The role of human and social board capital in driving CSR reporting

The objective of this paper is to analyze the effect of the professional, technical and relational background (human and social capital) of outside directors on promoting firm CSR disclosure. Following the Hillman et al. (2000) taxonomy of board members, we classify outside directors as business experts, support specialists and community influential, and examine whether business and technical expertise or political ties in the boardroom affect CSR disclosure.This study confirms that not all outside directors are equally effective in improving CSR disclosure and that only certain kinds of outside directors, those classified as support specialists, help promote it. On the other hand, our findings also show that directors with previous experience as politicians affect CSR disclosure negatively, probably due to their interests in safeguarding their reputation within the company, in avoiding public scrutiny and in protecting their political connections. In addition, our set of analysis with interaction effects reveals that powerful CEOs have the incentive to promote CSR-related strategies and to convince business experts and support specialist directors to enhance profitable sustainability strategies and transparency in CSR disclosure. Nevertheless, the powerful CEO effect is not enough to compensate the negative role of political directors on CSR reporting. Therefore, this paper supports the theories in favor of analyzing the multiple configurations of corporate governance mechanisms by adopting a holistic approach, and the need to combine these configurations in order to analyze their impact on CSR behavior.     

Detecting anomalies in fibre systems using 3-dimensional image data

Statistics and Computing - We consider the problem of detecting anomalies in the directional distribution of fibre materials observed in 3D images. We divide the image into a set of scanning...     

Work Trajectories of Female and Male Immigrants in Spain

This article aims to examine in depth the work trajectories of individuals over time, in order to provide a wider perspective of the employment history of immigrants compared to native people, by gender and for more than one decade (2005–2017) in Spain. We use microdata (cohort and multivariate analysis) from the Labour Force Survey and carry out a comparison for three groups: the Spanish born in Spain, the Spanish born abroad, and the non-Spanish born abroad. The results confirm that the non-Spanish born-abroad group is characterized by the existence of segmented assimilation. All foreigners suffered a loss in their work trajectories, since their employment rate in 2017 has as yet neither reached the level of the last years of the previous economic expansion nor the level of the previous cohorts at the same age.     

Soil organic carbon stock in different urban land uses: high stock evidence in urban parks

Urban Ecosystems - Urban areas are major producers of atmospheric CO2 emissions, but at the same time they can offset some of the associated C losses by retaining stable organic carbon in their...     

Kulturwandel im Geldgeschäft? Potenziale einer ethischen Selbsterneuerung im Banken- und Finanzwesen

Following the financial crisis in 2008 a debate about the social benefit of the financial industry, which operates without considering its real-economic consequences, was initiated. The financial industry responded by offering strategies of cultural change (“Kulturwandel”) which foster a more socially responsible financial practice. At the same time the expansion of “ethical” banks aims to establish a banking business avoiding negative externalities of the banking sector. Following the conceptual assumptions of the sociology of critique we study the collectively shared interpretation of a “good” and legitimate financial practice beyond publicly communicated standards of practice. Against this backdrop we evaluate the potentials of normative self-regulation in banking and finance. Our results show that cultural or ethical change is only partly feasible if it exclusively focuses the motives, values and personalities of the individual subjects but neglects the structural as well as institutional conditions of a “good” financial practice.     

Financial Well-Being Index in México

Social Indicators Research - This paper aims to construct a financial well-being index and analyze its determinants among adults in Mexico. It employs multiple correspondence analysis, multiple...     

Joshua A. Fishman 1926–2015

Joshua Fishman died in March this year. He was founder‐editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, one of the early and central journals of sociolinguistics. Alongside this major editorial involvement, which he maintained to the end, he also edited several of the field‐defining book collections which helped shape the growing field in the 1960s and 70s. He might well have viewed the founding of the Journal of Sociolinguistics in 1997 as unfortunate or competitive, the more so since our opening manifesto questioned the role of traditional sociology in our field. But Fishman responded graciously and positively to the invitation from me and Nikolas Coupland to join our inaugural Editorial Board. He remained on the Board, and was warm in his support and advice. The one piece he published with us was in 2000, a very personal obituary for Charles Ferguson which was notable for the respect and warmth it displayed. The editorial team is indebted to Fishman's longtime collaborator, Ofelia García, for this memoir on him and his significance in sociolinguistics. The Editors     

Model-based clustering with determinant-and-shape constraint

Statistics and Computing - Model-based approaches to cluster analysis and mixture modeling often involve maximizing classification and mixture likelihoods. Without appropriate constrains on the...