The role of social responsibility, philanthropy and entrepreneurship in the sports industry

This introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Management & Organization on social responsibility, philanthropy and entrepreneurship in the sport industry frames the key issues sport businesses, corporate partners, and related nonprofi t organizations grapple with to ensure that both the organizations and the social causes which are being addressed benefi t in some way. The importance of social responsibility is fi rst examined in the context of corporations and sports. The increasing importance of social issues to sport-related industries and the role of strategic philanthropy is discussed. Next, the connection between social responsibility and philanthropic endeavors is addressed in terms of social entrepreneurship. Finally, the article concludes by highlighting the increased signifi cance of sport in society and how the articles in this special issue contribute to a better understanding of the role of social responsibility, philanthropy and entrepreneurship in sport.

Ethnic aged discrimination and disparities in health and social care : a question of social justice

Older overseas-born Australians of diverse cultural and language backgrounds experience significant disparities in their health and social care needs and support systems. Despite being identified as a 'special needs' group, the ethnic aged in Australia are generally underserved by local health and social care services, experience unequal burdens of disease and encounter cultural and language barriers to accessing appropriate health and social care compared to the average Australian-born population. While a range of causes have been suggested to explain these disparities, rarely has the possibility of cultural racism been considered. In this article, it is suggested that cultural racism be named as a possible cause of ethnic aged disparities and disadvantage in health and social care. It is further suggested that unless cultural racism is named as a structural mechanism by which ethnic aged disparities in health and social care have been created and maintained, redressing them will remain difficult.

Climate change and social inclusion: opportunities for justice and empowerment

...the greatest untapped resource at our disposal lies in the disadvantaged Australians living in our most excluded communities. (Nicholson 2007 p. 4)

The commons are where justice and sustainability converge, where ecology and equity meet. (Shiva 2005 p. 50)

Since 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recognised human induced climate change to be primarily a result of burning fossil fuels and land clearing (Lee 2007). Changes to the world's climate patterns have been occurring for decades, but only in recent times has climate change arrived in our collective conscious. An onslaught of extreme weather events, destruction and failure of crops, increasing levels of water restrictions, government announcement of desalination plants. proposed increase in prices for utilities such as power and water - have ushered climate change into the Australian lexicon.

The challenges for all of us are many and varied and perhaps even unimaginable. as many propose a global reduction in annual C02 emissions of between 60-80% (compared to 1990 levels) by 2050.

We are not talking just about the re-construction of our world, but about its re-invention. Ryan (2007)

How will climate change affect us? Who is most vulnerable? What will be the features of policies and strategies to combat climate change that ensure an equitable and just response across our entire society? Are our present social-cultural justice paradigms of social exclusion and inclusion adequate in addressing the impending health consequences that are likely to result from climate change, and in supporting an equitable. harmonious and fruitful life for all population groups in the future?

This paper, written in the spirit of solution-oriented research. focusing on the causes of positive health rather than the causes of disease and other problems (Robinson & Sirard 2005). explores the possibility of a paradigm shift which imagines the social inclusion of specific population groups, not as an appended extra, but integral to the design of an equitable, sustainable low carbon society of the future.

Social stigma in diabetes : a framework to understand a growing problem for an increasing epidemic

A comprehensive understanding of the social and psychological impact of diabetes mellitus is important for informing policy and practice. One potentially significant, yet under-researched, issue is the social stigma surrounding diabetes. This narrative review draws on literature about health-related stigma in diabetes and other chronic conditions in order to develop a framework for understanding diabetes-related stigma. Our review of the literature found that people who do not have diabetes assume that diabetes is not a stigmatized condition. In contrast, people with diabetes report that stigma is a significant concern to them, experienced across many life domains, e.g., in the workplace, in relationships. The experience of diabetes-related stigma has a significant negative impact on many aspects of psychological well-being and may also result in sub-optimal clinical outcomes for people with diabetes. We propose a framework that highlights the causes (attitudes of blame, feelings of fear and disgust, and the felt need to enforce social norms and avoid disease), experiences (being judged, rejected, and discriminated against), and consequences (e.g., distress, poorer psychological well-being, and sub-optimal self-care) of diabetes-related stigma and also identifies potential mitigating strategies to reduce diabetes-related stigma and/or enhance coping and resilience amongst people with diabetes. The systematic investigation of the experiences, causes, and consequences of diabetes-related stigma is an urgent research priority.

Family day care educators : an exploration of their understanding and experiences promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing

This study aimed to explore family day care (FDC) educators’ knowledge of child social and emotional wellbeing and mental health problems, the strategies used to promote children’s wellbeing, and barriers and opportunities for promoting children’s social and emotional wellbeing. Thirteen FDC educators participated in individual semi-structured interviews. FDC educators were more comfortable defining children’s social and emotional wellbeing than they were in identifying causes and early signs of mental health problems. Strategies used to promote children’s mental health were largely informal and dependent on educator skills and capacities rather than a systematic scheme-wide approach. Common barriers to mental health promotion were limited financial resources, a need for more training and hesitance raising child mental health issues with parents. There is a need to build FDC educators’ knowledge of child social and emotional wellbeing and for tailored mental health promotion strategies in FDC.

Terrorism and social exclusion : misplaced risk - common security

Recent thinking on globalization places risk at the centre of contemporary life. Yet what if our perception of risk is misplaced? What if the greatest risk is not terrorism itself but the conditions that allow terrorism to flourish? This fascinating book illustrates that elevated perceptions of terrorism-related risks are having a deleterious impact on many societies, exacerbating feelings of exclusion among individuals and groups. Via their exploration of various societies, the expert contributors show that as a causal factor of terrorism, social exclusion can be remedied by inclusive, participatory and deliberative measures. They prescribe a recalibration of counter-terrorism policies to unite rather than divide multicultural societies.

Recognising user identity in twitter social networks via text mining

Social networks have become a convenient and effective means of communication in recent years. Many people use social networks to communicate, lead, and manage activities, and express their opinions in supporting or opposing different causes. This has brought forward the issue of verifying the owners of social accounts, in order to eliminate the effect of any fake accounts on the people. This study aims to authenticate the genuine accounts versus fake account using writeprint, which is the writing style biometric. We first extract a set of features using text mining techniques. Then, training of a supervised machine learning algorithm to build the knowledge base is conducted. The recognition procedure starts by extracting the relevant features and then measuring the similarity of the feature vector with respect to all feature vectors in the knowledge base. Then, the most similar vector is identified as the verified account.

A community based systems diagram of obesity causes

INTRODUCTION: Application of system thinking to the development, implementation and evaluation of childhood obesity prevention efforts represents the cutting edge of community-based prevention. We report on an approach to developing a system oriented community perspective on the causes of obesity. METHODS: Group model building sessions were conducted in a rural Australian community to address increasing childhood obesity. Stakeholders (n = 12) built a community model that progressed from connection circles to causal loop diagrams using scripts from the system dynamics literature. Participants began this work in identifying change over time in causes and effects of childhood obesity within their community. The initial causal loop diagram was then reviewed and elaborated by 50 community leaders over a full day session. RESULTS: The process created a causal loop diagram representing community perceptions of determinants and causes of obesity. The causal loop diagram can be broken down into four separate domains; social influences; fast food and junk food; participation in sport; and general physical activity. DISCUSSION: This causal loop diagram can provide the basis for community led planning of a prevention response that engages with multiple levels of existing settings and systems.

Don't eat that, you'll get fat! Exploring how parents and children conceptualise and frame messages about the causes and consequences of obesity

Family interactions about weight and health take place against the backdrop of the wider social discourse relating to the obesity epidemic. Parents (and children) negotiate complex and often contradictory messages in constructing a set of beliefs and practices around obesity and weight management. Despite this, very little research attention has been given to the nature of family-unit discourse on the subject of body weight and it's potential influence on the weight-related behaviours of family members. This includes the broad influence that dominant socio-cultural discourses have on family conceptualisations of weight and health. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with 150 family 'groups' comprised of at least one parent and one child in Victoria and South Australia, we explored how parents and children conceptualise and discuss issues of weight- and health-related lifestyle behaviours. Data were analysed using Attride-Stirling's (2001) thematic network approach. Three thematic clusters emerged from the analysis. First, both parents and children perceived that weight was the primary indicator of health. However, parents focused on the negative physical implications of overweight while children focused on the negative social implications. Second, weight and lifestyle choices were highly moralised. Parents saw it as their responsibility to communicate to children the 'dangers' of fatness. Children reported that parents typically used negatively-framed messages and scare tactics rather than positively-framed messages to encourage healthy behaviours. Third was the perception among parents and children that if you were thin, then eating habits and exercise were less important, and that activity could provide an antidote to food choices. Results suggest that both parents and children are internalising messages relating to obesity and weight management that focus on personal responsibility and blame attribution. These views reflect the broader societal discourse, and their consolidation at the family level is likely to increase their potency and make them resistant to change.

How the causes, consequences and solutions for problem gambling are reported in Australian newspapers: a qualitative content analysis

OBJECTIVE: To inform public health approaches to problem gambling by examining how the news media covers problem gambling, with a particular focus on the causes, consequences and solutions to problem gambling, and the 'actors' and sources who influence media coverage. METHODS: A qualitative content analysis guided by framing theory analysed coverage of problem gambling in Australian newspapers in the period 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012. RESULTS: Solutions to problem gambling were more frequently discussed than causes and consequences. A focus on the responsibility of individuals was preferred to reporting that focused on broader social, ecological, and industry determinants of problem gambling. Reporting was highly politicised, with politicians frequently quoted and political issues frequently discussed. In contrast, the community sector, health professionals and problem gamblers were rarely quoted. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: This analysis has revealed the need for a more proactive, coordinated approach to the media by both public health researchers and health groups. The establishment of a gambling-specific coalition to push for evidence-based reform is recommended.

SCLPV: secure certificateless public verification for cloud-based cyber-physical-social systems against malicious auditors

Cyber-physical-social system (CPSS) allows individuals to share personal information collected from not only cyberspace but also physical space. This has resulted in generating numerous data at a user's local storage. However, it is very expensive for users to store large data sets, and it also causes problems in data management. Therefore, it is of critical importance to outsource the data to cloud servers, which provides users an easy, cost-effective, and flexible way to manage data, whereas users lose control on their data once outsourcing their data to cloud servers, which poses challenges on integrity of outsourced data. Many schemes have been proposed to allow a third-party auditor to verify data integrity using the public keys of users. Most of these schemes bear a strong assumption: the auditors are honest and reliable, and thereby are vulnerability in the case that auditors are malicious. Moreover, in most of these schemes, an auditor needs to manage users certificates to choose the correct public keys for verification. In this paper, we propose a secure certificateless public integrity verification scheme (SCLPV). The SCLPV is the first work that simultaneously supports certificateless public verification and resistance against malicious auditors to verify the integrity of outsourced data in CPSS. A formal security proof proves the correctness and security of our scheme. In addition, an elaborate performance analysis demonstrates that the SCLPV is efficient and practical. Compared with the only existing certificateless public verification scheme (CLPV), the SCLPV provides stronger security guarantees in terms of remedying the security vulnerability of the CLPV and resistance against malicious auditors. In comparison with the best of integrity verification scheme achieving resistance against malicious auditors, the communication cost between the auditor and the cloud server of the SCLPV is independent of the size of the processed data, meanwhile, the auditor in the SCLPV does not need to manage certificates.

Safety communication patterns in small work groups – a pilot study using social network analysis

As a project based industry, construction is portrayed through the short term and transitory nature of the industry. This is one of the factors that have been correlated to the poor safety performance of the construction industry. An essential part of safety performance, however, is the effective safety communication between all parties on construction projects. The construction industry is highly regulated due to its high incidence of work-place accidents. This is especially true of smaller building companies/enterprises where the burden of compliance to safety regulations is most onerous. The majority of current research in this topic area has focused on identifying the high risk components or the causes of increased risks. The literature on safety communication network patterns and its relation to safety performance is nevertheless minimal. Thus, this study takes the opportunity to explore the safety communication issue by analyzing the communications patterns in small workgroups. In a pilot study, through surveys with construction crews that are contributing to active construction projects in Sydney, Australia, patterns of safety communications were identified using social network analysis (SNA). The findings, though preliminary, has identified safety communication network patterns under formal communications and toolbox talks may determine a small group’s safety performance.

Statistically modelling the relationships between Type D personality and social support, health behaviors and symptom severity in chronic illness groups

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to develop a predictive model of how Type D personality influences health behaviours, social support and symptom severity and assess its generalisability to a range of chronic illnesses.

DESIGN: Participants were classified as either healthy (n = 182) or having a chronic illness (n = 207). Participants completed an online survey measuring Type D and a range of health-related variables. Chronic illness participants were classified as having either a functional somatic syndrome (i.e. chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia), where the underlying pathological processes were unclear, or illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, where the causes are well understood.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Outcome measures were health behaviours, social support and both physical and psychological symptoms.

RESULTS: The rate of Type D was higher in chronic illness participants (53%) than in healthy controls (39%). Negative affectivity (NA) and social inhibition (SI) both correlated with outcome measures, although NA was generally the stronger predictor. Using NA and SI as independent subscales led to superior prediction of health outcomes than using categorical or continuous representations.

CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that the relationship between Type D and health outcomes may generalise across different chronic illnesses.