Societal Responsibility Research Articles

A study of redesigning food delivery application in Thailand

User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design is fundamental to the stickiness of any application. Food delivery is no exception. With the food delivery business sector on the rise during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it is necessary for any newcomers in the market to at least match the must-have feature lists of the major players. However, Robinhood, despite having a niche in societal responsibility, is still a food delivery app that is found to lack some of the features that, in the past few months, due to the fierce competition within the food delivery space, moved down from a delighter to a must-have. In this paper, we show, through iterations of qualitative interviews, the proposed solutions consisting of features and future roadmap along with the general context of why each implementation was selected in each sprint. Through all these experiments, we learned not to go against the natural reading pattern of reading from left to right, the z pattern in the visual hierarchy, the users’ familiarity with buttons placement due to loaded external factors, and how introducing too many new features may negatively impact the usability test score.

Statistics in Times of Increasing Uncertainty

AbstractThe statistical community mobilised vigorously from the start of the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, following the RSS's long tradition of offering our expertise to help society tackle important issues that require evidence-based decisions. This address aims to capture the highlights of our collective engagement in the pandemic, and the difficulties faced in delivering statistical design and analysis at pace and in communicating to the wider public the many complex issues that arose. I argue that these challenges gave impetus to fruitful new directions in the merging of statistical principles with constraints of agility, responsiveness and societal responsibilities. The lessons learned from this will strengthen the long-term impact of the discipline and of the Society. The need to evaluate policies even in emergency, and to strive for statistical interoperability in future disease surveillance systems is highlighted. In my final remarks, I look towards the future landscape for statistics in the fast-moving world of data science and outline a strategy of visible and growing engagement of the RSS with the data science ecosystem, building on the central position of statistics.

Perceived ethics among business students: Gender makes a difference

The authors examined the ethical perceptions of 262 college students. The present study follows prior studies using 10 scenarios that cover four categories: societal responsibilities, personal gains, corporate gains, and ethical principles. The findings indicate that social issues and ethical principles are more important to students, while personal gains have more significance than corporate gains. Gender plays a significant role in moral perceptions, with women being less tolerant of unethical behavior. Women who encountered ethical concepts in classes and participated in religious practices were less accepting of unethical behaviors. Ramifications for ethics education are shown, with gender being an intermediate (control) factor.

Towards Pedagogy Supporting Ethics in Modelling

Education for concepts such as ethics and societal responsibility that are critical in building robust and applicable mathematical and statistical models do currently exist in isolation but have not been incorporated into the mainstream curricula at the school or university level. This is partially due to the split between fields (such as mathematics, statistics, and computer science) in an educational setting but also the speed with which education is able to keep up with industry and its requirements. I argue that principles and frameworks of socially responsible modelling should begin at school level and that this would mean that ethics and real-life modelling are introduced much earlier than is currently done. Integrating these concepts with philosophical principles of society and ethics would ensure suitable foundations for future modellers and users of technology to build upon.

“How Does Nature Deify Us”

“How Does Nature Deify Us”

OCCUPATIONAL GENDER STEREOTYPES IN INDONESIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEXTBOOKS

This discourse study examines occupational gender stereotypes in two textbooks of secondary English language textbooks published in Indonesia. Occupational gender stereotypes in two English textbooks, entitled When English Rings a Bell, for grades 7 and 8 were analyzed with the help of Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) framework. The findings indicate that both textbooks encompass gender stereotypes, particularly occupation. The findings also revealed far fewer photos of women in the public domain than there were of men, indicating that women in conventional gender roles such as cooking, cleaning, watering plants, caring for children, and performing all domestic activities were far more common. Furthermore, the study found that male occupations were more common and diverse than female occupations regarding occupational gender stereotypes. Furthermore, in terms of societal responsibilities, males were demonstrated to have a wider choice of vocations than girls. Gender blindness among curriculum designers and textbook authors is a severe worry in this regard, and it must be addressed to improve awareness of gender-related occupations. The study's practical implications are that English teachers, language textbook authors, curriculum creators, and illustrators should be fully aware of the interplay between language, visual depictions, and gender concerns while constructing language textbooks to avoid unwanted insights into occupational gender stereotypes.

The Socio and Societal Responsibilities of the Islamic State: Analytical Study in the light of the Qur'an and Sunnah

The Socio and Societal Responsibilities of the Islamic State: Analytical Study in the light of the Qur'an and Sunnah

Unrevealing the Role of Economics on Financial Performance and Future Perspectives

The goals of the economics in the financial to highlight some major studies from across all economic fields wherein the grey systems theory could be applied in addition to opening and introduce new fields. Grey systems theory offers a unique type of number, the three-parameter interval grey numbers, a goal making methodology based on these numbers is proposed, with the premise that these numbers. Generally, decision-makers should consider commercial ethics and societal responsibility, as well as environmental management in particular. CEM seems to have a smaller influence on market based measurements than accounting based criteria is a good example. Another possible explanation for the observation is that market and accounting based measurements have various temporal horizons. Market economies are self-regulating systems governed by the laws of production and trade, according to classical economics' core theory. Some critics of management claim that planners place too much focus on ways to boost growth in the economy while neglecting the social consequences. Simple growth objectives have the disadvantage of not measuring the development in negative effects like noise, pollution and environmental degradation; instead, they reflect the costs of mitigating these problems as part of development itself.

Occupational Gender Stereotypes in Indonesian Secondary School English Language Textbooks

This discourse study seeks to examine occupational gender stereotypes in two textbooks of secondary English language textbooks published in Indonesia. Occupational gender stereotypes in two English textbooks, entitled When English Rings a Bell, for grade 7 and 8 were analyzed with the help of Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) framework. The findings indicate that both textbooks encompass content on gender stereotypes, particularly occupation. The findings also revealed that there were far less photos of women in the public domain than there were of men, indicating that women in conventional gender roles such as cooking, cleaning, watering plants, caring for children, and performing all domestic activities were far more common. Furthermore, the study found that male occupations were more common and diverse than female occupations in terms of occupational gender stereotypes. Furthermore, in terms of societal responsibilities, males were demonstrated to have a wider choice of vocations than girls. Gender blindness among curriculum designers and textbook authors is a serious worry in this regard, and it must be addressed in order to improve awareness of gender-related occupations. The study's practical implications are that English teachers, language textbook authors, curriculum creators and illustrators should be fully aware of the interplay between language, visual depictions, and gender concerns while constructing language textbooks to avoid unwanted insights into occupational gender stereotypes.

Racial Discrimination against Minority Healthcare Workers in Women’s Health

The women’s sexual and reproductive healthcare sector, one of the largest employers delivering services globally, does not always commit to equality, diversity, and inclusion. There is objective, published evidence that not only care provision but also workforce treatment permits inequality and discrimination. The black and ethnic minority workforce in the women’s health specialty, compared to their white counterparts, is often treated unfavorably in appointments, is less often afforded academic development opportunities, is, at many sites, subjected to disproportionately greater disciplinary penalties, tends not have representation in positions of authority, and undertakes training in what is often perceived as a climate of fear due to racism. This problem deserves immediate action by professional bodies. They have the responsibility to remove feelings of exclusion and lack of belonging to all staff, the negative impact on wellbeing caused by unnecessary stress, and concerns over career progression among minority ethnic healthcare workforce and other workers who report discrimination. This duty is part of the societal responsibility to ensure fairness and eradicate discrimination under the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda.

Current challenges and societal responsibility of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Hercegovina

The Islamic Community has been the core organisation serving the needs of Muslims in and from Bosnia and Herzegovina for 140 years. It has faced diverse challenges over its history but the current are different. Challenges currently being faced by Muslims and society in Bosnia and Herzegovina (and elsewhere) include how to counter accusations of radicalization and violent extremism, how to make a meaningful contribution to peace and stability, and how to respond to the pandemic, climate change, and the migrant crisis. This paper examines the Islamic Community’s response to these issues.

Social responsibility perspective in public response to the COVID-19 pandemic: a grounded theory approach

BackgroundCombating viral outbreaks extends beyond biomedical and clinical approaches; thus, public health prevention measures are equally important. Public engagement in preventive efforts can be viewed as the social responsibility of individuals in controlling an infectious disease and are subjected to change due to human behaviour. Understanding individuals’ perception of social responsibility is crucial and is not yet explored extensively in the academic literature. We adopted the grounded theory method to develop an explanatory substantive theory to illustrate the process of how individual responded to the outbreak from a social responsibility perspective.MethodsIn-depth interviews were conducted among 23 Malaysians either through telephone or face-to-face depending on the participant’s preference. Both purposive and theoretical sampling were used. Participants were invited to share their understanding, perceptions and activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were further probed about their perceptions on complying with the public health interventions imposed by the authorities. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data was analysed via open coding, focus coding and theoretical coding, facilitated by memoing, sketching and modelling.ResultsStudy findings showed that, social responsibility is perceived within its role, the perceived societal role responsibility. In a particular context, an individual assumed only one of the many expected social roles with their perceived circle of responsibility. Individuals negotiated their actions from this perspective, after considering the perceived risk during the outbreak. The four types of behaviour depicted in the matrix diagram facilitate the understanding of the abstract concept of negotiation in the human decision-making process, and provide the spectrum of different behaviour in relation to public response to the COVID-19 pandemic.ConclusionsOur study adopted the grounded theory approach to develop a theoretical model that illustrates how individual response to COVID-19 preventive measures is determined by the negotiation between perceived societal role responsibility and perceived infection risk. This substantive theoretical model is abstract, thus has relevance for adoption within similar context of an outbreak.

The Social Role of The Faculty of Educational Sciences as Perceived by Faculty Members at Jordan University: دور المسؤولية المجتمعية لكلية العلوم التربوية من وجهة نظر أعضاء هيئة التدريس في الجامعة الأردنية

This study aimed at identifying the social role of the faculty of educational sciences by faculty at the UJ in 2021. To achieve this goal, a questionnaire is developed, which is consisted of four dimensions: Academic responsibility (teacher education), community responsibility, personal responsibility, and Community Research. The tool was distributed after verifying its validity and reliability to a randomly selected sample of 62 faculty members. The result was: the social responsibilities roles of educational faculty at JU of faculty members were high in four dimensions, with average 4.22 from 5.00. This indicates the importance of the role of faculty members in societal and social responsibilities. The results also indicated that there were no statistically significant differences attributed to the demographic variables of faculty members, except on the variable of academic rank at the dimensions of community and personal regarding professors. Also, the significant differences in dimensions academic, and community regarding faculty graduated from USA and Europe. Finally, the study recommended that: the ministry of higher education will establish an institutional work and give it great importance by adopting initiatives that serve the community in varies aspects. The College of Education should activate the role of social responsibilities in their programs and curricula.

Toward institutionalization of responsible innovation in the contemporary research university: insights from case studies of Arizona State University

ABSTRACT A comprehensive organizational reconceptualization undertaken by Arizona State University (ASU) during the past two decades has been motivated in part by an explicit intent to institutionalize reflexive understandings of societal responsibility within a major public research university. In the process of operationalizing new models for the American research university, ASU embarked on an academic reorganization that institutionalized the conditions for responsible innovation. Indeed, this institutionalization proceeded contemporaneously with—and in some cases preceded—the systematic articulation of responsible innovation discourses by an international community of scholars. As a transformed and transformational institution, the case of ASU points to the need for research universities to rethink societal responsibility.

2 Academic Activism Reconsidered – between Societal Impact and Emancipation

Abstract: In this essay, I argue that the meaning of academic activism focusing narrowly on direct, immediate, political, and visible forms of action and agency needs to be supplemented by a more nuanced understanding including dimensions of academic re-action, co-action, and inter-action. In universities today, we are witnessing an entrepreneurial turn of research environments with an ever-increasing focus on the roles of professionalization and employability in researcher education and careers. As a counter-view, the essay aims to open up the conceptual understanding of the interconnectedness between research and its societal contexts. I shall argue that these relationships cannot exhaustively be described through current discourses about societal impact but need a broader and more inclusive vocabulary including terms like societal engagement, societal responsibility, societal value, and societal dialogue and commitment. I shall work from a philosophical foundation in the critical realism of Roy Bhaskar coupled with recent discussions within the literature of academic activism.

Concepts of responsibility in the German media debate on sugar taxation: a qualitative framing analysis.

BackgroundFraming plays an important role in health-policy processes. Responsibility for health is a salient and contested concept in the framing around food policies, such as sugar taxes. To deepen the understanding of the sugar tax process in Germany and contribute to a better understanding of how responsibility frames are used in debates on health policies, this study investigated responsibility concepts underlying the German media debate on sugar taxation.MethodsWe analyzed 114 national German newspaper articles, published between January 2018 and March 2019, following an inductive thematic analysis approach with an additional deductive focus on responsibility. We identified important contested concepts around sugar taxation, analyzed their combination into narrative frames, and scrutinized those narrative frames for underlying responsibility concepts.ResultsFirst, we identified important contested concepts regarding problems, actors and solutions (i.e. sugar tax and its potential alternatives). Those laid the basis for 13 narrative frames, of which the ‘unscrupulous industry’, ‘government failure’, ‘vulnerable youth’ and the ‘oversimplification’, ‘responsible industry’ and ‘nanny state’ frames were most salient. Within the narrative frames, we found a dominance of societal responsibility framing with a conflict between binding, legislative measures and voluntary solutions in cooperation with the food and beverages industry.ConclusionsQuestions around societal responsibility for health and corporate social responsibility framing become more salient in sugar tax debates. Future research should, therefore, investigate how public health advocates can successfully engage with corporate social responsibility narratives, and how legislative measures can be framed in ways that engender trust in governmental actions.

The Societal Responsibility of Banks: A Case Study of Three Swiss Alternative Banks

ABSTRACT The ‘Great Recession’ of 2008 exposed banks and banking systems as frail economic entities, posing a threat to the real economy and society at large. This context of near economic collapse made clear the societal responsibility of banks to conform to business ethics respectful of both individual and collective interests. We argue that banks are primarily institutions of capitalism that must rely on resilient systems of reasonable values. The paper focuses on three Swiss banks to determine their ethical properties and their social ends. Such a societal dimension that we thrust on banks implies rethinking the responsibility of banks to society and their contributions to the public interest.

Politicians' views on societal responsibility and possibility to promote newly arrived migrants' health in Sweden.

Newly arrived migrants in Sweden risk facing ill health. Politicians at the local and regional levels are involved in many decisions regarding the social determinants of health. The aim of this study was to explore politicians' views on different societal actors' responsibility and possibility to promote newly arrived migrants' health. Data were collected through online questionnaires completed by 667 politicians from municipality and regional councils in northern Sweden. Bivariate analysis was performed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Multivariate analyses were performed using cluster analysis and binary logistic regression analysis. The results show that politicians generally rate societal actors' responsibility and possibility to promote the general population's health higher than newly arrived migrants' health. Moreover, they consider societal actors' responsibility to be greater than their possibility to promote health. Factors significantly contributing to politicians' high ratings of societal responsibility and possibility are attitude (odds ratio [OR] = 2.156, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.306-3.558), specific knowledge of newly arrived migrants' health status (OR = 1.528, 95% CI: 1.005-2.323), personal interest in public health (OR = 2.452, 95% CI: 1.460-4.119), being a municipality politician (OR = 1.659, 95% CI: 1.031-2.670) and being female (OR = 1.934, 95% CI: 1.333-2.806). This study shows that politicians generally rate societal responsibility and possibility to promote newly arrived migrants' health rather high. Personal characteristics are important for politicians' high or low ratings of responsibility and possibility, suggesting insufficient structural support for politicians in health promotion.

Vaccine hesitancy and implications on childhood immunisation in Malaysia

PurposeThe World Health Organization identified vaccine hesitancy as one of the ten threats to global health in 2019. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the implications and factors affecting parental decision on childhood immunisation in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reviews literature on vaccine hesitancy and evaluation of factors affecting parental decision on childhood immunisation in Malaysia.FindingsVaccine hesitancy is a growing public health concern in Malaysia with factors such as influence of Internet and social media, personal choice and individual right, conspiracy theory, religious reasons and alternative medicine as among the influencing dynamics. An urban, educated demography operating within a postmodern medical paradigm compounds the diminishing value of vaccines.Originality/valueThis paper provides a comprehensive examination of vaccine hesitancy in Malaysia. Critical appraisal on personal choice over societal responsibility within an Asian/Muslim collectivist society has not been discussed in previous studies. The acceptance of homeopathy as an Islamic medicine alternative is peculiar to multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Malaysia.

A Systematic Review of Responsibility Frames and Their Effects in the Health Context

Responsibility frames potentially shape the public perception of health issues such as obesity, diabetes, or mental illness, specifically regarding responsibility attributions for their causes and treatment. Which responsibility frames prevail in the health context, and the responses they may elicit from audiences, has not been studied systematically. This systematic review includes studies with different methodological approaches published between 2004 and 2019 (N = 68). Content analyses (n = 56) show that different media attribute health responsibility most frequently, but not exclusively to individuals. Individual responsibility was especially emphasized for obesity, which was also the most studied health issue. Tendencies toward societal attributions of responsibility emerged over time, particularly regarding health risks for which the frames describe a specific cause (e.g., sugar, trans-fat). Experimental studies (n = 12) indicate that individual responsibility frames reduce policy support. The effects of responsibility frames were, however, not as clear-cut as expected with research gaps regarding behavioral and affective outcomes. Overall, there is a clear emphasis on noncommunicable diseases in this field. Finally, the conceptual focus on individual vs. societal health responsibility distracts from social network influences as another relevant health determinant. The implications for health communication are discussed.