The emperors clothes – corporate social responsibility creating shared value and sustainability

YesCorporations in the 21st play a decisive role in the future of society. Their power and influence in world affairs often seems devoid of ethics and seems to exceed the reach and the means of many nations. As a result, the strategic positions they take towards value creation and ethics affects every individual on the planet. This paper explores strategic routes that organisations could apply to facilitate economic growth while ensuring their ecological integrity and ensuring social enhancement generating benefits to a wider scope of organisational stakeholders. By conducting a critical analysis and clarifying common misconceptions between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Creating Shared Value (CSV) and Sustainability, it is possible to determine how these interrelated strategic approaches have evolved. This article argues the importance of transforming the purpose of organisations to encapsulate stakeholder value creation as the main reason for their existence

Modelling the Legacies of War Violence: Voters, Parties, Communities

Wars are extreme events with profound social consequences. Political science, however, has a limited grasp of their impact on the nature and content of political competition which follows in their wake. That is partly the case due to a lack of conceptual clarity when it comes to capturing the effects of war with reliable data. This article systematises and evaluates the attempts at modelling the consequences of war in political science research which relies on quantitative methods. Our discussion is organised around three levels of analysis: individual level of voters, institutional level of political parties, and the aggregate level of communities. We devote particular attention to modelling the legacies of the most recent wars in Southeast Europe, and we offer our view of which efforts have the best potential to help set the foundations of a promising research programme

The challenges and the policies of media literacy programs in Egyptian schools

Current limitations in Egypt hinder citizens from obtaining an acceptable understanding of the effects of current affairs on their daily lives; these limitations include a rigid state control on news media, an absence of journalistic ethical standards that result in wide spreading of rumors, polarity and political bias, and a lack of adequate media awareness. Citizens need to be equipped to overcome these obstacles in media systems by developing a good understanding of the media landscape, challenge defective media practices, and acquire needed skills to filter information for reliability and accuracy. Citizens should learn the value of the media around them and the worth of freedom of expression and freedom of information. This thesis focuses on current challenges teachers in Egyptian private and public schools may face in implementing media literacy programs. An Egypt-based model of media education in schools is drafted with recommendations based on descriptive analysis of such programs in different countries, and derived from in-depth interviews with experts and surveys with teachers. The purpose of this thesis is to establish a well-rounded media literacy educational model that can serve as a basis for application in private and public schools across grades K-12. The problem being addressed is the lack of comprehensive education that teaches youngsters in Egyptian schools how to critically and purposively consume, and create media. Theoretical framework is based on Uses and Gratification as well as Media Ecology theories

Wildlife Crime and Other Challenges to Resource System Resilience

Although wildlife crime has exploded in Africa over the past decade —“commercial poaching” now kills an estimated eight percent of the continent’s elephant population each year—some governments have proven more successful than others at protecting wildlife and preserving habitats. To explain this variation, this study examines how the policies of three states (Kenya, Tanzania, and Botswana) have enhanced or undermined the resilience of the continent’s elephant ecosystem. Using the social-ecological system framework, the study illustrates how each state’s changing practices have either exacerbated the stresses wrought by wildlife crime or successfully protected local populations from poaching. The study finds that monocausal explanations cannot explain social-ecological systems outcomes. Cross-level and cross-scale dynamics, including temporal, geospatial, epistemological, and institutional linkages, explain variation in system functionality. These dynamics include colonial policies, governance practices, the international conservation community, and resource use decisions

5th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2023)

Research methods in economics and social sciences are evolving with the increasing availability of Internet and Big Data sources of information. As these sources, methods, and applications become more interdisciplinary, the 5th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA) is a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas and advances on how emerging research methods and sources are applied to different fields of social sciences as well as to discuss current and future challenges.Martínez Torres, MDR.; Toral Marín, S. (2023). 5th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2023). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/CARMA2023.2023.1700

Radioactive masculinity: How the anxious postcolonial learnt to love and live in fear of the nuclear bomb

Radioactive Masculinity explores how the Cold War legacy, of nuclear weapons finding resonance in images of white maleness and masculinity, results in anxious hypermasculine performances. These discursive and physical masculine acts contingent on the symbolic and material power of nuclear weapons, I argue, represent radioactive masculinity, a form of hegemonic militarized masculinity, which is intrinsically linked to the concept of nationhood and sovereignty. This idealized masculinity is fluid and cannot be tangibly or materially realized, much like the constantly decaying radioactive bomb on which it is modeled. Through analyzing a wide range of artifacts from America and India, I show that the anxieties of radioactive masculinity produce belligerent masculine performances, which are always volatile and unsuccessful. While existent scholarship has examined the gendered nature of nuclear technology, the cultural effect of unexploded nuclear weapons has been seldom researched. My project remedies this gap by locating physical and cultural sites in America and India, where the materiality of the bomb is made visible through its associations with male corporeality. This relationship, I argue, is indispensable toward understanding both the continued legacy of the Cold War within the Indian subcontinent, as well as its effects on postcolonial subjectivities.;The dissertation begins with an introductory chapter that chronicles the rise of radioactive masculinity within the American military-industrial complex. Here, I analyze official US government documents and related materials, which perform the equation of the bomb to the hardened white male body. I show that while nuclear technology is not inherently gendered, both the bomb and its production spaces were pre-discursively masculinized in order to counter dual insecurities: of post-Depression era American emasculation and a hypermasculine Nazi Germany. Next, I bring in a comparison to Indian governmental documents to further describe how the transference of American radioactive masculinity into postcolonial spaces creates postcolonial nuclear borderlands, which are co-extensive with all nuclear postcolonial spaces everywhere. Chapter 2 examines the formation of a (pseudo) nuclear public sphere in America---resulting from the crisis in official publicity about the bomb---in the period following the cessation of above ground testing. By juxtaposing canonical Anglo-American nuclear disaster fiction with postcolonial speculative fiction, Chapters 3 and 4 emphasize that the structures of radioactive masculinity are fluid and not bound to specific spatio-temporal contexts. In Chapter 5, a comparative analysis of Leslie Silko\u27s Ceremony with postcolonial Indian texts from the eco-conservationist Bishnoi community demonstrate how tactical storytelling challenges the strategic structures of radioactive colonization. My dissertation concludes with an examination of minority anti-nuclear cultural productions, which by challenging the ideology of nuclear nationalism implicit in radioactive masculinity, deconstructs dominant Anglo-American nuclear historiography. By challenging the symbiotic relationship between radioactive masculinity and nuclear nationalism these texts initiate Nucliteracy---a dynamic multimodal form of literacy---that interrogates dominant and official publicity/secrecy about the bomb

Wearing an amulet: Land titling and tenure (in) security in Tanzania

Land reform in Tanzania introduced a new National Land Policy (1995) and Land Laws (1999), changing the way land is governed and administrated. The land reform process promoted formalisation of customary land rights as a means to tenure security for the citizens. This ethnography found that possession of a land title does not guarantee tenure security; when land held under customary rights is allocated by the state for investors or encroached upon by the wealthy and well connected. Nevertheless, land titling is undertaken strategically by each of the three groups who form the core of this ethnography to achieve their different goals: MKURABITA – a government sponsored programme, the Community Organisation for Research and Development Services (CORDS) – a pastoralist NGO, and the smallholders and pastoralists village residents, to achieve their different goals. The government of Tanzania are focussed on attracting inward investment, loans and development. Civil society groups promote titling for their members as a defensive mechanism against encroachment and smallholders and pastoralists hope that having a title deed just might swing a case in their favour

Exploring the contribution of paradiplomacy to climate resilient development : the cases of Oslo and Nouvelle-Aquitaine

The IPCC conclusions are clear: the situation is dire, and the window of opportunity to keep a hospitable climate is narrowing. Current systems of global governance are showing their limits in the face of such threats, as the important lag in appropriate climate action illustrates. Moreover, our better understanding of the synergies between climate and societies is pushing for transformations embedding climate resilience within a sustainable and just human development. As such actions are required at all levels, a new type of actor emerging on the international scene deserves attention: subnational governments. Cities and regions worldwide are indeed getting increasingly involved in global affairs, advocating through networks, acting through cooperation, signing treaties… A phenomenon coined as “paradiplomacy” by a growing but fragmented body of literature, that embodies a move towards more polycentric forms of global governance. This thesis explores how the global involvement of subnational governments can contribute to the integrated approach of climate resilient development. By looking at the paradiplomatic activities of two cases – the French region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine and the Norwegian city of Oslo – this research investigates actual contributions to key dimensions of climate resilience and socially just development. Through a comparative approach, it attempts to identify the factors shaping such contributions, highlighting some of the limits and potentials of a decentralized global climate action, and its integration with issues of socially just human development.M-D

4th. International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2022)

Research methods in economics and social sciences are evolving with the increasing availability of Internet and Big Data sources of information. As these sources, methods, and applications become more interdisciplinary, the 4th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA) is a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas and advances on how emerging research methods and sources are applied to different fields of social sciences as well as to discuss current and future challenges. Due to the covid pandemic, CARMA 2022 is planned as a virtual and face-to-face conference, simultaneouslyDoménech I De Soria, J.; Vicente Cuervo, MR. (2022). 4th. International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2022). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/CARMA2022.2022.1595