ESG Principles in International Business and Sustainable Contracts

The concept of sustainable development has captured the world. It is altering society, generating new social patterns, reorganizing business and management models, testifying to the ultimate connectedness of the world and, as a result, encourages rethinking the legal superstructure, adapting supernova normative arrays to the current legal taxonomy, which is not always possible with taking into account the positivist approach to law. ESG principles have today become a kind of model for sustainable business development, due to which the goals of companies’ involvement in solving environmental, social and management problems are achieved. They have not only a vector effect, but also a regulatory, reputational; they have also an increasing impact on international business in a variety of industries. In addition, they are updating relatively new rating mechanisms that form the basis of investment, financial, credit, trade, corporate, management and other policies of companies. At the same time, ESG principles are segmented, fragmented and, as a rule, objectified externally in the form of norms of nonstate, often industry regulation. Without legally binding force, ESG principles are quite comparable with law in terms of the degree of impact on public relations and in terms of the resulting legal and economic consequences. Cross-border contracting practices are also changing, leading to the incorporation of “sustainability” clauses into contracts, as well as the emergence of the concept of a sustainable contract. The pre-contractual stage becomes more complicated, it requires human due diligence procedures, the formation and assessment of supply chains, the development of strategies for the disclosure of non-financial information, the study of legal risks taking into account the global law enforcement practice, as well as the establishment of methods and a jurisdictional forum for the resolution of disputes. International Commercial Arbitration claims to be attractive in resolving ESG disputes. These and other issues, taking into account their relevance, are studied in this paper.

SAFETY, SOCIAL RELATIONS AND SATISFACTION IN POSTDISASTER RESETTLED COMMUNITIES: A CASE OF KEDAH, MALAYSIA

This research aims to study the changes in physical and social patterns among tsunami victims in Kedah, Malaysia by examining the relationship between their perceptions of safety and satisfaction. Data were obtained through a questionnaire survey on 109 respondents who live in Taman Permatang Katong, a new housing area built by the federal government. Results indicated the positive relationship between perception of safety and satisfaction. Meanwhile, social relations played a mediating role on the relationship between perception of safety and satisfaction. This finding implies that those who perceived the new resettlement area to be safer reported higher levels of social relations and, consequently, higher levels of satisfaction. Overall, the majority of residents in Taman Permatang Katong are satisfied with their new houses after the tsunami and feel safe in their area of residency. In conclusion, the resettlement programme should be well planned and should consider both social and physical aspects to improve the well-being of residents.

On the Borrowability of Body Parts

Within recent years, quantitative cross-linguistic research has shown that body parts are one of the least borrowed semantic fields (Tadmor and Haspelmath, 2009a; 2009b; Tadmor, 2009). With body parts showing many similarities to closed classes, it is simple to assume there is little motivation for a language to borrow body part terms into its lexicon. Yet, despite its lower percentage of borrowings cross-linguistically, some languages employ much higher percentages of borrowings for naming the body. The motivations behind such borrowings across languages remain unexplored but can largely be explained by social factors. As Thomason and Kaufman (1988) and Thomason (2008) claim, social factors generally trump linguistic factors as predictors of contact-induced change. This study first discusses proposed inhibitions to lexical borrowing and then examines cases of body part loanwords from various languages showing how they fit into social patterns motivating such borrowings.

Regietheater – The Big Challenge for the Opera of our Times

"In a postmodern world where creative, aesthetic and social patterns are constantly reshaped or radically changed – a conservative, traditionalist view of lyrical performance can easily be categorized by some contemporary audiences as outdated and irrelevant. It is still possible that the opera, in its old costumes, to communicate any more interesting content – to modern man? This has been the dilemma of many opera directors who in the twentieth century changed their approach and often produced shocking performances for the public. The question remains open to the creators of the 21st century, the world of opera receiving more and more versions of shows that challenges the public with provocative solutions. Keywords: Regietheater, Opera, modern stages, 20th century "

Density and Desire: Toward's New Zealand's peculiar urban dream

<p>Density and Desire explores changes in the social organisation of New Zealand, the notion and use of the home, the contribution of dwellings in our cities and an alternative vision for the future dwelling. New Zealand is experiencing a period of rapid transformation that is changing the way we live, work and socialise, as well as our sense of cultural identity. Our population is becoming dramatically more diverse, more urban, and of very different age and family profiles, creating demand for a wider range of housing options that can adapt to changing social patterns. For these reasons and more, we face new questions about living in a community, of dwelling diversity, of promoting sociability, and of creating conditions for neighbourliness. The move towards higher density living in New Zealand’s major cities provides an exciting opportunity for architecture. There is an urgent need to build dwellings and this thesis argues that apartments are a necessary part of our future. However, there is a certain stigma attached to apartment dwelling as ‘second best’ — if you can’t afford a house, you’ll settle for an apartment. The romance of the ‘Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise’ (Mitchell) is traded in for a plot peppered with horror stories: paper-thin walls, shoebox-sized ‘chicken coop’ confinement, lack of flexibility, onerous body corporate rules… the list could go on, and it does. The research benchmarks itself against the quantity and the quality of the single detached dwelling on a quarter-acre block both as a spatial measure and the representation of home. By asking ‘how many more dwellings can we get on that space’ and ‘what is the notion of home in the future’, it seeks to resolve some of the problems associated with our initial round of higher density. Domestic architecture can be defined as a system of relationships between oppositions — this thesis explores these relationships through three strategies: Hybrid, Separations & Connections, and Looseness. Each of these deals with the spatial and social characteristics of the city and the home and are used as a technique for controlling relationships at a range of scales and intimacies — from urban to interior — and as a tool for connecting or interrupting the public and private, inside and outside, and building and landscape. Density and Desire offers a conceptual framework with a series of strategies that demonstrate the potential of the apartment building to re-define urban living and the peculiar New Zealand urban dream.</p>

Density and Desire: Toward's New Zealand's peculiar urban dream

<p>Density and Desire explores changes in the social organisation of New Zealand, the notion and use of the home, the contribution of dwellings in our cities and an alternative vision for the future dwelling. New Zealand is experiencing a period of rapid transformation that is changing the way we live, work and socialise, as well as our sense of cultural identity. Our population is becoming dramatically more diverse, more urban, and of very different age and family profiles, creating demand for a wider range of housing options that can adapt to changing social patterns. For these reasons and more, we face new questions about living in a community, of dwelling diversity, of promoting sociability, and of creating conditions for neighbourliness. The move towards higher density living in New Zealand’s major cities provides an exciting opportunity for architecture. There is an urgent need to build dwellings and this thesis argues that apartments are a necessary part of our future. However, there is a certain stigma attached to apartment dwelling as ‘second best’ — if you can’t afford a house, you’ll settle for an apartment. The romance of the ‘Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise’ (Mitchell) is traded in for a plot peppered with horror stories: paper-thin walls, shoebox-sized ‘chicken coop’ confinement, lack of flexibility, onerous body corporate rules… the list could go on, and it does. The research benchmarks itself against the quantity and the quality of the single detached dwelling on a quarter-acre block both as a spatial measure and the representation of home. By asking ‘how many more dwellings can we get on that space’ and ‘what is the notion of home in the future’, it seeks to resolve some of the problems associated with our initial round of higher density. Domestic architecture can be defined as a system of relationships between oppositions — this thesis explores these relationships through three strategies: Hybrid, Separations & Connections, and Looseness. Each of these deals with the spatial and social characteristics of the city and the home and are used as a technique for controlling relationships at a range of scales and intimacies — from urban to interior — and as a tool for connecting or interrupting the public and private, inside and outside, and building and landscape. Density and Desire offers a conceptual framework with a series of strategies that demonstrate the potential of the apartment building to re-define urban living and the peculiar New Zealand urban dream.</p>

Postwar Women 1945-1960 and Their Daughters 1970-1985: an Analysis of Continuity, Contradiction, and Change in Two Generations of Pakeha Women as Mothers, Wives, and Workers

<p>The period of this study covers two generations of New Zealand social history and traces the context of life for two groups of Pakeha women during their childrearing years. It is not a compare and contrast exercise as the changes between generations are cumulative, as well as being variable amongst different groups of women. The women in this study from both generational groups, had much in common, in that they all had the primary responsibility for childrearing and were all economically dependent on their men for periods of time. However, alongside the commonality of experiences between the two groups of women there were differences. Not only were their experiences affected by different economic and political events, but there were identifiable shifts in the ideological frameworks through which the women ascribed meaning to their experiences. It was evident that the frameworks which were so pervasive in defining femininity in the early postwar years were seen as the norm by both groups of women, and the changing perspective of the younger women as a departure from the norm. This retrospective aura of normality surrounding in particular, the decade of the 1950's, is understandable when viewed in is historical context, but it is also misleading. Set between a decade of war and reconstruction and a decade of the 1960's when many values were challenged, it has been tempting for later generations to see the apparent order and consensus of the 1950's as a measure of normality. The years before and after the 1950's have appeared by comparison as more confusing. The argument of this study is that the apparent diversification in lifestyles was not just a post 1960's phenomena but had in fact taken root much earlier and that New Zealand society in the early postwar years operated in such a way to cover up the diversity and the changing social patterns that were already present. In particular this study seeks to show how women have attempted to redefine the boundaries of their responsibilities and spheres of interest during this period: a process which revealed more explicitly the conflict of interest for women between self - in terms of seeking autonomy, and others - in terms of dependence upon their men and their responsibility for children. The context of this redefinition is explored within three interconnected "sites" of the family - motherhood, marriage and work, and over the forty year period of this study it is possible to identify shifts in the construction of what is acceptable and possible, as women individually in the home and collectively outside of it, renegotiated and broadened the boundaries that defined their femininity.</p>

Postwar Women 1945-1960 and Their Daughters 1970-1985: an Analysis of Continuity, Contradiction, and Change in Two Generations of Pakeha Women as Mothers, Wives, and Workers

<p>The period of this study covers two generations of New Zealand social history and traces the context of life for two groups of Pakeha women during their childrearing years. It is not a compare and contrast exercise as the changes between generations are cumulative, as well as being variable amongst different groups of women. The women in this study from both generational groups, had much in common, in that they all had the primary responsibility for childrearing and were all economically dependent on their men for periods of time. However, alongside the commonality of experiences between the two groups of women there were differences. Not only were their experiences affected by different economic and political events, but there were identifiable shifts in the ideological frameworks through which the women ascribed meaning to their experiences. It was evident that the frameworks which were so pervasive in defining femininity in the early postwar years were seen as the norm by both groups of women, and the changing perspective of the younger women as a departure from the norm. This retrospective aura of normality surrounding in particular, the decade of the 1950's, is understandable when viewed in is historical context, but it is also misleading. Set between a decade of war and reconstruction and a decade of the 1960's when many values were challenged, it has been tempting for later generations to see the apparent order and consensus of the 1950's as a measure of normality. The years before and after the 1950's have appeared by comparison as more confusing. The argument of this study is that the apparent diversification in lifestyles was not just a post 1960's phenomena but had in fact taken root much earlier and that New Zealand society in the early postwar years operated in such a way to cover up the diversity and the changing social patterns that were already present. In particular this study seeks to show how women have attempted to redefine the boundaries of their responsibilities and spheres of interest during this period: a process which revealed more explicitly the conflict of interest for women between self - in terms of seeking autonomy, and others - in terms of dependence upon their men and their responsibility for children. The context of this redefinition is explored within three interconnected "sites" of the family - motherhood, marriage and work, and over the forty year period of this study it is possible to identify shifts in the construction of what is acceptable and possible, as women individually in the home and collectively outside of it, renegotiated and broadened the boundaries that defined their femininity.</p>