“Wolf Totem” – metaphorical narrative of sustainability reporting practice from a balanced ecosystem perspective: a longitudinal study of sustainability reporting by Chinese banks

This research attempts to explain and evaluate corporate sustainability reporting practices from an ecosystems perspective, through the application of metaphors. It argues that commonly held ideas of sustainable development, which many firms embrace to produce sustainability reports, narrowly focus on the sustainability performances of individual firms and fail to comprehend a broader systems view, that incorporates a holistic understanding of sustainability embracing ecological perspectives. The study draws on the work of Chinese intellectual Jiang Rong, author of a best-selling semi-autobiographical novel Wolf Totem, which documents the life experiences of a Beijing student sent to the Inner Mongolian countryside during China’s Cultural Revolution. Reflecting on his experiences, the author describes the powerful interrelationships between human beings, animals, nature and culture that work in harmony to sustain nomadic life. The novel is used in this research as a contextual landscape to construct a series of multi-tiered metaphors to make sense of corporate sustainability reporting through metaphorical interpretations. By narrating the Chinese banking sector as the “ecosystem”, various actors within the sector are examined to establish their roles and functions in the ecosystem. This is made possible by conducting a summative content analysis on sustainability reports issued by Chinese banks for the period 2008 to 2012 and a metaphorical narrative representation of the findings. This research aims to become one of the first studies of its kind to use a cross-disciplinary framework and application of metaphors to comprehend sustainability reporting practice with a focus on the context of a financial service sector in a strong, emerging economy

An autoethnographic study of a Mongolian English teacher’s journey in applying a task-based approach to an online English writing class for adult learners

This study explores the trajectory of a Mongolian English teacher incorporating task-based language teaching (TBLT) in an online writing class. Through autoethnograpy, it deepens teacher’s pedagogical understanding of technology-mediated TBLT, grounded their first-hand experience and learner’s perceptions about this unique approach. The findings show the main challenges the teacher faced were teacher’s self-doubt and anxiety regarding TBLT, technology use and language proficiency. Overall, Mongolian learners perceived the lessons positively as it encouraged independent and reflective learning

COVID-19 study on sccientific articles in health communication: A science mapping analysis in Web of Science.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause a collapse in the health systems and economies of many countries around the world, after 2 years of struggle and with the number of cases still growing exponentially. Health communication has become as essential and necessary for control of the pandemic as epidemiology. This bibliometric analysis identifies existing contributions, jointly studying health communication and the pandemic in scientific journals indexed. A systematic search of the Web of Science was performed, using keywords related to COVID-19 and health communication. Data extracted included the type of study, journal, number of citations, number of authors, country of publication, and study content. As the number of scientific investigations has grown, it is necessary to delve into the areas in which the most impactful publications have been generated. The results show that the scientific community has been quick to react by generating an extraordinary volume of publications. This review provides a comprehensive mapping of contributions to date, showing how research approaches have evolved in parallel with the pandemic. In 2020, concepts related to mental health, mass communication, misinformation and communication risk were more used. In 2021, vaccination, infodemic, risk perception, social distancing and telemedicine were the most prevalent keywords. By highlighting the main topics, authors, manuscripts and journals since the origin of COVID-19, the authors hope to disseminate information that can help researchers to identify subsisting knowledge gaps and a number of future research opportunities.This research was funded by Programa Operativo FEDER Andalucía 2014–2020, grant number UMA18-FEDERJA-148’ and the APC was funded by Universidad de Málaga/CBUA

Foreign bodies: public health and the regulation of racialized threats to empire and the citizen body

Who can truly be American? In the United States, the storybook citizen is conceived as a young, white, able-bodied, heterosexual, productive male. The menace of racialized contagion is integral to preserving this fiction and a prominent co-author of this work is the public health sector. Contagion is often articulated as a threat to the empire and to the citizenry and, invested with institutional authority, public health delineates which bodies are "fit" to constitute the body politic. Despite claims of universality, public health policies, recommendations and regulations are informed by historically-specific sociocultural beliefs about race, class, gender and sexuality. This thesis investigates how public health informs the constitution of and responses to racialized contagion. I argue that, in the American context, such formulations can be traced to the late nineteenth century when public health was bolstered by the American Civil War and came to prominence in a society being dynamically reshaped by emancipation, immigration and urbanization. For this project, I conduct a discourse analysis of historically-specific accounts of disease, specifically leprosy (and to a lesser extent syphilis) related to nineteenth century Chinese immigrants and Haitians as a “risk group” for HIV/AIDS at the close of the twentieth century to examine the ways in which public health discourses that serve to exclude certain populations from the body politic (do not) persist. Through doing so, I intend to determine whether there is a pattern to the logics of racialized exclusion that has existed in public health since its inception. In short, do the contours of whiteness always require the construction of a diseased brown boogeyman and, if so, how is this danger constructed in the American context

The Case of Mongolia

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 협동과정 기술경영·경제·정책전공, 2021.8. Jorn Altmann.Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are considered key players in any country's social and economic development. Adopting innovative technologies such as Big Data Analytics (BDA) can bring better performance and competitive advantage for SMEs, which is important for a country's economic growth. This study aims to assess the main challenges and potentials of BDA adoptions in SMEs and examine the impacts of its adoption into business performance for SMEs in developing countries aspect. To achieve the study's goal, a systematic literature review (SLR) is conducted regarding the adoption of BDA in SMEs. The most common SLR method among the researchers in information system research, which was initiated by Kitchencham et al. (Kitchenham, Budgen, & Brereton, 2015) and Okoli et al.(Okoli & Schabram, 2010), is adapted in the study. In doing so, the SLR is focused on defining SMEs within various aspects and is directed to determine the most common influencing factors in BDA adoption in SMEs. In the result of the SLR, widely discussed 34 distinct influencing factors are identified in the adoption of BDA in SMEs from the previous literature. In addition, the hypotheses are developed based on the influencing factors, which show consensus among the researchers. After that, a conceptual framework is developed for developing the country aspect and control variables, and the moderating variables’ effect is also estimated. To evaluate hypotheses and the conceptual framework, an online questionnaire is conducted among Mongolia SMEs which run businesses in various industries. The online questionnaire is distributed to decision-makers and information technology specialists in the firm. In total, 170 respondents participated in the online survey. Based on the survey result, hypotheses are tested. As a consequence, the collected data and proposed framework are analyzed by using Partial Least Squares (PLS). This is a method of Structure Equation Modeling (SEM) that allows investigating the inter-relationship between the latent and observed variables. In terms of statistical software tools, Smart PLS v3.3.3 was employed, which is one of the useriv friendly tools for data analysis. Finally, policies and recommendations are deployed based on the findings.중소기업 (SME)은 모든 국가의 사회 및 경제 개발에서 핵심적인 역할을 하고 있는 것으로 간주된다. 빅 데이터 분석 (BDA)과 같은 혁신적인 기술의 채택은 국가 경제 성장에 중요한 역할을 하는 있는 중소기업에 더 나은 경영 성과와 경쟁력을 가져올 수 있다. 본 연구는 중소기업에서 BDA 채택하는 데에 있는 주요 과제와 잠재력을 평가하고 개발 도상국 측면에서 BDA 채택은 중소기업의 경영 성과에 대한 영향을 조사하는 것을 목표로 한다. 본 연구의 목표를 이루기 위해 우선 SME에서 BDA 채택과 관련한 문헌검토(systematic literature review (SLR))를 하였다. 정보 시스템 연구자들 중에 Kitchencham et al [1]과 Okoli et al. [2]에 의해 시작된 정보 시스템 연구는 가장 일반적인 SLR 방법이라고 할 수 있다. 이 방법은 본 연구에 적용됩니다. 본 연구는 문헌 검토를 통해서 다양한 측면에서 SME를 정의하는 데 초점을 맞추고 있으며 SME에서 BDA 채택의 가장 일반적인 영향 요인을 밝혔다 . 문헌 검토한 결과를 보면, 선행 연구에서 SME의 BDA 채택에 있어서 34 개의 뚜렷한 영향 요인을 논의했다는 것을 확인되었다. 본 연구의 가설은 연구자들의 일치한 관점을 보여주는 영향 요인을 기반으로 설정하었다. 그 다음에 개발 도상국을 위한 개념의 체계를 세우고 통제 변인과 조절 변인의 영향도 추정하였다. 가설과 개념 체계를 평가하기 위해 본 연구는 몽골의 다양한 사업을 운영하고 있는 중소기업을 대상으로 온라인 설문조사를 실시하였다. 온라인 141 설문조사의 참여자는 회사의 주요 의사 결정자 및 정보 기술 전문가였다. 이를 통해 수집 된 데이터와 제안 된 체계를 PLS (Partial Least Squire)를 사용하여 분석하였다. 이 방법은 잠재 변수와 관찰 변수 간의 상호 관계를 조사 할 수있는 구조 방정식 모형 (SEM) 방법이다. 통계 소프트웨어 도구 측면에서는 접하기가 쉬운 데이터 분석 도구 중 하나인 SmartPLS v3.3.3 을 이용하였다. 마지막으로, 본 연구는 분석한 결과를 기반하여 정책 및 제안을 제시하였다.Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. Background on Big Data Analytics Adoption 6 2.1 Defination of Big Data 6 2.2 Defination of Small and Medium enterprises 9 2.3 Role of Big Data 10 2.4 Charateristics of developing countries 11 Chapter 3. Methodology and Model Design 13 3.1 Methdogology fused for analyzing Big Data Analytics in Small and Medium Enterprises in Developing countries 13 3.2. Model design 26 3.2.1 Factors 26 3.2.2. Theories 28 3.2.3. Classification of factors into categories 36 3.2.4. Impact on developing country 46 3.2.5. Impact on different industries 50 3.2.6. Theoritical background and hypothesis development 51 3.2.7. Technological context 54 3.2.8. Organizational context 58 3.2.9. Environmental context 61 3.2.10. Moderating variables 63 3.2.11. Control variables 65 Chapter 4. Framework for Mongolian case 67 4.1. Mongolia 67 4.2. Data collection 68 4.3. Basic understanding on moderating effect 70 4.4. Data analysis 71 4.5. Results 74 4.5.1. Reliability and validity 74 4.5.2. Structual model analysis 78 4.5.3. Moderating variables 82 Chapter 5. Conclusion 85 5.1. Discussion 85 5.1.1. Technological context 85 5.1.2. Organizational context 88 5.1.3. Environmental context 88 5.2. Contrubitions 89 5.3. Policy implication 90 5.4. Limitation and outlok 91 Appendix.1 93 Appendix.2 110 Bibliography 115 Abstract in Korean 140석

The Case for a Modern Euskara: Proposed Structural Changes to Euskara Batua

This paper comes into being because of this author’s concern about the limited use and slow evolution of Euskara Batua, the version of the Basque language spoken today in parts of the Basque Country and the larger B, also called Euskal Herria, with its historical regions in Europe, bounded by Spain in the south and by France in the north, as well as in dozens of Basque communities in the USA, Central, and South America. What’s the problem? Well, currently the number of auxiliary verbs (verbal forms, aditz languntzaileak) in Euskara Batua as proposed by the Euskaltzaindia, the Academy of the Basque Language, approaches the number of 825, a gigantic number by any scale, any standard, in any language. In contrast, the number of auxiliary verbs in English is in the order of 12-15 (e.g., can, could, do, does, will, would, should, must, etc.), and this small number does the role and functions of all those 825 verbal forms in Euskara Batua. How has this happened? What was the Euskaltzaindia up to, and why? Why nobody within the Euskaltzaindia, or anywhere else, has said anything, objected to this unreasonable high number of 825 auxiliary verbs? Actually, there have been many objections, calling such system of verbs “artificial”, “unnecessary”, “harmful” and more, but little has been done about it, really. Accordingly, this paper reports on an independent survey that this author conducted recently in order to ascertain the knowledge of Euskara Batua, in particular the knowledge of auxiliary verbs and the use of Euskara Batua outside the school environment, namely at home, at work, and on the street. Statistical results of this survey are reported in this paper

An Adaptive Framework for Improving the Effectiveness of Virtual Enterprises in the Supply Chain

This thesis describes a research project that develops an adaptive framework for improving the effectiveness of virtual enterprises in the supply chains in Mongolia. The research takes empirical and quantitative approach to study the phenomenon of virtual enterprises. Based on a literature review, the factors that influence organisations to join in virtual enterprises are studied by a higher-order factor analysis. As a result, agility is identified as one of the main benefits organisations can gain by joining a virtual enterprise temporarily and changes in business performance are conceived as the measures of effectiveness. Next, a taxonomy of enterprises is developed with five distinguishing clusters that achieve differing levels of agility and business performance. This study suggests that enterprises that are monitoring changes in their business environment take most advantage of agility and achieve the best levels of performance. These findings then allow an adaptive framework based on common reference architectures to be developed as a main contribution of this study. The framework includes a breeding environment as a ‘pool’ of prepared enterprises with the ability to form temporary collaborations to react responsively, rapidly and effectively to the fast-changing opportunities. A structural equation model was used to examine the model fit with the supporting hypotheses, based on the observed data. Then, a powerful clustered expectation maximisation algorithm was applied to the analysis of the grouped enterprises. Finally, a simulation-based case study was conducted to validate the developed framework. The results provide rich empirical evidence of the beneficial impact of virtual enterprises on agile supply chains. The research provides rich empirical evidence of the beneficial impact of virtual enterprises on agile supply chains. It also provides theoretical and managerial insights that can be used to strengthen the drivers, enablers and capabilities that enhance the effectiveness of virtual enterprises collaboration in agile supply chains that can be translated to a global context. These are major contributions the ‘body of knowledge’ in themselves, but the research also adds usefully to the study of applied research methodologies in the area