Human rights abuses at the Rio 2016 Olympics: activism and the media

Abstract

This article examines activists’ use of human rights as a discourse to contest the impacts of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games by drawing on a wider ethnographic project examining activism at Rio 2016. Focusing on two areas of contention, forced evictions and police brutality, the article considers the way activists framed their grievances and how mainstream international media outlets reported those grievances. While activists fighting against forced evictions explicitly used the language of rights in their activism, media accounts tended not to discuss these issues using this lexicon. Conversely, grassroots activists protesting around the issue of police brutality did not tend to frame their grievances in terms of rights, but these issues were discussed as human rights abuses in the media. This points to a dual role played by activists fighting forced evictions: while they are fighting to keep their own homes, they are also part of a wider discursive battle for the right to housing to be recognised and respected.     

A dynamic multiple equation approach for forecasting PM2.5 pollution in Santiago,Chile

This paper proposes a methodology based on a system of dynamic multiple linear equations that incorporates hourly, daily and annual seasonal characteristics for predicting hourly ${\text{pm}}_{2.5}$ pollution concentrations for 11 meteorological stations in Santiago, Chile. It is demonstrated that the proposed model has the potential to match or even surpass the accuracy of competing nonlinear forecasting models in terms of both fit and predictive ability. In addition, the model is successful at predicting various categories of high concentration events, between 53% and 76% of mid-range events, and around 90% of extreme-range events on average across all stations. This forecasting model is considered a useful tool for helping government authorities to anticipate critical episodes of poor air quality so as to avoid the detrimental economic and health impacts of extreme pollution levels.     

Adaptation responses to increasing drought frequency

Using state contingent analysis, we discuss how and why irrigators adapt to alternative water supply signals. Focusing on the timing of water allocations, we explore inherent differences in the demand for water by two key irrigation sectors: annual and perennial producers. The analysis explores the reliability of alternative water property right bundles and how reduced allocations across time influence alternative responses by producers. Our findings are then extended to explore how management strategies could adapt to two possible future drier state types: (i) where an average reduction in water supply is experienced; and (ii) where drought becomes more frequent. The combination of these findings is subsequently used to discuss the role water reform policy plays in dealing with current and future climate scenarios.     

Die Informationswissenschaften als Brücke zwischen den Natur- und Kulturwissenschaften

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Motivating Employees with Goal-Based Prosocial Rewards*

A recent trend in organizations is to motivate employees with goal-based prosocial rewards, whereby employees must donate their rewards to charities upon goal attainment. We examine the motivational effects of goal-based prosocial rewards versus cash rewards under different levels of goal difficulty. We develop our hypotheses based on affective valuation theory, which posits that when valuing uncertain outcomes by affect rather than calculation, individuals are largely insensitive to changes in probability of the outcomes, including probability of goal attainment. Experiment results support our hypotheses. Specifically, we find that employees who are rewarded with prosocial (vs. cash) goal-based rewards are more likely to adopt an affective valuation approach. Consequently, when employees are assigned either an easy goal or a stretch goal, their effort is higher when incentivized with a goal-based prosocial reward than a cash reward. Furthermore, there is a less curve-linear relationship between goal difficulty and effort with prosocial (vs. cash) goal-based rewards. These findings highlight for incentive system designers the motivational advantage of goal-based prosocial rewards relative to traditional cash rewards. Furthermore, we extend the academic literature by showing how affect-rich rewards such as prosocial rewards can influence employees' assessment of the probability of goal attainment.     

Political ideology and CEO performance under crisis

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Management quality is known to influence depository institution performance, but less understood are the characteristics of managers that influence...