Audience Of Stakeholders Research Articles

Corporate Social Responsibility Reports: An Analysis of Dialogicity Across Sectors and Countries

The paper explores Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports in their dialogicity, i.e. as an interactive communication practice taking place between the company and a multifaceted audience of stakeholders. In particular, it investigates the linguistic and discursive resources used by a sample of companies in their CSR disclosures to articulate corporate values and performance, and voice stakeholders’ concerns. The analysis was conducted on a small collection of documents belonging to firms operating in three different sectors: Banking, Food, and Oil and Gas, and headquartered in three European countries: Italy, Switzerland and the UK. With the support of corpus linguistics tools, the CSR reports were examined in a selection of key dialogic elements and their phraseology. The quantitative and qualitative analysis was intended to map out the strategies (dis)similarly adopted by the firms across the sectors and countries to project themselves into the text, establish a connection with stakeholders, and address their needs and expectations.

Too Legit to Quit: Developing Cognitive Legitimacy by Reconceptualizing Failed Product Pitches

Establishing legitimacy is a key goal for new ventures. Entrepreneurs can establish legitimacy for their new ventures by attracting financial backing from investors and using those funds to build value into ventures. The professional communication-focused behavior of delivering an entrepreneurial pitch to potential resource providers represents one of the most important behaviors entrepreneurs engage in while developing a sustainable venture. Effective professional communication skills are essential not only to the development of entrepreneurs but also to those management and finance students destined to enter professional environments requiring interaction with entrepreneurs and start-up ventures. We present an assignment introducing management students to the concept of entrepreneurial pitch as a tool necessary for identifying and implementing legitimacy, framing, and entrepreneurial motivations. The pitching-failed-product-ideas assignment allows students to begin building skills necessary to communicate legitimacy of an organization to an audience of stakeholders and utilize entrepreneurial motivations of enthusiasm, preparedness, and commitment.

Information that matters: Exploring information needs of people affected by algorithmic decisions

Every AI system that makes decisions about people has a group of stakeholders that are personally affected by these decisions. However, explanations of AI systems rarely address the information needs of this stakeholder group, who often are AI novices. This creates a gap between conveyed information and information that matters to those who are impacted by the system’s decisions, such as domain experts and decision subjects. To address this, we present the “XAI Novice Question Bank”, an extension of the XAI Question Bank (Liao et al., 2020) containing a catalog of information needs from AI novices in two use cases: employment prediction and health monitoring. The catalog covers the categories of data, system context, system usage, and system specifications. We gathered information needs through task based interviews where participants asked questions about two AI systems to decide on their adoption and received verbal explanations in response. Our analysis showed that participants’ confidence increased after receiving explanations but that their understanding faced challenges. These included difficulties in locating information and in assessing their own understanding, as well as attempts to outsource understanding. Additionally, participants’ prior perceptions of the systems’ risks and benefits influenced their information needs. Participants who perceived high risks sought explanations about the intentions behind a system’s deployment, while those who perceived low risks rather asked about the system’s operation. Our work aims to support the inclusion of AI novices in explainability efforts by highlighting their information needs, aims, and challenges. We summarize our findings as five key implications that can inform the design of future explanations for lay stakeholder audiences.

Hypocrites! Social Media Reactions and Stakeholder Backlash to Conflicting CSR Information

AbstractAt a time when firms signal their commitment to CSR through online communication, news sources may convey conflicting information, causing stakeholders to perceive firm hypocrisy. Here, we test the effects of conflicting CSR information that conveys inconsistent outcomes (results-based hypocrisy) and ulterior motives (motive-based hypocrisy) on hypocrisy perceptions expressed in social media posts, which we conceptualize as countersignals that reach a broad audience of stakeholders. Across six studies, we find that (1) conflicting CSR information from internal (firm) and external (news) sources elicits hypocrisy perceptions regardless of whether the CSR information reflects inconsistencies in results or motives, (2) individuals respond to conflicting CSR information with countersignals accusing firms of hypocrisy expressed in social media posts, (3) hypocrisy perceptions are linked to other damaging stakeholder consequences, including behavior (divestment, boycotting, lower employment interest), affect (moral outrage), and cognition (moral condemnation), and (4) firms with higher credibility are more likely to experience adverse effects of conflicting CSR information. These findings advance theory regarding the effects of conflicting CSR information as it relates to the role of credibility and different forms of hypocrisy. Importantly, damaging social media posts and stakeholder backlash can arise from hypocrisy perceptions associated with inconsistent CSR results as well as inconsistent motives, and strong firm credibility only makes a firm more vulnerable to this backlash.

How do the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Technology Transfer Centers Decide What Evidence-Based Practices to Disseminate and Determine How to Do So? A Cross-Sectional Study of a National Network.

It is important to use evidence-based programs and practices (EBPs) to address major public health issues. However, those who use EBPs in real-world settings often require support in bridging the research-to-practice gap. In the US, one of the largest systems that provides such support is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA's) Technology Transfer Center (TTC) Network. As part of a large external evaluation of the Network, this study examined how TTCs determine which EBPs to promote and how to promote them. Using semi-structured interviews and pre-testing, we developed a "Determinants of Technology Transfer" survey that was completed by 100% of TTCs in the Network. Because the study period overlapped with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also conducted a retrospective pre/post-pandemic comparison of determinants. TTCs reported relying on a broad group of factors when selecting EBPs to disseminate and the methods to do so. Stakeholder and target audience input and needs were consistently the most important determinant (both before and during COVID-19), while some other determinants fluctuated around the pandemic (e.g., public health mandates, instructions in the funding opportunity announcements). We discuss implications of the findings for technology transfer and frame the analyses in terms of the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation.

Participatory System Mapping for Food Systems: Lessons Learned from a Case Study of Comox Valley, Canada

Food systems are complex and multifaceted, comprising a diverse range of actors, processes, and interactions. Participatory system mapping can be employed to help understand this complexity and support the development of sustainable and resilient food systems. This article shares a participatory mapping approach that has been developed as part of the Climate–Biodiversity–Health (CBH) Nexus project in the Comox Valley, British Columbia, Canada. This research pursues two main aims: (1) to ground truth in the CBH system map of food systems, developed with the participation of stakeholders; and (2) to explain how participatory system mapping can be employed to clarify the complexity of food systems in a clear and concise manner for all stakeholders. This research contributes to the literature on participatory system mapping, including critiques of its practical utility, by employing participatory approaches to visualize multi-dimensional and multi-level system maps with an emphasis on verifying that they are clear, understandable/useful, and reliable for diverse stakeholder audiences.

Innovations in pharmaceutical policies and learnings for sustainable access to affordable medicines

Innovations in pharmaceutical policies and learnings for sustainable access to affordable medicines

Critical Factors Affecting Trust in the Wine Supply Chain in Greece: A Grey DEMATEL Approach

Background: Although trust is a well-studied topic in supply chain management, the case of the wine supply chain has not been adequately investigated. Methods: A hybrid approach combining qualitative and quantitative data analysis was adopted. The research was divided into two phases: (i) identification of critical factors based on the literature, and (ii) analysis of eight experts’ insights on those factors by employing the grey DEMATEL approach. Results: Fourteen factors that affect trust in the wine supply chain were identified based on the academic literature. From the analysis of the experts’ views, with the use of the grey DEMATEL approach, the factors were classified into two groups. The first group (nine factors) concerns the factors that affect the rest and the second group (five factors) concerns those which are affected by the former factors. Conclusions: The study of trust in the supply chain can be further improved by monitoring the trends in the sector and by engaging a wider audience of stakeholders. This approach can be applied to various regions in order to examine whether the situation is different from country to country. Stakeholders will have the necessary information to support their decisions and prioritize their objectives, aiming at improving the whole supply chain.

Ensuring a ‘Responsible’ AI future in India: RRI as an approach for identifying the ethical challenges from an Indian perspective

AbstractArtificial intelligence (AI) can be seen to be at an inflexion point in India, a country which is keen to adopt and exploit new technologies, but needs to carefully consider how they do this. AI is usually deployed with good intentions, to unlock value and create opportunities for the people; however it does not come without its challenges. There are a set of ethical–social issues associated with AI, which include concerns around privacy, data protection, job displacement, historical bias and discrimination. Through a series of focus groups with knowledgeable people embedded in India and its culture, this research explores the ethical–societal changes and challenges that India now faces. Further, it investigates whether the principles and practices of responsible research and innovation (RRI) might provide a framework to help identify and deal with these issues. The results show that the areas in which RRI could offer scope to improve this outlook include education, policy and governance, legislation and regulation, and innovation and industry practices. Some significant challenges described by participants included: the lack of awareness of AI by the public as well as policy makers; India’s access and implementation of Western datasets, resulting in a lack of diversity, exacerbation of existing power asymmetries, increase in social inequality and the creation of bias; the potential replacement of jobs by AI. One option was to look at a hybrid approach, a mix of AI and humans, with expansion and upskilling of the current workforce. In terms of strategy, there seems to be a gap between the rhetoric of the government and what is seen on the ground, and therefore going forward there needs to be a much greater engagement with a wider audience of stakeholders.

Oh, the stories we could tell: a conceptual model for building shared entrepreneurial narratives

PurposePrior research has drawn from entrepreneurial practice to conceptualize a variety of discreet narrative types. Research has also demonstrated that narratives are a practical and useful tool for entrepreneurs in many stages of the entrepreneurial process. This paper proposes a new narrative, shared narrative, and a conceptual model for how entrepreneurs might build such a narrative that is strategic in nature.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the authors review the types of narrative and introduce shared narrative as an account that narrativizes both the entrepreneur and relevant stakeholders. Then, integrating theoretical concepts from constitutive rhetoric and value co-creation, the authors introduce a conceptual framework as a three-stage process guide for entrepreneurs to build shared narratives for strategic stakeholder engagement. Leveraging the power of shared roles and salient values as the key to pre-story building process, the intended audience of the story (i.e. consumer, investor) is present from the inception of the story and integral to its success.FindingsThe authors assert that entrepreneurs need to adopt a shared narrative approach for strategic purposes. Further, the development of a shared narrative begins at the pre-story process of co-creation, focused on identifying the roles and values entrepreneurs share with their various stakeholders. Incorporating these shared roles and salient values into the entrepreneurial narrative will result in a narrative that is compelling, authentic and adaptable to different stages of the entrepreneurial process and for multiple stakeholder audiences. Post-story, this authentic narrative will result in higher levels of engagement from both the audience and the entrepreneur in the form of reciprocal action.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a new narrative and provides a structured process to support entrepreneurs in building shared narratives for strategic engagement with a wide range of stakeholders.

The progression of disclosures in the basic materials industry of South Africa

AbstractConsidering debates surrounding the usefulness of integrated reporting for decision‐making, this exploratory study uses objective measures to investigate the quality of disclosures other than financial in the basic materials industry of South Africa. Annual and integrated reports for the basic materials and consumer discretionary industries are evaluated over 12 years, from 2008 to 2020 for a total of 1204 firm‐year observations to investigate whether (1) integrated reporting brought positive change and (2) whether reporting improved over time. Readability and narrative tone analyses are conducted, and non‐parametric Kruskal‐Wallis tests are used to investigate the development of these measures over time. The results show that corporate reports in the basic materials industry decreased in quality over time in that the reports have become longer, less readable, and use specific narrative tones, which can create biases. The findings reveal that the declining quality of reports in the basic materials industry could mislead or deter investors, challenge regulatory oversight, and ultimately, impact firms' social licence to operate. Thus, they offer actionable insights for firms to improve disclosure by reducing complexity and length and adopting a neutral narrative tone to mitigate biases, thereby making these reports more accessible and useful for a wider stakeholder audience. In addition, investors ought to demand better reporting, and regulators should tighten guidelines.

SHAPING THE FUTURE OF ISLAMIC BANKING AND FINANCE: A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE

After the inception of Islamic banking and finance (IBF) in the global financial industry, IBF became a new alternative form of ethical finance based on Islamic economic thought. According to classical thought, the essence of Islamic economics is not to prohibit making a profit but to prioritize people’s well-being and, hence, enjoy the profit. This study examines the regulation and functioning of Islamic financial institutions (IsFIs), including their compliance with Sharia law. It explores the ethical considerations surrounding IsFIs by examining how their financial services align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study aims to shed light on the challenges and opportunities within the IBF sector, ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of its role in promoting ethical finance and sustainable development. This study employs an empirical legal research approach to investigate the legal framework of IBF. The results reveal that by effectively highlighting ethical foundations and objectives, Islamic finance will attract a larger market of Muslims and arouse the interest of a wider audience of stakeholders who are not just interested in avoiding financial transactions that support prohibited practices. The findings of this study suggest that a major obstacle to the massive growth of the Islamic banking and finance sector is the existence of contradictions that depend especially on the excessively liberal accreditation of Islamic banks as “Sharia compliant.”

Impression management at board meetings: accountability in public and in private

PurposeTo demonstrate transparency and accountability, the three boards in this study are required to meet in public in front of an audience, although the boards reserve confidential issues for discussion in private sessions. This study examines boardroom public accountability, contrasting it with accountability in board meetings held in private. The study adopts Erving Goffman's impression management theory to interpret divergences between boardroom behaviour in public and private, or “frontstage” and “backstage” in Goffman's terminology.Design/methodology/approachThe research observes and video-records three board meetings for each of the three boards (nine board meetings), in public and private. The research operationalises accountability in terms of director-manager question-and-answer interactions.FindingsIn the presence of an audience of local stakeholders, the boards employ impression management techniques to demonstrate accountability, by creating the impression that non-executive directors are performing challenge and managers are providing satisfactory answers. Thus, they “save the show” in Goffman terms. These techniques enable board members and managers to navigate the interface between demonstrating the required good governance and the competence of the organisations and their managers, while not revealing issues that could tarnish their image and concern the stakeholders. The boards need to demonstrate to the audience that “matters are what they appear to be”, even if they are not. The research identifies behaviour consistent with impression management to manage this complexity. The authors conclude that regulatory objectives have not met their transparency aspirations.Originality/valueFor the first time, the research studies the effect of transparency regulations (“sunshine” laws) on the behaviour of boards of directors meeting in public. The study contributes to the embryonic literature based on video-taped board meetings to access the “black box” of the boardroom, which permits a study of impression management at board meetings not previously possible. This study extends prior impression management theory by identifying eleven impression management techniques that non-executive directors and managers use and which are unique to a boardroom context.

Beyond mathematics, statistics, and programming: data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence competencies and curricula for clinicians, informaticians, science journalists, and researchers

ABSTRACT Data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence applications impact clinicians, informaticians, science journalists, and researchers. Most biomedical data science training focuses on learning a programming language in addition to higher mathematics and advanced statistics. This approach is appropriate for graduate students but greatly reduces the number of individuals in healthcare who can be involved in data science. To serve these four stakeholder audiences, we describe several curricular strategies focusing on solving real problems of interest to these audiences. Relevant competencies for these audiences include using intuitive programming tools that facilitate data exploration with minimal programming background, creating data models, evaluating results of data analyses, and assessing data science research reports, among others. Offering the curricula described here more broadly could broaden the stakeholder groups knowledgeable about and engaged in data science.

Organization-as-Platform Activism: Theory and Evidence from the National Football League “Take a Knee” Movement

Social activists sometimes engage in a form of workplace activism that involves using their employer organization as an unofficial platform to communicate social issue messages to external stakeholders. This type of activism follows a different logic from that of more-familiar citizen activism, in which citizens directly target society and its institutions, and that of organizational-change activism, in which employees aim to influence their employer organization. This article develops and tests theory to understand this phenomenon of organization-as-platform activism, using the National Football League “Take a Knee” employee athlete protests as an empirical context. Drawing on past research on social movements and employee activism, we offer a theoretical comparison of these three forms of activism—citizen, organizational-change, and organization-as-platform—to conceptually distinguish them and to theorize factors that uniquely predict the occurrence of platform activism. We find evidence of predictors associated with the attributes of the organizational platform and those of the intended stakeholder audience. Organization-as-platform activism is associated with the accessibility and openness of the organizational platform for messaging use, the visibility of the organizational platform for message transmission, and the receptivity of the targeted stakeholder audience. As employees increasingly bring their non-work identities and beliefs into the workplace, our findings invite new research on the outcomes of platform activism for organizations, the implications of such activism for organizational stakeholder strategy, and the relation between platform activism and employee prosocial voice.

DIGITALIZATION OF HERBARIUM COLLECTIONS AS A TOOL FOR THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

Digitalization of socio-economic processes is an inevitable phenomenon of the modern economy. Digitalization also applies to scientific knowledge. Herbaria are examples of large data sets that, thanks to the available technology, can be digitized and then digitalized. The question that this study answers is the following: can the digitalization of herbarium collections be perceived as a tool for the commercialization of scientific knowledge. The presented case study of Herbarium Pomeranicum gives a full picture of the digitalization of such specific scientific knowledge as collections of herbarium specimens. The case study shows that thanks to the use of specialist IT solutions about half a million of the most valuable specimens from Pomeranian collections will be made available to a wide audience of stakeholders, which constitutes the commercialization of scientific knowledge. The study advances the academic research on digitalization and commercialization of herbaria's specimens.

Mobile mapping for buildings, assets and estates : Benefits, new workflows and new deliverables

This paper looks at the opportunities presented by mobile mapping technology used for measured building survey, comparing data capture techniques and selecting the right match for the client’s end use. Secondly, it discusses how to balance ‘black box’ automated processing with tried-and-tested quality workflows. Lastly, it investigates how hosting survey data on web-based platforms enables the creation of new deliverables and adds value through embedding data and enabling access to a wider audience of potential stakeholders.

Challenge in the boardroom: Director–manager question‐and‐answer interactions at board meetings

AbstractResearch question/issueCorporate governance codes of practice require non‐executive directors (NEDs) to challenge and question managers. Prior literature and best practice guidance remain silent on the precise meaning of, and on how directors might execute, “challenge”, and how management might respond. We explore the ways in which NEDs challenge, question, and dissent during board meetings, and how managers respond. We observe, audio‐record, and video‐record three boards during nine board meetings. Our boards are unique in holding part of their meetings in public and part in private.Research findings/insightsOur dataset comprises 418 questions and 510 answers. We develop a typology of NEDs' challenge/questions comprising six categories/48 subcategories and managers' responses/answers comprising eight categories/69 subcategories. Our findings support the assertion that NEDs may be reluctant to offer moderate (i.e., constructive) challenge in public. We find significant differences between the level of dissent and the types of answers offered in public versus in private. We find an association between the type of question asked and the type of answer provided. Who asks and answers questions varies significantly in public versus in private, as do the questions and answers by each board.Theoretical/academic implicationsOur empirical findings suggest board behavior varies in the presence of an audience of stakeholders. In public, boards go through the motions by engaging in the performativity of governance, while more substantive governance occurs in private.Practitioner/policy implicationsWe show that regulatory calls for robust challenge by NEDs have not been met, at least judging by the three boards in our study. There is a lack of guidance and advice on how NEDs should exercise challenge and how managers might respond.

Youth engagement in mental health research: A systematic review.

Patient engagement in youth mental health research has the potential to inform research on the interventions, servicesand policies that will benefit youth. At present, there is little evidence to guide mental health researchers on youth engagement. This systematic review aims to describe the impacts of youth engagement on mental health research and to summarize youth engagement in mental health research. We searched the following databases: MEDLINE, EMBASEand PsycINFO, using a combination of subject headings, keywordsand synonyms for the concepts 'patient engagement', 'youth' and 'mental health'. Articles that described engaging youth in mental health research were included. Two reviewers performed the study selection. Study characteristics, research activities performed by youth, impacts of youth engagement, challenges,and facilitators to engagementand recommendations for youth engagement described by authors were extracted. Quality appraisal involved determining the level of engagement of youth and the stage(s) of research where youth were involved. The database search returned 2836 citations, 151 full-text articles were screened and 16 articles, representing 14 studies, were selected for inclusion. Youth were involved at nearly all stages of the research cycle, in either advisory or co-production roles. Youth engagement impacts included enhancing relevant research findings, data collection and analysisand dissemination to academic and stakeholder audiences. Both youth and academic researchers reported personal development across many domains. One negative impact reported was the increase in funding and resources needed for engagement. We produced a list of 35 recommendations under the headings of training, youth researcher composition, strategy, expectations, relationships, meeting approachesand engagement conditions. This study provides an understanding of the impacts and recommendations of youth engagement in mental health research. The findings from this study may encourage researchers to engage youth in their mental health research and support youth engagement in funding applications. We consulted three youths with experience being engaged in mental health research about the review findings and the discussion. One youth designed a visual representation of the results and provided feedback on the manuscript. All youth's input informed the way the findings were presented and the focus of the discussion.

Use of Project ECHO in Response to COVID-19 in Countries Supported by US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with funding from the US President's Plan for Emergency Relief, implements a virtual model for clinical mentorship, Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO), worldwide to connect multidisciplinary teams of healthcare workers (HCWs) with specialists to build capacity to respond to the HIV epidemic. The emergence of and quick evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic created the need and opportunity for the use of the Project ECHO model to help address the knowledge requirements of HCW responding to COVID-19 while maintaining HCW safety through social distancing. We describe the implementation experiences of Project ECHO in 5 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention programs as part of their COVID-19 response, in which existing platforms were used to rapidly disseminate relevant, up-to-date COVID-19-related clinical information to a large, multidisciplinary audience of stakeholders within their healthcare systems.