Social Responsibility Reporting: Evidence from India’s Leading Corporations

Abstract In this article, I examine how 121 leading corporations in India communicate the external relevance of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs/outputs and whether these outputs vary by ownership identity (foreign, government, and family), industry affiliation (environmentally sensitive and consumer proximate), and market orientation (inward and outward). I use content analysis from corporate websites, annual reports, and CSR/Sustainability reports to create a unique database on India. Indicators include issuance of stand-alone CSR/Sustainability reports, participation in GRI, UNGC, Carbon Disclosure Project, and UN Carbon Credits reporting and auditing, social and environmental data and disclosure scores, and CSR/Sustainability awards. My analysis finds that with the exception of outward-oriented firms that are exposed to a wider range of stakeholder influences that demand higher disclosure to make investment decisions, neither ownership identity nor industry affiliation explain a firm’s proclivity to engage in social reporting. In addition to a systematic empirical examination of a large sample, my analyses of CSR outputs at the firm and industry level in India can serve as a benchmark for longitudinal and cross-country comparisons and add to the scant research on the form and penetration of CSR in Asia and emerging economy contexts

Pigeons, Prayers, and Pollution: Recoding the Amazon Rain Forest in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

 Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990), represents environmental, ethical, and economic dilemmas in an age of planetary environmental crisis, depicting clashes between predatory market forces and indigenous Amazonian indigenous communities. Yamashita’s use of magical realism simultaneously represents the value-laden ethos of a pre-literate society, even as it arguably portrays them as defenseless against the onslaught of capitalism’s encroachments. This paper enquires if magical realism has, in the twenty-first century, exhausted itself, reduced to an exaggerated narrative trope that caters to the perceived cultural otherness and differences of those residing outside non-metropolitan borders for the benefit of cosmopolitan audiences.  Analyzing Yamashita’s advocacy of lesser-valorized modes of communication and relationships between humans that include spiritual kinship and therapeutic touch, this paper argues that Yamashita broadens the scope of magical realism by drawing attention to modes of living that by their very simplicity and pure-heartedness appear to present a way of life that is infused with magic, but are in essence only a celebration of ethical living. This reading examines the capacities and limitations of magical realism as an innovative form of literary experimentation, capable of social and environmental change.

Second law analysis of MHD Casson and Maxwell fluid flow over a permeable stretching sheet with homogenous heterogeneous reactions and variable heat source

Entropy generation analysis of MHD Casson and Maxwell fluid flow over a stretching sheet with space and temperature dependent non-uniform heat source/sink with porous media has been explored. Using appropriate similarity transformations, governing equations have been changed into ODE’s, and solved numerically using RK-fourth order method with shooting technique. The impact of pertinent parameters on velocity, temperature, entropy and Bejan number has been presented graphically. The skin friction and Nusselt number have been obtained and tabulated

Second law analysis in MHD flow and heat transfer of a rotating Casson fluid over a stretching surface

Second law analysis in three-dimensional MHD boundary layer flow and heat transfer of a rotating Casson fluid over a stretching surface has been investigated. Such flow problems have relevance in extraction and manufacturing of rubber and polymer sheets. Solution of these problems is of great interest as they serve a practical purpose. Partial differential equations governing flow and heat transfer have been transformed into non-linear ordinary differential equations by using suitable similarity transformations. These non-linear differential equations have been solved numerically by using shooting techniques with fourth order Runge-Kutta method. Effects of Casson fluid parameter β, rotation parameter λ, Prandtl number Pr and magnetic field parameter M on velocity profile, temperature profile and skin friction number have been analyzed and depicted through graphs and tables. Entropy generation number and Bejan number have also been obtained and discussed

Heat and mass transfer over a three-dimensional inclined non-linear stretching sheet with convective boundary conditions

This investigation has been made to study of heat and mass on three-dimensional boundary layer flow of an incompressible fluid due to inclined non-linear stretching sheet with convective boundary conditions. The effect of thermophoresis and chemical reaction has been taken into account. Numerical solution has been obtained for the set of non-linear coupled ordinary equations which are reduced by using similarity transformations from non-linear partial differential equations. Transforms system of equations has been solved using Runge–Kutta–Fehlberg fourth–fifth order method along with shooting technique. Effects of various parameters on velocity, temperature and concentration profiles have been obtained. These results have been presented through graphs and also our analysis explores the physical quantities of interest through the tables

E-Government Implementation Challenges at Local Level: A Citizens\u27 Centric Perspective

Majority of the studies reported in e-government literature identify the challenges involved in any e-government implementation from technical or project implementation perspective. In contrast, in this study, we take the citizen centric perspective to identify the factors and issues that influence the success of e-government implementation at local level. In this paper, we report the findings of a case study of e-government implementation undertaken recently at a local government authority in the UK. We conducted the study in two phases. During the first phase, we interviewed operational and managerial staff members at a local government authority in the UK who were involved with the e-government implementation. In the second phase, we interviewed 88 citizens to understand the issues and perceptions about e-government services available to them. We use the design-reality gap analysis framework based on seven \u27ITPOSMO\u27 dimensions proposed by Heeks to compare and contrast the issues from citizens‟ perspective and those from government perspective. Our findings indicate that the success of e-government at local level requires a strong partnership between local government and citizens. The study results point to lack of clear strategy at local authorities‟ level for changing the way the government interacts with citizens. This paper contributes to our understanding of issues involved in implementing e-government at local level both from citizens‟ perspective and government perspective

Opportunities and Challenges in Paper Printed RFID

RFID technique has gathered interest in many areas. But due to high installation cost and comparatively low read range, it has not reached its full potential. In this paper, how ‘conductive’ ink-jet printing technique, as an effective approach for the printing of RFID tags on paper has been studied. Various results characterize paper as a good substrate for the fabrication of sensor modules. Also, the use of implantable RFID tags for bio-monitoring applications is investigated that may open interesting opportunities in telemedicine. Although the technique is exciting enough to be adopted and can revolutionize data fusion but still there are certain unresolved issues that can restrict its use for the development of a ‘ubiquitous’ network for device and body monitoring applications

Low Degree Metabolites Explain Essential Reactions and Enhance Modularity in Biological Networks

Recently there has been a lot of interest in identifying modules at the level of genetic and metabolic networks of organisms, as well as in identifying single genes and reactions that are essential for the organism. A goal of computational and systems biology is to go beyond identification towards an explanation of specific modules and essential genes and reactions in terms of specific structural or evolutionary constraints. In the metabolic networks of E. coli, S. cerevisiae and S. aureus, we identified metabolites with a low degree of connectivity, particularly those that are produced and/or consumed in just a single reaction. Using FBA we also determined reactions essential for growth in these metabolic networks. We find that most reactions identified as essential in these networks turn out to be those involving the production or consumption of low degree metabolites. Applying graph theoretic methods to these metabolic networks, we identified connected clusters of these low degree metabolites. The genes involved in several operons in E. coli are correctly predicted as those of enzymes catalyzing the reactions of these clusters. We independently identified clusters of reactions whose fluxes are perfectly correlated. We find that the composition of the latter `functional clusters' is also largely explained in terms of clusters of low degree metabolites in each of these organisms. Our findings mean that most metabolic reactions that are essential can be tagged by one or more low degree metabolites. Those reactions are essential because they are the only ways of producing or consuming their respective tagged metabolites. Furthermore, reactions whose fluxes are strongly correlated can be thought of as `glued together' by these low degree metabolites.Comment: 12 pages main text with 2 figures and 2 tables. 16 pages of Supplementary material. Revised version has title changed and contains study of 3 organisms instead of 1 earlie