Football: a counterpoint to the procession of pain on the Western Front, 1914-1918?

In this article, three artworks of the First World War containing images of recreational football are analysed. These three images, In the Wings of the Theatre of War, Artillery Men at Football and Gassed, span the war from its beginning to its conclusion and are discussed in relationship to the development of recreational football in the front-line area, the evolving policies of censorship and propaganda and in consideration of the national mood in Britain. The paper shows how football went from being a spontaneous and improvised pastime in the early stages of the war to a well organized entertainment by war’s end. The images demonstrate how the war was portrayed as a temporary affair by a confident nation in 1914 to a more resigned acceptance of a semi-permanent event to be endured by 1918; however, all three artworks show that the sporting spirit, and hence the fighting spirit, of the British soldier was intact

Corporate social responsibility and financial performance: Evidence from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, South Africa

Background: Stakeholders are increasingly concerned whether the companies they are involved with act in a socially responsible way. However, stakeholders like employees and shareholders also have a direct financial interest in those companies and need to be assured that company actions bring forth some financial benefit. Aim: The research investigated one of the main questions surrounding the concept of corporate socially responsibility, namely whether a company’s investment in and effort towards corporate social responsibility results in improved financial performance. The purpose of this study was to narrow the gap in the body of knowledge in relation to corporate social responsibility and its relationship to financial performance. Setting: This research investigated whether there was a relationship between being listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Index and financial performance. The unit of study comprises 885 company-years of companies listed on the JSE over the period 2009–2014. Methods: Logistic regression was used to find evidence of a relationship between a listing on the JSE SRI Index and financial performance. Results: It is evident that there was no real relationship between inclusion on the JSE SRI Index and financial performance, but there was a direct relationship between the size of a company and having a listing on the JSE SRI Index. Conclusion: A listing on the JSE SRI Index does not have a clear and direct impact on financial performance, but it appeared that larger companies are perhaps better able to invest in corporate social activities and are, as a result, more likely to be listed on the JSE SRI Index

Advancements in decadal climate predictability: the role of nonoceanic drivers

We review recent progress in understanding the role of sea ice, land surface, stratosphere, and aerosols in decadal-scale predictability and discuss the perspectives for improving the predictive capabilities of current Earth system models (ESMs). These constituents have received relatively little attention because their contribution to the slow climatic manifold is controversial in comparison to that of the large heat capacity of the oceans. Furthermore, their initialization as well as their representation in state-of-the-art climate models remains a challenge. Numerous extraoceanic processes that could be active over the decadal range are proposed. Potential predictability associated with the aforementioned, poorly represented, and scarcely observed constituents of the climate system has been primarily inspected through numerical simulations performed under idealized experimental settings. The impact, however, on practical decadal predictions, conducted with realistically initialized full-fledged climate models, is still largely unexploited. Enhancing initial-value predictability through an improved model initialization appears to be a viable option for land surface, sea ice, and, marginally, the stratosphere. Similarly, capturing future aerosol emission storylines might lead to an improved representation of both global and regional short-term climatic changes. In addition to these factors, a key role on the overall predictive ability of ESMs is expected to be played by an accurate representation of processes associated with specific components of the climate system. These act as “signal carriers,” transferring across the climatic phase space the information associated with the initial state and boundary forcings, and dynamically bridging different (otherwise unconnected) subsystems. Through this mechanism, Earth system components trigger low-frequency variability modes, thus extending the predictability beyond the seasonal scale