Have banks been supportive during the COVID19 pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had disrupting and negative effects on economies and society. Nevertheless, it seems that it has contributed to increased solidarity, and determined individuals and organizations to be more responsible, at least concerning health-related aspects. Companies around the world have been involved in supporting the health care system and minimizing the impact of the pandemic on economies around the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, companies were motivated by utilitarianism and deontological factors to get involved in philanthropic CSR actions in the toughest moments of the pandemic. Banks seem to be no exception. Even more, during this pandemic, banks have done much to rehabilitate their reputations, tarnished during the previous financial and economic crises. This paper aims to analyze the perception of the involvement of Romanian banks during the pandemic, especially for overcoming the crises of the healthcare system. The findings could guide banks to be more consistent and better communicate their CSR activities and involvement for the benefit of society, and helps understand how people observe and evaluate the CSR efforts of banks

HOW CUSTOMERS PERCEIVE BANKS’ CSR INITIATIVES

The pandemic context shows signs of stability. During these complicated times for all, banks were extremely vigilant toward the evolution of the sanitary crisis. Banks came up with quick solutions to protect the health of their colleagues and clients. And they have been open to adapting their strategy to the changing data from the field. This paper analyzes the perception of the involvement of Romanian banks in corporate social responsibility during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study reveals that the activity of banks during the pandemic, evaluated positive to some extent, does not significantly impact the level of trust in the banking system. The findings could guide banks from Romania to better communicate their CSR projects and impact on the community. Despite the difficulties brought by the pandemic, it is natural for banks to take a step forward and think about the way they will define their CSR strategy in the future. Altogether, our findings could help the banking system learn to be even more empathetic and understanding towards clients and to be present in the community. During the pandemic, banks have done much to rehabilitate their reputation, impacted by the previous economic crisis

The relationship of organizations with the media in crisis situations

An interesting facet in the life of the organizations that we want to highlight in this article is to present some aspects of the relationships with the media during organizational crisis. Complex and complicated, this relationship involves the activation of numerous levers that build a necessary communication with the media. The dimensions of our approach have not allowed us to highlight all the underlying aspects on which such a relationship is built, but we have drawn only a few general frameworks that are important to follow if organizations are confronted with moments of crisis. The crisis management team in the organization plays an important role in maintaining and developing communication with journalists in a correct way, in communicating information on the crisis, on the evaluation of its effects, on rebuilding the organization. The tools that help build the organization's relationship with the media are the press release, the press conference and the press kit. The press release during a crisis must be concise, with a brief, but accurate summary of events, with an indication of the measures taken by the organization to mitigate the effects of the crisis. In turn, the press conference will be prepared by knowing the positions taken by journalists, by emphasizing the role of the spokesperson. The press kit is a lot richer; it is one of the most important ways to relate to the media. The clarity of the relationship certainly leads to the efficiency of the measures taken to fight the crisis. The press remains a fast way of communication between the organization and its audiences

Organisations and the Communication Crisis

In creating this approach, we stared from re-updating the concept of communication crisis, in order to track the effects this disruption has on the image of organisations. For, as we know, to build an image favourable for an institutional structure involves hard, continuous work, and the deterioration of this image in a period of crisis can determine its evolution, it can even lead to the disappearance of that organisation. We tried to emphasise the correct and rapid ways by which the crisis can be managed, and communication is the fastest and one of the most efficient means. Public relations play an essential role at this stage, because they help in developing the messages to be transmitted to various types of audiences. Communication during the crisis highlights the pragmatic aspect of communication, because when the information is lapidary, there is not enough time to collect data and to inform you

VISIBLE MANIFESTATIONS OF CORPORATE CULTURE

We intended to offer in this article a synthesis of the ways in which the culture developed at the corporate level is manifested. The term culture in the organizational analysis refers to the common values and believes that end up characterizing the organizations. Beyond the diversity of these variables, their intensity and their manner of manifestation vary from individual to individual, from one working group to another, but a strong organizational culture will always find and use a common denominator

Multi-Task Hypergraphs for Semi-supervised Learning using Earth Observations

There are many ways of interpreting the world and they are highly interdependent. We exploit such complex dependencies and introduce a powerful multi-task hypergraph, in which every node is a task and different paths through the hypergraph reaching a given task become unsupervised teachers, by forming ensembles that learn to generate reliable pseudolabels for that task. Each hyperedge is part of an ensemble teacher for a given task and it is also a student of the self-supervised hypergraph system. We apply our model to one of the most important problems of our times, that of Earth Observation, which is highly multi-task and it often suffers from missing ground-truth data. By performing extensive experiments on the NASA NEO Dataset, spanning a period of 22 years, we demonstrate the value of our multi-task semi-supervised approach, by consistent improvements over strong baselines and recent work. We also show that the hypergraph can adapt unsupervised to gradual data distribution shifts and reliably recover, through its multi-task self-supervision process, the missing data for several observational layers for up to seven years.Comment: Accepted in ICCV 2023 Workshop

A brief review of the literature on the malignant ureteral obstruction

Malignant ureteral obstruction (MUO) caused by a primarily urological tumor or secondary to a late-stage malignancy can be difficult for the urologist to manage. Due to a lack of clinical data on the management of MUO, every case is particular and should be aborted individually. Lack of specific treatment, either palliative or definitive, can severely damage renal function and lifetime expectancy in patients, causing even more damage that could otherwise be avoided. Prompt management directed at the recovery of renal function is the main goal in such cases. Even after urinary flow is restored, life threatening post-obstructive diuresis needs to be managed

Underactive bladder - an underestimated entity

Introduction. The concept of underactive bladder is relatively new. Currently there is no generally accepted definition of this pathology. Diagnosis depends on urodynamic findings, and symptoms are usually rare and intricated with the symptoms of other urinary pathology. Matherials and methods. This review examines the current literature on underactive bladder regarding pathology, definition, diagnosis, current guidelines, and any further potential medical developments. Conclusions. Underactive bladder is a poorly understood pathologic condition. Only since 2002 has there been any consensus regarding the definition. The diagnosis relies only on urodynamics; clinical diagnosis is a challenge even for a consultant; and treatment does not seem to alleviate much of the suffering. This disease remains underrecognized and undertreated. More research is needed to identify less invasive diagnosis tools and treatment for this pathology

The importance of early arthritis in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic inflammatory disorder that manifests predominantly in the synovial joint, where it causes a chronic inflammatory process, leading to early osteoarticular destructions. These destructions are progressive and irreversible, generating a significant functional deficiency. During the last years, the diagnostic approach of RA has focused on early arthritis. Early arthritis can develop into established RA or another established arthropathy, like systemic lupus erythematosus or psoriatic arthritis. It can have a spontaneous resolution or may remain undifferentiated for indefinite periods of time. The management of early arthritis has changed considerably in the past few years, under the influence of new concepts of diagnosis and new effective therapies. The treatment goal of early arthritis should now be the clinical remission and prevention of joint destruction. Methotrexate is the first line of therapy, used to treat early arthralgia and to reverse or limit impending exacerbation to RA. Biological treatment is used as a second line therapy in patients with severe disease who do not respond or have a contraindication to disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Patients with early arthritis should usually be identified and directed to rheumatologists to confirm the presence of arthritis, and to establish the correct diagnosis plus to initiate the proper treatment strategies

New oral anticoagulants and their reversal agents

Atrial fibrillation is a commonly encountered pathology in medical practice, and its prevalence has shown a continuous rise over the past years. Atrial fibrillation has a significant impact on patients\u27 quality of life, not only due to the standard anticoagulant treatment with vitamin K antagonists that require close monitoring and dose adjustment, but also due to the fragile equilibrium between hemorrhagic and thrombotic risks. The introduction of new oral anticoagulants (NOACs) in the treatment guidelines for atrial fibrillation has improved the quality of life, as NOACs do not require close monitoring or dose adjustments. However, even if the safety profile of the NOACs regarding the hemorrhagic risk is superior to vitamin K antagonists, the problem raised by an unexpected hemorrhage (e.g. severe hemorrhage after an accident) and the need for efficient hemostasis in a chronic anticoagulated patient has remained unsolved. To find a solution for this problem, reversal agents for NOACs have been developed and tested, and two of them, idarucizumab and andexanet-alpha, have already been approved by the FDA, thus making NOACs increasingly appealing as a choice of anticoagulation treatment