This paper examines the association between board characteristics and the ethical reputation of financial institutions. Given the pivotal governance role of the board of directors and the value-relevance of ethical corporate behavior, we postulate a positive relationship between ethical reputation and board features that foster more effective monitoring and oversight. Using a sample of large financial institutions from 13 different countries, we run several alternative panel regressions of ethical reputation on board characteristics and firm-specific controls. Our results demonstrate that the (...) ethical reputation of financial institutions is positively associated with board size, gender diversity, and CEO duality, while being negatively related to the busyness of the board members and a composite index reflecting poor monitoring. Nevertheless, inconsistent with our hypothesis, we also document that financial institutions with less frequent board meetings have better ethical reputation. Overall, our empirical findings suggest that stronger board oversight may promote ethical behavior in the financial industry. (shrink)

Do firms gain environmental legitimacy when they conform to external expectations regarding the natural environment? Drawing on institutional logic and signaling theory, we investigate sources of heterogeneity in the impacts of environmental actions on environmental legitimacy. Longitudinal data about 325 publicly traded U.S. firms in polluting industries support the notion that environmental actions help firms gain environmental legitimacy. However, some actions instead can harm this legitimacy if environmental performance deteriorates and the firm is subject to intense scrutiny from nongovernmental organizations. (...) Thus, an important contribution of this research is to identify conditions under which greenwashing can backfire. (shrink)

In this article, we empirically assess the impact of corporate ethical identity (CEI) on a firm's financial performance. Drawing on formulations of normative and instrumental stakeholder theory, we argue that firms with a strong ethical identity achieve a greater degree of stakeholder satisfaction (SS), which, in turn, positively influences a firm's financial performance. We analyze two dimensions of the CEI of firms: corporate revealed ethics and corporate applied ethics. Our results indicate that revealed ethics has informational worth and enhances shareholder (...) value, whereas applied ethics has a positive impact through the improvement of SS. However, revealed ethics by itself (i.e. decoupled from ethical initiatives) is not sufficient to boost economic performance. (shrink)

Plato’s Statesman offers us interesting elements of his educational theory; it can be seen as a help towards attaining a greater knowledge of truth. This article begins with a brief introduction to this work, and then presents an analysis of several ideas that appear throughout the text, with a special emphasis on those dealing directly or indirectly with the theme of education and human communication. The article concludes with a summary of the main issues examined in the work.

Mucho se ha escrito para analizar y dar sentido a dos términos que vienen intrínsecamente unidos, el nacionalismo y la nación. La principal consecuencia positiva de esto ha sido un vasto debate teórico sobre el nacionalismo y la nación que indudablemente los enriquece. La principal consecuencia negativa, por su parte, es que el desarrollo del propio debate, y cómo se ha ido formando, ha recibido poca atención. El objetivo de este artículo es exponer cómo este debate se ha sido desarrollado (...) alrededor de los cuatros paradigmas clásicos del nacionalismo. Para ello, se aplica el esquema kuhniano para saber cuándo, cómo, y por qué se articularon estos paradigmas clásicos en torno a estos dos términos. Con esto se pretende profundizar en la explicación histórica de Moreno Almendral (2015), pero desde la filosofía de la ciencia, desarrollando una visión mucho más detallada del debate en torno al nacionalismo y la nación. (shrink)

In Scotland, residents have fought open-net salmon farms and their toll on human and nonhuman bodies for decades. This paper recollects seven years of work in Skye and Raasay, two islands off the northwest coast of the country, developing strategies to divest away from salmon aquaculture. Addressing the contemporary wave of underwater clearances created by UK’s top food export industry, it unpacks the implementation of a transition into alternative horizons by embracing the legacies of toxicity inherited from salmon extractivist industries. (...) CLIMAVORE, a framework developed as a research-led artistic practice by the authors, investigates how to eat in the new seasons of the climate crisis. In a season of marine dead zones, it facilitates new approaches to aquaecology and coastal care that cultivate coastal livelihoods. CLIMAVORE began with a new public forum, shaped as a multispecies intertidal table, established in Skye in 2017 to envision environmentally regenerative and socially reparative forms of food production based on metabolic interactions between humans and depleted landscapes that benefit a plethora of species. CLIMAVORE’s site responsive methodology relies on a socially-engaged art practice, consisting of fieldwork, interviews, working groups, oral histories, performative meals, cooking and building apprenticeships, tidal gardening, material testing and public art installations. Ongoing collaboration with residents, scientists, and policymakers critically explores ways of living not only on but with the coast. This new holistic approach to coastal nourishment provides methodologies for ecological praxis as well as a platform for researchers and the general public to imagine an alternative ecological future: the tidal commons. (shrink)

This article is a first attempt to line out the conditions under which executives might have a real self-interest in pursuing a broad stakeholder management (SM) orientation to enlarge their power. We suggest that managers have wider latitude of action under an SM approach, even when this is instrumental to financial performance. The causally ambiguity of the performance effects of idiosyncratic relationships with stakeholders not only makes SM strategy difficult for competitors to imitate but also increases managerial discretion. When managers (...) use this situation for their own benefit, they can undermine the purported goals of the SM approach. By analyzing some of the factors that might lead to such disfunctionalities, this article advances a theory of the potential dark side of SM. (shrink)

Tras analizar sucintamente las consecuencias científicas y filosóficas de la identidad mente-cerebro, se señalan argumentos a favor y en contra de mantener el debate mente-cerebro. En particular se consideran las nuevas técnicas de exploración del cerebro como argumento en contra de tal debate. Las deficiencias e insuficiencias de tales técnicas aconsejan mantener el debate mente-cerebro y no asumir el materialismo.

Solms and the other authors in this series of BBS target articles accept the findings that the executive control of the REM/NREM cycle is still localized within a narrow region of the pontine brainstem. However, recent findings challenge this notion. We will review the recent data and suggest instead that the hypothalamus is the primary regulator of states of consciousness. If the hypothalamus indeed controls all the fun stuff, such as sex, eating, drinking, sleeping, and so on, then one can (...) more easily accept Solms's argument that dreams are also generated from the forebrain. [Solms]. (shrink)

El agua, como agente físico de la naturaleza, ha sido utilizada desde la antigüedad con fines higiénicos y terapéuticos. Sin embargo, distintas civilizaciones antiguas le añadían un valor mágico y divino para conseguir la curación. El objetivo de la presente revisión bibliográfica es conocer el valor terapéutico del agua en la cultura fenicia, así como identificar la localización de los centros termales donde se aplicaba. Water, as a physics agent of nature, has been used since ancient times with hygienic and (...) therapeutic aims. However, different ancient civilizations added it a magic and divine value to get faith healing. The objective of this bibliographical review is to know the therapeutic value of water in the Phoenician culture, as well as to identify the location of thermal centers where it was applied. (shrink)

Se presenta en este trabajo la traducción comentada del primer capítulo del Kitâb al-Zahra de Ibn Dâwûd de Ispahán (m. 909), recopilación poética y teoría sobre la concepción amatoria del pensamiento neoplatónico bagdadí. El texto supone una adecuación a la tradición islámica de las teorías de origen aristotélico y platónico sobre el amor, aunque fundamentada en la tradición poética de los árabes y en la preceptiva moral atribuida a Mahoma. En él se aborda, desde un punto de vista ontológico, la (...) contemplación de la belleza como objeto de afectación sensual, que es el origen de la dolencia de amor. (shrink)

En la gran discusión pública en torno a la pandemia de la COVID-19 fueposible identificar cuatro líneas argumentales que contenían un análisis delevento pandémico, una valoración y una predicción o propuesta futuro. Laprimera fue la de la negación o el engaño bajo el paradigma del Estado deexcepción permanente. La segunda cifró el peligro en la posible inacción delos Estados y en la consiguiente violación de la dignidad humana. La terceraconsideró la pandemia un acelerador de la crisis de los sistemas democráticosy (...) del triunfo del capitalismo tecnológico. Finalmente, la cuarta líneaargumental anunció el advenimiento de un momento único de catarsis colectiva.El objeto de este artículo es repensar con la perspectiva del tiempo losmarcos interpretativos que iluminaron un debate que todavía hoy no puededarse por cerrado. (shrink)

Vital events, such as widowhood and retirement, are broadly accepted as points of inflection in the lives of older adults that often differ according to gender. In this study, we analyzed the influence of gender differences in meaningful leisure among older adults through the integration of qualitative and quantitative findings. The use of joint displays revealed that: (1) there is no significant difference between the influence of retirement and widowhood on the two genders, (2) the ethic of care is a (...) constraining factor in older women’s leisure, (3) women are more innovative in their leisure in older age, and (4) volunteer activities are highly segregated by gender. The use of joint displays helped illuminate these four phenomena in light of quantitative and qualitative data. (shrink)

Social-media platforms have become a global phenomenon of communication, where users publish content in text, images, video, audio or a combination of them to convey opinions, report facts that are happening or show current situations of interest. Smart-city applications can benefit from social media and digital participatory platforms when citizens become active social sensors of the problems that occur in their communities. Indeed, systems that analyse and interpret user-generated content can extract actionable information from the digital world to improve citizens’ (...) quality of life. This article aims to model the knowledge required for automatic problem detection to reproduce citizens’ awareness of problems from the analysis of text-based user-generated content items. Therefore, this research focuses on two primary goals. On the one hand, we present the underpinnings of the ontological model that categorises the types of problems affecting citizens’ quality of life in society. In this regard, this study contributes significantly to developing an ontology based on the social-sensing paradigm to support the advance of smart societies. On the other hand, we describe the architecture of the text-processing module that relies on such an ontology to perform problem detection, which involves the tasks of topic categorisation and keyword recognition. (shrink)