexion three times with thirty seconds interval. Three trials were performed by each subject for each of the odor conditions. Force signal from the load cell and biceps brachii activity from surface EMG were recorded simultaneously. Force reaction time (FRT), muscle reaction time (MRT), peak force (PF), PF time-of-arrival, and difference between MRT and FRT (mechanical delay time) were evaluated. RESULTS: ANOVA revealed a significant odor effect in the variables of PF (F1,6 = 5.87, P < 0.05) and mechanical delay time (F1,6 = 4.67, P < 0.05). Tukey post-hoc tests revealed that AMN had a higher PF, and a shorter mechanical delay time compared to ORG (p < 0.05, p < 0.05, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: The ammonia odor is linked to arousal, which is strong enough to elevate output of muscle force as well as to facilitate muscle response to flexion of the elbow. Supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 18 K06454.

How do lizard niches conserve, diverge or converge? Further exploration of saurian evolutionary ecology

BackgroundEnvironmental conditions on Earth are repeated in non-random patterns that often coincide with species from different regions and time periods having consistent combinations of morphological, physiological and behavioral traits. Observation of repeated trait combinations among species confronting similar environmental conditions suggest that adaptive trait combinations are constrained by functional tradeoffs within or across niche dimensions. In an earlier study, we assembled a high-resolution database of functional traits for 134 lizard species to explore ecological diversification in relation to five fundamental niche dimensions. Here we expand and further examine multivariate relationships in that dataset to assess the relative influence of niche dimensions on the distribution of species in 6-dimensional niche space and how these may deviate from distributions generated from null models. We then analyzed a dataset with lower functional-trait resolution for 1023 lizard species that was compiled from our dataset and a published database, representing most of the extant families and environmental conditions occupied by lizards globally. Ordinations from multivariate analysis were compared with null models to assess how ecological and historical factors have resulted in the conservation, divergence or convergence of lizard niches.ResultsLizard species clustered within a functional niche volume influenced mostly by functional traits associated with diet, activity, and habitat/substrate. Consistent patterns of trait combinations within and among niche dimensions yielded 24 functional groups that occupied a total niche space significantly smaller than plausible spaces projected by null models. Null model tests indicated that several functional groups are strongly constrained by phylogeny, such as nocturnality in the Gekkota and the secondarily acquired sit-and-wait foraging strategy in Iguania. Most of the widely distributed and species-rich families contained multiple functional groups thereby contributing to high incidence of niche convergence.ConclusionsComparison of empirical patterns with those generated by null models suggests that ecological filters promote limited sets of trait combinations, especially where similar conditions occur, reflecting both niche convergence and conservatism. Widespread patterns of niche convergence following ancestral niche diversification support the idea that lizard niches are defined by trait-function relationships and interactions with environment that are, to some degree, predictable and independent of phylogeny.

The ethical-political dimension of social and community praxis: The case of Ecuador's early response to COVID-19.

Around the globe, millions of people have experienced suffering and death related to COVID‐19, an infectious disease caused by the SARS‐CoV2 virus. In Ecuador,the painful impact of the pandemic elicited early responses by the government and by local communities. This critical, positioned and exploratory case study analyses such responses, underscoring the fundamental ethical–political dimension of any academic and professional praxis aimed at the construction of healthier societies worldwide. While critical traditions are familiar with this stance, the inequalities and ideological mechanisms made visible by COVID‐19 responses may enable the wider community of researchers and practitioners to join ongoing collective ethical–political efforts. Findings from Ecuador underline the potentially harmful role of neoliberalism and issues of democratic legitimacy, significant problems before and during the pandemic shock, and official discourses, which blame communities for their own suffering and death. Neutrality and depoliticized notions of scientific evidence are notoriously insufficient in these scenarios. We need to engage more deeply with diverse forms of global and local community resistance, in times of COVID‐19, and beyond. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Our roles are not at ease: The work of engaging a youth advisory council in a mental health services delivery organization.

ObjectivesThere is growing policy impetus for including youth voices in health services research and health system reform. This article examines the perspectives of professionals in a mental healthcare organization charged with engaging young people as advisors in service transformation.MethodsAn institutional ethnography of a youth mental health services organization in Ontario, Canada, was conducted. Fieldwork consisted of twelve months of observation of meetings, interviews with youth advisors and adult service providers, with subsequent text analysis of engagement training and policy materials. The present article reports data from six adult professionals and related field observations.ResultsService providers’ efforts to engage youth were observed in three areas: a) supporting youth's development as advisors, b) retaining and deepening youth participation while waiting for organizational change and c) embedding relationships between youth and adults at various levels within the system of care. This work denotes existing tensions between the values and ideals of youth engagement and the everyday demands of services delivery.ConclusionIn this setting, a fundamental dimension of this work consisted of negotiating tensions between the policy enthusiasm for engagement and its realization in a health services context. In describing these contextual challenges, we outline implications for consideration by other youth mental health services. Engagement efforts that are authentic and sustained require resources and flexibility, and leadership commitment to instil service users’ perspectives throughout multiple levels within the organization.

Exploring separated fathers’ understandings and experiences of ‘home’ and homemaking

ABSTRACT This paper considers fathers’ understandings and experiences of home after relationship separation – an issue that has received little research attention to date – through interviews with four separated fathers conducted as part of a larger qualitative study. Key themes to emerge were: the significance attached by participant fathers to home and homemaking through their focus on everyday interactions; the concern that their home might be viewed by children as secondary; and a sense of the vulnerability and transience of home arising from their children’s presence and absence. Viewed overall, the fathers in this study conveyed their determination to offer their children a loving, stable, and secure home life as a fundamental dimension of their commitment to post-separation fathering while also describing key challenges they experienced in doing so.

A New Conceptualization of the Political Left and Right: One Dimension, Multiple Domains

AbstractScholars of the political left-right divide often see equality as the core issue of contention, with the left seeking greater equality than the right. Though partially agreeing with this consensus, I propose a modified left-right conceptualization that offers three novel contributions. First, while accepting the idea of a single fundamental dimension underlying conflict in global politics, I argue the key issue is not necessarilyequalitybut rather the diffusion or concentration ofpowerwithin and across nations, communities and individuals. Second, given the inescapable complexity of politics, I argue in favour of distinguishing between those who seek to de-concentrate power and broaden inclusion (the left) from those advocating for a concentration of power (the right) in specific issue domains. Third, I illustrate the utility of this “one dimension, multiple domains” theoretical framework through a comparative analysis of eight contemporary political parties across the domains of economic, foreign and social policy.

Faith, Religion, and Spirituality: A Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Contribution to Parsing the Distinctions

Religion and spirituality are contested terms in the fields of Religious Studies, Theology, Sociology or Anthropology of Religion, and other areas, and the notion of faith has often been abandoned altogether. The present article attempts to make a distinctly philosophical contribution to this debate by employing phenomenological parameters, as they are articulated in the work of Martin Heidegger, for proposing distinctions between faith, religion, and spirituality. It then goes on to “fill” these structural distinctions in more detail with hermeneutic content by drawing on Paul Ricœur’s work on faith and religion, as well as Johann Michel’s analysis of Ricœur’s account of the self as a “spirituality”. The article thus employs Heidegger’s phenomenological categories and Ricœur’s hermeneutic project in order to think through the possibility of making phenomenological distinctions between personal confession of faith, religious adhesion to a tradition via myth and ritual, and a broader spirituality as a fundamental dimension of the human being.

Service with improper requests: How fellow customers interpret Employee's judgment call

In this paper, we examined the impact of different judgment calls by service personnel on service satisfaction, in response to inappropriate requests from customers. Based on the stereotype content model, we propose that employees servicing with these requests are often evaluated on two fundamental dimensions, warmth and competence, and the accessibility of one dimension over the other determines overall service satisfaction of fellow customers. Through three experiments, the current research shows that fellow customers perceive service employees who consent to an improper request as higher in warmth but lower in competence than those who reject the request. However, when the compliance has serious consequences for a fellow customer, this negatively affects the competence evaluation but not the warmth evaluation, which in turn reduce customer satisfaction. When the focal customer suffers from the serious consequences, this positively affect both competence and warmth perception, which in turn enhance fellow customer satisfaction. This research could be used to identify ways to handle improper requests made by customers.

Tutelarsi dall’emergenza: ripensare le pratiche educative nella tutela dei minorenni attraverso l’esperienza della pandemia

Child protection services represent a professional context in which emergency is a frequent dimension, being embedded in the need to prevent and address threats to personal integrity and freedom. This feature makes it a particularly interesting milieu for interrogating the effects of the pandemic crisis on educational practices that take place in specific institutional settings, thereby fostering a wider pedagogical reflection on the meaning and nature of educational interventions in critical situations. This article will present some considerations based on qualitative research – part of the project Education for Social Justice, Disuf, UNIMIB – realized through inter- views with professionals during the lockdown. The emerging themes offer interesting cues to re-think some fundamental dimensions of educational work, such as the challenges that flourish on the borderline between the personal and professional spheres, the relevance of networking and the need for a better awareness of those professional assumptions shaped – often unconsciously – by institutional frames of reference.

The \u201cBig Two\u201d and socially induced emotions: Agency and communion jointly influence emotional contagion and emotional mimicry

Three studies investigated the effects of two fundamental dimensions of social perception on emotional contagion (i.e., the transfer of emotions between people). Rooting our hypotheses in the Dual Perspective Model of Agency and Communion (Abele and Wojciszke in Adv Exp Soc Psychol 50:198–255, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800284-1.00004-7, 2014), we predicted that agency would strengthen the effects of communion on emotional contagion and emotional mimicry (a process often considered a key mechanism behind emotional contagion). To test this hypothesis, we exposed participants to happy, sad, and angry senders characterized by low vs. high communion and agency. Our results demonstrated that, as expected, the effects of the two dimensions on socially induced emotions were interactive. The strength and direction of these effects, however, were consistent with our predictions only when the senders expressed happiness. When the senders expressed sadness, we found no effects of agency or communion on participants’ emotional responses, whereas for anger a mixed pattern emerged. Overall, our results align with the notion that emotional contagion and mimicry are modulated not only by the senders’ traits but also by the social meaning of the expressed emotion.

Farmers’ empowerment and learning processes in accountability practices: An assemblage perspective

Certification and standards are key instruments to implement accountability in the contemporary governance of food systems. They are based on the idea that, thanks to the creation and circulation of information, promises to consumers are kept in increasingly complex value chains. However, critical examinations also describe it as a symptom of an ongoing globalisation and neoliberalisation, shifting power from the state to market actors, in particular retailers and supermarkets. This paper offers a new perspective on accountability within the tripartite standards regime, inspired by an assemblage approach and focusing on power relations and knowledge creation, as fundamental dimensions. The example of IP-Suisse, a Swiss farmer organisation and a food label, allows us to identify multiple contradictory power and knowledge processes that are simultaneously unfolding within the agri-environmental governance assemblage. Beyond the expected dominance of powerful actors (particularly retailers) and the relentless bureaucratisation of governance, more positive processes also emerge, including a collective empowerment of farmers and the realization of cumulative and progressive learning through new collaborations and experiments. The assemblage approach suggests that the point is not so much to invent a new blueprint for better accountability practices, but rather to understand the specific processes taking place within a given AEG assemblage and then to encourage the creation of new alliances to strengthen those processes that are most likely to foster experimentation and knowledge. It thereby obliges us to take the multiplicity of transformational processes seriously, as a starting point for developing innovative accountability practices.

Health Measurement Model-Bringing a Life Course Perspective to Health Measurement: The PRISM Model.

Health is a multidimensional concept that is challenging to measure, and in the rapidly evolving developmental changes that occur during the first 21 years of human life, requires a dynamic approach to accurately capture the transitions, and overall arc of a complex process of internal and external interactions. We propose an approach that integrates a lifecourse framework with a layered series of assessments, each layer using a many to many mapping, to converge on four fundamental dimensions of health measurement-Potential, Adaptability, Performance, and Experience. The four dimensions can conceptually be mapped onto a plane with each edge of the resulting quadrilateral corresponding to one dimension and each dimensions assessment calibrated against a theoretical ideal. As the plane evolves over time, the sequential measurements will form a volume. We term such a model the Prism Model, and describe conceptually how single domain assessments can be built up to generate the holistic description through the vehicle of a layer of Exemplar Cases. The model is theoretical but future work can use the framework and principles to generate scalable and adaptable applications that can unify and improve the precision of serial measurements that integrate environmental and physiologic influences to improve the science of child health measurement.

Extending Geodemographics Using Data Primitives: A Review and a Methodological Proposal

This paper reviews geodemographic classifications and developments in contemporary classifications. It develops a critique of current approaches and identifiea a number of key limitations. These include the problems associated with the geodemographic cluster label (few cluster members are typical or have the same properties as the cluster centre) and the failure of the static label to describe anything about the underlying neighbourhood processes and dynamics. To address these limitations, this paper proposed a data primitives approach. Data primitives are the fundamental dimensions or measurements that capture the processes of interest. They can be used to describe the current state of an area in a multivariate feature space, and states can be compared over multiple time periods for which data are available, through for example a change vector approach. In this way, emergent social processes, which may be too weak to result in a change in a cluster label, but are nonetheless important signals, can be captured. As states are updated (for example, as new data become available), inferences about different social processes can be made, as well as classification updates if required. State changes can also be used to determine neighbourhood trajectories and to predict or infer future states. A list of data primitives was suggested from a review of the mechanisms driving a number of neighbourhood-level social processes, with the aim of improving the wider understanding of the interaction of complex neighbourhood processes and their effects. A small case study was provided to illustrate the approach. In this way, the methods outlined in this paper suggest a more nuanced approach to geodemographic research, away from a focus on classifications and static data, towards approaches that capture the social dynamics experienced by neighbourhoods.

The Taxonomy of Empathy: A Meta-definition and the Nine Dimensions of the Empathic System

The conceptual diversity in the definition of empathy has resulted in descriptions of a highly heterogeneous collection of related phenomena, causing confusion as to what empathy actually is. Some of this heterogeneity arises due to disparate viewpoints across different disciplines. Capturing this transdisciplinary construct and arriving at a clear and unambiguous overarching definition of empathy will help provide a clearer outline of the fundamental dimensions of empathy, and will facilitate greater consistency in research and discussion of empathy across and between a range of disciplines. An inductive conceptual content analysis of the existing definitions of empathy was undertaken to distil the common higher order and lower order components of empathy definitions that have been used in the literature since 1980. A total of 146 definitions of empathy were sourced from a sample of 506 publications. Nine overarching dimensions were identified within the 146 definitions, including empathy as a catalyst, function, process, outcome, affective state, cognitive state, involving self and other, leading to a behaviour, and occurring in a specific context. The resultant meta-definition of empathy is “the ability to experience affective and cognitive states of another person, while maintaining a distinct self, in order to understand the other.” The results reveal empathy as a complex series of processes that we argue should be considered an “empathic system” given its multidimensional nature.

IESE ECGI CONFERENCE ON CORPORATE PURPOSE: Can Purpose Deliver Better Corporate Governance?

IESE ECGI CONFERENCE ON CORPORATE PURPOSE: Can Purpose Deliver Better Corporate Governance?

Designing Integrated Business Training Programs Focused on the Unemployed in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Human resource development and continuous training are a precondition for organizational and socio-economic resilience and development. It is also vital to build integrated training programs, especially for the unemployed nowadays, considering the major challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in various labor markets internationally. This article aims to distinguish fundamental theoretical and practical dimensions of structuring business training programs and supporting learning and innovation after investigating critical trends of conceptual readjustment of modern management theory. A significant conclusion is that a business training program has to synthesize the organization’s strategic, technological, and managerial potential and goals (Stra.Tech.Man approach), valorizing the basic principles of integrated planning, organizing, implementing, and controlling. A novel training program framework is suggested, attributing particular weight to developing structured mechanisms for training unemployed population groups at the local level.

Designing Integrated Business Training Programs Focused on the Unemployed in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Human resource development and continuous training are a precondition for organizational and socio-economic resilience and development. It is also vital to build integrated training programs, especially for the unemployed nowadays, considering the major challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in various labor markets internationally. This article aims to distinguish fundamental theoretical and practical dimensions of structuring business training programs and supporting learning and innovation after investigating critical trends of conceptual readjustment of modern management theory. A significant conclusion is that a business training program has to synthesize the organization’s strategic, technological, and managerial potential and goals (Stra.Tech.Man approach), valorizing the basic principles of integrated planning, organizing, implementing, and controlling. A novel training program framework is suggested, attributing particular weight to developing structured mechanisms for training unemployed population groups at the local level.

Exploring the dimensions of everyday soundscapes perception in spatiotemporal view: A qualitative approach

Soundscape measurement has gained attention from researchers across a variety of disciplines and professions. The aim of this study was to explore everyday soundscapes properties as perceived by non-experts and construct a soundscape perception model in the spatiotemporal view and landscape tradition. This study used the conceptual framework of an existing landscape model to construct a soundscape evaluation scale based on the qualitative analysis of 490 semi-structured questionnaires. The evaluation scale has five fundamental dimensions: Perceptible Sound Characteristics, Perceptual Time, Perceptual Place, Audience Subjectivity, and Auditory Imagination. There are 18 primary indexes and 35 secondary indexes. The results indicated that the public’s perception schema of soundscape was similar to that of visual landscape, but had more emotional aspects. Thus, the soundscape can produce abundant auditory mapping in the mind through the involvement of the auditory organs and subsequent cognitive processing and people can provide efficient evolution of the perceptible sound environment as feedback.

A new multidimensional model of writing for research publication: An analysis of disciplinarity, intra-textual variation, and L1 versus LX expert writing

Scholarly knowledge in contemporary academia is created and communicated primarily through writing for research publication. It is through this particular form of knowledge dissemination that a rich body of scientific knowledge about a given phenomenon is accumulated. The present study sought to investigate the linguistic characteristics of knowledge communication in research writing from multiple perspectives. For this purpose, a multivariate approach was adopted to develop a new multidimensional model of research writing based on three key factors: disciplinarity, intra-textual variation, and L1 versus LX expert writing. Our analysis revealed three fundamental linguistic dimensions underlying discourse practices in research writing. Our results showed that the identified dimensions have the potential to provide detailed descriptions of linguistic relations among main sections of research articles. It was also found that the linguistic co-occurrence patterns defining these functional dimensions can be strongly affected by disciplinary preferences, and that any characterization of research writing with no careful consideration given to such factors would be incomplete. Our findings further revealed considerable differences between L1 and LX expert writing in fulfilling the communicative practices related to the evaluation and elaboration of research findings.