Factors affecting perceptions of corporate social responsibility implementation: an emphasis on values

This dissertation is a broad study of factors affecting perceptions of CSR issues in multiple stakeholder realms, the main purpose being to determine the effects of the values of individuals on their perceptions regarding CSR. It examines perceptions of CSR both at the emic (observing individuals and stakeholders) and etic levels (conducting cross-cultural comparison) through a descriptive-empirical research strategy. The dissertation is based on quantitative interview data among Chinese, Finnish and US stakeholder groups of industry companies (with an emphasis on the forest industries) and consists of four published articles and two submitted manuscripts. Theoretically, this dissertation provides a valuable and unique philosophical and intellectual perspective on the contemporary study of CSR `The Harmony Approach to CSR'. Empirically, this dissertation does values assessment and CSR evaluation of a wide variety of business activities covering CSR reporting, business ethics, and three dimensions of CSR performance. From the multi-stakeholder perspective, this dissertation use survey methods to examine the perceptions and stakeholder salience in the context of CSR by describing, comparing the differences between demographic factors as well as hypothetical drivers behind perceptions. The results of study suggest that the CSR objective of a corporation's top management should be to manage the divergent and conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders, taking others than key stakeholders into account as well. The importance of values as a driver of ethical behaviour and decision-making has been generally recognized. This dissertation provides more empirical proof of this theory by highlighting the effects of values on CSR perceptions. It suggests that since the way to encourage responsible behaviour and develop CSR is to develop individual values and cultivate their virtues, it is time to invoke the critical role of moral (ethics) education. The specific studies of China and comparison between Finland and the US contribute to a common understanding of the emerging CSR issues, problems and opportunities for the future of sustainability. The similarities among these countries can enhance international cooperation, while the differences will open up opportunities and diversified solutions for CSR in local conditions.

Implications of the half-duplex constraint on relay-aided cooperation using rateless codes

The half-duplex constraint, which mandates that a cooperative relay cannot transmit and receive simultaneously, considerably simplifies the demands made on the hardware and signal processing capabilities of a relay. However, the very inability of a relay to transmit and receive simultaneously leads to a potential under-utilization of time and bandwidth resources available to the system. We analyze the impact of the half-duplex constraint on the throughput of a cooperative relay system that uses rateless codes to harness spatial diversity and efficiently transmit information from a source to a destination. We derive closed-form expressions for the throughput of the system, and show that as the number of relays increases, the throughput approaches that of a system that uses more sophisticated full-duplex nodes. Thus, half-duplex nodes are well suited for cooperation using rateless codes despite the simplicity of both the cooperation protocol and the relays.

Autonomous and non-autonomous traits mediate social cooperation in Dictyostelium discoideum

In the trishanku (triA(-)) mutant of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, aggregates are smaller than usual and the spore mass is located mid-way up the stalk, not at the apex. We have monitored aggregate territory size, spore allocation and fruiting body morphology in chimaeric groups of (quasi-wild-type) Ax2 and triA(-) cells. Developmental canalisation breaks down in chimaeras and leads to an increase in phenotypic variation. A minority of triA(-) cells causes largely Ax2 aggregation streams to break up; the effect is not due to the counting factor. Most chimaeric fruiting bodies resemble those of Ax2 or triA(-). Others are double-deckers with a single stalk and two spore masses, one each at the terminus and midway along the stalk. The relative number of spores belonging to the two genotypes depends both on the mixing ratio and on the fruiting body morphology. In double-deckers formed from 1:1 chimaeras, the upper spore mass has more Ax2 spores, and the lower spore mass more triA(-) spores, than expected. Thus, the traits under study depend partly on the cells' own genotype and partly on the phenotypes, and so genotypes, of other cells: they are both autonomous and non-autonomous. These findings strengthen the parallels between multicellular development and behaviour in social groups. Besides that, they reinforce the point that a trait can be associated with a genotype only in a specified context.

Asymmetric Cooperation Among Relays with Linear Precoding

Fixed and mobile relays are used, among other applications, in the downlink of cellular communications systems. Cooperation between relays can greatly increase their benefits in terms of extended coverage, increased reliability, and improved spectral efficiency. In this paper, we introduce the fundamental notion of asymmetric cooperation. For this, we consider a two-phase transmission protocol where, in the first phase, the base station (BS) sends several available messages to the relays over wireless links. But, depending on the channel state and the duration of the BS transmission, not all relays decode all messages. In a second phase, the relays, which may now have asymmetric message knowledge, use cooperative linear precoding for the transmission to the mobile stations. We show that for many channel configurations, asymmetric cooperation, although (slighlty) sub-optimum for the second phase, is optimum from a total-throughput point of view, as it requires less time and energy in the first phase. We give analytical formulations for the optimum operating parameters and the achievable throughput, and show that under typical circumstances, 20-30% throughput enhancement can be achieved over conventional systems.

Energy-Efficient Decentralized Routing with Localized Cooperation Suitable for Fast Fading

Wireless networks transmit information from a source to a destination via multiple hops in order to save energy and, thus, increase the lifetime of battery-operated nodes. The energy savings can be especially significant in cooperative transmission schemes, where several nodes cooperate during one hop to forward the information to the next node along a route to the destination. Finding the best multi-hop transmission policy in such a network which determines nodes that are involved in each hop, is a very important problem, but also a very difficult one especially when the physical wireless channel behavior is to be accounted for and exploited. We model the above optimization problem for randomly fading channels as a decentralized control problem – the channel observations available at each node define the information structure, while the control policy is defined by the power and phase of the signal transmitted by each node.In particular, we consider the problem of computing an energy-optimal cooperative transmission scheme in a wireless network for two different channel fading models: (i) slow fading channels, where the channel gains of the links remain the same for a large number of transmissions, and (ii) fast fading channels,where the channel gains of the links change quickly from one transmission to another. For slow fading, we consider a factored class of policies (corresponding to local cooperation between nodes), and show that the computation of an optimal policy in this class is equivalent to a shortest path computation on an induced graph, whose edge costs can be computed in a decentralized manner using only locally available channel state information(CSI). For fast fading, both CSI acquisition and data transmission consume energy. Hence, we need to jointly optimize over both these; we cast this optimization problem as a large stochastic optimization problem. We then jointly optimize over a set of CSI functions of the local channel states, and a corresponding factored class of control policies corresponding to local cooperation between nodes with a local outage constraint. The resulting optimal scheme in this class can again be computed efficiently in a decentralized manner. We demonstrate significant energy savings for both slow and fast fading channels through numerical simulations of randomly distributed networks.

Accurate performance analysis of single and opportunistic AF relay cooperation with imperfect cascaded channel estimates

Given the significant gains that relay-based cooperation promises, the practical problems of acquisition of channel state information (CSI) and the characterization and optimization of performance with imperfect CSI are receiving increasing attention. We develop novel and accurate expressions for the symbol error probability (SEP) for fixed-gain amplify-and-forward relaying when the destination acquires CSI using the time-efficient cascaded channel estimation (CCE) protocol. The CCE protocol saves time by making the destination directly estimate the product of the source-relay and relay-destination channel gains. For a single relay system, we first develop a novel SEP expression and a tight SEP upper bound. We then similarly analyze an opportunistic multi-relay system, in which both selection and coherent demodulation use imperfect estimates. A distinctive aspect of our approach is the use of as few simplifying approximations as possible, which results in new results that are accurate at signal-to-noise-ratios as low as 1 dB for single and multi-relay systems. Using insights gleaned from an asymptotic analysis, we also present a simple, closed-form, nearly-optimal solution for allocation of energy between pilot and data symbols at the source and relay(s).

Sustaining cooperation on networks: an analytical study based on evolutionary game theory

We analytically study the role played by the network topology in sustaining cooperation in a society of myopic agents in an evolutionary setting. In our model, each agent plays the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game with its neighbors, as specified by a network. Cooperation is the incumbent strategy, whereas defectors are the mutants. Starting with a population of cooperators, some agents are switched to defection. The agents then play the PD game with their neighbors and compute their fitness. After this, an evolutionary rule, or imitation dynamic is used to update the agent strategy. A defector switches back to cooperation if it has a cooperator neighbor with higher fitness. The network is said to sustain cooperation if almost all defectors switch to cooperation. Earlier work on the sustenance of cooperation has largely consisted of simulation studies, and we seek to complement this body of work by providing analytical insight for the same. We find that in order to sustain cooperation, a network should satisfy some properties such as small average diameter, densification, and irregularity. Real-world networks have been empirically shown to exhibit these properties, and are thus candidates for the sustenance of cooperation. We also analyze some specific graphs to determine whether or not they sustain cooperation. In particular, we find that scale-free graphs belonging to a certain family sustain cooperation, whereas Erdos-Renyi random graphs do not. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first analytical attempt to determine which networks sustain cooperation in a population of myopic agents in an evolutionary setting.

Secrecy in the 2-User Symmetric Deterministic Interference Channel with Transmitter Cooperation

This work presents novel achievable schemes for the 2-user symmetric linear deterministic interference channel with limited-rate transmitter cooperation and perfect secrecy constraints at the receivers. The proposed achievable scheme consists of a combination of interference cancelation, relaying of the other user's data bits, time sharing, and transmission of random bits, depending on the rate of the cooperative link and the relative strengths of the signal and the interference. The results show, for example, that the proposed scheme achieves the same rate as the capacity without the secrecy constraints, in the initial part of the weak interference regime. Also, sharing random bits through the cooperative link can achieve a higher secrecy rate compared to sharing data bits, in the very high interference regime. The results highlight the importance of limited transmitter cooperation in facilitating secure communications over 2-user interference channels.

Outer Bounds on the Secrecy Rate of the 2-User Symmetric Deterministic Interference Channel with Transmitter Cooperation

This paper derives outer bounds for the 2-user symmetric linear deterministic interference channel (SLDIC) with limited-rate transmitter cooperation and perfect secrecy constraints at the receivers. Five outer bounds are derived, under different assumptions of providing side information to receivers and partitioning the encoded message/output depending on the relative strength of the signal and the interference. The usefulness of these outer bounds is shown by comparing the bounds with the inner bound on the achievable secrecy rate derived by the authors in a previous work. Also, the outer bounds help to establish that sharing random bits through the cooperative link can achieve the optimal rate in the very high interference regime.

Financing And Cooperation For Sustainable Development In The Mediterranean, Sophia Antipolis, France, 3-4 June 2004: Volume II: Technical Report of the Workshop

(263 page document)