Corporate philanthropy and corporate financial performance: The roles of social response and political access

Corporate philanthropy is expected to positively affect firm financial performance because it helps firms gain sociopolitical legitimacy, which enables them to elicit positive stakeholder responses and to gain political access. The positive philanthropy-performance relationship is stronger for firms with greater public visibility and for those with better past performance, as philanthropy by these firms gains more positive stakeholder responses. Firms that are not government-owned or politically well connected were shown to benefit more from philanthropy, as gaining political resources is more critical for such firms. Empirical analyses using data on Chinese firms listed on stock exchanges from 2001 to 2006 support these arguments

Public relations orientation: Development, empirical testing and implications for managers

This study proposes a new construct and a measure for understanding the embeddedness of public relations capability at the organisation level. The public relations orientation measure assesses the degree to which organisations (1) pursue both behavioural and symbolic relationships with publics, (2) set public relations goals to support organisational goals and facilitate effective use of public relations information within the organisation, (3) provide adequate resources for public relations, and (4) engage in dialogue with the publics on whom their success or failure depends. Suggestions are given for how public relations orientation (PRO) can be used as a diagnostic and benchmarking tool in organisations

SRI’s normative and ethics-based rationale

Socially responsible investment (SRI) has a long lineage. Faith-based investors practised it for centuries to ensure they did not invest in “sin.” In recent decades other types of investors have embraced it, challenging apartheid, tobacco, and fossil fuel industries. The SRI sector has grown dramatically, and with this growth its rationales have changed. While some investors embrace SRI as a matter of ethical compulsion, many act for other reasons including their financial self-interest. Some may even no longer speak of SRI or “ethical investment,” but instead refer to “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) issues as “financially material” (Ransome and Sampford 2011). This article evaluates the principal rationales for SRI, namely legal compliance, to avoid complicity in undesirable activities, to use leverage to enable positive change, and to accrue financial advantages

Multicentric atrial strain COmparison between two different modalities: MASCOT HIT study

Two methods are currently available for left atrial (LA) strain measurement by speckle tracking echocardiography, with two different reference timings for starting the analysis: QRS (QRS-LASr) and P wave (P-LASr). The aim of MASCOT HIT study was to define which of the two was more reproducible, more feasible, and less time consuming. In 26 expert centers, LA strain was analyzed by two different echocardiographers (young vs senior) in a blinded fashion. The study population included: healthy subjects, patients with arterial hypertension or aortic stenosis (LA pressure overload, group 2) and patients with mitral regurgitation or heart failure (LA volume–pressure overload, group 3). Difference between the inter-correlation coefficient (ICC) by the two echocardiographers using the two techniques, feasibility and analysis time of both methods were analyzed. A total of 938 subjects were included: 309 controls, 333 patients in group 2, and 296 patients in group 3. The ICC was comparable between QRS-LASr (0.93) and P-LASr (0.90). The young echocardiographers calculated QRS-LASr in 90% of cases, the expert ones in 95%. The feasibility of P-LASr was 85% by young echocardiographers and 88% by senior ones. QRS-LASr young median time was 110 s (interquartile range, IR, 78-149) vs senior 110 s (IR 78-155); for P-LASr, 120 s (IR 80-165) and 120 s (IR 90-161), respectively. LA strain was feasible in the majority of patients with similar reproducibility for both methods. QRS complex guaranteed a slightly higher feasibility and a lower time wasting compared to the use of P wave as the reference