A study of determinants and impacts of leading Chinese firms’ corporate social responsibility activities

Being helpful and kind is a virtue rooted in Chinese culture. However, profit-making and fast-growth orientation in the Chinese business sector has caused a series of social issues. In 2008, the Sanlu milk scandal and firms’ donations to Wenchuan-earthquake relief were typical bad and good examples of socially responsible behaviors. Given social responsibility on one side and social irresponsibility on another side, this thesis has threefold objectives in response to the lack of thorough CSR studies in China and potential methodology issues. With a combination of multiple theories including stakeholder theory, institutional theory, corporate governance theories and agency theory as theoretical foundations, this thesis first applies fixed-effect models to untangle the factors determining a good level of Chinese companies’ overall social performance in the same year and a lagged year by using a sample of Chinese listed companies from 2008 to 2012. Then this thesis extracts corporate philanthropy from corporate social responsibility for analysis due to the wide practices among Chinese companies. Both quantitative and qualitative content analyses are employed to investigate the stakeholders and institutions driving philanthropy-disclosure compilations and activities disclosed of 120 leading Chinese multinational corporations in 2017. In a further step, whether or not cash and gift-in-kind giving would in turn benefit Chinese firms’ value are examined based on a sample of Chinese listed companies used in the first chapter, but with the time period extends to 2016. The findings suggest that managerial shareholdings reduce the level of overall corporate social performance while rising wages, employment as well as tax payments are the main determinants of a better level of corporate social performance. The thesis also finds that the stakeholder framework, agendas, guidance and standards issued by international- and nation-wide-level institutions play key roles in shaping leading Chinese multinationals’ philanthropy-disclosure compilations. A wider group of stakeholders (e.g. government, employees and charitable foundations), but less institutions, are found to influence the philanthropic activities disclosed. Also, a salient trend of corporate philanthropy development is traced among the leading corporations. The results of the final chapter reveal that corporate philanthropic giving could increase firm value measured by Tobin’s q. Non-government ownership is not found as a moderator between the philanthropic giving-firm value relationship. While executives’ shareholdings play a positive moderating role in the relationship, inferring senior managers’ contrast attitudes towards overall corporate social performance and pure philanthropic giving

Recovering from External Disturbances in Online Manipulation through State-Dependent Revertive Recovery Policies

Robots are increasingly entering uncertain and unstructured environments. Within these, robots are bound to face unexpected external disturbances like accidental human or tool collisions. Robots must develop the capacity to respond to unexpected events. That is not only identifying the sudden anomaly, but also deciding how to handle it. In this work, we contribute a recovery policy that allows a robot to recovery from various anomalous scenarios across different tasks and conditions in a consistent and robust fashion. The system organizes tasks as a sequence of nodes composed of internal modules such as motion generation and introspection. When an introspection module flags an anomaly, the recovery strategy is triggered and reverts the task execution by selecting a target node as a function of a state dependency chart. The new skill allows the robot to overcome the effects of the external disturbance and conclude the task. Our system recovers from accidental human and tool collisions in a number of tasks. Of particular importance is the fact that we test the robustness of the recovery system by triggering anomalies at each node in the task graph showing robust recovery everywhere in the task. We also trigger multiple and repeated anomalies at each of the nodes of the task showing that the recovery system can consistently recover anywhere in the presence of strong and pervasive anomalous conditions. Robust recovery systems will be key enablers for long-term autonomy in robot systems. Supplemental info including code, data, graphs, and result analysis can be found at [1].Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Fast, Robust, and Versatile Event Detection through HMM Belief State Gradient Measures

Event detection is a critical feature in data-driven systems as it assists with the identification of nominal and anomalous behavior. Event detection is increasingly relevant in robotics as robots operate with greater autonomy in increasingly unstructured environments. In this work, we present an accurate, robust, fast, and versatile measure for skill and anomaly identification. A theoretical proof establishes the link between the derivative of the log-likelihood of the HMM filtered belief state and the latest emission probabilities. The key insight is the inverse relationship in which gradient analysis is used for skill and anomaly identification. Our measure showed better performance across all metrics than related state-of-the art works. The result is broadly applicable to domains that use HMMs for event detection.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, double col, ieee conference forma

Baicalin-aluminum alleviates necrotic enteritis in broiler chickens by inhibiting virulence factors expression of Clostridium perfringens

Clostridium perfringens type A is the main cause of necrotic enteritis (NE) in chickens. Since the use of antibiotics in feed is withdrawn, it is imperative to find out suitable alternatives to control NE. Baicalin-aluminum complex is synthesized from baicalin, a flavonoid isolated from Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi. The present study investigated the effects of baicalin-aluminum on the virulence-associated traits and virulence genes expression of C. perfringens CVCC2030, it also evaluated the in vivo therapeutic effect on NE. The results showed that baicalin-aluminum inhibited bacterial hemolytic activity, diminished biofilm formation, attenuated cytotoxicity to Caco-2 cells, downregulated the expression of genes encoding for clostridial toxins and extracellular enzymes such as alpha toxin (CPA), perfringolysin O (PFO), collagenase (ColA), and sialidases (NanI, NanJ). Additionally, baicalin-aluminum was found to negatively regulate the expression of genes involved in quorum sensing (QS) communication, including genes of Agr QS system (agrB, agrD) and genes of VirS/R two-component regulatory system (virS, virR). In vivo experiments, baicalin-aluminum lightened the intestinal lesions and histological damage, it inhibited pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6) expression in the jejunal and ileal tissues. Besides, baicalin-aluminum alleviated the upregulation of C. perfringens and Escherichia coli and raised the relative abundance of Lactobacillus in the ileal digesta. This study suggests that baicalin-aluminum may be a potential candidate against C. perfringens infection by inhibiting the virulence-associated traits and virulence genes expression

Activation of Interleukin-1β Release by the Classical Swine Fever Virus Is Dependent on the NLRP3 Inflammasome, Which Affects Virus Growth in Monocytes

Classical swine fever virus (CSFV) is a classic Flavivirus that causes the acute, febrile, and highly contagious disease known as classical swine fever (CSF). Inflammasomes are molecular platforms that trigger the maturation of proinflammatory cytokines to engage innate immune defenses that are induced upon cellular infection or stress. However, the relationship between the inflammasome and CSFV infection has not been thoroughly characterized. To understand the function of the inflammasome response to CSFV infection, we infected porcine peripheral blood monocytes (PBMCs) with CSFV. Our results indicated that CSFV infection induced both the generation of pro-interleukin-1β (pro-IL-1β) and its processing in monocytes, leading to the maturation and secretion of IL-1β through the activation of caspase 1. Moreover, CSFV infection in PBMCs induced the production and cleavage of gasdermin D (GSDMD), which is an inducer of pyroptosis. Additional studies showed that CSFV-induced IL-1β secretion was mediated by NLRP3 and that CSFV infection could sufficiently activate the assembly of the NLRP3 inflammasome in monocytes. These results revealed that CSFV infection inhibited the expression of NLRP3, and knockdown of NLRP3 enhanced the replication of CSFV. In conclusion, these findings demonstrate that the NLRP3 inflammasome plays an important role in the innate immune response to CSFV infection

A study of determinants and impacts of leading Chinese firms’ corporate social responsibility activities

Being helpful and kind is a virtue rooted in Chinese culture. However, profit-making and fast-growth orientation in the Chinese business sector has caused a series of social issues. In 2008, the Sanlu milk scandal and firms’ donations to Wenchuan-earthquake relief were typical bad and good examples of socially responsible behaviors. Given social responsibility on one side and social irresponsibility on another side, this thesis has threefold objectives in response to the lack of thorough CSR studies in China and potential methodology issues. With a combination of multiple theories including stakeholder theory, institutional theory, corporate governance theories and agency theory as theoretical foundations, this thesis first applies fixed-effect models to untangle the factors determining a good level of Chinese companies’ overall social performance in the same year and a lagged year by using a sample of Chinese listed companies from 2008 to 2012. Then this thesis extracts corporate philanthropy from corporate social responsibility for analysis due to the wide practices among Chinese companies. Both quantitative and qualitative content analyses are employed to investigate the stakeholders and institutions driving philanthropy-disclosure compilations and activities disclosed of 120 leading Chinese multinational corporations in 2017. In a further step, whether or not cash and gift-in-kind giving would in turn benefit Chinese firms’ value are examined based on a sample of Chinese listed companies used in the first chapter, but with the time period extends to 2016. The findings suggest that managerial shareholdings reduce the level of overall corporate social performance while rising wages, employment as well as tax payments are the main determinants of a better level of corporate social performance. The thesis also finds that the stakeholder framework, agendas, guidance and standards issued by international- and nation-wide-level institutions play key roles in shaping leading Chinese multinationals’ philanthropy-disclosure compilations. A wider group of stakeholders (e.g. government, employees and charitable foundations), but less institutions, are found to influence the philanthropic activities disclosed. Also, a salient trend of corporate philanthropy development is traced among the leading corporations. The results of the final chapter reveal that corporate philanthropic giving could increase firm value measured by Tobin’s q. Non-government ownership is not found as a moderator between the philanthropic giving-firm value relationship. While executives’ shareholdings play a positive moderating role in the relationship, inferring senior managers’ contrast attitudes towards overall corporate social performance and pure philanthropic giving

The Influence of Slowly Varying Mass on Severity of Dynamics Nonlinearity of Bearing-Rotor Systems with Pedestal Looseness

Nonlinearity measure is proposed to investigate the influence of slowly varying mass on severity of dynamics nonlinearity of bearing-rotor systems with pedestal looseness. A nonlinear mathematical model including the effect of slowly varying disk mass is developed for a bearing-rotor system with pedestal looseness. The varying of equivalent disk mass is described by a cosine function, and the amplitude coefficient is used as a control parameter. Then, nonlinearity measure is employed to quantify the severity of dynamics nonlinearity of bearing-rotor systems. With the increasing of looseness clearances, the curves that denote the trend of nonlinearity degree are plotted for each amplitude coefficient of mass varying. It can be concluded that larger amplitude coefficients of the disk mass varying will have more influence on the severity of dynamics nonlinearity and generation of chaotic behaviors in rotor systems with pedestal looseness

Fixed-Point Theorems for α-Admissible Mappings with w-Distance and Applications to Nonlinear Integral Equations

Two fixed-point theorems for α-admissible mappings satisfying contractive inequality of integral type with w-distance in complete metric spaces are proved. Our results extend and improve a few existing results in the literature. As applications, we use the fixed-point theorems obtained in this paper to establish solvability of nonlinear integral equations. Examples are included