Hero shots: involved fathers conquering new discursive territory in consumer culture

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore how visual expressions of culture offer new discursive territory within which consumer cultural ideals can be negotiated on a global scale. Through a critical visual analysis of the revelatory case Swedish Dads, we find hero shots depicting involved fathers where children’s needs and the hermetic confines of the home take center stage, as opposed to the traditional fatherhood ideals portrayed in western contemporary advertising, media, and popular culture. We demonstrate how the Swedish state’s gender ideology was encoded into a communicative event in the form of hero shots and subsequently dispersed by visual consumers as well as political and commercial stakeholders pushing this particular agenda and/or capitalizing on its tendencies. This in such a way that the event conquered new discursive territory fostering new types of consumer cultural negotiations on fatherhood ideals also in other cultural settings.     

Principles for Sustainable Insurance: Risk Management and Value

Some of the largest global insurers are actively pursuing the recently enacted Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI). While the concept of sustainability is often associated with a governance design that promotes stakeholder value, the PSI do not appear to be a call for stakeholder‐focused insurers. Rather, the PSI appear to be about internalizing tacit claims in the operations of insurers. Conceptual and empirical literature on shareholder value maximization suggests that when an insurer honors its tacit claims the value to shareholders increases. A key insight from practice is that a sincere pursuit of the PSI will expand the scope of corporate risk management.     

Heterogeneity in Urban Park Use of Aging Visitors: A Latent Class Analysis

This study describes and predicts urban parks use patterns for various age groups, with specific attention to the growing group of older adults. Park use intensity of various age groups is described. Subsequently, a multinomial logit model is estimated to describe urban park choice as a function of park features, activities, and socio-demographics. To identify segments in park use patterns of aging visitors a latent class model is estimated. Data are collected from a sample of 1,107 residents of the Eindhoven region in The Netherlands in 2002. The results indicate that age significantly affects park choice behavior. Specifically, four segments of older visitors were identified that clearly differed in their park use patterns: active health oriented users, active socially oriented users, passive local users, and moderate users.     

Influence of Socio-Demographics and Residential Environment on Leisure Activity Participation

Participating in leisure activities provides important benefits for all people. However, there is a substantial reduction of (green) leisure opportunities in cities, and the green spaces that are available often are poorly accessible. The purpose of this study is to analyze the diversity of participation in various types of leisure activities and to determine the relationship between leisure activity participation and characteristics of the residential environment depending on socio-demographic characteristics. Diary data from 803 respondents living in the Eindhoven region in the Netherlands were used. Four segments were identified that differ regarding their leisure activity participation, and a modest impact of green space accessibility was found.     

The Financial Impact of ISO 14001 Certification: Top-Line, Bottom-Line, or Both?

It is not easy being green, but it does beg the question: Does being green pay off on the bottom-line? Unfortunately, that question of becoming ISO 14001 to reap financial benefit remains widely unanswered. In particular, corporate practice is interested in how environmental management impacts firms’ finance through top-line impact, bottom-line impact, or both—as this paves the way for an investment of environmental management. As current findings are mixed, our study tracks financial performance of publicly traded US firms between 1996 and 2005 to test whether ISO 14001 leads to improved financial performance. Employing a rigorous event-study approach, we compare certified firms to different control groups based on several matching criteria that include industry, size, and/or ROA. In the short run, ISO 14001 certification makes only a minor impact on the bottom-line, according to our results. However, these same results show a significant financial improvement over the long haul with ISO 14001 certification. Additionally, this long-term improvement also makes a significant improvement in top-line performance. Thus, we conclude that environmental management pays off along both dimensions.     

The impact of the new protectionist stance in US trade policy on selected German companies in Mexico

ABSTRACT

Previous studies on the impact of the new protectionist stance of the United States have focused mainly on the imposition of the controversial border tax. This research advances the understanding of the possible impacts of the tightening of the rules of origin and the imposition of the most-favored nation tariffs on manufacturing companies. The findings show a negative impact from the protectionist measures on businesses by increasing costs per unit and decreasing the gross margin. The results suggest that those additional costs could be passed on to the final buyers, raising the price level by more than previously assumed.     

A Unifying Framework and Comparison of Algorithms for Non-negative Matrix Factorisation

Non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF) is an increasingly popular unsupervised learning method. However, parameter estimation in the NMF model is a difficult high-dimensional optimisation problem. We consider algorithms of the alternating least squares type. Solutions to the least squares problem fall in two categories. The first category is iterative algorithms, which include algorithms such as the majorise–minimise (MM) algorithm, coordinate descent, gradient descent and the Févotte-Cemgil expectation–maximisation (FC-EM) algorithm. We introduce a new family of iterative updates based on a generalisation of the FC-EM algorithm. The coordinate descent, gradient descent and FC-EM algorithms are special cases of this new EM family of iterative procedures. Curiously, we show that the MM algorithm is never a member of our general EM algorithm. The second category is based on cone projection. We describe and prove a cone projection algorithm tailored to the non-negative least square problem. We compare the algorithms on a test case and on the problem of identifying mutational signatures in human cancer. We generally find that cone projection is an attractive choice. Furthermore, in the cancer application, we find that a mix-and-match strategy performs better than running each algorithm in isolation.