Resilience in crisis reconsidered: the need for values against relativist ethics

The need for a reconsideration of resilience from both a positive and a normative point of view can be discussed using some of the lessons and conclusions drawn from individual resilience studied by psychologists in an educational context. The main point made in this article is that unless we want to approach resilience as a feature which is exogenously given in each population and society and whose dynamics, if any, are not subject to deliberate actions and policies, we need a framework for the evaluation of resilience as a social good. Relying on the hope that resilience is necessarily built in our societies as a force guaranteeing convergence to a socially desirable point of social evolution may be too optimistic and even counterproductive, because it may lead us to an inefficient or biased political and regulatory decision making. When the effect of policies and actions at a national or international level take into account the dynamic effect of such actions on resilience itself, one cannot blindly rely on the goodness of the process any more. This is mainly because resilience is not uniformly embodied in all societies and it does not have a globally positive social value by itself. The issue of socially valuing the options available beyond market-price valuations becomes fundamental in this context.

Doing well by talking good? A topic modelling-assisted discourse study of corporate social responsibility

Using the novel technique of topic modelling, this paper examines thematic patterns and their changes over time in a large corpus of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports produced in the oil sector. Whereas previous research on corporate communications has been small-scale or interested in selected lexical aspects and thematic categories identified ex ante, our approach allows for thematic patterns to emerge from the data. The analysis reveals a number of major trends and topic shifts pointing to changing practices of CSR. Nowadays ‘people’, ‘communities’ and ‘rights’ seem to be given more prominence, whereas ‘environmental protection’ appears to be less relevant. Using more established corpus-based methods, we subsequently explore two top phrases - ‘human rights’ and ‘climate change’ that were identified as representative of the shifting thematic patterns. Our approach strikes a balance between the purely quantitative and qualitative methodologies and offers applied linguists new ways of exploring discourse in large collections of texts.

The Universal Common Good: Faith-Based Partnerships and Sustainable Development

Partnership is increasingly espoused as the best relationship between members of the sustainable development aid chain, and implies a respect for the position of all and a desire to avoid a situation where one group dominates another. It also implies a form of relationship that is not just 'better' for the sake of it but that is more able to help achieve sustainable development. However, given the inevitable inequalities in power between donors that have the resources and field partners that do not it can be hard to put this ideal into practice. This paper explores the function of partnership within a group of closely related institutions that comprise the Catholic Church development chain. The research focussed on three Catholic Church based donors (one from the USA and two from Europe) and their partners in Abuja Ecclesiastical Province, Nigeria. Relationships between and within various strata of the Church in Nigeria were also examined. Relationships were 'patchy' at all levels. One of the donors had a significant operational presence in Nigeria and this was regarded by some respondents as a parallel structure that seriously undermined local bodies. However, while problems existed, there was a sense of inter-dependence arising from a shared sense of values and Catholic Social Teaching, which allowed partners to work through their stresses and conflicts. It is the innate sustainability of the aid chain itself founded upon a set of shared values that provided the space and time for problems to be addressed. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Corporate social performance and stock returns: UK evidence from disaggregate measures

This study examines the relation between corporate social performance and stock returns in the UK. We closely evaluate the interactions between social and financial performance with a set of disaggregated social performance indicators for environment, employment, and community activities instead of using an aggregate measure. While scores on a composite social performance indicator are negatively related to stock returns, we find the poor financial reward offered by such firms is attributable to their good social performance on the environment and, to a lesser extent, the community aspects. Considerable abnormal returns are available from holding a portfolio of the socially least desirable stocks. These relationships between social and financial performance can be rationalized by multi-factor models for explaining the cross-sectional variation in returns, but not by industry effects.

Doing more harm than good? Community based natural resource management and the neglect of local institutions in policy development

Approaches to natural resource management emphasise the importance of involving local people and institutions in order to build capacity, limit costs, and achieve environmental sustainability. Governments worldwide, often encouraged by international donors, have formulated devolution policies and legal instruments that provide an enabling environment for devolved natural resource management. However, implementation of these policies reveals serious challenges. This article explores the effects of limited involvement of local people and institutions in policy development and implementation. An in-depth study of the Forest Policy of Malawi and Village Forest Areas in the Lilongwe district provides an example of externally driven policy development which seeks to promote local management of natural resources. The article argues that policy which has weak ownership by national government and does not adequately consider the complexity of local institutions, together with the effects of previous initiatives on them, can create a cumulative legacy through which destructive resource use practices and social conflict may be reinforced. In short, poorly developed and implemented community based natural resource management policies can do considerably more harm than good. Approaches are needed that enable the policy development process to embed an in-depth understanding of local institutions whilst incorporating flexibility to account for their location-specific nature. This demands further research on policy design to enable rigorous identification of positive and negative institutions and ex-ante exploration of the likely effects of different policy interventions.

Good and bad increases in ecological awareness: environmental differentiation revisited

We analyze a vertically differentiated market, assuming that conventional and green firms' products have different impacts on the environment. Heterogeneous consumers choose to be supplied by a conventional or a green firm, depending on their extra willingness to pay for a green product and the relative prices of the products in the market. We show that environmental awareness campaigns may have a negative impact on total welfare. This possibility is shown to exist without consumer misperceptions about the quality of green products and ruling out changes in the coverage and the structure of the market. Surprisingly, both conventional and green firms may benefit from heterogeneity-enhancing awareness campaigns, while social welfare is more likely to be enhanced by heterogeneity-reducing ones.

The effects of corporate social performance on the cost of corporate debt and credit ratings

This study investigates the differential impact that various dimensions of corporate social performance have on the pricing of corporate debt as well as the assessment of the credit quality of specific bond issues. The empirical analysis, based on an extensive longitudinal data set, suggests that overall, good performance is rewarded and corporate social transgressions are penalized through lower and higher corporate bond yield spreads, respectively. Similar conclusions can be drawn when focusing on either the bond rating assigned to a specific debt issue or the probability of it being considered to be an asset of speculative grade.