Determinants of Managerial Values on Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from China

This paper empirically investigates how Chinese executives and managers perceive and interpret corporate social responsibility (CSR), to what extent firms’ productive characteristics influence managers’ attitudes towards their CSR rating, and whether their values in favour of CSR are positively correlated to firms’ economic performance. Although a large proportion of respondents express a favourable view of CSR and a willingness to participate in socially responsible activities, we find that the true nature of their assertion is linked to entrepreneurs’ instincts of gaining economic benefits. It is the poorly-performing firms, or rather, firms with vulnerable indicators – smaller in size, State-owned, producing traditional goods and located in poorer regions that are more likely to have managers who opt for a higher CSR rating. Managers’ personal characteristics per se are not significant in determining their CSR choice. Moreover, controlling for other observed variables, we find that managers’ CSR orientation is positively correlated with their firms’ performance. The better-off a firm is, the more likely its manager is to get involve in CSR activities. Firms with better economic performance before their restructuring would sustain higher post-restructuring performance.corporate social responsibility, profit maximisation, China

Determinants of Managerial Values on Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from China

This paper empirically investigates how Chinese executives and managers perceive and interpret corporate social responsibility (CSR), to what extent firms’ productive characteristics influence managers’ attitudes towards their CSR rating, and whether their values in favour of CSR are positively correlated to firms’ economic performance. Although a large proportion of respondents express a favourable view of CSR and a willingness to participate in socially responsible activities, we find that the true nature of their assertion is linked to entrepreneurs’ instincts of gaining economic benefits. It is the poorly-performing firms, or rather, firms with vulnerable indicators – smaller in size, State-owned, producing traditional goods and located in poorer regions that are more likely to have managers who opt for a higher CSR rating. Managers’ personal characteristics per se are not significant in determining their CSR choice. Moreover, controlling for other observed variables, we find that managers’ CSR orientation is positively correlated with their firms’ performance. The better-off a firm is, the more likely its manager is to get involve in CSR activities. Firms with better economic performance before their restructuring would sustain higher post-restructuring performance.profit maximisation, corporate social responsibility, China

Conservation-Dissipation Formalism for Soft Matter Physics: II. Application to Non-isothermal Nematic Liquid Crystals

To most existing non-equilibrium theories, the modeling of non-isothermal processes was a hard task. Intrinsic difficulties involved the non-equilibrium temperature, the coexistence of conserved energy and dissipative entropy, etc. In this paper, by taking the non-isothermal flow of nematic liquid crystals as a typical example, we illustrated that thermodynamically consistent models in either vectorial or tensorial forms could be constructed within the framework of Conservation-Dissipation Formalism (CDF). And the classical isothermal Ericksen-Leslie model and Qian-Sheng model were shown to be special cases of our new vectorial and tensorial models in the isothermal, incompressible and stationary limit. Most importantly, from above examples, it was learnt that mathematical modeling based on CDF could easily solve the issues relating with non-isothermal situations in a systematic way. The first and second laws of thermodynamics were satisfied simultaneously. The non-equilibrium temperature was defined self-consistently through the partial derivative of entropy function. Relaxation-type constitutive relations were constructed, which gave rise to the classical linear constitutive relations, like Newton's law and Fourier's law, in stationary limits. Therefore, CDF was expected to have a broad scope of applications in soft matter physics, especially under the complicated situations, such as non-isothermal, compressible and nanoscale systems.Comment: 29 page

Modeling the Epidemic Outbreak and Dynamics of COVID-19 in Croatia

The paper deals with a modeling of the ongoing epidemic caused by Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the closed territory of the Republic of Croatia. Using the official public information on the number of confirmed infected, recovered and deceased individuals, the modified SEIR compartmental model is developed to describe the underlying dynamics of the epidemic. Fitted modified SEIR model provides the prediction of the disease progression in the near future, considering strict control interventions by means of social distancing and quarantine for infected and at-risk individuals introduced at the beginning of COVID-19 spread on February, 25th by Croatian Ministry of Health. Assuming the accuracy of provided data and satisfactory representativeness of the model used, the basic reproduction number is derived. Obtained results portray potential positive developments and justify the stringent precautionary measures introduced by the Ministry of Health.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the SpliTech2020 conferenc

Economic benefit analysis of low-level high vacuum compaction method from the perspective of low carbon

In order to discuss the superiorities of High Vacuum Drubbing Means (HVDM) in soft foundation treatment of roads, this paper takes the soft foundation treatment project of Wucheng Road in Wuwei County of Wanjiang City Belt in China as an example. By comparing and analyzing the economic benefit differences between HVDM method and traditional powder injection pile method in soft soil foundation treatment, the following conclusions are drawn: Low-level high-vacuum compaction method soft base processing method is better than traditional powder-jet pile method in soft foundation treatment. The method can better reduce the consumption of raw materials such as cement and stone, avoid the pollution of the social environment caused by cement production, shorten the construction period by about 50 % and save the direct labor cost. Compared with the traditional powder-sprayed pile method, total cost of the project can be saved by more than 30 % and the construction quality is controllable. The construction process is green and its social and economic benefits are remarkable

Thermodynamics for Reduced Models of Chemical Reactions by PEA and QSSA

Partial equilibrium approximation (PEA) and quasi-steady-state approximation (QSSA) are two classical methods for reducing complex macroscopic chemical reactions into simple computable ones. Previous studies mainly focus on the accuracy of solutions before and after applying model reduction. While, in this paper we start from a thermodynamic view, and try to establish a quantitative connection on the essential thermodynamic quantities, like entropy production rate, free energy dissipation rate and entropy flow rate, between the original reversible chemical mass-action equations and the reduced models by either PEA or QSSA. Our results reveal that the PEA and QSSA do not necessarily preserve the nice thermodynamic structure of the original full model during the reduction procedure (e.g. the loss of non-negativity of free energy dissipation rate), especially when adopting the algebraic relations in replace of differential equations. These results are further validated though the application to Michaelis-Menten reactions analytically and numerically as a prototype. We expect our study would motivate a re-examination on the effectiveness of various model reduction or approximation methods from a new perspective of non-equilibrium thermodynamics.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Fiscal science and technology expenditure and the spatial convergence of regional innovation efficiency: evidence from China’s province-level data

Narrowing the gap in regional innovation efficiency is conducive to the coordinated development of regional economies. Fiscal science and technology (S&T) expenditure is the government’s primary means of supporting regional innovation. It also plays an essential role in improving the efficiency of regional innovation. This study constructs a spatial convergence economic model based on a dynamic perspective. It also examines the relationship between fiscal S&T expenditure and spatial convergence of regional innovation efficiency. China’s regional innovation efficiency shows a trend of conditional b-convergence. Fiscal S&T expenditure positively affects the spatial convergence of regional innovation efficiency and has an inverted U-shaped, nonlinear relationship as a whole. The transmission mechanism test revealed that the cross-regional flow of research and development (R&D) personnel can enhance this positive effect, and the role of R&D capital is not significant