Studies of Work: Achieving Hybrid Disciplines in IT Design and Management Studies

We explore the relationship between ethnomethodology (EM), ethnography and the needs of managers and designers in industry, considering both ethnomethodological and industrial criteria of adequacy and explicating their relationship through the concept of “audience.” We examine a range of studies in this light, with a view to their possible candidacy as hybrid studies and identify three types of application of EM studies of work: market research, design, and business improvement. Application in the first of these fields we dub “anthropological,” in that it consists in studying and reporting back on the ways of exotic people (customers). This is the application most commonly found in studies of computer supported co-operative work (CSCW). A second CSCW application, “technomethodology,” involves the introduction of EM concepts into the design process. A further application, dubbed “holding-up-a-mirror,” involves reporting back to members of a setting upon their own activities. We argue that technomethodology and holding-up-a-mirror both offer the possibility of creating hybrid disciplines. We consider the objection that improvement and design involve the introduction of value judgements that threaten the practice of EM indifference, arguing that action research can serve as a guarantee of unique adequacy (UA) by testing the researcher’s understanding as analysis in action in the setting. Furthermore, the standard of reporting required by the UA criterion contributes to the effectiveness of proposed solutions

THE CLERGY-PENITENT PRIVILEGE: THE ROLE OF CLERGY IN PERPETUATING AND PREVENTING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Domestic violence occurs at alarming rates in all socioeconomic levels, races, locations, sexual orientations, and professions. Domestic violence occurs at similar frequencies among religious and non-religious individuals. Clergy play an important role in religious communities. The clergy-penitent privilege was created to protect the relationship between clergy and communicant and prevents clergy from testifying about spiritual communications. However, the privilege is currently an absolute privilege which is unnecessary and hurts victims and survivors of domestic violence. Additionally, the statutorily written privilege is not aligned with the application and practice of the privilege. Practice indicates clergy tend to desire to testify and view the privilege very narrowly. A qualified clergy-penitent privilege would strike a more appropriate balance between protecting religious freedom and obtaining justice. Furthermore, clergy-penitent privileges often conflict with mandatory child abuse reporting laws. Abrogating the privilege as to child abuse will compel clergy to comply with mandatory reporting laws and protect vulnerable children

Sustainability reporting using integrated reporting and sustainable development goals (sdg). the case of ibex 35 companies

Abstract: In this paper there is a general glimpse in the Integrated Reporting and in the Sustainable Development Goals as tools for sustainability reporting. In the second part we offer an analysis of the application of both guidelines in the case of the companies included in the IBEX 35 of the Spanish stock exchange market. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to outline two general landmarks of sustainability reporting: Integrated Reporting (IR) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and offer a general glimpse about their use in the case of the companies included in the IBEX 35. Design/methodology/approach: The approach is to outline a presentation of IR and SDG, and make a review of their use for a set of outstanding Spanish companies. Originality/value: This paper offers a general view on a subject that is a challenge for entities oriented to the implementation of sustainability in their values and also in their reporting

Video Compression for Camera Networks: A Distributed Approach

The problem of finding efficient communications techniques to distribute multi-view video content across different devices and users in a network is receiving a great attention in the last years. Much interest in particular has been devoted recently to the so called field of Distributed Video Coding (DVC). After briefly reporting traditional approaches to multiview coding, this chapter will introduce the field of DVC for multi-camera systems. The theoretical background of Distributed Source Coding (DSC) is first concisely presented and the problem of the application of DSC principles to the case of video sources is then analyzed. The topic is presented discussing approaches to the problem of DVC in both single-view and in multi-view applications

Hedging effectiveness of total returns swaps: application to the Japanese market

The development of the real estate swap market offers many opportunities for investors to adjust the exposure of their portfolios to real estate. A number of OTC transactions have been observed in markets around the world. In this paper we examine the Japanese commercial real estate market from the point of view of an investor holding a portfolio of properties seeking to reduce the portfolio exposure to the real estate market by swapping an index of real estate for LIBOR. This paper explores the practicalities of hedging portfolios comprising small numbers of individual properties against an appropriate index. We use the returns from 74 properties owned by Japanese Real Estate Investment Trusts over the period up to September 2007. The paper also discusses and applies the appropriate stochastic processes required to model real estate returns in this application and presents alternative ways of reporting hedging effectiveness. We find that the development of the derivative does provide the capacity for hedging market risk but that the effectiveness of the hedge varies considerably over time. We explore the factors that cause this variability

Mandatory environmental disclosures by companies complying with IAS/IFRS: The case of France, Germany and the UK

This study investigates whether the adoption of a single set of accounting standards, such as IFRS, guarantees harmonization of accounting practices within a country and across countries, or whether differences in reporting practices persist because of dissimilarities in reporting habits and institutional settings. To this end, we investigate whether the level of environmental disclosure under IFRS is related to the size of the reporting firm, which has been shown to be a major determinant of voluntary environmental information, and the strength of legal and regulatory constraints on environmental disclosures in the country where the firm is domiciled. Results indicate that environmental disclosures imposed by IFRS increase with firm size, just like voluntary environmental disclosures. This suggests that application of IFRS is affected by the reporting practices that prevailed prior to IFRS adoption. Results also indicate that firms domiciled in countries with constraining environmental disclosure regulations (i.e. France and the UK) report more on environmental issues than do firms domiciled in countries with weakly constraining regulations (i.e. Germany). This suggests that national regulations strongly impact IFRS reporting. Taken as a whole, our results support the view that IFRS are not applied consistently across firms or across countries, notably because of persistence of reporting traditions and discrepancies in national legal requirements