Exploring the relationship between corporate social responsibility and firm competitiveness

This study deals with the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm competitiveness. Based on the comprehensive literature review, the theoretical model, providing linkages between CSR and corporate competences, has been developed. The created model was empirically tested, and the case study in Lithuania was conducted based on the assessment of influence of different social responsibility dimensions (environmental, social, economic, shareholder and voluntariness) on separate elements of competitiveness (financial capacity, quality of production, satisfied needs of consumers, efficiency, introduction of innovations and company’s image). The survey of 33 Lithuanian companies, i.e., all companies in Lithuania that have joined Global Compact, was performed by employing questionnaires. The conducted empirical research confirms that separate social responsibility dimensions (environmental, social, economic, shareholder, voluntariness) differently affect separate elements of competitiveness: financial capacity, quality of production, satisfied needs of consumers, efficiency, introduction of innovations and company’s image. It has been found that neither the quality of production nor the possibilities for introduction of innovations in a company are affected by the dimensions of social responsibility. Whereas company’s image, reputation and the factor of satisfied needs of consumers are affected by all dimensions of social responsibility that have been analysed. It has been noticed as well that the element of competitiveness, i.e., financial capacity, is affected by environmental and economic social responsibility dimensions; whereas, productivity and work efficiency are mostly related to social, shareholder and philanthropic dimensions. The main input of this paper is the definition of linkages between specific Corporate Social Responsibility dimensions addressed by the Global Compact and the main elements of competitiveness that have been identified based on rigorous and systematic literature review. The paper applies a completely different approach compared to the other studies that are investigating the impact of CSR on competitiveness via moderation and mediation analysis. The main approach followed in this paper is the qualitative assessment that has several limitations and advantage

CTCF Mediates the Cell-Type Specific Spatial Organization of the Kcnq5 Locus and the Local Gene Regulation

Chromatin loops play important roles in the dynamic spatial organization of genes in the nucleus. Growing evidence has revealed that the multivalent functional zinc finger protein CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) is a master regulator of genome spatial organization, and mediates the ubiquitous chromatin loops within the genome. Using circular chromosome conformation capture (4C) methodology, we discovered that CTCF may be a master organizer in mediating the spatial organization of the kcnq5 gene locus. We characterized the cell-type specific spatial organization of the kcnq5 gene locus mediated by CTCF in detail using chromosome conformation capture (3C) and 3C-derived techniques. Cohesion also participated in mediating the organization of this locus. RNAi-mediated knockdown of CTCF sharply diminished the interaction frequencies between the chromatin loops of the kcnq5 gene locus and down-regulated local gene expression. Functional analysis showed that the interacting chromatin loops of the kcnq5 gene locus can repress the gene expression in a luciferase reporter assay. These interacting chromatin fragments were a series of repressing elements whose contacts were mediated by CTCF. Therefore, these findings suggested that the dynamical spatial organization of the kcnq5 locus regulates local gene expression

Masked Angle-Aware Autoencoder for Remote Sensing Images

To overcome the inherent domain gap between remote sensing (RS) images and natural images, some self-supervised representation learning methods have made promising progress. However, they have overlooked the diverse angles present in RS objects. This paper proposes the Masked Angle-Aware Autoencoder (MA3E) to perceive and learn angles during pre-training. We design a \textit{scaling center crop} operation to create the rotated crop with random orientation on each original image, introducing the explicit angle variation. MA3E inputs this composite image while reconstruct the original image, aiming to effectively learn rotation-invariant representations by restoring the angle variation introduced on the rotated crop. To avoid biases caused by directly reconstructing the rotated crop, we propose an Optimal Transport (OT) loss that automatically assigns similar original image patches to each rotated crop patch for reconstruction. MA3E demonstrates more competitive performance than existing pre-training methods on seven different RS image datasets in three downstream tasks.Comment: This paper has been accepted by ECCV 202

Linking Corporate Social Responsibility with Reputation and Brand of the Firm

There are no agreements among scientists in terms of relationships between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Identity and Corporate Image (CI), Corporate Reputation (CR), and Corporate Brand (CB), and their mutual impacts as well the definition of these constructs cause a lot of scientific debates among scholars. The paper analyses the relationship between CSR, Corporate Image, Corporate Reputation and Corporate Brand and their outcomes linked to the financial and other benefits of the firm and society. The main studies that are dealing with this subject were analysed, and the theoretical model that is linking these constructs was developed. The proposed model can be used for carrying empirical studies in specific industries and branches of the economy in order to assess the main measures to increase Corporate Reputation and maximise its outcome

Cryotherapy Combined with Warm Transfusion Apply to Serious Burns in a Rabbit Model: An Experimental Study

A bottoming 275 kilowatt planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) gas turbine (GT) hybrid system control approach has been conceptualized and designed. Based on previously published modeling techniques, a dynamic model is developed that captures the physics sufficient for dynamic simulation of all processes that affect the system with time scales greater than ten milliseconds. The dynamic model was used to make system design improvements to enable the system to operate dynamically over a wide range of power output (15 to 100% power). The wide range of operation was possible by burning supplementary fuel in the combustor and operating the turbine at variable speed for improved thermal management. The dynamic model was employed to design a control strategy for the system. Analyses of the relative gain array (RGA) of the system at several operating points gave insight into input/output (I/O) pairing for decentralized control. Particularly, the analyses indicate that for SOFC/GT hybrid plants that use voltage as a controlled variable it is beneficial to control system power by manipulating fuel cell current and to control fuel cell voltage by manipulating the anode fuel flowrate. To control the stack temperature during transient load changes, a cascade control structure is employed in which a fast inner loop that maintains the GT shaft speed receives its setpoint from a slower outer loop that maintains the stack temperature. Fuel can be added to the combustor to maintain the turbine inlet temperature for the lower operating power conditions. To maintain fuel utilization and to prevent fuel starvation in the fuel cell, fuel is supplied to the fuel cell proportionally to the stack current. In addition, voltage is used as an indicator of varying fuel concentrations allowing the fuel flow to be adjusted accordingly. Using voltage as a sensor is shown to be a potential solution to making SOFC systems robust to varying fuel compositions. The simulation tool proved effective for fuel cell/GT hybrid system control system development. The resulting SOFC/GT system control approach is shown to have transient load-following capability over a wide range of power, ambient temperature, and fuel concentration variations. Copyright © 2006 by ASME

Assessment of corporate social responsibility and its impacts on corporate reputation of companies in selected Balkan Countries former Yugoslavia States

The empirical study was conducted in the three selected Balkan Countries from former Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro through totally 270 experts’ surveys, 90 questionnaires were distributed to entrepreneurs (30), policy makers (30) and experts from academia (30) in each country in order to assess the CSR level in the country and the effect the main drivers having on CSR level, then followed by the assessment of CSR impacts on Corporate Reputation (CR). The model of multivariate regression was developed for assessment of the impact of the four independent variables (Institutional Environment, Executive Characteristics, Customers’ Expectations and Political Factors) on dependent variable–CSR. The study also analysed the impact of CSR (dependent variable) on CR. The obtained results show that countries with the higher level of CSR, have achieved the greater level of CR. The degree of the impact of the main drivers on CSR in selected Balkan countries is linked to EU accession level. The political factor has the highest impact on CSR level in all investigated countries, institutional environment is the next