False dawn for CSR? Shifts in regulatory policy and the response of the corporate and financial sectors in Britain

We present a model of CSR as a set of mechanisms for aligning corporate behaviour with the interests of society in reducing externalities and promoting a sustainable corporate sector. These mechanisms include voluntary action by companies to go above minimum legal standards, with the aim of enhancing competitiveness ('action beyond compliance'); interventions by regulators designed to promote self-regulation by industry ('reflexive law'); and steps taken by shareholders to put pressure on companies to make effective use of corporate assets (shareholder engagement). We then assess the degree to which the model is realized in current British practice. Focusing on the issue of working conditions, we find managerial resistance to the linking of CSR with internal employee relations, and obstacles to shareholder engagement on this issue.Corporate social responsibility; Shareholder engagement; Reflexive law; Labour standards

Opting Out Of The 48-Hour Week – Employer Necessity Or Individual Choice? An Empirical Study Of The Operation Of Article 18(1)(B) Of The Working Time Directive In The UK

The EU Working Time Directive has so far had little impact on an ingrained culture of long-hours working in the UK. Case studies suggest that the use of individual opt-outs from the 48-hour limit on weekly working time is a principal reason for this. However, removal of the individual opt-out (currently under consideration at EU level) is unlikely to make much difference to UK practice in the absence of a wider review of working time policy. In particular, the UK’s individualised system of workplace bargaining is currently ill-placed to adapt to a continental European model of working time regulation.working time, labour standards, collective bargaining, European Union

Reflexive law, corporate social responsibility and the evolution of labour standards: the case of working time

Through an empirical study of working time in the United Kingdom, we explore the scope for initiatives based on corporate social responsibility (CSR) to engender voluntary action by employers to raise labour standards. Our evidence suggests that a CSR-based approach faces considerable problems of implementation in this area, in large part because the legal mechanisms which might underpin CSR ('reflexive law') have not yet been effectively developed.corporate social responsibility, labour standards

The creation and use of a chemical kinetics code to model and understand the atmospheres of hot Jupiters

Chemical compositions of exoplanets can provide key insights into their physical processes, and formation and evolutionary histories. Atmospheric spectroscopy provides a direct avenue to probe exoplanetary compositions. However, whether obtained in transit or thermal emission, spectroscopic observations probe limited pressure windows of planetary atmospheres and are directly sensitive to only a limited set of spectroscopically active species. It is therefore critical to have chemical models that can relate retrieved atmospheric compositions to an atmosphere's bulk physical and chemical state. To this end we present Levi, a chemical kinetics code for modelling exoplanetary atmospheres. Levi is constructed as a eulerian solver of a series of coupled 1-D continuity equations for the evolution of molecular species. Levi is able to calculate the gas phase hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen chemistry in hot Jupiters to produce abundance profiles of the planets’ atmospheres. We perform extensive testing of Levi to ensure its accuracy, including investigations of how both the boundary and initial conditions of the model could affect the final result, as well as comparing the thermochemical processes to the diffusional and photochemical processes. Levi underwent benchmarking by testing it against already existing codes of the same type, to ensure the code was consistent with previously produced models. We use Levi to run a suite of models across a range of metallicities to produce the abundance of a number of molecules in any hot Jupiter's atmosphere. Our parameter sweep covers metallicities between 0.1x and 10x solar values for the C/H, O/H and N/H ratios, and equilibrium temperatures of hot Jupiters between 1000K and 2000K. We link this parameter sweep to hot Jupiter formation and migration models from previous works to produce predictions of the link between molecular abundance and planet formation pathways, for the spectrally active molecules H2O, CO, CH4, CO2, HCN and NH3. We investigate the detections of numerous molecules in the atmosphere of HD 209458b, and find that within the framework of our model, the abundance of these molecules best matches with a planet that formed by gravitational instability between the CO2 and CO snowlines and underwent disk-free migration to reach its current location. We next extend the underlying chemical network used in Levi. We present and validate a new network of atmospheric thermo-chemical and photo-chemical sulfur reactions. Sulfur was chosen as the element to add due to its importance on planets such as Venus and the existence of previous studies that have shown that sulfur may be significant in hot Jupiter atmospheres. We use Levi to investigate these reactions as part of a broader HCNO chemical network in a series of hot and warm Jupiters. We also investigate how the inclusion of sulfur can manifest in a hot Jupiter's atmosphere indirectly. Sulfur chemistry can result in the depletion of many non-sulfur-bearing species, including CH4, NH3 and HCN, by several orders of magnitude. In summary, we create a 1-D photochemical-kinetic model and show that it can be used to constrain the dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres and their origins. Some of the key directions for future development include expanding the sophistication of the underlying chemical networks, work begun by our introduction of sulfur, and exploring the possibility of 2-D and 3-D dynamical models, to account for zonal redistribution. More developed chemical networks allow us to better constrain the atmospheric chemistry, and thus the overall atmospheric composition, breaking existing degeneracies we highlight, while improving the treatment of the dynamics ensures our modelling gives a more accurate depiction of the disequilibrium chemistry taking place

Development of Beluga, Delphinapterus leucas, Capture and Satellite Tagging Protocol in Cook Inlet, Alaska

Attempts to capture and place satellite tags on belugas, Delphinapterus leucas, in Cook Inlet, Alaska were conducted during late spring and summer of 1995, 1997, and 1999. In 1995, capture attempts using a hoop net proved impractical in Cook Inlet. In 1997, capture efforts focused on driving belugas into nets. Although this method had been successful in the Canadian High Arctic, it failed in Cook Inlet due to the ability of the whales to detect and avoid nets in shallow and very turbid water. In 1999, belugas were successfully captured using a gillnet encirclement technique. A satellite tag was attached to a juvenile male, which subsequently provided the first documentation of this species’ movements within Cook Inlet during the summer months (31 May–17 September)

Joint inversion scheme with an adaptive coupling strategy - applications on synthetic and real data sets

Joint inversion strategies for geophysical data have become increasingly popular since they allow to combine complementary information from different data sets in an efficient way. However, for joint inversion algorithms that use methods that are sensitive to different parameters it is important that they are not restricted to specific survey arrays and subsurface conditions. Hence, joint inversion schemes are needed that 1) adequately balance data from the different methods and 2) use links between the parameter models that are suited for a wide range of applications. Here, we combine MT, seismic tomography and gravity data in a non-linear joint inversion that accounts for these critical issues. Data from the different methods are inverted separately and are joined through constrains accounting for parameter relationships. An advantage of performing the inversions separately (and not together in one matrix) is that no relative weighting between the data sets is required. To avoid that the convergence behavior of the inversions is profoundly disturbed by the coupling, the strengths of the associated constraints are re-adjusted at each iteration. As criteria to control the adaption of the coupling strengths we used a general version of the well-known discrepancy principle. Adaption of the coupling strengths makes the joint inversion scheme also applicable to subsurface conditions, for which the assumed relationships are only a rough first order approximation. So, the coupling between the different parameter models is automatically reduced if for some structures the true rock property behaviors differ significantly from the assumed relationships (e.g. the atypical density-velocity behavior of salt). We have tested our scheme first on different synthetic 2-D models for which the assumed parameter relationships are everywhere valid. We observe that the adaption of the coupling strengths makes the convergence of the inversions very robust and that the final results are close to the true models. In a next step the scheme has been applied on models for which the assumed parameter relationships are invalid for some structures. For these structures deviations from the relationships are present in the final results; however, for the remaining structures the relative behaviors of the physical parameters are still approximately described by the assumed relationship. Finally, we applied our joint inversion scheme on seismic, MT and gravity data collected offshore the Faroe Islands, where basalt intrusions are present

Implicit contracts, takeovers and corporate governance: in the shadow of the city code

This paper offers a qualitative, case-study based analysis of hostile takeover bids mounted in the UK in the mid-1990s under the regime of the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers. It is shown that during bids, directors of bid targets focus on the concerns of target shareholders to the exclusion of other stakeholder groups. A review of the case studies five years on find that, almost withouth exception, mergers led to large-scale job losses and asset disposals. However, almost none of the bids were considered by financial commentators, at this point, to have generated shareholder value for investors in that merged company. While there is therefore clear evidence that the Takeover Code is effective in protecting the interests of target shareholders, the implications of the Code for efficiency in corporate performance are much less certain.hostile takeovers, stakeholding, implicit contracts, breach of trust

Anglo-American corporate governance and the employment relationship: a case to answer?

The corporate governance environment in the UK and US is generally thought to be hostile to the emergence of cooperative employment relations of the kind exemplified by labour-management partnerships. We discuss case study evidence from the UK which suggests that, contrary to this widespread perception, enduring and proactive partnerships may develop, in conditions where management can convince shareholders of the long-term gains from this approach, and where other regulatory factors operate to extend the time-horizon for financial returns. We conclude that there is more scope than is commonly allowed for measures which could reconcile liquidity in capital markets with cooperation in labour relations competition rather than EC legislationcorporate governance, labour-management partnerships, stakeholding