Little is known about employees’ responses to their organizations’ initiatives in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Academics have already identified a few outcomes regarding CSR’s impact on employees’ attitudes and behaviours; however, studies explaining the underlying mechanisms that drive employees’ favourable responses to CSR remain largely unexplored. Based on organizational identification (OI) theory, this study surveyed 155 employees of a petrochemical organization to better elucidate why, how and under which circumstances employees might positively respond to organizations’ CSR initiatives in the controversial (...) oil industry sector. Findings first support that perceived CSR (i.e. environmental CSR) positively relates to employees’ OI which is known as an important antecedent of employees’ outcomes (Riketta, J Vocat Behavior, 66(2):358, 2005). Furthermore, results highlighted that the relationship between perceived CSR and employees’ OI is mediated by organizational trust. Finally, this study also revealed that some contingency factors such as employees’ attributions of self-centred motives to their organization’s investment in environmental issues can moderate the relationship between perceived CSR and organizational trust. Based on these findings, it is argued that CSR initiatives can support organizations’ efforts to maintain a strong relationship with their employees, and gain their support even in a controversial industry sector. (shrink)

This research investigates the interlinkage between corporate social responsibility and ethical leadership in inducing employees’ socially responsible behaviors. Specifically, building on organizational identification theory and cue consistency theory, we develop and test an integrated moderated mediation framework in which employees’ perception of ethical leadership moderates the mediating mechanism between their perceptions of CSR, organizational identification, and SRBs. The findings highlight the need for consistency between employees’ perceptions of CSR and ethical leadership to foster their propensity to further social good through (...) relationship-building activities with their organization. The results, which largely verify the theoretical framework, contribute to and have implications for both research and practice. (shrink)

Research on employees’ responses to corporate social responsibility has recently accelerated and begun appearing in top-tier academic journals. However, existing findings are still largely fragmented, and this stream of research lacks theoretical consolidation. This article integrates the diffuse and multi-disciplinary literature on CSR micro-level influences in a theoretically driven conceptual framework that contributes to explain and predict when, why, and how employees might react to CSR activity in a way that influences organizations’ economic and social performance. Drawing on social identity (...) theory and social exchange theory, we delineate the different but interdependent psychological mechanisms that explain how CSR can strengthen the employee–organization relationship and subsequently foster employee-related, micro-level outcomes. Contributions of our framework to extant literature and potential extensions for future research are then discussed. (shrink)

8 March, now known as International Women’s Day, is a day for feminist claims where demonstrations are organized in over 150 countries, with the participation of millions of women all around the world. These demonstrations can be viewed as collective rituals and thus focus attention on the processes that facilitate different psychosocial effects. This work aims to explore the mechanisms involved in participation in the demonstrations of 8 March 2020, collective and ritualized feminist actions, and their correlates associated with personal (...) well-being and collective well-being, collective efficacy and collective growth, and behavioral intention to support the fight for women’s rights. To this end, a cross-cultural study was conducted with the participation of 2,854 people from countries in Latin America and Europe, with a retrospective correlational cross-sectional design and a convenience sample. Participants were divided between demonstration participants and non-demonstrators or followers who monitored participants through the media and social networks. Compared with non-demonstrators and with males, female and non-binary gender respondents had greater scores in mechanisms and criterion variables. Further random-effects model meta-analyses revealed that the perceived emotional synchrony was consistently associated with more proximal mechanisms, as well as with criterion variables. Finally, sequential moderation analyses showed that proposed mechanisms successfully mediated the effects of participation on every criterion variable. These results indicate that participation in 8M marches and demonstrations can be analyzed through the literature on collective rituals. As such, collective participation implies positive outcomes both individually and collectively, which are further reinforced through key psychological mechanisms, in line with a Durkheimian approach to collective rituals. (shrink)

For the past three decades there has been a substantial amount of scientific evidence supporting the view that attention is necessary and sufficient for perceptual representations to become conscious (i.e., for there to be something that it is like to experience a representational perceptual state). This view, however, has been recently questioned on the basis of some alleged counterevidence. In this paper we survey some of the most important recent findings. In doing so, we have two primary goals. The first (...) is descriptive: we provide a literature review for those seeking an understanding of the present debate. The second is editorial: we suggest that the evidence alleging dissociations between consciousness and attention is not decisive. Thus, this is an opinionated overview of the debate. By presenting our assessment, we hope to bring out both sides in the debate and to underscore that the issues here remain matters of intense controversy and ongoing investigation. (shrink)

After having defined the KARO logic for specifying intelligent agents in earlier work we now turn to the question how to realise agents specified in the KARO framework. To this end we look at agent programming languages that we have defined, and investigate how programs in these languages can be linked to the KARO logic.

One of the main limitations of natural language‐based approaches to meaning is that they do not incorporate multimodal representations the way humans do. In this study, we evaluate how well different kinds of models account for people's representations of both concrete and abstract concepts. The models we compare include unimodal distributional linguistic models as well as multimodal models which combine linguistic with perceptual or affective information. There are two types of linguistic models: those based on text corpora and those derived (...) from word association data. We present two new studies and a reanalysis of a series of previous studies. The studies demonstrate that both visual and affective multimodal models better capture behavior that reflects human representations than unimodal linguistic models. The size of the multimodal advantage depends on the nature of semantic representations involved, and it is especially pronounced for basic‐level concepts that belong to the same superordinate category. Additional visual and affective features improve the accuracy of linguistic models based on text corpora more than those based on word associations; this suggests systematic qualitative differences between what information is encoded in natural language versus what information is reflected in word associations. Altogether, our work presents new evidence that multimodal information is important for capturing both abstract and concrete words and that fully representing word meaning requires more than purely linguistic information. Implications for both embodied and distributional views of semantic representation are discussed. (shrink)

We develop a framework for assessing security market quality, relating five elements of market design to three metrics of market integrity and two metrics of market efficiency. We empirically implement this integrity–efficiency MQ framework by testing a hypothesis that trade-based ramping manipulation at the close raises execution costs on 24 security markets worldwide. Estimating a simultaneous equations model of ramping incidence, spreads, and the probability of deploying real-time surveillance, we show that quoted bid-ask spreads are positively related to the incidence (...) of MTC across seven liquidity deciles. The magnitude is economically significant; improving market integrity by cutting MTC in half reduces spreads 6–11 %. Allowing direct market access in conjunction with RTS, conducting auctions at the close, and developing regulations that require surveillance, all reduce MTC and thereby lower spreads, assuring better market integrity and enhancing market efficiency. Introducing circuit breakers or prohibiting shorts poses integrity–efficiency tradeoffs. (shrink)

Many biological systems experience a periodic environment. Floquet theory is a mathematical tool to deal with such time periodic systems. It is not often applied in biology, because linkage between the mathematics and the biology is not available. To create this linkage, we derive the Floquet theory for natural systems. We construct a framework, where the rotation of the Earth is causing the periodicity. Within this framework the angular momentum operator is introduced to describe the Earth’s rotation. The Fourier operators (...) and the Fourier states are defined to link the rotation to the biological system. Using these operators, the biological system can be transformed into a rotating frame in which the environment becomes static. In this rotating frame the Floquet solution can be derived. Two examples demonstrate how to apply this natural framework. (shrink)

In this article we aim to open a new line of debate about religion in public schools by focusing on religious ideals. We begin with an elucidation of the concept ‘religious ideals’ and an explanation of the notion of reasonable pluralism, in order to be able to explore the dangers and positive contributions of religious ideals and their pursuit on a liberal democratic society. We draw our examples of religious ideals from Christianity and Islam, because these religions have most adherents (...) in Western liberal democracies that are the focus of this article. The fifth and most important section ‘‘Reasonable pluralism and the inclusion of religious ideals in public secondary schools’’ provides three arguments for our claim that public schools should include religious ideals, namely that they are important to religious people, that they are conducive for the development of pupils into citizens of a liberal democracy, and that the flourishing of pupils as adults is advanced by encountering religious ideals. We also offer a more practical reason: religious ideals can more easily be included within public education than religious dogmas and rules. (shrink)

We investigate what distinguishes social entrepreneurial ecosystems (SEEs) from entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) through appreciation of the importance of context—the multiplex of intertwined social, spatial, temporal, historical, cultural, and political influences. Community is incorporated as a key variable and hitherto overlooked dimension of the structure and influence of SEEs. We draw on extant literature and examples of a variety of SEEs to support our propositions and demonstrate why considerations of both context and community are critical to advance understanding of SEEs. We (...) contribute to the study of SEEs by presenting a new conceptual framework and theorizing SEE as an evolving composite of interdependent actors who interact and collaborate across multiple levels to collectively generate positive externalities and drive sustainable solutions to social problems. (shrink)

The past 50 years have seen an accumulation of evidence suggesting that associative learning depends on high-level cognitive processes that give rise to propositional knowledge. Yet, many learning theorists maintain a belief in a learning mechanism in which links between mental representations are formed automatically. We characterize and highlight the differences between the propositional and link approaches, and review the relevant empirical evidence. We conclude that learning is the consequence of propositional reasoning processes that cooperate with the unconscious processes involved (...) in memory retrieval and perception. We argue that this new conceptual framework allows many of the important recent advances in associative learning research to be retained, but recast in a model that provides a firmer foundation for both immediate application and future research. (shrink)

Advanced practice nursing is an expanding field within many healthcare environments around the world. The scope and particular focus of an advanced practice nurse’s role is highly variable and thus the ethical challenges they face are equally diverse. Yet, the dominant existing ethics pedagogies used in the nursing context have been described as not fit-for-purpose. Existing pedagogies do not adequately prepare APN candidates to meet the ethical challenges they will encounter in practice. Applying an arts-based pedagogy in ethics education for (...) advanced practice nurses has the capacity to provide effective ethics learning. This article reports on the value of a multidisciplinary pedagogy used in a graduate course in nursing leadership, law and ethics for advanced practice at an Australian university. Written in a multidisciplinary mode that allies with the pedagogy it presents, it addresses the key pedagogical challenges and opportunities of teaching ethics through an innovative arts-based pedagogy centred upon the changing depictions of the human person in works of art housed in a major state-funded art gallery. (shrink)

A theory of the joint measurement of quantum mechanical observables is generalized in order to make it applicable to the measurement of the local observables of field theory. Subsequently, the property of local commutativity, which is usually introduced as a postulate, is derived by means of the theory of measurement from a requirement of mutual nondisturbance, which, for local observables performed at a spacelike distance from each other, is interpreted as a requirement of macrocausality. Alternative attempts at establishing a deductive (...) relationship between relativistic causality and local commutativity are reviewed, but found wanting, either because of the assumption of an unwarranted objectivity of the object system (algebraic approach) or because of the use of a projection postulate (operational approach). Finally, the quantum mechanical nonobjectivity is related to certain features of nonlocality which are present in the formalism of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

When the COVID-19 surge hit New York City hospitals, the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College, and our affiliated ethics consultation services, faced waves of ethical issues sweeping forward with intensity and urgency. In this article, we describe our experience over an eight-week period (16 March through 10 May 2020), and describe three types of services: clinical ethics consultation (CEC); service practice communications/interventions (SPCI); and organizational ethics advisement (OEA). We tell this narrative through the prism of time, (...) describing the evolution of ethical issues and trends as the pandemic unfolded. We delineate three phases: anticipation and preparation, crisis management, and reflection and adjustment. The first phase focused predominantly on ways to address impending resource shortages and to plan for remote ethics consultation, and CECs focused on code status discussions with surrogates. The second phase was characterized by the dramatic convergence of a rapid increase in the number of critically ill patients, a growing scarcity of resources, and the reassignment/ redeployment of staff outside their specialty areas. The third phase was characterized by the recognition that while the worst of the crisis was waning, its medium- and long-term consequences continued to pose immense challenges. We note that there were times during the crisis that serving in the role of clinical ethics consultant created a sense of dis-ease as novel as the coronavirus itself. In retrospect we learned that our activities far exceeded the familiar terrain of clinical ethics consultation and extended into other spheres of organizational life in novel ways that were unanticipated before this pandemic. To that end, we defined and categorized a middle level of ethics consultation, which we have termed service practice communication intervention (SPCI). This is an underappreciated dimension of the work that ethics consult services are capable of in times of crisis. We believe that the pandemic has revealed the many enduring ways that ethics consultation services can more robustly contribute to the ethical life of their institutions moving forward. (shrink)

Using the position as an independent variable, and time as the dependent variable, we derive the function $${\mathcal{P}}^{(\pm )}=\pm \sqrt{2m({\mathcal{H}}-{\mathcal{V}}(q))}$$, which generates the space evolution under the potential $${\mathcal{V}}(q)$$ and Hamiltonian $${\mathcal{H}}$$. No parametrization is used. Canonically conjugated variables are the time and minus the Hamiltonian ( $$-{\mathcal{H}}$$ ). While the classical dynamics do not change, the corresponding Quantum operator $${{{\hat{\mathcal P}}}}^{(\pm )}$$ naturally leads to a 1/2-fractional time evolution, consistent with a recent proposed space–time symmetric formalism of the Quantum (...) Mechanics. Using Dirac’s procedure, separation of variables is possible, and while the two-coupled position-independent Dirac equations depend on the 1/2-fractional derivative, the two-coupled time-independent Dirac equations lead to positive and negative shifts in the potential, proportional to the force. Both equations couple the (±) solutions of $${{{\hat{\mathcal P}}}}^{(\pm )}$$ and the kinetic energy $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}$$ (separation constant) is the coupling strength. Thus, we obtain a pair of coupled states for systems with finite forces, not necessarily stationary states. The potential shifts for the harmonic oscillator (HO) are $$\pm {\hbar {\omega}} /2$$, and the corresponding pair of states are coupled for $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}\ne 0$$. No time evolution is present for $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}=0$$, and the ground state with energy $${\hbar {\omega}} /2$$ is stable. For $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}>0$$, the ground state becomes coupled to the state with energy $$-{\hbar {\omega}} /2$$, and this coupling allows to describe higher excited states in the HO. Energy quantization of the HO leads to the quantization of $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}=k{\hbar {\omega}}$$ ( $$k=1,2,\ldots$$ ). For the one-dimensional Hydrogen atom, the potential shifts become imaginary and position-dependent. Decoupled case $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}=0$$ leads to plane-waves-like solutions at the threshold. Above the threshold ( $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}>0$$ ), we obtain a plane-wave-like solution, and for the bounded states ( $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}<0$$ ), the wave-function becomes similar to the exact solutions but squeezed closer to the nucleus. (shrink)