How is corporate social responsibility adopted by managers? The contribution of ethnography

This short paper details the ethnographic research processes of access and rapport that are outcomes of PhD research on the topic of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The reason for detailing these processes is twofold. Firstly, I argue that the contribution of ethnography to CSR research is simply the question: how is CSR adopted by managers? Secondly, an ethnographer must convince in their interpretation that the research is valid and useful to the subject of research. In this particular case, that the method of research and how it is communicated are significant for the better understanding of CSR. This paper inductively concludes that one (or the first) contribution of ethnography to CSR is simply that the causes of individual action in the 'institutional and structural order of society' (Webb, 2006 p.4) are over-looked and under-researched

'To hell with it': a case study examination of organisational trustworthiness, and dependent stakeholder-organisation relations in the Milaki plant

This paper investigates trust worthiness and dependent stakeholder relations with a contextualised case-study of the Milaki plant in Greece, owned and operated by a multinational concrete aggregates firm. We investigate the opinions of community stakeholders concerning operational decisions made by the case-study firm in multiple challenging contexts (e.g. the Greek economic recession). We focus on the community stakeholder with regard to trustworthiness of the firm i.e. ability, integrity and benevolence (Mayer et al., 1995). With this novel emphasis on the dependent (less powerful) stakeholder of the local community, we can make a contribution by bringing together the stakeholder literature with the literature on trust (Greenwood and Van Buren, 2010). How organisational trustworthiness unfolds in the organisation-stakeholder relationship is under-researched, especially in challenging contexts. This focus enables us to shed light upon how decisions perceived as ethically questionable by the community, and which potentially breach trust, change the dynamic of dependent-stakeholder to organisation relationship. The imp act of this change and the subsequent implications of it for the stakeholder-organisation relationship will be explored in the full paper

What happened to the knowledge economy? ICT, intangible investment and Britain's productivity record revisited

A major puzzle is that despite the apparent importance of innovation around the "knowledge economy", UK macro performance appears unaffected: investment rates are flat, and productivity has slowed down. We investigate whether measurement issues might account for the puzzle. The standard National Accounts treatment of most spending on "knowledge" or "intangible" assets is as intermediate consumption. Thus they do not count as either GDP or investment. We ask how treating such spending as investment affects some key macro variables, namely, market sector gross value added (MGVA), business investment, capital and labour shares, growth in labour and total factor productivity, and capital deepening. We find (a) MGVA was understated by about 6% in 1970 and 13% in 2004 (b) instead of the nominal business investment/MGVA ratio falling since 1970 it is has been rising (c) instead of the labour compensation/MGVA ratio being flat since 1970 it has been falling (d) growth in labour productivity and capital deepening has been understated and growth in total factor productivity overstated (e) total factor productivity growth has not slowed since 1990 but has been accelerating

The Polonnaruwa meteorite: oxygen isotope, crystalline and biological composition

Results of X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis, Triple Oxygen Isotope analysis and Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) studies are presented for stone fragments recovered from the North Central Province of Sri Lanka following a witnessed fireball event on 29 December 2012. The existence of numerous nitrogen depleted highly carbonaceous fossilized biological structures fused into the rock matrix is inconsistent with recent terrestrial contamination. Oxygen isotope results compare well with those of CI and CI-like chondrites but are inconsistent with the fulgurite hypothesis.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, 4 table

Production, purification and characterization of two recombinant DNA-derived N-terminal ovine growth hormone variants: oGH3 and oGH5

Two recombinant DNA-derived variants of ovine growth hormone were produced, purified, characterized and compared with the authentic pituitary derived GH. The variants oGH3 and oGH5 were isolated by differential centrifugation method and were purified after refolding by ion-exchangechromatography and gel filtration. Both the proteins showed single band on SDS-PAGE and had molecular weight and iso-electric point closer to authentic pituitary GH. The variants oGH3 and oGH5 were compared with the authentic pituitary derived GH in radio immuno assays, radio receptor assays and binding with the monoclonal antibodies OA 11 and OA12

Cooling and recombination processes in cometary plasma

The ion electron plasma in comets is examined for cooling processes which result from its interactions with the neutral coma. A cometary coma model is formulated that is composed predominantly of H2O and its decomposition products where electrons are cooled in a variety of processes at rates varying with energy. It is shown that solar plasma plus accumulated cometary ions and electrons is affected very strongly as it flows into the coma. The electrons are rapidly cooled and all but some 10% of the ions undergo charge exchange. Photodissociation of H2O is assumed where ion electron recombination is the dominant loss process

Accounting for multivariate probabilities of failure in vertical seawall reliability assessments

The aim of this paper is to appraise the current knowledge on seawall performance and reliability, and to make the case for improved reliability assessments of vertical seawalls, which are used here as a representative for coastal flood defences. In order to achieve this aim, a brief introduction to flood risk management is first given. Then, vertical seawalls are introduced, and their most prominent failure modes are discussed. Reliability analysis is introduced within the context of flood risk management. More specifically, the fragility curve approach that is currently in use in industry is described, and its limitations are discussed. Finally, it is argued that recent advances in multivariate extreme value models would enable improvements to the approaches currently applied in practice. It is stressed that future risk assessment models of coastal flood defences ought to include multiple failure modes and their interactions, a thorough analysis of the model uncertainties, and potential computational costs, in view of providing practitioners with an improved and functional risk assessment tool. Carter, Magar, Simm, Gouldby & Walli