Demos-Ethos: a framework to study the Icelandic and Basque cases through Critical Social Innovation and Applied Ethics

This article presents a framework informed by two disciplines, Social Innovation and Applied Ethics, to be used in an ongoing analysis of territorial democratic systems. It aims to combine Social Innovation and Applied Ethics analysis to better understand the socio-political regeneration process in Iceland initiated with the 2008 global crisis. This crisis, particularly in Iceland had an economic and political aspect affecting the self-understanding of the territories as a whole, but in the Basque Country at present, it also deals with the current peace process to settle down political violence and its causes. In both cases there are deep underlying value issues. Nevertheless, this article introduces only the results obtained in Iceland. While its democratic system has proven to be able to contest the causes of the crisis, there is no definitive evidence that the re-examination process that was opened in October 2008 is resolved yet.     

Bayesian modeling of university first-year students' grades after placement test

University first-year students grades are naturally correlated with the scores obtained at placement tests. Often this characteristic leads the university grades in the first exams to be asymmetrically distributed. Motivated by the analysis of grades of the basic Statistics examination of first-year students, we discuss informative priors for the shape parameter of the skew-normal model, a class of distribution which account for several degree of asymmetry. Our proposed prior leads to closed-form full-conditional posterior distributions, particularly useful in Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. A Gibbs sampling algorithm is discussed for the joint vector of parameters and the method is applied to a real data set from the School of Economics, University of Padua, Italy. Our analysis reveals that the correlation between the placement test and the grades of first-year students leads to a measurable positive skewness of the distribution of the university grades.     

Quantile hidden semi-Markov models for multivariate time series

Statistics and Computing - Parametric regression, such as linear regression, plays an important role in statistics. The use of parametric regression models typically involves the specification of a...     

Investors’ expectations around quantitative easing: does liquidity injection affect European banks equally?

Journal of Management and Governance - The role of liquidity in the banking industry is increasingly under the spotlight since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2007. Prior evidence offers...     

Building an integral metatheory of management

The increasing fragmentation of organization theory seems not to be responding to the challenges and complexities of organizations and society. This article contends that integral theory can make an important contribution to our discipline and presents a metatheory that integrates all previous organizational knowledge in an integral, balanced and non-marginalizing framework. Using metatriangulation techniques it reviews management and organization theories, classifies them according to their underlying paradigms and integrates them in a new metatheory. The resulting theory called “3D Management” maintains that there are 3 basic and irreducible dimensions of management: science, arts and ethics which refer respectively to the techno-economical, the aesthetic-emotional and the moral aspects of organizational reality. The fourth management dimension, the spiritual dimension, integrates the Big Three in an essential unit and strives for unity and meaning. An assessment of the theory and a concluding discussion of its contributions and potential applications is provided.     

The Influence of Stakeholders on the Environmental Strategy of Service Firms: The Moderating Effects of Complexity,Uncertainty and Munificence*

Drawing on the resource‐based view of the firm, we examine how complexity, uncertainty and munificence in the general business environment moderate the association between a firm's stakeholder integration capability and its environmental strategy. Our data were drawn from 134 ski resorts in 12 countries in western Europe and North America. Our study finds that (1) an organizational capability of stakeholder integration is associated with a service firm's adoption of a proactive environmental strategy; (2) an uncertain business environment has a direct positive influence and a complex business environment has a direct negative influence on a firm's environmental strategy; and (3) complexity has a negative moderating influence on the relationship between a firm's stakeholder integration capability and its environmental strategy.     

On a length-biased life distribution based on the sinh-normal model

In this article, we characterize a new life distribution based on the sinh-normal model. Specifically, we find the density, the distribution function, and the moments of the new model. In addition, we carry out a brief graphical analysis of its density. Furthermore, we derive some properties and transformations related to the new distribution. Moreover, we conduct a study of its hazard rate. Finally, we present an example that illustrates the obtained results and a computational implementation of these results.     

Species richness and seasonality of spiders (Arachnida, Araneae) in an urban Atlantic Forest fragment in Northeastern Brazil

Species richness and forest seasonality of spiders in an urban fragment of Northeastern Brazil were investigated. Mata do Buraquinho is a remnant of Atlantic Rain Forest where no spider inventories have ever been made. Samplings during dry and wet seasons were carried out in order to establish if seasonality influences species richness and complementarily of the spider fauna. Pitfall traps, nocturnal collections, and beating tray samples were used to access a multi-guild spider fauna. Spider species were estimated using first order Jackknife method. Four hundred samples were obtained, resulting in 1681 adult spiders. A total of 166 species were recorded and 211 were estimated. No significant differences for species richness were observed between both periods, and the captured species were the same according to the complementarily coefficients. The fragmentation hypothesis as factor of biota impoverishment was not tested, but future investigations on this topic are suggested in the complex of forest remnants in João Pessoa.