Corporate green image communication through public disclosures and social media

Today, companies need to mind the environment in all their actions. Policies, regulations and growing pressure from environmentally conscious public are driving corporations to invest increasingly in their green images. Communication plays a key role in forming and maintaining that image. This thesis explores how six selected companies communicate about their environmental efforts and activities, and its linkage to their green images, in annual and sustainability reports and in Facebook. The companies come from the U.S. and Europe and operate in three different industries: ICT, oil and gas, and aerospace & defense. Qualitative and quantitative content analyses are conducted to examine 36 reports and 121 Facebook messages, collected from the period of 2010-2014, and from 2005 for comparison. The results show that although the quality and quantity of environmental disclosure is increasing, there is still room for improvement. Overall, disclosure in the ICT sector is on the highest level. The European companies disclose more and on average have stronger green images than the American ones. Emissions and ways to reduce them is by far the most covered topic in both continents and in all three industry sectors. The messages in Facebook are closer to advertising, and overall the platform is utilized surprisingly little.

Corporate Citizenship: What are the Social Responsibilities of Australian Business? School of Social Work and Applied Human Sciences Occasional Paper Series No. 6

Corporate Citizenship: What are the Social Responsibilities of Australian Business? School of Social Work and Applied Human Sciences Occasional Paper Series No. 6

Realisable climate change narratives in public discourse: an East/West comparative analysis of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) as a response to global climate change

This thesis looks at how non-experts develop an opinion on climate change, and how those opinions could be changed by public discourse. I use Hubert Dreyfus’ account of skill acquisition to distinguish between experts and non-experts. I then use a combination of Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm and the hermeneutics of Paul Ricœur to explore how non-experts form opinions, and how public narratives can provide a point of critique. In order to develop robust narratives, they must be financially realistic. I therefore consider the burgeoning field of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) analysis as a way of informing realistic public narratives. I identify a potential problem with this approach: the Western assumptions of ESG analysis might make for public narratives that are not convincing to a non-Western audience. I then demonstrate how elements of the Chinese tradition, the Confucian, Neo-Confucian, and Daoist schools, as presented by David Hall and Roger Ames, can provide alternative assumptions to ESG analysis so that the public narratives will be more culturally adaptable. This research contributes to the discipline by bringing disparate traditions together in a unique way, into a practical project with a view towards applications. I conclude by considering avenues for further research.

Hypercapitalism: New media, language, and social perceptions of value

Every day trillions of dollars circulate the globe in a digital data space and new forms of property and ownership emerge. Massive corporate entities with a global reach are formed and disappear with breathtaking speed, making and breaking personal fortunes the size of which defy imagination. Fictitious commodities abound. The genomes of entire nations have become corporately owned. Relationships have become the overt basis of economic wealth and political power. Hypercapitalism explores the problems of understanding this emergent form of global political economic organization by focusing on the internal relations between language, new media networks, and social perceptions of value. Taking an historical approach informed by Marx, Phil Graham draws upon writings in political economy, media studies, sociolinguistics, anthropology, and critical social science to understand the development, roots, and trajectory of the global system in which every possible aspect of human existence, including imagined futures, has become a commodity form.

Transformational leadership, corporate cultism and the spirituality paradigm: An unholy trinity in the workplace?

Leadership is a perennially popular topic in the academic and practitioner literature on management. In particular, the past twenty years have witnessed an explosive growth of interest in what has been termed 'transformational leadership' (henceforth, TL). The theory is closely linked to the growth in what has been defined as corporate culturism - an emphasis on the importance of cohereat cultures, as a means of securing competitive advantage. This article outlines the central components of TL theory, and subjects the concept to a critical analysis. In particular, similarities are identified between the components concerned and the characteristics of leadership practice in organizations generally defined as cults. This connection has been previously unremarked in the literature. These similarities are comprehensively reviewed. Trends towards what can be defined as corporate cultism in modem management practice are also discussed. We conclude that TL models are overly concerned with the achievement of corporate cohesion to the detriment of internal dissent Such dissent is a vital ingredient of effective decision-making. It is suggested that more inclusive and participatory models of the leadership process are required.

As políticas de proteção social no contexto escolar

Esta dissertação teve o objetivo de investigar como a formalização das políticas de proteção social via programas e projetos socioeducativos se articulam com a educação escolarizada. Realiza uma discussão conceitual acerca das políticas de proteção social e “vulnerabilidade e risco social” a partir de aspectos históricos situando-as na lógica societária das desigualdades e complexificações das refrações da questão social do modelo capitalista de produção e reprodução social, sobretudo no contexto das reformas do Estado brasileiro enquanto demanda dos ajustes neoliberais. O lócus da pesquisa foi uma escola da rede pública municipal de Serra/ES. As investigações foram realizadas em duas etapas. A primeira constituiu-se de um estudo exploratório de caráter qualitativo. Por meio das análises abstraídas dessa fase, foi realizado um estudo de caso como segunda etapa da pesquisa. Os instrumentos utilizados, análise de documentos, observação participante e entrevistas, evidenciam que os programas e projetos socioeducativos desenvolvidos no espaço escolar visando a uma suposta proteção social, não guardam relação concreta com a melhoria dos processos de aprendizagem dos alunos, logo, seus efeitos na vida escolar desses alunos não foram evidenciados. Verificou-se ainda profunda desarticulação entre as propostas pedagógicas da escola e dos docentes com os programas e projetos investigados. A partir dos dados da pesquisa, pudemos ainda constatar que tais programas e projetos adentram o espaço escolar por meio de demandas externas envolvendo a Secretaria Municipal de Educação e a iniciativa privada. Concluímos que a proteção social no espaço escolar via programas e projetos socioeducativos necessita voltar-se à articulação com políticas públicas que ultrapassem os muros da escola e que de fato garantam o acesso a bens materiais e simbólicos com vista à melhoria das condições de vida material e sociocultural dos alunos a quem são destinados e, consequentemente, a melhoria da qualidade da educação escolarizada.