THE INSTITUTIONAL COMPLEXITY OF BUSINESS SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (NATURE, INSTITUTIONS, MECHANISM)

Purpose: Business social responsibility or BSR is strengthened by innovative management and marketing practices of Russian enterprises to form their reputation capital and increase commercial benefits. The reasons of these ones are not able to explain in terms of full rationality. The aim of the paper is to examine nature and specifi city of BSR in institutional logics of the fi rm evolution. Methodology & Approach: The theoretical analyses presented in this paper are based on the tools of modern institutional theory and corporate management. BSR is considered as an institutional form of the compelled adaptation of corporations to growing requirements of civil society and regulators (protective reaction), as marketing technology of strengthening of a brand image (response) and as a way of expansion of norms and practices on counteragents and partners in global supply chains (return reaction). Implications for future research: The paper highlights the puzzling essence of BSR determined political, cultural and other social institutions which have produced exogenous effects on organizational behavior. Better understanding of an economic mechanism of introducing BSR institute into a representative firm accelerates the adaptive process of this transplanted institute. Findings: The system of institutions of the socio-responsible company is detailed. Positive effects, contradictions and the mechanism of social orientation of corporate sector are proved.

Measurement of the Low-temperature Loss Tangent of High-resistivity Silicon with a High Q-factor Superconducting Resonator

In this letter, we present the direct loss tangent measurement of a high-resistivity intrinsic (100) silicon wafer in the temperature range from ~ 70 mK to 1 K, approaching the quantum regime. The measurement was performed using a technique that takes advantage of a high quality factor superconducting niobium resonator and allows to directly measure the loss tangent of insulating materials with high level of accuracy and precision. We report silicon loss tangent values at the lowest temperature and for electric field amplitudes comparable to those found in planar transmon devices one order of magnitude larger than what was previously estimated. In addition, we discover a non-monotonic trend of the loss tangent as a function of temperature that we describe by means of a phenomenological model based on variable range hopping conduction between localized states around the Fermi energy. We also observe that the dissipation increases as a function of the electric field and that this behavior can be qualitatively described by the variable range hopping conduction mechanism as well. This study lays the foundations for a novel approach to investigate the loss mechanisms and accurately estimate the loss tangent in insulating materials in the quantum regime, leading to a better understanding of coherence in quantum devices

The Institutionalization of Socio-Responsible Business: Global Trends and Regional Features

The article describes the dual nature of business social responsibility: global and regional. The increased pressure of globalization produces a new stakeholder expectations and efforts of companies to conform to it. As a result of return reaction the growing requirements of International standards of business ethics create common effect on corporate management and organizational behavior. However, the institutional conditions of the firm evolution are determined by regional basics of institutional environment. It sets up a local differentiation of socio-responsible activities of corporate sector. Focused on the possibilities of institutional transplantation we consider economic benefits of an importation and a further adaptation of business social innovations for developing countries and Russia

Snow metamorphism: a fractal approach

Snow is a porous disordered medium consisting of air and three water phases: ice, vapour and liquid. The ice phase consists of an assemblage of grains, ice matrix, initially arranged over a random load bearing skeleton. The quantitative relationship between density and morphological characteristics of different snow microstructures is still an open issue. In this work, a three-dimensional fractal description of density corresponding to different snow microstructure is put forward. First, snow density is simulated in terms of a generalized Menger sponge model. Then, a fully three-dimensional compact stochastic fractal model is adopted. The latter approach yields a quantitative map of the randomness of the snow texture, which is described as a three-dimensional fractional Brownian field with the Hurst exponent H varying as continuous parameter. The Hurst exponent is found to be strongly dependent on snow morphology and density. The approach might be applied to all those cases where the morphological evolution of snow cover or ice sheets should be conveniently described at a quantitative level

LAS FORMAS MODERNAS DE PRESENTACIÓN DE LA INFORMACIÓN SOBRE LOS PROYECTOS DE INNOVACIÓN: TEORÍA Y PRÁCTICA

At work, there are some ways of presenting information about innovative projects which are examined. Special attention is given to key aspects of scientific and technical information visualization, including use of multimedia techniques.En el trabajo se examinan formas modernas para la representación de la información sobre los proyectos de innovación. La atención especial es concedida a los aspectos claves de la visualización de la información científico-técnica, incluso con el uso de las tecnologías multimedia

The Institutionalization of Socio-Responsible Business: Global Trends and Regional Features

The article describes the dual nature of business social responsibility: global and regional. The increased pressure of globalization produces a new stakeholder expectations and efforts of companies to conform to it. As a result of return reaction the growing requirements of International standards of business ethics create common effect on corporate management and organizational behavior. However, the institutional conditions of the firm evolution are determined by regional basics of institutional environment. It sets up a local differentiation of socio-responsible activities of corporate sector. Focused on the possibilities of institutional transplantation we consider economic benefits of an importation and a further adaptation of business social innovations for developing countries and Russia

Metaphors and Analogies in Institutional Economic Theory

The article presents the critical review of physical and biological metaphors in the institutional economic theory. It is proved that physical (including mechanistic) analogies are most adequate for the associative characteristic of a statics and kinetics of institutional systems, and biological – for the figurative description of their evolution. Efficiency of use of metaphors and analogies from the most developed, vanguard areas of natural-science researches is shown

Nonlinear material and ionic transport through membrane nanotubes

Membrane nanotubes (NTs) and their networks play an important role in intracellular membrane transport and intercellular communications. The transport characteristics of the NT lumen resemble those of conventional solid-state nanopores. However, unlike the rigid pores, the soft membrane wall of the NT can be deformed by forces driving the transport through the NT lumen. This intrinsic coupling between the NT geometry and transport properties remains poorly explored. Using synchronized fluorescence microscopy and conductance measurements, we revealed that the NT shape was changed by both electric and hydrostatic forces driving the ionic and solute fluxes through the NT lumen. Far from the shape instability, the strength of the force effect is determined by the lateral membrane tension and is scaled with membrane elasticity so that the NT can be operated as a linear elastic sensor. Near shape instabilities, the transport forces triggered large-scale shape transformations, both stochastic and periodic. The periodic oscillations were coupled to a vesicle passage along the NT axis, resembling peristaltic transport. The oscillations were parametrically controlled by the electric field, making NT a highly nonlinear nanofluidic circuitry element with biological and technological implications.This work was partially supported by NIGMS of the National Institutes of Health under award R01GM121725, RYC-2014-01419 to A.V.S.; Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities grants PGC2018-099971-B-I00 and EUR2019-103830 to A.V.S.; Basque Government grant IT1270-19; and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation to P.I.K. and G.T.R

Observing the products of stellar evolution in the old open cluster M67 with APOGEE

© 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society Recent works have shown how the [C/N] ratio in stars after the first dredge-up (FDU) can be used as an age estimator in virtue of its dependence on stellar mass. For this purpose, precise predictions of the surface chemical composition before and after the mixing takes place in the convective envelope of subgiant stars are necessary. Stellar evolution models can provide us with such predictions, although a comparison with objects of known age is needed for calibration. Open clusters are excellent test cases, as they represent a single stellar population for which the age can be derived through, e.g. isochrone fitting. In this study, we present a detailed analysis of stars belonging to the well-known open cluster M67 observed by the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) survey in the twelfth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and whose chemical properties were derived with the APOGEE Stellar Parameters and Chemical Abundances Pipeline. We find that the [C/N] abundance of subgiant branch stars is overestimated by ∼0.2 dex due to an offset in the determination of the [N/Fe] abundance. Stars on the red giant branch and red clump are shown not to be affected by this offset. We derive [C/N]FDU = −0.46 ± 0.03 dex, which poses a strong constraint on calibrations of [C/N]FDU as age indicator. We also do not find any clear signature of additional chemical mixing processes that set in after the red giant branch bump. The results obtained for M67 indicate the importance of conducting high-resolution spectroscopic studies of open clusters of different ages in order to establish an accurate age-dating method for field stars