Vetting of Bloomberg’s ESG Governance ISS:QualityScore [GQS]

Context Of the plethora of market navigation platforms, the Environment, Social, and Governance [ESGÓ]-platform offered by BloombergÔ Professional Services* is one of the most richly endowed, including nearly 2,000 data-fields that provide an invaluable context for better understanding the “Stakeholder-impact” of the firm’s activities. A recent amelioration of the ESG-platform is the link with Institutional Shareholder Services [ISS] that offers a taxonomy where firms are assigned to Governance-risk decile-groups based upon ISS:GovernanceQualityScores: (GQSÔ). The GQS-platform offers a data-driven approach to scoring & screening designed to help investors monitor company governance activities so as to better inform their decision-making. Study Design Clear is: Market Intel-Platforms only have one simple raison d’être: To provide a relative advantage in teasing out market winners relative to the “Squawk-On-The Street”. If this is the case, information professionals, in a best practices context, are tacitly obligated to offer vetting tests of platforms such as the GQS to service investors in need an independent and reliable evaluation to Ferret-out useful market guidance platforms. In this endeavor, we offer a vetting evaluation of a random sample of firms included in the two polar-ISS:GQS:Classifications: GQS[1] & GQS[10]]. Point of information The intent of the GQS-Vetting is not to “reverse-engineer” the results of the GQS-assignment protocol so as to arrive an “inferentially” de-coded approximation of the actual ISS:GQS-protocol. Our vetting addresses the question: Is there a logical reason to reject the belief that the set of GQS-assignment protocols are not well formed thus creating Governance-risk-groupings that have no intra-group coherence and so exhibit no inter-group differentiability. Results Initially, we used a Strawman-Vetting test followed by FPE-inferential tests using specific and sensitive Income Statement and Balance Sheet Panel-profiles from a random sample of the firms in: GQS[1] & GQS[10]. We find that the triage-focus of GQS[1] is “Revenue at the Margin” while that of GQS[10] is “Asset[Net] Management”. Also, both groups have exhibited impressive attention to managing Working Capital. Summary: The ISS:GQS-assignment protocols seem to be well-formed and capable of offering useful differentiation.

A Space for Collaborative Creativity. How Collective Improvising Shapes ‘a Sense of Belonging’

In this contribution, we draw on findings from a non-formal, community music project to elaborate on the relationship between the concept of eudaimonia, as defined by Seligman, the interactive dimensions of collective free improvisation, and the concept of collaborative creativity. The project revolves around The Ostend Street Orkestra (TOSO), a music ensemble within which homeless adults and individuals with a psychiatric or alcohol/drug related background engage in collective musical improvisation. Between 2017 and 2019 data was collected through open interviews and video recordings of rehearsals and performances. Participant data was analyzed through inductive analysis based on the principles of grounded theory. One interesting finding was the discrepancy in the participant interviews between social relationships indicative of a negative affect about social group interaction versus strong feelings of group coherence and belonging. Video recordings of performances and rehearsals showed clear enjoyment and pleasure while playing music. Alongside verbal reflection through one-on-one interviews video recordings and analysis of moment-to moment observations should be used, in order to capture the complexity of community music projects with homeless people. The initial open coding was aligned with the five elements of the PERMA model. Overall, we observed more focus on Relationship (sense of belonging), Engagement (flow in rehearsals and performances) and Meaning (belonging to something greater than yourself) and less on Positive Emotion and Accomplishment (goal setting).

Δεξιότητες παραγωγής γραπτού λόγου σε παιδιά με και χωρίς δυσλεξία: ομοιότητες και διαφορές

The difficulties in writing among children with dyslexia are equally severe as and certainly more persistent than those they face in reading. In the present study, we compared the performance of 22 elementary school children (3rd and 5th graders) with dyslexia and 22 typically developing children, matched on gender, age, and non-verbal intelligence, on a picture-elicited narrative task. Participants’ written samples were evaluated in terms of productivity, complexity at the sentence and text levels, punctuation and capitalization, spelling accuracy, and text organization (cohesion and coherence). Groups differed chiefly in terms of spelling accuracy and cohesion, as non-dyslexic participants performed better. Qualitative analyses of the narratives produced allowed us to compare further and gain insight into the children’s spelling and text organization abilities in each group. Coherence appeared to be the domain in which children with and without dyslexia demonstrate the greatest similarities. More specifically, all of them face difficulties in controlling the macrostructure of their narratives, namely how the contents of the pictures may be interrelated, an ability that is necessary for the construction of textual meaning. Results are discussed in relation to the limited so far research findings regarding written language production, especially concerning children with dyslexia. Also, directions of future research are indicated, along with implications for educational practice.

Music, groove, and play

Savage et al. include groove and dance among musical features which enhance social bonds and group coherence. I discuss groove as grounded in structure and performance, and relate musical performance to play in nonhuman animals and humans. The interplay of individuals' contributions with group action is proposed as the common link between music and play as contributors to social bonding.

Dynamics

Dynamics is concerned with movement as occurs in metals even at very low temperatures. Designs in nature facilitate flow in physical systems such as in the branching of rivers and the circulatory system. The evolution of animals from the sea to the land to the air enhanced movement. Dynamics also applies to the resolution of conflicts in which positive and negative attractors either facilitate or impede progress. The appointment of a devil’s advocate may remove the detrimental effects of group coherence by challenging proposals and closer spatial proximity can create informal interactions to help resolve group differences. A comparison of the dynamical systems and information-processing perspectives is possible by mapping a state space to a problem space, a positive attractor to a productive subgoal, a negative attractor to an impasse, a latent attractor to implicit cognition, and nonincremental change to insight.

Constructing Foreign Policy vis-à-vis the Migration Crisis: The Czech and Slovak Cases

The study examines contemporary discourses in two small Central European states, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The aim is to analyze how key domestic political players discursively construct foreign policy vis-à-vis the migration crisis. Securitization, a concept developed by the Copenhagen School, serves as an analytical framework for revealing the kinds of discourse being produced in the two countries. The analysis of the discourse of the Prime Ministers from 2015 to 2018, indicates that in the Czech Republic and Slovakia foreign policy is being constructed around the issue of Europeanness (belongingness) and accommodation in the core-periphery spectrum. The article shows that the construction of external threats is done in different security sectors in each country, but in both it seems to promote the in-group coherence needed to affirm their belongingness to Europe, and it no longer happens on grounds of ethnically defined nations, but on grounds of the broader idea of civilizational Europe.

Empirical and Heuristic Phenomenological Case Study of the HeartMath Global Coherence Initiative

Along with the creativity of vast technological advances, humanity’s endemic destructiveness continues. Planetary healing needs motivated this research. The aim was an empirical and heuristic phenomenological investigation into and an evaluation of the theoretical and technological implications of the HeartMath Global Coherence Initiative. The single case study, and limited amount of data, indicated the null hypothesis. Methodology included HeartMath Inner Balance tool and newly developed Global Coherence application (app). Data collection involved linked empirical measures and experiential journaling. Quantitative data analysis, which consisted of statistical analysis of correlations between six existing Global Coherence magnetometers and empirical measures of meditation records, from Inner Balance and Global coherence apps, respectively, yielded unexpected findings, both significant and insignificant, in the form of trends towards global and local group coherence, respectively. Qualitative findings essentially revealed variations on the, interrelated, consciousness themes of wholeness, holistic healing, energy healing and meditation. In addition to various limitations and implications, interpretation of integrative findings indicated theoretical and practical support for the HeartMath mission and vision of developing and promoting personal, social and global coherence.

Using SmallWorlds to Enhance Social Presence, Group Cohesion, and Group Identity in an Online Postgraduate Course

Online learning is proliferating in education, yet the establishment of social presence, development of group cohesion, and cultivation of a group identity can be particularly challenging. These three elements have a key role for a fruitful educational experience in online courses. The same time, research has shown that the use of Virtual Worlds (VWs) in educational contexts can sustain the sense of being and communicating with other people and it potentially increases group coherence and identity. In this chapter the use of a VW, SmallWorlds, for enhancing the aforementioned elements in a distance learning online master's course is discussed. The chapter begins by providing the definitions and importance of the three elements. Next, the rationale behind the choice of SmallWorlds is explained and its main features are presented. What follows is the presentation of the key pedagogical strategies implemented and it is examined how each of these strategies contributes to the enhancement of the three elements. Lastly, a set of suggestions are offered for implementing similar activities.