CSR-Washing is Rare: A Conceptual Framework,Literature Review,and Critique

Growth in CSR-washing claims in recent decades has been dramatic in numerous academic and activist contexts. The discourse, however, has been fragmented, and still lacks an integrated framework of the conditions necessary for successful CSR-washing. Theorizing successful CSR-washing as the joint occurrence of five conditions, this paper undertakes a literature review of the empirical evidence for and against each condition. The literature review finds that many of the conditions are either highly contingent, rendering CSR-washing as a complex and fragile outcome. This finding runs counter to the dominant perception in the general public, among activists, and among a vocal contingent of academics that successful CSR-washing is rampant.     

Economics at DG Competition, 2010–2011

This paper discusses a selection of cases and important policy developments in the enforcement activities of the Directorate General for Competition at the European Commission during the past year (2010–2011).     

The Impact of Choice Inconsistencies in Stated Choice Studies

A new test procedure revealing mutuallyinconsistent choices has been developed andapplied to Stated Choice data. Our analysisshows that inconsistent choices commonly occurin several Stated Choice tasks. An applicationof the test to the Norwegian Value of Timestudy data shows that failing to excludeinconsistent choices resulted in asubstantially higher Value of time. Theinconsistent choices were made by less educatedparticipants. As the tasks were undertaken inthe easy context of choosing travelalternatives with three attributes,practitioners of more complex and cognitivedemanding designs should be particularilyconcerned with these results.     

Corporate social responsibility communication: stakeholder information, response and involvement strategies

While it is generally agreed that companies need to manage their relationships with their stakeholders, the way in which they choose to do so varies considerably. In this paper, it is argued that when companies want to communicate with stakeholders about their CSR initiatives, they need to involve those stakeholders in a two-way communication process, defined as an ongoing iterative sense-giving and sense-making process. The paper also argues that companies need to communicate through carefully crafted and increasingly sophisticated processes. Three CSR communication strategies are developed. Based on empirical illustrations and prior research, the authors argue that managers need to move from 'informing' and 'responding' to 'involving' stakeholders in CSR communication itself. They conclude that managers need to expand the role of stakeholders in corporate CSR communication processes if they want to improve their efforts to build legitimacy, a positive reputation and lasting stakeholder relationships.     

Using DEA and Worst Practice DEA in Credit Risk Evaluation

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of worst practice DEA, which aims at identifying worst performers by placing them on the frontier. This is particularly relevant for our application to credit risk evaluation, but this also has general relevance since the worst performers are where the largest improvement potential can be found. The paper also proposes to use a layering technique instead of the traditional cut-off point approach, since this enables incorporation of risk attitudes and risk-based pricing. Finally, it is shown how the use of a combination of normal and worst practice DEA models enable detection of self-identifiers. The results of the empirical application on credit risk evaluation validate the method. The best combination of layered normal and worst practice DEA models yields an impressive 100% bankruptcy and 78% non-bankruptcy prediction accuracy in the calibration data set, and equally convincing 100% and 67% out-of-sample classification accuracies.     

In search of general evolutionary principles: Why Darwinism is too important to be left to the biologists

Bioeconomics emphasizes the common ontological ground between economics and biology. However, this does not necessarily mean that both disciplines collapse into one. Instead it is proposed here that Darwinism provides a general, meta-theoretical framework for dealing with complex evolving systems, consisting of populations of varied and replicating entities, which are found in both nature and human society. There is no alternative to the core Darwinian principles of variation, selection and inheritance to explain the evolution of such systems. Neither the actual existence of human intentionality, nor the hypothetical existence of Lamarckian processes of acquired character inheritance, offer a barrier to the use of Darwinian explanations. However, while Darwinian principles are always necessary to explain complex evolving population systems, they are never sufficient on their own. Such a generalized Darwinism can accommodate several different stances found in the literature on bioeconomics and elsewhere.      

Students’ attitudes toward technology: exploring the relationship among affective,cognitive and behavioral components of the attitude construct

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - When studying attitudes toward technology education, the affective attitudinal component has primarily been the focus. This study focuses...     

Haptic routes and digestive destinations in cooking series: images of food and place in Keith Floyd and The Hairy Bikers in relation to art history

Taking modern television travel cookery series as a starting point, the article investigates the cultural significance of food and place in visual culture. The examples are, respectively, The Keith Floyd Cookery Collection: Floyd Around The Med [2000. BBC DVD, 2007] and The Hairy Bikers Cookbook Series 1 & 2 [BBC DVD, 2006]. The series illustrate the strong connection between travel, food and place in tourist consumer culture, as well as the way motion and emotion are related to sensuous and digestive aspects of touristic food. The series also illustrate the emblematic connection between food and the media in which aesthetical, cultural and symbolic values are related to the way food is mediatised. The main argument is that cooking television series produce haptic images of place and food that include a specific sensuous and emotional relation between screen and viewer. The haptic imagery is reflected in popular visual culture and tourism as well as in art history and aesthetics.     

The past as staged-real environment: communism revisited in The Crazy Guides Communism Tours,Krakow, Poland

Through an analysis of a tourism design in Krakow Poland, The Crazy Guides Communism Tours, I wish to present one possible way of promoting a district through dealing with an unwanted past, an undesirable heritage. In this instance, it is Nowa Huta, a part of city from the unwanted past, that is revalorized partly through the construction of staged environments in real places. Such designs realize the communication potential of the situation and can change socially constructed knowledge into social (inter-) action. The Crazy Guides Communism Tours require a high level of bodily and emotional investment both from the tourists and from the guides themselves. The paper investigates the designs on a representational and an experiential level and uses field analysis to try and answer the questions if, for whom and why these tourism designs change anything.