Consistent Grime’s CSR Strategy of Daisy Fleabane Erigeron annuus (L.) Pers. despite Its High Morphological Variability—A Case Study from Zagreb and Medvednica Mt., Croatia

Alongside the direct destruction of natural habitats and changes in land use, invasive species are considered one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity. Daisy fleabane Erigeron annuus (L.) Pers. is among the most widespread invasive plants in Croatia. Invasions of E. annuus may be aided by morphological variability, which this study investigates. The variability of life traits (stem height, fresh and dry leaf mass, length, width and leaf area, specific leaf area, and leaf dry matter content) was examined among 18 locations throughout Zagreb and Medvednica Mt. Overall, 87 plant specimens and 435 leaves were measured and analysed using univariate and multivariate statistics. Viable populations were recorded in diverse habitat types, mostly with marked human impact. We determined Grime’s CR plant life strategies for all, except for two localities with C/CR plant strategies. Two populations with a more pronounced competitive strategy had high leaf dry matter content, with smaller leaves and medium height stems. Significant differences between the localities were found, with the specific leaf area (SLA) and plant height being the most diverse. Despite its high morphological variability, daisy fleabane had a consistent CSR strategy, which likely enables its widespread invasions across variable habitats.

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) to Improve Students’ Achievement in Reading Comprehension

Reading is the most important activity in any language class, not only as a source of information and a pleasurable activity, but also as a means of consolidating and extending one’s knowledge of the language. In this case, the teaching of reading is essential for preparing students with the basic reading skill in order to be able to gain information and knowledge from any reading text. In the process of learning, the central goal of reading is to develop learners’ comprehension. In this case, the researcher proposes Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) as a technique of teaching reading in general English classes. The researcher formulates the statement of the problems in the form of questions as: (1) is there any significant improvement of students’ achievement in reading comprehension after being taught by using Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR)? (2) How do the students respond to Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) in the teaching of reading comprehension?. Since the present study is to measure the effect of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) towards the students’ reading comprehension achievement, it is classified into quantitative research. Here, the researcher collected numerical data by comparing the results of pre-test and post-test between two groups of experimental study – control and experimental groups. The data is used to investigate whether there is a significant increase in students’ reading comprehension achievement after being given the Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) treatment in reading class. After the data of this research was found to be distributed normally, through the calculation of the normality test, there was also a need to identify the homogeneity of the data of the whole scores of the test for both experimental and control groups. The results of the calculation of the t-test indicate that the score of the tvalue is bigger than ttable (2.18 > 2.021). This means that there is a significant improvement in the students’ achievement after they were treated using Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) strategy when studying reading comprehension in the classroom. The results of the analysis of the students’ response to the application of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) strategy in the teaching learning activities in the classroom provide a strong preference for the students study reading comprehension using Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) strategy. Since this current study is an action research, it is advisable that future researchers could follow up the results of this study for the development of similar research in the field of teaching methods and strategies. This is strongly suggested because there is still plenty of problems and the essences of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) strategy that need to be uncovered. It is also important to see how Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) could be applied in the other language skills, not only for the students of the tertiary education but also at the secondary education.

Corporate Social Responsibility of Islamic Banks: CSR website visibility, CSR initiatives, CSR strategy

Purpose: The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been widely known in the Islamic banking sector yet there is criticism and lack of trust which exists among stakeholdersDesign/Method/Approach: To reduce negative concern and to fill the gap in the literature, this research reinforces the integration of ethical and moral principles in the banking business.Findings: One of the integral and core elements of Islamic economics is ‘falah’; which focuses on wellness and the concept of reward in this world and hereafterOriginality/Values: To fulfil the needs of the ethical aspect of Islamic banks which leads to ‘falah’, this research has extracted the underlying theoretical issues of Islamic bank Corporate Social Responsibility (web visibility, initiatives, strategy). This research also determines the extent of CSR visibility in twelve leading Islamic banks’ corporate websites.

Employees as a vector of strategic intent: an examination of corporate, social and environmental strategic intent recognition by employees

PurposeOne of the hallmarks of strategizing is having a clearly articulated vision and mission for the organization. It has been suggested that this provides a compass bearing for the organization's strategy, helps in motivation, commitment and retention of employees, serves as a guide to internal sensemaking and decision-making, has a potential performance effect, helps establish the identity of the organization and positions its desired reputation. The compass bearing role is important because it guides the selection of the goals and strategic orientation of the organization which in turn shapes its overall strategy and much of its internal decision making. The inspirational role is important because it helps to motivate and engage employees and other stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThis study provides a more rigorous indication as to whether employees can, in the first instance, recognize and distinguish their corporate and environmental strategy from that of their competitors within their own industry and random other companies from other industries. This first issue addresses, to a degree, if and why, such strategic communiqués are effective inside a range of different organizations. Secondly, the authors examine whether there are any specific individual level effects that could explain variations in these responses. Finally, the authors examine the extent to which the recognition rates the authors observe, relate to how employees are rewarded through appraisals, promotions and salary increases. This helps in the authors’ understanding of the role of hard incentives versus soft motivations. The authors’ approach to assessing employee knowledge of their organization's strategy is unique. Rather than survey employees about their knowledge, the authors use a matching study and a discrete choice measurement model to assess if they can recognize their organization's strategy from those of their competitors and some other randomly selected organizations. This approach allows us to mitigate social desirability and common method biases and directly estimate the underlying behavioral model being used to assess their organization's strategy.FindingsOverall, the authors found that few employees could correctly identify their corporate strategy statements. In the case of corporate strategy statements, the authors find that, on average, only 29 percent of employees could correctly match their company to its publicly espoused corporate strategy. When the authors look at the environmental sustainability strategy of the firm, this is worse overall, with individuals doing no better than random on average. When the authors look at company training and communication practices across the realm of different strategies, the authors see a number of factors leading to the general results. First, most of the authors’ respondents could not recall a significant effort being given to communication and training by their employer. Indeed, most communication/training is simply related to having documentation/brochures available. Second, respondents indicated that more effort is put into communicating corporate strategy to employees in a more systematic manner than communication about environmental/corporate social responsible (CSR) strategy. Third, the authors see that individuals are evaluated more on and give more weight to, evaluations relating to their ability to meet individual/group financial and market performance metrics (targets) and work as a team than their involvement in environmental and social responsibility programs. Finally, the employees studied seemed to be more confident in understanding the corporate strategy. When asked to put their corporate strategy into words – a task the authors asked respondents to do after the matching phase of the study – 40% of participants did so for the corporate strategy but only 14% did so for the environmental strategy and seven percent for the CSR strategy.Practical implicationsThe primary implication of the study is that the values-mission-strategy logic of strategic motivation seems to have limited validity and with respect to the view that employees are a vector of corporate strategy. It is hard to argue that employees can be a vector for something they cannot recall or even distinguish between.Originality/valueThe study is unique in terms of (1) asking the very simple question of whether employees internalize their company's strategies and (2) in the methodological approach to examine employee knowledge and informativeness.

The gift that keeps on giving: corporate giving and excessive risk-taking

Corporations have recently started incorporating employees’ prosocial preferences into their incentive schemes, including charitable donations (corporate giving). These donations are mainly discussed in conjunction with the external effects of a firm’s CSR strategy. However, this experiment examines the effect of donations on internal firm operations. Specifically, we investigate whether the presence and structure of corporate giving influences employees’ excessive risk-taking. Such prosocial activities may remediate misaligned incentives often cited as drivers for employees to take excessive risks. Contrary to widespread practice, our experimental evidence suggests that firms could constrain employees' excessive risk-taking by linking existing contributions to project rather than corporate performance, thus providing boundaries around an employee’s involvement in CSR initiatives. We identify project-level giving as an unexplored CSR benefit and infer that personal responsibility effectively changes an employee’s incentive package. Our findings suggest an inverted U-shape curve of effectiveness.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance among Energy Sector Companies

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the main drivers of corporate reputation. Many studies show that CSR can positively affect financial performance (FP) and vice versa. However, the relationship between FP and CSR depends on the type of industry in which the company operates, and there is little research regarding the energy sector in this area. The basis of empirical research in this study is slack resource theory which argues that financial performance is the cause of corporate social performance. This paper aims to analyze if financial performance affects corporate social responsibility adoption in energy sector companies. In order to achieve this goal, the study specifically examines the relationship between selected financial performance indicators and CSR adoption. Analyzing an international sample of 219 companies from thirty-two countries for 2020, we observed the statistically significant relations between financial performance and the implementing of the CSR strategy of the energy industry companies. The Return on Assets measure (ROA) and the Earnings Before Interest and Taxes measure (EBIT) were significantly higher among companies implementing the CSR strategy. The Enterprise Value to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization ratio (EV EBITDA) was lower among companies that adopted CSR. We did not confirm that the Return on Equity measure (ROE), Beta coefficient, and EBITDA per Share correlated with CSR adoption. Our research had implications for firms’ investment policies in social initiatives and highlighted the relation between the financial performance and CSR initiatives of the energy sector companies.

Corporate Social Responsibility: A Stakeholders Perspective Applied to the Lebanese Heart Hospital

This research aims to assess Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practice applied to the Heart Hospital, Tripoli, Lebanon. A stakeholders (workers, patients, the local community, and the environment) perspective is considered. The population of the research includes all workers in the target hospital, however the research sample consists of 40 employees. This research is quantitative, descriptive and analytic based on a structured questionnaire designed and distributed to the respondents. The study found that the activities related to CSR were adapted and practiced to different levels. Employees’ responses about the dimensions of CSR were varied. Findings show that the hospital does exercise its social responsibilities towards patients (Mean=3.97), it does exercise its social responsibilities towards the environment (Mean=3.96), it moderately exercises its social responsibilities towards the local community (Mean=3.36), and it weakly exercises its social responsibilities towards its workers (Mean=2.75). Therefore, it is recommended that the hospital administrators must review their CSR strategy to reinstate one of the most critical factors for the success of the institution namely the human assets besides giving more attention to its local community needs.

Sustainability and short-term profitability in the agri-food sector, a cross-sectional time-series investigation on global corporations

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate whether being sustainable is also profitable for agri-food companies in the short-term.Design/methodology/approachThe study analysed the impacts of sustainability multiple issues on one-year lagged return on assets, developing a longitudinal analysis focused on best and worst companies' samples for a timeframe of ten years. Notably, we performed OLS regressions on unbalanced panels data collecting overall 1,760 annual observations from 318 companies. Moreover, we examined the moderating effects of slack resources on the relationship between sustainability and the short-term firms' profitability.FindingsThe results show that the best sustainable companies usually improve future profitability. Conversely, the worst ones should prioritize efforts in specific initiatives (i.e. responsible products, eco-innovation, management and governance commitment to sustainability), which positively affect their profitability and compensate possible short-term financial losses due to CSR strategy execution and sustainable production/supply chain management. Finally, the study found mixed results regarding the moderating effects of slack resources on the scrutinized relationships.Practical implicationsThe paper highlights the key environmental, social and governance aspects to be addressed for consolidating and enhancing the virtuous relationship between non-financial and financial performance, distinguishing between best and worst sustainability performers.Originality/valueThis study is among the first that decomposed sustainability in multiple micro aspects (i.e. sustainable strategy, products and processes) investigating the effects of each of them on the short-term agri-food firms' profitability.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE MAPPING OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ISSUES THAT CAN BE MANAGED DURING THE DESIGN PROCESS - APPLICATION IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

Sustainability is a key issue for manufacturing companies, which detail in their annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports how they plan to operationalise the seventeen sustainable development goals set by the United Nations in 2016. Design is deemed particularly relevant to integrate sustainability issues, and many design for sustainability (DFS) approaches have developed since the 1980s. However, the lack of understanding of the relationship between CSR and design prevents DFS approaches from enabling sustainability issues to be integrated in the design process in a relevant manner with the CSR strategy of a company. Consequently, we developed a mapping methodology in order to provide a better understanding of the CSR-design relationship. This mapping methodology consists in (1) identifying the relevant CSR goals that can be managed during the design process, (2) gathering information about the links between these CSR goals and the design process through semi-structured interviews, and (3) building a map representing these links. We started to apply our mapping methodology in an application case in the automotive industry. The first results of this application are presented in this article.