The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Human Resource Flexibility as a Mediating Variable Between High Performance Work Systems and Performance

Much of the human resource management literature has demonstrated the impact of high performance work systems (HPWS) on organizational performance. A new generation of studies is emerging in this literature that recommends the inclusion of mediating variables between HPWS and organizational performance. The increasing rate of dynamism in competitive environments suggests that measures of employee adaptability should be included as a mechanism that may explain the relevance of HPWS to firm competitiveness. On a sample of 226 Spanish firms, the study’s results confirm that HPWS influences performance through its impact on the firm’s human resource (HR) flexibility

The Use of Copper and Vanadium Mineral Ores in Catalyzed Mechanochemical Carbon–carbon Bond Formations

Under mechanochemical conditions in ball mills, copper- and vanadium-containing minerals initiate atom transfer radical cyclizations and oxidative couplings, respectively. Only catalytic quantities of the minerals are required, and the reactions proceed either under neat conditions or in the presence of a minimal amount of solvent

Mechanochemical Oxidation and Cleavage of Lignin β‑O‑4 Model Compounds and Lignin

A mechanochemical oxidation and cleavage reaction in lignin β-O-4 model compounds and lignin catalyzed by HO–TEMPO/KBr/Oxone (TEMPO is 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinyloxy) has been developed under milling conditions. The studies on nonphenolic lignin β-O-4 model compounds led to selective oxidations of the benzylic hydroxyl groups. Subjecting phenolic lignin model compounds to the oxidative conditions in a ball mill initiated aryl–C_α bond cleavage reactions leading to the formation of the corresponding quinones and phenol derivatives. Transferring the mechanochemical protocol to lignin resulted in the simultaneous oxidation and cleavage of bonds with varied selectivity for monomeric products. Finally, a scale-up approach of the oxidative procedure by using vibrating disc mill technology enabled the mechanochemical protocol to be applied in gram-scale batch reactions under reduced milling time, while affording a similar extent of oxidation

Entwicklung einer 8 Bit Mikroprozessor-Bausteinfamilie in CMOS-Technologie

SIGLEDEGerman

Entwicklung einer 8 Bit Mikroprozessor-Bausteinfamilie in CMOS-Technologie

SIGLEDEGerman

Revisiting the national corporate social responsibility index

This paper relies on Gjølberg’s national corporate social responsibility (CSR) index while its purpose is twofold. First, it seeks to extend the methodological instrument for assessing national CSR and, second, it applies the new approach to a much larger pool of countries (n = 86) in an attempt to provide a global CSR outlook. The emergent picture from the study is one of deficient CSR penetration and wide variation among countries where most of the assessed countries are still lagging in the endorsement of international CSR initiatives and schemes. Findings offer fertile ground to theorists and researchers for a deeper investigation of the national specificity of CSR and to further identify institutional determinants that shape the social responsiveness and self-regulation of business entities. The study has also implications for managers and top executives to consider as it infers that the national background can be influential in the development of a CSR agenda and can condition the level of CSR penetration