Choice Of Membership Research Articles

Orchestration and consolidation in corporate sustainability reporting. The legacy of the Corporate Reporting Dialogue

PurposeThe paper uses theoretical conceptions of power and orchestration to analyse the role of the Corporate Reporting Dialogue on the global standardisation of sustainability reporting.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts an interpretive approach and draws on a qualitative dataset derived from interviews, documentary analysis and observation.FindingsThe paper traces how the Corporate Reporting Dialogue was orchestrated by the International Integrated Reporting Council, with the objective of aligning sustainability reporting standards, but moved to become a vehicle for orchestrating standards consistent with the recommendations of the Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosure. Collaboration between the Dialogue's five most active bodies forged the blueprint adopted by the International Sustainability Standards Board's vision of sustainability reporting that prioritised reporting only on those socio-ecological issues deemed to materially affect future enterprise value.Originality/valueThe paper explicates the role of collaborative initiatives in the standardisation of sustainability reporting and shows how these initiatives act as vehicles to subtly undermine the GRI position (presented as one standardiser amongst many whose vision appears as an outlier, despite its position as the dominant sustainability reporting standardiser), and establish the prioritisation of a sustainability reporting worldview based on investor-oriented enterprise value creation. The case also draws attention to the specific orchestrators involved in establishing this prioritisation, and reveals the influence of philanthropic foundations. In doing so, it extends our understanding of legitimacy generation in standard-setting by showing how collaborative initiatives offer private standardisers another means to generate input legitimacy for what, in this case, represented a vision of reporting at odds with most sustainability reporting practice. Finally, the paper extends the sites of power to collaborative initiatives and details the mechanisms through which covert power is exercised but also masked where orchestrators use convening power, funding and membership choices to define the boundaries of discussion by influencing who participates, what is on the agenda and what activity is undertaken. Rather than viewing standardisation as a simple pursuit of conquest between individual standardisers, the paper considers how collaboration provides the opportunity for assimilation.

Why Join the Fed?

We study the decisions of state-chartered banks to join the Fed in its first decade. Ours is the first study to combine state regulatory environment characteristics and individual bank characteristics to explain Fed membership choice. Regulatory environments that reduced the benefit of discount window access or increased the regulatory cost of joining the Fed led to fewer banks joining. Individual bank characteristics that affected the magnitude of benefits from accessing the discount window (either passing on liquidity risk reduction to respondents or reducing the member bank’s own seasonal liquidity risk) were even more important in determining which banks joined.I believe that, through the Federal Reserve Banks, … the better shall we be equipped to cope with the problems ahead of us, of helping ourselves and of helping the world; I believe it to be the duty of every bank in the country to contribute its share in equipping our nation for this task; … I firmly believe that the future will belong to those banks—national or state—that are members of the Federal Reserve System.—Paul Warburg, Speech at the New York State Bankers’ Association Convention, 9 June 1916

Explorative analysis of potential MaaS customers: an agent-based scenario

Abstract Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a user-centered service that combines different mobility services offered to the users by means of different packages. The users fulfil their daily mobility needs using a subscription-based smartphone application, which gives them access to the services within their mobility budget. Various surveys on MaaS have been run in the last years to capture which transport mode can be more suitable within a package and the user’s willingness to pay. Moreover, pilot projects have been employed to figure out potential MaaS users’ characteristics and inclination. Results among stated preference scenarios differ due to the different characteristics of the demand and supply. Hence, there is not a general consensus around the potential of MaaS membership choice. This study embraces an agent-based modeling approach which allows to maximize the user’s utility of performing activities and account for travel costs to simulate two scenarios. The first one considers carsharing systems and public transport as a basic MaaS package. We further employ an economic approach which assumes MaaS services costs to be perceived as fixed costs by the customers. We assume the same MaaS package to be accessible to the generated population of the city of Berlin. The second is a Pay-as-you-go (NoMaaS) scenario where users pay the service experiencing trip-based costs. Evaluating the differential of users’ utility when comparing the two scenarios this study aims to explore the characteristics of the potential MaaS customers. The results indicate a higher propension to subscribe among public transport and two-way car-sharers, whereas MaaS seems to capture new free-floating customers. The potential users employ both carsharing services longer in their daily trip chain in the MaaS scenario, because the new mobility system allows users to do not consider marginal cost in their daily travel pattern. Outcomes also indicate that MaaS will not be a direct substitute to private car, and it’s likely to extend rental time of car sharing systems.

Managing policy‐making in the local climate governance landscape: The role of network administrative organizations and member cities

AbstractTrans‐municipal networks (TMNs) have reshaped the landscape around local government action on global climate policy. Past research has focused on why cities join TMNs and the impact that membership has on local action. This study considers a potential reverse effect: namely, that cities' membership choices position them to influence TMNs' overall priorities. In considering this, we emphasize the role of network administrative organizations (NAOs) and posit that the multiple climate‐related networks, which share members and operate in overlapping geographic and issue spaces, are bound together as part of a meta‐network. We utilize social network analysis and data on membership in four climate‐related TMNs to examine the factors that shape how cities can influence meta‐network priorities. We find that cities with local vulnerabilities tend to be located in network positions that enable them to influence the meta‐network's overall priorities.

Fuzzy Poverty Measurement: Multidimensional and Unidimensional Indicators

This paper proposes a comparison between multidimensional and unidimensional poverty indicators. Sets of poor units identified by traditional head count ratio, fuzzy unidimensional and fuzzy multidimensional indices are compared by means of a rank correlation analysis. The robustness of the comparison is ensured by a simulation study, which allows to address several issues related not only to fuzzy sets based methods, such as the subjective choice of membership to the poor set, but also to the multidimensional measurement, such as the effect of the weighting system. Our results stress that the unidimensional indicators provide partial information on poverty condition.

Blockchain consortium networks: Adding security and trust in financial services

AbstractThis article explores blockchain consortium networks as an emerging technology for financial institutions. Blockchain is quickly becoming recognized for its value as an immutable ledger within the financial services industry. While Blockchain provides direct benefits in fraud prevention and transaction efficiency, consortium networks specifically address a need for increased trust and security in shared business processes. Also discussed are strategic decisions needed for implementing blockchain consortium networks at the enterprise level with topics ranging from membership choices to use of cloud services.

The effect of cooperative membership on agricultural technology adoption in Sichuan, China

Farmer cooperatives may promote technology adoption in agricultural production, which, in turn, increases crop productivity and farmers' income. However, empirical evidence of how and to what extent cooperatives facilitate the technology adoption extensity, defined as the number of technologies adopted by a farmer from a wide range of agricultural technologies, remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we examine the impact of cooperative membership on the technology adoption extensity using cross-sectional data collected from 413 farm households in Sichuan province of China. We use propensity score matching combined with an instrumental variable approach to address the sample selection bias associated with voluntary cooperative membership choice. The statistical results suggest that cooperative membership has a positive effect on the technology adoption extensity when all 13 surveyed technologies are considered. However, the separate analyses on the adoption of production and post-harvest technologies reveal that cooperative membership has an insignificant impact on the number of adopted production technologies, but it significantly increases the number of post-harvest technologies adopted. These empirical findings are in line with the new institutional economics theories and our observations on the ground.

IPM adoption, cooperative membership and farm economic performance

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of agricultural cooperative membership on farmers’ decisions to adopt integrated pest management (IPM) technology and to estimate the impact of IPM adoption on farm economic performance.Design/methodology/approachAn endogenous switching probit model that addresses the sample selection bias issue arising from both observed and unobserved factors is used to estimate the survey data from a sample of 481 apple households in China. A treatment effects model is employed to estimate the impact of IPM adoption on apple yields, net returns and agricultural income. In order to address the potential endogeneity associated with off-farm work variable in estimating both cooperative membership choice specification and IPM adoption specifications, a control function approach is used.FindingsThe empirical results show that cooperative membership exerts a positive and significant impact on the adoption of IPM technology. In particular, farmers’ IPM adoption decision is significantly associated with household and farm-level characteristics (e.g. education, farm size and price knowledge). IPM adoption has a positive and statistically significant impact on apple yields, net returns and agricultural income.Practical implicationsThe findings indicate that agricultural cooperatives can be a transmission route in the efforts to proliferate the adoption and diffusion of IPM technology, and increased IPM adoption tends to improve the economic performance of farm households.Originality/valueDespite the widespread evidence of health and environmental benefits associated with IPM technology, the adoption rate of this technology remains significantly low. This paper provides a first attempt by investigating to what extent and how agricultural cooperative membership affects IPM adoption and how IPM adoption influences farm economic performance.

Identification of suitable membership and kernel function for FCM based FSVM classifier model

Support vector machine (SVM) a new machine learning algorithm emerging as an effective classification technique than neural networks and other statistical classifiers. Its performance is however, observed to be affected by presence of outliers or noise in the dataset. So, to enhance the generalization capability of SVM, researchers focussed on developing fuzzy support vector machines (FSVM), which works on the concept of fuzzy membership to data points for learning the best decision hyperplane to classify data points. In such case, the choice of membership for data points is critical for good behaviour of the model. So, this paper focuses on finding right membership using optimal fuzzy index parameter (m) and demonstrating its significance in membership and classifier performance. This research work focussed on finding membership values using FCM and final membership from derived low value and high value membership function and incorporating them in FSVM model, to find the best membership value from analysis of five datasets used in the study. For linear classification of data, as kernel functions can show its influence, the study also performed analysis on selection of appropriate kernel function that can best fit the FCM based FSVM classifier model and prove enhancement of generalization performance with our research findings. High and low membership functions are compared through computational analyses and the membership that results in better generalization capability in the model is proven in the study.

Potential Choices of Travel Mode including Carsharing and Carsharing Membership: Evidences from Four Japanese Cities

This study reports the results of a local survey of carsharing in four Japanese cities which includes the two cities having carsharing. The survey focused on respondents’ awareness and expected actions regarding car ownership, and stated choice of carsharing membership. The survey was implemented in February to April, 2010. No carsharing users are included in the respondents. After the data was gathered, the modal and carsharing membership choices were empirically analyzed. The survey results indicate the following: car owners are more aware of carsharing than non-owners, non-owners consider using carsharing more often than car owners, 30-40 percent of the surveyed individuals would choose to forgo car ownership if they were a member of a carsharing service, individuals seem to make rational decisions regarding membership under different hypothetical cases, and the availability of carsharing services and public transportation, trip distance, and household income influence whether one participates in carsharing.

Selection of individuals to serve on major gift fundraising teams: a study of membership choice criteria

Major gift fundraising (MGF) is a crucial activity for large UK charities and is one that is normally undertaken by teams. This paper examines the criteria that the managements of large charities apply when selecting individuals to serve on MGF teams. It also explores possible connections between team composition and MGF success. A questionnaire exploring this matter was distributed to a sampling frame comprising 500 of the UK's largest fundraising charities, resulting in 151 replies. It emerged that MGF teams which contained people who had been chosen on the basis of their commitment to the MGF function, their communication and relationship nurturing abilities, and their wide‐ranging connections throughout an organisation were reported to perform better than teams that were not deliberately assembled in this way. The more background research was completed into an MGF prospect's circumstances and preferences and the more diverse an MGF team's composition, the higher the probability of success. However, team size did not exert significant effects on performance nor did (i) the personal status of any of a team's members or (contrary to expectations) (ii) the inclusion of individuals who knew a prospect personally. Teams with members who possessed extensive experience of MGF did not perform substantially better than others. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Using The Lure of Gang Life to Teach Interpersonal and Group Attraction

Course: Small Group Communication Objective: Students will apply group and interpersonal attraction theories to discover the factors impacting a young man's small group membership choices in The Lure of Gang Life

Ethical Management, Corporate Governance, and Abnormal Accruals

Recent research has linked the reduction of abnormal accruals to corporate governance metrics. The results of these studies, however, are based on samples taken from periods prior to promulgated board independence requirements. In other words, during this time period, management not only had discretion over accounting accruals, but also significant influence over the choice of membership on the board of directors. This study suggests that ethical management practices may be a correlated omitted variable in these studies, thus resulting in causal inference problems in the previous research. We argue that, rather than the board of directors monitoring and reducing abnormal accruals as has been posited, management who was not engaging in abusive earnings management was attempting to signal the market regarding the quality of the firm’s financial information through its choice of board membership.

Discursive patterns in multiprofessional healthcare teams

The aim of this paper is to report a study exploring how members of multiprofessional healthcare teams talk about their team. Specifically, the team members' talk was analysed to explore the discursive patterns that emerged and their functions. Over recent decades there has been an increasing demand in Western countries to change care organizations and to coordinate resources and professional competencies to meet the needs of patients/service users better. Because society promotes this kind of work, it may be valuable to explore the self-presentations of a multiprofessional healthcare team. A discourse analysis was carried out on existing empirical data from focus group interviews with a member-identified category sample comprising 32 healthcare professionals in six authentic multiprofessional teams in south-east Sweden. The analysis focused on the participants' discursive constructions of multiprofessional teamwork, on the way they talked about their group, and, in particular, on their use of the pronouns we, they and I. The constructions of 'we' by multiprofessional healthcare teams showed discursive patterns that are here referred to as knowledge synergy and trusting support, which included factors such as cross-learning and personal chemistry. The pronoun we was also used as a flexible resource to manage expertise, power and leadership within the teams, and it might also function to ease the pressure for consensus. These discursive patterns provided powerful rhetorical resources for team members, both to affirm their choice of membership and to claim superiority in relations with the surrounding community (the others) by linking to a societal discourse that promotes collaboration.

The Structure of Founding Teams: Homophily, Strong Ties, and Isolation among U.S. Entrepreneurs

The mechanisms governing the composition of formal social groups (e.g., task groups, organizational founding teams) remain poorly understood, owing to (1) a lack of representative sampling from groups found in the general population, (2) a “success” bias among researchers that leads them to consider only those groups that actually emerge and survive, and (3) a restrictive focus on some theorized mechanisms of group composition (e.g., homophily) to the exclusion of others. These shortcomings are addressed by analyzing a unique, representative data set of organizational founding teams sampled from the U.S. population. Rather than simply considering the properties of those founding teams that are empirically observed, a novel quantitative methodology generates the distribution of all possible teams, based on combinations of individual and relational characteristics. This methodology permits the exploration of five mechanisms of group composition—those based on homophily, functionality, status expectations, network constraint, and ecological constraint. Findings suggest that homophily and network constraints based on strong ties have the most pronounced effect on group composition. Social isolation (i.e., exclusion from a group) is more likely to occur as a result of ecological constraints on the availability of similar alters in a locality than as a result of status-varying membership choices.

The Structure of Founding Teams: Homophily, Strong Ties, and Isolation among U.S. Entrepreneurs

The mechanisms governing the composition of formal social groups (e.g., task groups, organizational founding teams) remain poorly understood, owing to (1) a lack of representative sampling from groups found in the general population, (2) a success bias among researchers that leads them to consider only those groups that actually emerge and survive, and (3) a restrictive focus on some theorized mechanisms of group composition (e.g., homophily) to the exclusion of others. These shortcomings are addressed by analyzing a unique, representative data set of organizational founding teams sampled from the U.S. population. Rather than simply considering the properties of those founding teams that are empirically observed, a novel quantitative methodology generates the distribution of all possible teams, based on combinations of individual and relational characteristics. This methodology permits the exploration of five mechanisms of group composition-those based on homophily, functionality, status expectations, network constraint, and ecological constraint. Findings suggest that homophily and network constraints based on strong ties have the most pronounced effect on group composition. Social isolation (i.e., exclusion from a group) is more likely to occur as a result of ecological constraints on the availability of similar alters in a locality than as a result of status varying membership choices.

Clubs and the Market

This paper defines a general equilibrium model with exchange and club formation. Agents trade multiple private goods widely in the market, can belong to several clubs, and care about the characteristics of the other members of their clubs. The space of agents is a continuum, but clubs are finite. It is shown that (i) competitive equilibria exist, and (ii) the core coincides with the set of equilibrium states. The central subtlety is in modeling club memberships and expressing the notion that membership choices are consistent across the population.

Accountants and Empire: the case of co-membership of Australian and British accountancy bodies, 1885 to 1914

This study examines one aspect of the influence of the British Empire connection on the establishment of an accountancy profession in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It does so by analysing data collected on the comembership of the numerous Australian and British accountancy bodies formed before 1914. It casts doubt on the conclusions of Johnson and Caygill (1971) regarding the predominance of accountants with British qualifications in the creation and growth of the Australian bodies and also elucidates the connection between the professionalization strategies of particular bodies and the membership choices of accountants in the context of imperialism.

A highly interpretable form of Sugeno inference systems

We present a form of fuzzy inference systems (FISs) that is highly interpretable and easy to manipulate. The form is based on a judicious choice of membership functions that have strong locality and differentiability properties and on a modification of the Sugeno and generalized Sugeno forms of the consequent polynomials so as to make them rule centered. Under these conditions, the coefficients in the consequent polynomials can be exactly interpreted as Taylor series coefficients. Besides the intuitive interpretation thus bestowed on the coefficients, we show that the new form allows easy design, manipulation, testing, training, and combination of the resulting fuzzy inference systems. The rudiments of a calculus of fuzzy inference systems are then introduced.

Why Join? Why Stay? Instrumentality, Beliefs, Satisfaction and Individual Decisions on Union Membership

AbstractTo understand individuals’ union membership choices it is necessary to examine decisions both to join and to leave (exit) unions, observed when employees are in jobs where unions are available and there is freedom of choice on union membership (‘open’ jobs). Using multivariate analysis of survey data, it was found that sympathy towards unions was the most powerful influence upon union joining, but had little impact on union exit, which was more a function of the perceived instrumentality of membership. Employee perceptions on union in-fighting and cooperation with management influenced union membership, as did the outcome of involvement in industrial disputes. Satisfaction with union delegates was a key influence on attitudes and membership. Employee trust of management only influenced exit behaviour through its interaction with satisfaction with union delegates. Job satisfaction had a complex relationship with union membership that is disguised in aggregated studies.