Job Satisfaction: Are Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives Beneficial And Do Different Governance Structures Matter?

The non-financial benefits of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives remain an understudied controversy in the literature.  We draw on elements of stakeholder theory to investigate the effect of multiple CSR initiatives on job satisfaction for a widespread set of medium-sized Canadian companies.  We explore this relationship further by focusing on the moderating effects of governance control structures.  Data on these variables is captured through the lens of CFO/controller perceptions because of their intimate governance gatekeeping over firms’ control structure/systems.  In this respect, we assume that CFOs are among the instrumental drivers in advancing an organization’s unfolding social consciousness.  Research findings in this study reveal the criticality of examining this linkage within the context of the performance-based versus conformance-based dimensions of an organization’s corporate governance control structure – two governance dimensions championed by the International Federation of Accountants (2009).  Results for low/high levels of performance-based control structures manifest different interaction configurations of statistically significant CSR variables that heighten job satisfaction.  However, significant interaction effects under low/high levels featuring compliance-based control structures are not forthcoming, despite the presence of significant main effects in the CSR/job satisfaction relationship.  These findings offer firms a more comprehensive practical understanding of benefits associated with investments in particular CSR strategies while grooming specific control structures, as well as offering researchers new control variables to model in the CSR domain.&nbsp

Determinants of Ethical Climate in the Firm:The Role of Governance Systems and Environmental Uncertainty

Corporate governance mechanisms essentially reside in the control structure/systems of most organizations and provide, theoretically at least, a conduit to support a better organizational ethical climate.  This linkage, however, has seldom been portrayed this way in the literature and, correspondingly, there are virtually no empirical studies to offer increased understanding, especially with respect to the professional accountant in practice.  Accordingly, this paper empirically assesses the governance mechanisms sanctioned by the International Federation of Accountants (2009) as determinants of an organization’s ethical climate based on evidence from a Canadian sample of CFOs/controllers.  The ethics/leadership literature relating to ethical climate provides the theoretical underpinnings while organizational contingency theory supports examining the moderating effects of perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU).   Increases in corporate governance control mechanisms are found to positively influence ethical climate.  A significant relationship persists under both low and high levels of PEU but, as expected, it is much stronger when the level of PEU is low – which raises concerns about how to embrace a stronger ethical climate when uncertainty is high.  This paper contributes to the governance and ethics literature by providing empirical evidence that normative directives on evaluating and improving governance in organizations from global accounting authorities, such as the IFAC, are effective in shaping firms’ ethical climates in practice

Lithological and geochemical dispersal in till: McAdam area, New Brunswick

Analyses of dispersal patterns for till clasts and matrix geochemistry in the McAdam area, southwestern New Brunswick, are used to define the dominant glacial transport direction in an area of ice-flow complexity, as indicated by multiple and differing striae directions. Dispersal and erosional data indicate that the main (regional) southeastward flow direction was preceded and followed by secondary deviations, due to local influences of topography and substrate and possibly also from changes within the ice mass or surrounding glaciers. Clast trains are traceable from known outcrops, southward over distances greater than 16 km, whereas distinctive geochemical trains are lost within 10 km of transport, due to homogenization of the till matrix. These results demonstrate that for drift prospecting, transport path and source unit are more clearly delineated by shape and size of till clasts and matrix dispersal patterns, than by analysis of directional indicators caused by glacial erosion. RÉSUMÉ On a recours à des analyses des modes de dispersion des clastes du till et de la géochimie de la matrice dans le secteur de McAdam, dans le sud-est du Nouveau-Brunswick, pour défiinir la direction du transport glaciaire dominant à l’intérieur d'un secteur caractérisé par la complexity de l'écoulemcnt glaciaire, comme en témoignent les directions multiples et différentes des rayures. Les données relatives à la dispersion et à l'érosion révèlant que la principale direction (régionale) de l'écoulcment, l'écoulement vers le sud-est, a été précédée et suivie de déviations secondares en raison des influences locales de la topographie et du substrat, ainsi que possiblement de changements survenus à l'intérieur de l'amas de glaces ou des glaciers environnants. On peut retracer les parcours des clastes à partir d'affleurements connus sur des distances de plus de 16 km vers le sud, alors qu'on pcrd des tracées géochimiques distinctifs à moins de 10 km de transport à cause de l'homogénéisation de la matrice du till. Ces résultats démontrent qu'en matère de prospection glacio-sédimentaire, on délimite plus nettement le trajet du transport et l'unité d'origine par la forme et la dimension des clastes du till et par les modes de dispersion de la matrice que par l'analyse des indicateurs de direction laissés par l'érosion glaciaire. [Traduit par la rédaction

Knight Shift Anomalies in Heavy Electron Materials

We calculate non-linear Knight Shift $K$ vs. susceptibility $\chi$ anomalies for Ce ions possessing local moments in metals. The ions are modeled with the Anderson Hamiltonian and studied within the non-crossing approximation (NCA). The $K-vs.- \chi$ non-linearity diminishes with decreasing Kondo temperature $T_0$ and nuclear spin- local moment separation. Treating the Ce ions as an incoherent array in CeSn$_3$, we find excellent agreement with the observed Sn $K(T)$ data.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex, 3 figures available upon request from [email protected]

The Influence of Ethical Leadership on Managerial Performance: Mediating Effects of Mindfulness and Corporate Social Responsibility

In a continuing world of corporate misdeeds and unscrupulous decision making, much of the management and academic literatures points to the incomplete knowledge of the consequences of ethics leadership.  One of the bastions of ethics gatekeeping in the firm is the CFO but remarkably scant information can be found on their perceptions concerning ethics leadership.  This study addresses this void by examining mindfulness and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives as new mediating linkages in comprehending the influence of ethics leadership on managerial performance.  Findings reveal that ethical leadership is positively associated with CSR initiatives which, in turn, operate to enhance managerial performance.  Simultaneously, ethical leadership manifests a significant positive relationship with mindfulness but, surprisingly, there is no corresponding relationship with managerial performance.  Instead, mindfulness indirectly influences managerial performance through the intervening effects on CSR initiatives.  These findings suggest that firms can acquire better managerial performance by focusing efforts on CSR strategies, bringing cognitive processes of mindfulness to bear on these actions, and grooming ethics leadership.  In addition, the results offer researchers new relationships to model in the leadership domain.

Calculations of the Knight Shift Anomalies in Heavy Electron Materials

We have studied the Knight shift $K(\vec r, T)$ and magnetic susceptibility $\chi(T)$ of heavy electron materials, modeled by the infinite U Anderson model with the NCA method. A systematic study of $K(\vec r, T)$ and $\chi(T)$ for different Kondo temperatures $T_0$ (which depends on the hybridization width $\Gamma$) shows a low temperature anomaly (nonlinear relation between $K$ and $\chi$) which increases as the Kondo temperature $T_0$ and distance $r$ increase. We carried out an incoherent lattice sum by adding the $K(\vec r)$ of a few hundred shells of rare earth atoms around a nucleus and compare the numerically calculated results with the experimental results. For CeSn_3, which is a concentrated heavy electron material, both the ^{119}Sn NMR Knight shift and positive muon Knight shift are studied. Also, lattice coherence effects by conduction electron scattering at every rare earth site are included using the average-T matrix approximation. Also NMR Knight shifts for YbCuAl and the proposed quadrupolar Kondo alloy Y_{0.8}U_{0.2}Pd_{3} are studied.Comment: 31 pages of RevTex, 22 Postscript figures, submmitted to PRB, some figures are delete

Boundary entropy of supersymmetric Janus solutions

In this paper we compute the holographic boundary entropy for half-BPS Janus deformations of the $AdS_3\times S^3\times T^4$ vacuum of type IIB supergravity. Previous work \cite{Chiodaroli:2009yw} has shown that there are two independent deformations of this sort. In one case, the six-dimensional dilaton jumps across the interface, while the other case displays a jump of axion and four-form potential. In case of a jump of the six-dimensional dilaton, it is possible to compare the holographic result with the weak-coupling result for a two-dimensional interface CFT where the radii of the compactified bosons jump across the interface. We find exact agreement between holographic and CFT results. This is to be contrasted with the holographic calculation for the non-supersymmetric Janus solution, which agrees with the CFT result only at the leading order in the jump parameter. We also examine the implications of the holographic calculation in case of a solution with a jump in the axion, which can be associated with a deformation of the CFT by the $Z_2$-orbifold twist operator.Comment: 35 pages, pdf-LaTeX, 5 figures, v2: minor changes, typos corrected, reference adde