Disclosure of environmental matters - Galp Energy

There is a growing number of companies expressing social concerns where environmental worries are also included. Even before legal obliga-tion of environmental disclosures, companies already used to adopt an active stance to safeguard their reputation. However, risk events may have negative impacts on companies’ legitimacy, making it necessary to implement strategies to repair/recover the damaged reputation. This study analyses the annual reports from 2001 to 2011 of the largest Por-tuguese oil company - Galp Energia - in the view of the occurrence of negative events, which, consequently, may have affected the company's reputation. Empirically, legitimacy theory can explain the implementa-tion of strategies to repair reputation. Within this context, most of the existing research is based on common-law countries, with little literature grounded on code-law countries, such as Portugal. Findings have shown that Galp Energia has great concerns about the external perception of society. The company acts immediately after risk events, implementing strategies to minimise the risk impact, especially through the use of cor-rective actions.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

The legitimation of radical change

In coping with climate change, governments – both at national and local levels – increasingly have to deal with radical change. This term refers to situations characterized by (i) a multidimensional concurrence of different types of changes (political, socio-economic, cultural, organizational, environmental), (ii) drastic (non-path dependent) alterations of public planning and spending priorities and (iii) a generalized perception of crisis and insecurity among stakeholders and civil societies. The climate-related determinants of radical change are in principle well known by now, even though their concrete scope and impacts are still quite difficult to predict. They include issues of adaptation, mitigation and integrated ecosystem management. However, research on the political capability of states to actually manage those changes has been rather limited so far. In particular, a basic coin of adaptability, sustainability and resilience, the legitimacy of political orders, has been largely neglected by the scientific debate. Legitimacy rests on the acknowledgment that a political order exists “rightfully” and that its exponents (the “government”) act in the common interest. It gives states the authority to formulate and implement binding decisions and helps them to mobilize societal resources to meet common challenges. Every political order designed to last in time engages in the strategic procurement of legitimacy, but there are different modalities of legitimation and individual political orders are characterized by a specific (but by no means inalterable) mix of modalities. The proposed paper uses an analytical approach which identifies six modalities of legitimation. The concept will be applied to the political management of climate-related radical change. The main objective is to assess the capability of existing political orders to manage change from a common interest perspective, and the options to strengthen democratic legitimacy in the context of climate change

The Politics of the American Policymaking System

Most public policy is developed and implemented by the federal bureaucracy. The possibility of unelected bureaucrats subverting the wishes of popularly elected political principals threatens to sever democratic control of policy by the populace. Through a series of essays, this dissertation explores the opportunities and limitations of one form of bureaucratic control: ex post political oversight by a third-party. Through a series of formal models I illustrate how oversight, such as judicial or executive review of agency actions, structures the policymaking incentives of bureaucratic agencies. The way oversight affects agency behavior, in turn, structures incentives for political principals to design and sustain politically biased policymaking agencies in exchange for higher quality policy promulgation. Overall, the results illustrate the good and bad sides of political oversight and how it can be leveraged to inform several important issues of institutional design. The results suggest paths to improve bureaucratic motivational strategies by administrators

Divulgação de matérias ambientais a Galp Energia

Mestrado em Contabilidade - AuditoriaCada vez mais as empresas demonstram preocupações a nível social, onde se inserem as preocupações ambientais. Mesmo antes da imposição legal de divulgação de matérias ambientais, as empresas já adotavam posturas ativas na salvaguarda da sua reputação. Este é um dos vetores mais importantes para a concretização de muitos dos seus objetivos, e passa pela manifestação dessas preocupações. No entanto, eventos de risco podem trazer impactos negativos na legitimidade da empresa, sendo necessário implementar estratégias de reparação/recuperação da reputação afetada. É através da perspetiva da Teoria da Legitimidade que estas estratégias são analisadas e implementadas. Nesta área a maior parte dos estudos existentes até ao momento, baseiam-se em países Common-law, sendo escassa a literatura baseada em países Code-law, como Portugal. O presente estudo analisa os relatórios e contas desde 2001 a 2011, da maior petrolífera Portuguesa - a Galp Energia – atendendo à ocorrência de eventos negativos que consequentemente afetaram a reputação da empresa. Empiricamente a Teoria da Legitimidade poderá explicar a implementação das estratégias de reparação da mesma. Os resultados do estudo vêm demonstrar que a Galp Energia de facto tem uma grande preocupação com a perceção externa da sociedade, e que perante eventos de risco atua de imediato, implementando estratégias de minimização do impacto, nomeadamente através de ações corretivas.Increasingly companies express social concerns, where environmental concerns are included. Even before the legal obligation of environmental disclosures, companies already had adopted an active stance in safeguarding their reputation. This is one of the most important issues to materializing their goals. However, risk events may bring negative impacts on companies’ legitimacy, being necessary to implement strategies to repair / recover affected reputation. It is through the perspective of Legitimacy Theory that these strategies are analyzed and implemented. In this context most of the existing research are based on common-law countries, with little literature based on Code-law countries, such as Portugal. The present study analyzes the annual reports from 2001 to 2011, of the largest oil Portuguese company - Galp Energia - in view of the occurrence of negative events, which consequently affected company's reputation. Empirically, legitimacy theory can explain the implementation of strategies to repair reputation. Findings have shown Galp Energia, have a great concern about the external perception of society. After risk events the company acts immediately, implementing strategies to minimize risk impact, specially through the use of corrective actions

Personality disorder: no longer a diagnosis of exclusion? Law, policy and practice in Scotland

Personality disorder has been and continues to be a contested diagnosis. Those who attract this form of diagnosis have been particularly vulnerable to the effects of stigma and have tended to be excluded from service provision. This thesis provides an examination of how recent developments in law, policy and practice have impacted upon the status of personality disorder as a diagnosis of exclusion in Scotland. The theoretical framework that provides this thesis with its structure is derived from the post-empiricist approach proposed by Derek Layder. This approach seeks to contextualise emergent inductive findings within a broader historical and contemporary analysis. In the case of this research the broader context consists of the interplay between mental health law, policy and practice in the field of mental health and the diagnosis of personality disorder more specifically. The empirical enquiry at the core of this thesis is based upon an analysis of the views, beliefs and expectations of front-line staff (psychiatrists and social workers qualified as mental health officers) involved in the process of assessment and service provision. In addition to front-line staff (n = 27) a range of key informants who were in a position to shed light on the strategic imperatives underpinning recent developments in law and policy were also interviewed. This analysis is contextualised within a review of key developments in law and policy that have particular significance for anyone who may attract a diagnosis of personality disorder. Despite the ostensibly inclusive approach towards those who may attract a diagnosis of personality disorder evident within the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003, the reality is a highly selective and very limited inclusion of those who attract this form of diagnosis. The effective inclusion of those who may attract a diagnosis of personality disorder has been obstructed by several key impediments: 1: an insufficiently robust policy framework to drive forward the process of inclusion; 2: residual ambivalence towards the legitimacy of the diagnosis of personality disorder itself and the legitimacy of the claims made upon services by those who may attract a diagnosis of personality disorder; 3: insufficient and inadequately focused resources; 4: service structures that have not been redesigned sufficiently to engage successfully with service users who may attract a diagnosis of personality disorder. As a consequence of these impediments to inclusion, the majority of those who may attract a diagnosis of personality disorder in Scotland are likely to continue to face high levels of marginalisation and exclusion

Sustainability Reporting in the Mining Industry

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the sustainability reporting of global mining companies. A review of prior literature indicated that sustainability has grown as a concept of interest in recent decades. Early studies concentrated on the characteristics of organisations producing sustainability reports and proffered different theories explaining why these reports are produced. While more recent research has focused on sustainability in the mining sector, no prior study had looked at the content of the sustainability reports of multiple mining organisations. This study, therefore, provides greater understanding of the concepts and themes used within mining companies’ sustainability reports. The study data drew on 104 electronically available sustainability reports collected from 32 mining companies covering the period 2010 to 2013. The mining companies were further classified according to their International Council on Mining and Minerals (ICMM) membership status. A content and thematic analysis was conducted using Leximancer software, a computer textual analysis program. The software analysed the data and produced concept findings, key themes, and concept maps from it. The findings showed that the most frequently used concepts across all the sustainability reports were community, employees, local, production, and safety. At 27,727 interactions, the concept of community had the greatest number of interactions with other concepts. When the number of interactions was divided by the concept count, education was seen to have the highest number of interactions per concept appearance, followed by power, consumption, coal, and employment. The theme findings identified five theme groups: Community, Safety, Production, Water, and Employees. The summarised findings for the individual companies revealed variation across the different companies. The count percentage of the second most frequent concept, compared to the most frequent, ranged from 99% to 49%. The third most frequent concept’s average relevance score ranged from 97% 38%. When limiting the individual companies to their 5 most frequent concepts, 29 concepts were found to be in use across the 32 different companies. The most common concepts to rank in the top 5 overall were operations, ‘company name’, management, development, and mine. The findings revealed 65 concepts across the 4 investigated years; 22 of these concepts were found to be common concepts. The study identified 17 top 10 ranked concepts for the 4-year period; however, 4 of these ranked consistently in the top 10. These were community, production, report, and local. The findings for the three different ICMM member categories revealed 19 concepts that ranked in the top 40 across all categories. The concepts of community, employees, report, production, and local all had an average rank inside the top 10, regardless of ICMM membership. This study provided greater insight into the sustainability reporting practices of leading global mining companies. The findings revealed the concepts and themes that appeared within the sustainability reports. More research is needed to understand the different concepts and the reasons for the variability in reporting and reporting trends over time. This study has provided a preliminary review which can be used to better understand how mining companies are using sustainability reporting in light of the inherent paradox between sustainability and mining.