Islam-based legal language and state governance: democracy,strength of the judiciary and human rights

Constitutional Political Economy - States embracing Islam-based laws are frequently seen as struggling with establishing democratic institutions, jeopardizing human rights and encouraging executive...     

Bridging the gap: How sustainable development can help companies create shareholder value and improve financial performance

This study examines the effect of integrating sustainability into corporate strategy on various aspects of shareholder value creation and financial performance in the British capital market. The employed method is based on the content analysis of corporate disclosures and a new technique for assessing the adoption of the corporate sustainability concept (embracing the environmental, social, and financial aspects of a company's policies at the same time). Using extensive data of FTSE 350 firms covering the years 2006–2012, 65 companies were selected as meeting corporate sustainability criteria. For the above period, we find that these firms were characterized by higher financial risk exposure, lower asset growth rates, lower BV/MV ratios, lower EVA ratios, and higher MVA ratios. Such relations were generally present among different size and industry groupings. The results support the thesis that firms that incorporate sustainability issues into their business operations are better able to leverage their resources toward stronger financial performance and shareholder value creation than other companies. The paper contributes to the literature by offering a more holistic approach to corporate sustainable performance measurement and shedding additional light on its relation to financial performance in the context of the recent global financial crisis and its direct aftermath.     

Visitors’ diversified motivations and behavior – the case of the pilgrimage center in Krakow (Poland)

The article presents the visitors’ motivations and behavior at the pilgrimage center in Krakow (Poland). Here, the relation between these elements, i.e. whether their motivations have a correlation with what buildings they visit, is emphasized for the first time. The most important motivations for visits were religious and tourist ones, often rated equally high by the same respondents. They visited religious, cultural and tourist buildings and facilities. The stay of visitors with religious motivations was not limited to religious practices, but was extended by tourist behavior. Similarly, visitors with tourist motivations visited religious buildings and participated in religious practices. However, they visit tourist and cultural facilities more often. Additionally, the three groups of respondents were categorized and, on the basis of importance of the religious and tourist motivations, three types were distinguished, i.e. pilgrims, religious tourists and tourists. Their characteristic has been expanded by the analysis of their behavior. Nowadays, visitors’ motivations and behavior at pilgrimage centers include those typical for pilgrims and tourists in the traditional meaning. In addition to their religious function, these sites offer cultural and tourist facilities. The article highlights the dedifferentiation approach to visitors’ motivations and behavior, and in respect of the spatial organization of pilgrimage centers.     

Cluster-mapping procedure for tourism regions based on geostatistics and fuzzy clustering: example of Polish districts

ABSTRACT

In tourism, the phenomenon of spatial agglomeration (concentration of economic activity) spreads beyond the borders of the territorial units. It is referred to as geographic ‘spillovers’ that enhances spatial interdependence and functional relationship of neighbouring regions. Within the standard procedure of cluster-mapping, only concentration inside a territorial unit may be analysed which is a source of biased results in tourism studies. However, tourist agglomeration centres sometimes occur at the juncture of territorial units and the economic entities located in them form spatial clusters with a different degree of membership to several centres of agglomerations located in the neighbourhood. Therefore, we propose to measure ‘inter-regional’ agglomeration in tourism providing modification of spatial autocorrelation measures (regarding neighbourhood and distance). In order to measure neighbourhood more precisely, we use geostatistical information (global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of tourism entities) and geographically weighted fuzzy clustering approach (FGWC). We examine the method on the example of Polish districts (NUTS-4) using database of 131,338 firms registered in section I (accommodation and food services) of Polish Classification of Activity in 2015. The results proved that a novel method of cluster-mapping considering spatial dependency combined with geographic information system (GIS) and FGWC method increases the accuracy of the identification of tourism clusters (inter-regional agglomeration).     

Accumulative vs. Appreciative Expressions of Materialism: Revising Materialism in Light of Polish Simplifiers and New Materialism

Journal of Business Ethics - At a time when it is critically important to preserve natural resources and reduce the amount of man-made pollution, this article explores other potentials for...     

‘Taking on almost everyone?’ Migrant and employer recruitment strategies in a booming labour market

This paper explores the recruitment strategies of employers in the Irish Celtic Tiger boom labour market. It explores Irish employers' turn towards immigrants rather than pursuing other strategies such as raising productivity or mobilising alternative sources of labour. It demonstrates that during the boom years a more casualised approach to recruitment was favoured, privileging soft skills and competencies above credentialised skills. Immigrants became the employees of choice, not least because of issues of costs and obedience, but also because they brought new skills, in particular soft skills. Indeed, employers in some sectors developed a categorical preference for migrant workers as they recruited for attitude, work ethic and potential.     

Fragile democracies and constitutional crises: a laboratory for studying the role of constitutional constraints

Constitutional Political Economy -     

A multilevel framework to enhance organizational resilience

Abstract

Organizational resilience is a capacity that emerges at multiple levels. Although the multilevel character of organizations has been generally acknowledged in existing organizational studies, there is a lack of theoretical and empirical studies that address how it affects organizational resilience. To adress this gap, this article offers a multilevel framework applicable to enhance organizational resilience and presents an empirical study to probe the impact of multilevel elements on organization's capacity for responding to critical situations. More specifically, the new framework will help an organization to enhance its resilience through a process of self-assessment on crisis preparedness and response capacity. This process will allow the organization to identify and remedy potential vulnerabilities in the interaction between its organs as well as environment. We argue that crisis management and organizational resilience are mutually shaped across multiple levels, from individual, organizational, to environmental. These multiple levels are operationalized operationalization in four phases: (1) reviewing and monitoring context, (2) testing preparedness, (3) analysing and assessing responses, and (4) strengthening capabilities. In these phases, we underline that resilience management requires continuous embracing of the dynamic processes within an organizational system and its environment. To validate the framework, we present an empirical study on a security organization, and describe the results to demonstrate how to utilise the tool in practice. In conclusion, we discuss how the multilevel framework can be further applied towards building stronger resilience management.