The influence of corporate social responsibility and customer–company identification on publics’ dialogic communication intentions

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of consumers’ perceptions of the company's corporate social responsibility on their intentions to engage in dialogic communications with a company (i.e., feedback), and to investigate the mediation role of their identification with the company in such effects. The findings indicated a significant relationship between corporate social responsibility and publics’ intentions to engage in dialogic communications. Also, customer–company identification was found to mediate such effects.     

Exploring nonprofit-business partnerships on Twitter from a network perspective

This exploratory study attempts to understand the role of nonprofits and their position in corporate social responsibility (CSR) partnership communication. Employing social network analysis, the study identifies and interprets the network strategies used by top U.S. nonprofits in communicating about their CSR partnerships on Twitter. The results show that although all the nonprofit issue sectors disclosed extensive business partnerships, they selectively mobilize communication with certain business partners. The present study extends the network approach in a CSR context. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.     

Media use and political learning: Comparing Trump supporters to celebrity candidate voters

This study examines whether political media use behaviors of voters who supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election align with those of “celebrity candidate voters” portrayed in the literature. The study used a national online survey (N = 1,608) conducted during the 2016 primary, and findings reveal that Trump supporters, more than other voters, are driven by entertainment motivations and follow campaign news using entertainment media: specifically, the video-sharing site YouTube. Although Trump voters are interested in the campaign, their level of political knowledge is lower than other voters, and no one media outlet made a significant contribution to their learning. A comparison group of other voters showed significant knowledge gains from news websites and Twitter. Results for Trump voters are consistent with scholars’ characterization of the celebrity candidate audience, particularly in studies suggesting that celebrity politicians may increase citizens’ engagement through entertainment gratifications rather than by a desire to become informed.     

Judge a Nonprofit by the Partners it Keeps: How Does Cross-Sector Partnership Disclosure Influence Public Evaluations of the Nonprofit?

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This study investigates public reactions to cross-sectoral partnership communication from a nonprofit’s perspective....     

State Economic Strength and Some Methodological Issues on Its Assessment

At present, many international organizations and scholars, who are aimed to compare and assess country-specific economy or competitiveness, have set different standards and indicators and tried to assess the economic strength of individual country. But most of these standards and indicators are for the assessment of individual aspects and what is worse, they are not suitable for the real situation of the countries concerned. This paper deals with methodological issues on the assessment of state economic strength. To this end, authors investigate the preceding studies on the assessment of economy of a given country, conceptualize the state economic strength, set a new system of indicators for assessing it and on this basis, produce a methodology for the synthetic assessment of state economic strength. The findings are that state economic strength must be defined in a view of economic capability which any country can exhibit by itself even under uncertain external environment, the indicators for assessing it include a variety of indicators in line with its essence, and assessment methodology must be synthetic one based on considering the weights of indicators. These findings may help, on the one hand, in assessing the economy of a given country and taking an economic and technical measures for its strengthening for policymakers, and on the other hand, in comparing and assessing the country-specific economy for organizations or scholars in a new perspective.

     

Dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) skepticism and their impacts on public evaluations toward CSR

This study attempts to examine the dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) skepticism and to identify the strongest predictor by testing the relationships between the skepticism constructs and public responses. The study further examines the role of cynicism either as an antecedent, a moderator, or a component of CSR skepticism. Through a series of model tests, three factors of CSR skepticism were identified to better predict public responses to CSR: (a) skepticism toward a company’s altruism, (b) disbelief of CSR messages and CSR activities, and (c) skepticism toward CSR informativeness. Skepticism toward a company’s altruism was identified as the strongest predictor in determining negative public response to CSR, whereas cynicism did not have much predictive power to explain public response to CSR; as a result, it was excluded from the final dimensions of CSR skepticism.     

On the contribution of sectoral natural population growth to the aggregate poverty change

This note extends the Ravallion and Huppi (World Bank Econ Rev 5(1):57–82, 1991) aggregate poverty change decomposition to account for the distinct contribution of migration and differential natural population growth between sectors to the aggregate poverty change. We apply our decomposition to three Least Developing countries. We find that accounting for sectoral difference in natural population growth has a considerable impact on national poverty change. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno     

A goodness-of-fit test for the stratified proportional hazards model for survival data

Abstract

Goodness-of-fit testing is addressed in the stratified proportional hazards model for survival data. A test statistic based on within-strata cumulative sums of martingale residuals over covariates is proposed and its asymptotic distribution is derived under the null hypothesis of model adequacy. A Monte Carlo procedure is proposed to approximate the critical value of the test. Simulation studies are conducted to examine finite-sample performance of the proposed statistic.     

Some issues arising in the analysis of the development level of cultural and welfare service

ABSTRACT

A crucial factor in the shaping of state policy for social work and development is to satisfy various needs in people’s living. The work of satisfying people’s demand for enhanced well-being and the elimination of inequalities in their living is realised through the activity called cultural and welfare service. On the basis of theoretical research on other kinds of services, in this paper, we conceptualised cultural and welfare service that seeks to satisfy various demands in people’s living, set main indicators characterising its development level and suggest a methodology for analysing it.     

The influence of customer use of corporate websites: Corporate social responsibility,trust, and word-of-mouth communication

This study investigates the potential of organization websites from the customer's perspective. The findings include significant direct effects of customers’ use of corporate websites on their perceptions of a company's corporate social responsibility and their trust in the company, and indirect effects of their use of corporate websites on positive word-of-mouth through trust. The results also indicate a close link between perception of corporate social responsibility and trust.