Maintaining and breaking symmetry in homomeric coiled-coil assemblies

Higher order coiled coils with five or more helices can form α-helical barrels. Here the authors show that placing β-branched aliphatic residues along the lumen yields stable and open α-helical barrels, which is of interest for the rational design of functional proteins; whereas, the absence of β-branched side chains leads to unusual low-symmetry α-helical bundles

Secondary Stakeholder Influence on CSR Disclosure: An Application of Stakeholder Salience Theory

The aim of this study is to analyse how secondary stakeholders influence managerial decision-making on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure. Based on stakeholder salience theory, we empirically investigate whether differences in environmental disclosure among companies are systematically related to differences in the level of power, urgency and legitimacy of the environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with which these companies are confronted. Using proprietary archival data for an international sample of 199 large companies, our results suggest that differences in environmental disclosures between companies are mainly associated with differences between their environmental stakeholders’ legitimacy. The effects of power and urgency are of an indirect nature, as they are mediated by legitimacy. This study improves our understanding of CSR disclosure by demonstrating that, next to the well-documented effect of company characteristics, stakeholder characteristics are also important. Besides, it provides scarce empirical evidence that not only primary stakeholders, but also secondary stakeholders are influential with regards to management decision-making. And more specifically, it offers insight into why some stakeholder groups are better able to influence disclosure decisions than other. The results also have important practical implications for managers of both environmental NGOs and large companies. For managers of environmental NGOs the results provide evidence of the most successful tactics for having their environmental information demands satisfied by companies. For company management the results provide insights into the most important stakeholder characteristics, on the basis of which they may develop strategies for proactively disclosing environmental information

Institutional investor influence on global climate change disclosure practices

Using a stakeholder engagement perspective, we investigate the collective influence of institutional investors on a comprehensive set of climate change disclosures for a global sample of large companies. The proposition tested in this paper is that the influence of these powerful stakeholders is positively associated with climate change disclosure via corporate communications channels. We find that the extent and quality of climate change disclosures to be associated with three indicators of corporate responsiveness to institutional investor expectations about the disclosure of this information. These are completion and publication of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) questionnaire on CDP’s website, indications in corporate communications that CDP activities have influenced climate change disclosures, and the extent and quality of climate change information provided in CDP questionnaire responses