Enhancing environmental information transparency through corporate social responsibility reporting regulation

This research aims to contribute to the scientific debate about the lack of interlinkages between mandatory non-financial reporting and sustainable business models. For our purposes, a counter-accounting analysis was conducted on the non-financial reports of a sample of 145 Italian firms interested by the Directive 2014/95/EU effects. Specifically, the study adopts an empirical approach to evaluate environmental information transparency, which represents one of the main critical issues concerning the non-financial declarations prepared by European Italian Public Interest Entities (PIEs) to comply with Directive 2014/95/EU. The results highlight that corporate governance and report characteristics affect environmental transparency. Furthermore, the results confirm the overall attitude to avoid the disclosure of unfavourable or unavailable environmental information through impression management strategies. Finally, the analysis underlines the opportunities for policymakers to rethink mandatory non-financial reporting to sustain the ecological transition of European PIEs.     

跳频信号的归一化多普勒频差最大似然估计

针对双站定位涉及的跳频信号多普勒频差估计问题，提出了归一化的频差最大似然估计算法，利用两个定位站接收到的跳频脉冲串信号，构建一个关于基准跳频频率多普勒频差的似然函数，通过网格搜索得到使似然函数最大的多普勒频差估计，既解决了跳频信号在不同跳频频率上多普勒频差不一致的问题，又充分利用在不同频率的脉冲串信号提高了多普勒频差估计精度。通过仿真对算法的性能进行了评估，结果表明，与基于子空间的算法比较，在脉冲数达到240个时，所提算法执行效率提升30%以上。     

Transport infrastructure equities in mixed-asset portfolios: estimating risk with a Garch-Copula CVaR model

Transport infrastructure is an important subsector within infrastructure, but knowledge of its equities in terms of risk-return characteristics and contribution to portfolio performance is still limited. This study assesses the subsector individually and in a multi-asset, index-based portfolio. In doing so, we apply a t-Copula-based Conditional Value-at-Risk model to simulate risk and returns. Our findings reveal that the subsector has a relatively low dependency on other equities, performs like other alternative asset classes such as general real estate, and does not grant significant risk diversification benefits for mainstream institutional investors such as pension funds. Investors aiming for higher target returns may however assign substantial weights to transport infrastructure, supporting our conjecture that it does not share the same asset class characteristics as general infrastructure. By contrasting Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) scores for both the mean-variance framework and the t-Copula simulation, we further document the limitations of traditional VaR approaches. Hence, this study’s results support the use of risk assessment tools that incorporate non-normal distributions to represent multivariate dependence structures.     

Why We Should Change Our Attitude Towards Distressed Firms

This article surveys ‘creditor‐friendly’ and ‘enterprise‐friendly’ bankruptcy regimes with a focus on the methodology underlying the filter test in distress, as reflected both in its academic treatment and in legal practice. I find that the test exhibits pro‐liquidation bias in designating liquidation of a firm with recovery potential as the Type II error, and in underplaying the benefits of a possible turnaround. Further influences militating against continuation include the power conferred on creditors through the balance sheet criterion and the undervaluation of intangible assets. I make the case for reversing such biases to establish a presumption in favour of continuation.     

广义空间调制系统的正则化OMP检测算法

在广义空间调制（GSM）系统中，最大似然（ML）检测可以取得最优的检测性能，然而其计算复杂度随激活天线数的增加急剧增长。针对这一问题，提出了一种基于稀疏重构理论的低复杂度检测算法——正则化正交匹配追踪（ROMP）算法。该算法首先根据信道矩阵和当前残差的内积选取多个候选激活天线索引，接着对候选天线索引按正则化标准进行可靠性验证，剔除错误索引，缩小信号的搜索空间，最后通过求解最小二乘问题估计信号。仿真结果表明，与经典的正交匹配追踪（OMP）算法相比，所提算法以少许复杂度的增加为代价极大提升了检测性能，能够在检测性能与复杂度之间取得更好的折中。     

The impact on stock prices of deferral and elimination of internal control audit requirement for small firms

This paper examines the cumulative market reaction to the events related to deferral of internal control audit requirement under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and its elimination under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 for nonaccelerated filers (small firms). We document that small firms experienced negative cumulative abnormal returns around these events; and the differences between the cumulative abnormal returns for small firms and the two control groups (accelerated and large accelerated filers) were negative and significant at the 1% level. These results support the notion that market participants value the reliability of financial information irrespective of the firm size. Within the small firms, we find no firm characteristic significantly explains the market reaction to the events considered. That is, all small firms lost market value in reaction to the events that delayed and eliminated their internal control audit requirement.     

Lifestyling entrepreneurs’ sociological expressionism

This study explores the tourism host-home relationship investigated through documentary analysis of photographs choreographed through mutual negotiation between hosts and researcher (collaborative auto-driving) and participants’ spoken narratives (photo-elicitation interviews); we identify the significance for tourism product construction. Major findings concern the sociological expressionism of the tourism lifestyle entrepreneur who creates a certain personal brand identity or ‘lifestyling’ through their commercial home presentation; ‘private’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘temporal’ classification categories of hosts’ favourite spaces in the home are identified, based upon the individual spatial management strategies employed. Depictions of favourite spaces emphasised emotional and sensorial dimensions rather than material things present, and were described as spaces of contentment and tranquillity essential for energising hosts in the ongoing production of the commercial home.     

Forget about ‘the ideal worker’: A theoretical contribution to the debate on flexible workplace designs,work/life conflict,and opportunities for gender equality

This study integrates insights from Self-Determination Theory and Boundary Theory to present scenarios on how flexible workplace designs can trigger multiple motivational processes underlying gendered work/nonwork integration behaviors, and how these affect work/life conflict. We disentangle processes underlying work engagement and work/life conflict, explaining the paradoxical outcomes found with regard to gender inequality in terms of work/life performance, satisfaction, and health. Policy makers and organizations need an increased understanding and a reconceptualization of these issues, realizing that the ideal worker does not exist. Instead, a long-term perspective is needed in order to truly realize the potential benefits of flexible workplace designs for all stakeholders. Organizations need to take responsibility for preventing individual workers’ depletion and stimulating the regeneration of workers’ resources.     

“We are all so different that it is just … normal.” Normalization practices in an academic hospital in the Netherlands

Internationally, academic hospitals are giving increasing attention to diversity management. This paper sheds light on the actual praxis of cultural diversity management by professionals in workplace interactions. An ethnographic study in a Dutch academic hospital showed that normalization practices were obscuring diversity issues and obstructing inclusion of cultural minority professionals. The normalization of professionalism-as-neutral and equality-as-sameness informed the unequal distribution of privilege and disadvantage among professionals and left no room to question this distribution. Majority and minority professionals disciplined themselves and each other in (re)producing an ideal worker norm, essentialized difference and sameness, and explained away the structural hierarchy involved. To create space for cultural diversity in healthcare organizations in the Netherlands and beyond, we need to challenge normalization practices.