Personal attributes,organizational conditions,and ethical attitudes: a social cognitive approach

This paper investigates the impact of personal attributes and organizational conditions on attitudes toward corporate misdeeds. On the basis of social cognitive theory, we develop hypotheses that are tested against data collected from 215 German employees using an online survey. Our findings suggest that personal attributes (i.e. gender, age, Big five personality traits) have a much greater impact on ethical attitudes than organizational conditions (i.e. organizational culture). Further, a moderating effect of control‐oriented culture on the relationship between personality traits (i.e. conscientiousness, extraversion) and attitudes toward corporate misdeeds is found. We derive implications for human resource management and further theory development.     

Does expert trust and factual knowledge shape individual's perception of science?

Explaining how individuals form their risks and benefit perceptions with regard to new technologies is a key issue in order to understand how new information disseminates. This paper examines the effect of knowledge, social values and trust in experts as shaping perceptions of risks and benefits of new technologies. Given that individual's perceptions of a technology is affected by unobserved heterogeneity, we use a methodology to disentangle the effect of a joint estimation of risks and benefit perceptions, namely seemingly unrelated probit, and we draw upon evidence from a representative survey carried out in Spain. Our findings suggest that factual knowledge and trust in experts increase perceptions of benefit of new technology developments and jointly reduce the perceptions of risk. Furthermore, reliance on traditional social values only appears to affect perceptions of benefits but does not influence risk perceptions.     

A participatory framework for conservation payments

This paper describes a participatory framework used in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala to analyze the future viability of different conservation measures in a cloud forest area. It presents how in the case of conservation initiatives, participatory developed instruments could provide the incentive for farmers to reinforce or introduce conservation measures in their farming systems to preserve habitats, reduce species disruptions and alleviate poverty. A model's architecture was created with stakeholders of different settings of the region of study. Together, baseline-scenarios and policy-scenarios on land use and income generation were developed. The paper investigates the potential impacts of different policy measures for conservation and poverty reduction through the instrument “payments for environmental services”. Aim was to integrate social, economic and environmental aspects.     

Conservation agriculture practices adopted in southern Brazil

The adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) practices are essential for soil and water conservation. In CA, farmers must adopt no-tillage (NT) with crop rotation to maintain a permanent soil cover. In Brazil, mainly in the South region, for CA to be more efficient, practices such as contour farming and agricultural terraces should also be adopted. Thus, the objective of this study is to determine the extent to which NT has been adopted with crop rotation and others soil and water conservation practices. Data from the Agricultural Census in Paraná State, southern Brazil, were used. For the data analysis, the relationship between the level of adoption of NT and the use of crop rotation, contour farming and agricultural terraces was analyzed. A factor and cluster analysis were performed to distinguish regions in terms of soil and water conservation practices. The results show good overall soil and water conservation practices, although heterogeneity has been observed in the adoption practices between regions. Adoption of NT is high in almost all the studied regions. The conservation practice most widely used with NT is contour farming, whereas the least used is agricultural terraces. Conservation practices for runoff control are being neglected by farmers.