13,623 research outputs found

    Corporate Social Responsibility: the institutionalization of ESG

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    Understanding the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on firm performance as it relates to industries reliant on technological innovation is a complex and perpetually evolving challenge. To thoroughly investigate this topic, this dissertation will adopt an economics-based structure to address three primary hypotheses. This structure allows for each hypothesis to essentially be a standalone empirical paper, unified by an overall analysis of the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance. The first hypothesis explores the evolution of CSR to the modern quantified iteration of ESG has led to the institutionalization and standardization of the CSR concept. The second hypothesis fills gaps in existing literature testing the relationship between firm performance and ESG by finding that the relationship is significantly positive in long-term, strategic metrics (ROA and ROIC) and that there is no correlation in short-term metrics (ROE and ROS). Finally, the third hypothesis states that if a firm has a long-term strategic ESG plan, as proxied by the publication of CSR reports, then it is more resilience to damage from controversies. This is supported by the finding that pro-ESG firms consistently fared better than their counterparts in both financial and ESG performance, even in the event of a controversy. However, firms with consistent reporting are also held to a higher standard than their nonreporting peers, suggesting a higher risk and higher reward dynamic. These findings support the theory of good management, in that long-term strategic planning is both immediately economically beneficial and serves as a means of risk management and social impact mitigation. Overall, this contributes to the literature by fillings gaps in the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance, particularly from a management perspective

    A Decision Support System for Economic Viability and Environmental Impact Assessment of Vertical Farms

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    Vertical farming (VF) is the practice of growing crops or animals using the vertical dimension via multi-tier racks or vertically inclined surfaces. In this thesis, I focus on the emerging industry of plant-specific VF. Vertical plant farming (VPF) is a promising and relatively novel practice that can be conducted in buildings with environmental control and artificial lighting. However, the nascent sector has experienced challenges in economic viability, standardisation, and environmental sustainability. Practitioners and academics call for a comprehensive financial analysis of VPF, but efforts are stifled by a lack of valid and available data. A review of economic estimation and horticultural software identifies a need for a decision support system (DSS) that facilitates risk-empowered business planning for vertical farmers. This thesis proposes an open-source DSS framework to evaluate business sustainability through financial risk and environmental impact assessments. Data from the literature, alongside lessons learned from industry practitioners, would be centralised in the proposed DSS using imprecise data techniques. These techniques have been applied in engineering but are seldom used in financial forecasting. This could benefit complex sectors which only have scarce data to predict business viability. To begin the execution of the DSS framework, VPF practitioners were interviewed using a mixed-methods approach. Learnings from over 19 shuttered and operational VPF projects provide insights into the barriers inhibiting scalability and identifying risks to form a risk taxonomy. Labour was the most commonly reported top challenge. Therefore, research was conducted to explore lean principles to improve productivity. A probabilistic model representing a spectrum of variables and their associated uncertainty was built according to the DSS framework to evaluate the financial risk for VF projects. This enabled flexible computation without precise production or financial data to improve economic estimation accuracy. The model assessed two VPF cases (one in the UK and another in Japan), demonstrating the first risk and uncertainty quantification of VPF business models in the literature. The results highlighted measures to improve economic viability and the viability of the UK and Japan case. The environmental impact assessment model was developed, allowing VPF operators to evaluate their carbon footprint compared to traditional agriculture using life-cycle assessment. I explore strategies for net-zero carbon production through sensitivity analysis. Renewable energies, especially solar, geothermal, and tidal power, show promise for reducing the carbon emissions of indoor VPF. Results show that renewably-powered VPF can reduce carbon emissions compared to field-based agriculture when considering the land-use change. The drivers for DSS adoption have been researched, showing a pathway of compliance and design thinking to overcome the ‘problem of implementation’ and enable commercialisation. Further work is suggested to standardise VF equipment, collect benchmarking data, and characterise risks. This work will reduce risk and uncertainty and accelerate the sector’s emergence

    The development of the Kent coalfield 1896-1946

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    One of the unique features of the Kent Coalfield is that it is entirely concealed by newer rocks. The existence of a coalfield under southern England, being a direct link between those of South Wales, Somerset and Bristol in the west and the Ruhr, Belgium. and northern France in the east, was predicted by the geologist R. A. C. Godwin-Austen as early as 1856. It was, however, only the rapid increase in demand for Britain's coal in the last quarter of the nineteenth century that made it worth considering testing this hypothesis. The first boring was made in the years 1886-90, and although it discovered coal, this did not in itself prove the existence of a viable coalfield. This could be done only by incurring the heavy cost of boring systematically over a wide area. As the financial returns from such an undertaking were uncertain, it was not surprising that in the early years, around the turn of the century, a dominant role was played by speculators, who were able to induce numerous small investors to risk some of their savings in the expectation of high profits. As minerals in Britain were privately owned, the early pioneer companies not only had to meet the cost of the exploratory borines, but also, if they were not to see the benefit of their work accrue to others, lease beforehand the right to mine coal from local landowners in as much of the surrounding area as possible. This policy was pursued most vigorously by Arthur Burr, a Surrey land specula tor, who raised capital by creating the Kent Coal Conoessions Ltd. and then floating a series of companies allied to it. Burr's enterprise would probably have been. successful had it not been for the water problems encountered at depth in -v- the coalfield. As a result, the Concessions group found itself in control of most of the coalfield, but without the necessary capital to sink and adequately equip its 01ffi collieries. By 1910, however, the discovery of iron ore deposits in east Kent, coupled with the fact that Kent coal was excellent for coking purposes, began to attract the large steel firms of Bolckow, Vaughan Ltd. and Dorman, Long & Co. Ltd. in to the area. The First World War intervened, however, to delay their plans, and to provide an extended lease of life to the Concessions group, which, by the summer of 1914, was facing financial collapse. By the time Dorman, Lone & Co, in alliance with Weetman Pearson (Lord Cowdray), had acquired control over the greater part of the coalfield from the Concessions group, not only was the country's coal industry declining, but so was its steel industry, which suffered an even more severe rate of contraction during the inter-war years. As a result, Pearson and Dorman Long Ltd. was forced to concentrate just on coal production, and this in turn was hampered not only by the water problems, but also by labour shortages and the schemes introduced by the government in 1930 to restrict the country's coal output, in an attempt to maintain prices and revenue in the industry. Nevertheless, production did show a substantial increase between 1927 and 1935, after which it declined as miners left the coalfield to return to their former districts, where employment opportunities were improving in the late thirties. Supporting roles were played in the inter-war years by Richard Tilden Smith, a share underwriter turned industrialist with long standing interests in the coalfield, who acquired one of the Concessions group's two collieries, and by the Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Co. Ltd., which through subsidiary companies, took over the only colliery to be developed by a pioneer company outside the Concessions group. The impossibility of Kent coal, because of its nature, ever gaining more than token access to the more lucrative household market, and then the failure of the local steel industry to materialise meant that the -vi- companies had to develop alternative outlets for their growing outputs. Although nearness to industrial markets in the south-east of England did confer certain advantages were poor consolation for the hoped for developments of either the early pioneers or the later industrialists. Instead of the expected profits, the companies mostly incurred losses, and only the company acquired by Powell Duffryn ever paid a dividend to its shareholders in the years before nationalisation. From the point of view of the Kent miners, the shortage of labour in the coalfield, particularly in the years 1914-20 and 1927-35, was to an important extent responsible for their being amongst the highest paid in the industry. At the same time the more favourable employment opportunities prevailing in Kent compared with other mining districts enabled the Kent Nine Workers Association to develop into a well organised union, which on the whole was able to look after the interests of its members fairly successfully. Throughout the period 1896 to 1946 the Kent Coalfield existed very much at the margin of the British coal industry. Its failure to develop substantially along the lines envisaged by either the early pioneers or by the later industrialists meant that its importance in national terms always remained small

    Victims' Access to Justice in Trinidad and Tobago: An exploratory study of experiences and challenges of accessing criminal justice in a post-colonial society

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    This thesis investigates victims' access to justice in Trinidad and Tobago, using their own narratives. It seeks to capture how their experiences affected their identities as victims and citizens, alongside their perceptions of legitimacy regarding the criminal justice system. While there have been some reforms in the administration of criminal justice in Trinidad and Tobago, such reforms have not focused on victims' accessibility to the justice system. Using grounded theory methodology, qualitative data was collected through 31 in-depth interviews with victims and victim advocates. The analysis found that victims experienced interpersonal, structural, and systemic barriers at varying levels throughout the criminal justice system, which manifested as institutionalized secondary victimization, silencing and inequality. This thesis argues that such experiences not only served to appropriate conflict but demonstrates that access is often given in a very narrow sense. Furthermore, it shows a failure to encompass access to justice as appropriated conflicts are left to stagnate in the system as there is often very little resolution. Adopting a postcolonial lens to analyse victims' experiences, the analysis identified othering practices that served to institutionalize the vulnerability and powerlessness associated with victim identities. Here, it is argued that these othering practices also affected the rights consciousness of victims, delegitimating their identities as citizens. Moreover, as a result of their experiences, victims had mixed perceptions of the justice system. It is argued that while the system is a legitimate authority victims' endorsement of the system is questionable, therefore victims' experiences suggest that there is a reinforcement of the system's legal hegemony. The findings suggest that within the legal system of Trinidad and Tobago, legacies of colonialism shape the postcolonial present as the psychology and inequalities of the past are present in the interactions and processes of justice. These findings are relevant for policymakers in Trinidad and Tobago and other regions. From this study it is recognized that, to improve access to justice for victims, there needs to be a move towards victim empowerment that promotes resilience and enhances social capital. Going forward it is noted that there is a need for further research

    HackYourSyllabus Mini-Grant: A bite-sized OER incentive program

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    Transformation of the business model to establish sustainable value in the consumer durables super store industry of Sri Lanka

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    The business model of an organization, operates as the fundamental blue print of the planning process, which shapes the nature of the strategies executed during the course of operation. These strategies in turn are responsible for the value creation or value erosion that takes place during the operation of the organization determining its sustainability, and in a broader context the sustainability of the industry. The research is done for the Consumer Durables Super Store (CDSS) industry of Sri Lanka concerning the existing business model, the value erosion occurring as a result of it and the risk it carries to the sustainability of the industry. The theoretical aspect of the research to develop a relationship based business model was anchored on the understanding of existing frameworks relating to sustainable value and extracting relevant areas of each of these frameworks (alignment of value, transforming current strategies and service offerings to create sustainable value) to develop a suitable hybrid framework with modifications to the literature to suite the research context.Ten in-depth interviews with CDSS organizational representatives holding leadership, sales and marketing management positions, and two focus group sessions with fifty selected customers were conducted in a virtual environment due to the prevailing pandemic situation. The data collected were analyzed with NVIVO 12, with themes relevant to the research utilized as codes, giving a clear understanding over the buyer and seller purview on the themes of the research. The findings surfaced the value erosion caused due to the financially driven strategies originated from the transactional orientation of the existing business model. The theories adopted to construct the relationship oriented business model to rectify the value erosion taking place, based on sustainable value, value alignment and service offerings, were modified to incorporate ‘quality of trade’ to bridge the gap, leading towards the creation and delivery of sustainable value to the buyer-seller eco system of the industry

    Investigating and mitigating the role of neutralisation techniques on information security policies violation in healthcare organisations

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    Healthcare organisations today rely heavily on Electronic Medical Records systems (EMRs), which have become highly crucial IT assets that require significant security efforts to safeguard patients’ information. Individuals who have legitimate access to an organisation’s assets to perform their day-to-day duties but intentionally or unintentionally violate information security policies can jeopardise their organisation’s information security efforts and cause significant legal and financial losses. In the information security (InfoSec) literature, several studies emphasised the necessity to understand why employees behave in ways that contradict information security requirements but have offered widely different solutions. In an effort to respond to this situation, this thesis addressed the gap in the information security academic research by providing a deep understanding of the problem of medical practitioners’ behavioural justifications to violate information security policies and then determining proper solutions to reduce this undesirable behaviour. Neutralisation theory was used as the theoretical basis for the research. This thesis adopted a mixed-method research approach that comprises four consecutive phases, and each phase represents a research study that was conducted in light of the results from the preceding phase. The first phase of the thesis started by investigating the relationship between medical practitioners’ neutralisation techniques and their intention to violate information security policies that protect a patient’s privacy. A quantitative study was conducted to extend the work of Siponen and Vance [1] through a study of the Saudi Arabia healthcare industry. The data was collected via an online questionnaire from 66 Medical Interns (MIs) working in four academic hospitals. The study found that six neutralisation techniques—(1) appeal to higher loyalties, (2) defence of necessity, (3) the metaphor of ledger, (4) denial of responsibility, (5) denial of injury, and (6) condemnation of condemners—significantly contribute to the justifications of the MIs in hypothetically violating information security policies. The second phase of this research used a series of semi-structured interviews with IT security professionals in one of the largest academic hospitals in Saudi Arabia to explore the environmental factors that motivated the medical practitioners to evoke various neutralisation techniques. The results revealed that social, organisational, and emotional factors all stimulated the behavioural justifications to breach information security policies. During these interviews, it became clear that the IT department needed to ensure that security policies fit the daily tasks of the medical practitioners by providing alternative solutions to ensure the effectiveness of those policies. Based on these interviews, the objective of the following two phases was to improve the effectiveness of InfoSec policies against the use of behavioural justification by engaging the end users in the modification of existing policies via a collaborative writing process. Those two phases were conducted in the UK and Saudi Arabia to determine whether the collaborative writing process could produce a more effective security policy that balanced the security requirements with daily business needs, thus leading to a reduction in the use of neutralisation techniques to violate security policies. The overall result confirmed that the involvement of the end users via a collaborative writing process positively improved the effectiveness of the security policy to mitigate the individual behavioural justifications, showing that the process is a promising one to enhance security compliance

    Stakeholder Governance: Empirical and Theoretical Developments

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    Stakeholder governance receives attention across many disciplines, resulting in fragmented knowledge. The inherent complexity of stakeholder governance requires the integration of this knowledge to develop comprehensive and inclusive theories to better conceptualize this phenomenon. In this research, we develop stakeholder governance through empirical and theoretical approaches. In the first essay, we use multiple case comparisons to empirically examine how and why organizations manage food waste to develop grounded theory through contextualized explanations. We contribute grounded theoretical and empirical evidence to show that food waste represents a significant business problem. Our data suggests that dimensions of logistics and stakeholder governance dictate how and why organizations manage food waste. These findings stimulate a deeper dive into stakeholder governance, revealing fragmentations in knowledge that require holistic, interdisciplinary review and synthesis. In the second essay, we identify definitions and terminologies, review the evolution of theories and orientations, organize mechanisms and conceptualizations, synthesize key theoretical tensions, and offer suggestions for future research to contribute theoretical developments for stakeholder governance. We contribute pluralist conceptual frameworks that integrate knowledge across disciplines to provide a comprehensive overview and recommendations. Overall, we contribute empirical and theoretical research to advance theory development for stakeholder governance
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