Corporate social responsibility:reviewed, rated, revised

Purpose: Critical literature review of CSR research in both general management and hospitality management literature. Discusses trends,commonalities, and inconsistencies to better understand the state of contemporary scholarship, and calls for a context-specific conceptual engagement with the phenomenon.Design/Methodology/Approach: Systematic literature review, noting and critiquing a general tendency towards measurement of financial and other internal benefit impacts.Findings: Hospitality management is well-positioned to evaluate the opportunities and challenges of CSR, yet research has uncritically adopted the instrumental emphasis on assessing processes, perceptions, and private profitability from the general management literature, without engaging on a contextually-specific and/or theoretical level.Research limitations: CSR research is abundant and therefore difficult to summarise in one article.The primarily Anglo-American and Asian contextual bias is reflected in this review.Practical implications: Consistently inconsistent results challenge the portability of financial impact studies.Studies are needed to re-evaluate the concept of CSR as it pertains to hospitality, and measure the effectiveness of CSR activities relative to context and resource availability.Social implications: Further research into the scope of CSR in hospitality management, with an emphasis on recuperating social value, would lead to widespread positive social implications.Originality/value: This critical review offers a new perspective on CSR in the hospitality literature and industry, calling for a reconsideration of the concept in context, and formulates a working definition

Introduction

It might seem strange to devote a collection of essays to Shakespeare and Phenomenology in the second decade of the twenty-first century. After all, phenomenology as a philosophical movement had its heyday in the middle of the twentieth century. But phenomenology\u27s demise as a major philosophical movement has enabled it to live on as the approach or method shorn of dogma that its earliest practitioners promised. Far from being a single school of thought, phenomenology now looks more like an intellectual diaspora, a galaxy of related but discreet propositions that share basic assumptions while pursuing different philosophical projects. In early modern and Shakespeare studies, we have seen a particularly robust variant of phenomenology in the past ten years in the practice of historical phenomenology. In this special issue, we attempt to build on the successes of historical phenomenology by pursuing a variety of phenomenological approaches and practices in relation to Shakespeare and the early modern. By embracing phenomenology\u27s remarkable intellectual diaspora, we hope to offer a new critical agenda for phenomenologically inflected reading of Shakespeare. We propose that phenomenology offers a language of speculation and inquiry dynamic enough to accommodate both historicism and theory, a common language that can speak as compellingly to questions of law, ethics, performance, and hospitality as it can to questions about feeling and sensation. Accordingly, Shakespeare and Phenomenology is not invested in carving out yet another subfield of Shakespeare studies. On the contrary, in this collection we are committed to opening up conversations among subfields and to imagining a common critical future

Music 2025 : The Music Data Dilemma: issues facing the music industry in improving data management

© Crown Copyright 2019Music 2025ʼ investigates the infrastructure issues around the management of digital data in an increasingly stream driven industry. The findings are the culmination of over 50 interviews with high profile music industry representatives across the sector and reflects key issues as well as areas of consensus and contrasting views. The findings reveal whilst there are great examples of data initiatives across the value chain, there are opportunities to improve efficiency and interoperability

Teaching java programming using cable in a collaborative online environment

With the emergence and evolution of computer hardware, software and networks - virtual classrooms now exist which enable teachers and students to experience learning activities and to work together at a distance either directly or on a part-time basis. We are increasingly confronted with a need for ‘lifelong training’ and it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to attend physical classrooms on a full-time basis. Research to date has highlighted an area of interest with regard to teaching computer programming in an online environment. We investigate here the use of a Cognitive Apprenticeship-Based Learning Environment (CABLE) in the teaching of Java programming in an attempt to validate its effectiveness. This paper outlines the result of using a pedagogical model which employed a combination of instructional strategies including directive support, responsive cognitive apprenticeship, collaborative learning, stimulating metacognition (organising, motivating (through a “spark”, modifying one’s own skills), and using various technologies via the use of online discussion through Blackboard

Forecasting Short-term Wholesale Prices on the Irish Single Electricity Market

Electricity markets are different from other markets as electricity generation cannot be easily stored in substantial amounts and to avoid blackouts, the generation of electricity must be balanced with customer demand for it on a second-by-second basis. Customers tend to rely on electricity for day-to-day living and cannot replace it easily so when electricity prices increase, customer demand generally does not reduce significantly in the short-term. As electricity generation and customer demand must be matched perfectly second-by-second, and because generation cannot be stored to a considerable extent, cost bids from generators must be balanced with demand estimates in advance of real-time. This paper outlines a a forecasting algorithm built on artificial neural networks to predict short-term wholesale prices on the Irish Single Electricity Market so that market participants can make more informed trading decisions. Research studies have demonstrated that an adaptive or self-adaptive approach to forecasting would appear more suited to the task of predicting energy demands in territory such as Ireland. We have identified the features that such a model demands and outline it here

Legal, ethical & social issues in the case of an intrusive remote monitoring software

In 2008, a laptop was stolen from a high school student in the USA. The laptop was being monitored by remote recovery software. The thief sold the laptop in question to another student who in turn sold it to a teacher. The software continued to monitor the private daily life of this teacher. This paper provides an overview of the resultant lawsuit. We examine the ethical, privacy and legal dilemmas highlighted by this case

Dexamethasone Attenuates Hyperexcitability Provoked by Experimental Febrile Status Epilepticus.

The role of neuroinflammation in the mechanisms of epilepsy development is important because inflammatory mediators provide tractable targets for intervention. Inflammation is intrinsically involved in the generation of childhood febrile seizures (FSs), and prolonged FS [febrile status epilepticus (FSE)] precedes a large proportion of adult cases of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). As TLE is often refractory to therapy and is associated with serious cognitive and emotional problems, we investigated whether its development can be prevented using anti-inflammatory strategies. Using an immature rat model of FSE [experimental FSE (eFSE)], we administered dexamethasone (DEX), a broad anti-inflammatory agent, over 3 d following eFSE. We assessed eFSE-provoked hippocampal network hyperexcitability by quantifying the presence, frequency, and duration of hippocampal spike series, as these precede and herald the development of TLE-like epilepsy. We tested whether eFSE provoked hippocampal microgliosis, astrocytosis, and proinflammatory cytokine production in male and female rats and investigated blood-brain barrier (BBB) breaches as a potential contributor. We then evaluated whether DEX attenuated these eFSE sequelae. Spike series were not observed in control rats given vehicle or DEX, but occurred in 41.6% of eFSE-vehicle rats, associated with BBB leakage and elevated hippocampal cytokines. eFSE did not induce astrocytosis or microgliosis but provoked BBB disruption in 60% of animals. DEX significantly reduced spike series prevalence (to 7.6%) and frequency, and abrogated eFSE-induced cytokine production and BBB leakage (to 20%). These findings suggest that a short, postinsult intervention with a clinically available anti-inflammatory agent potently attenuates epilepsy-predicting hippocampal hyperexcitability, potentially by minimizing BBB disruption and related neuroinflammation

A Meta-Analysis of the Association between Appraisals of Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents

Cognitive models of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder place emphasis on the role of negative appraisals of traumatic events. It is suggested that the way in which the event is appraised determines the extent to which posttraumatic stress symptoms will be experienced. Therefore, a strong relationship between trauma appraisals and symptoms of PTSD might be expected. However, this relationship is not as firmly established in the child and adolescent literature as in the adult literature, and this review aimed to address this.A systematic literature review of this relationship returned 467 publications, of which 11 met full eligibility criteria. Random effects meta-analysis revealed a large effect size for the relationship between appraisals and PTSD symptoms in children and adolescents, with significant heterogeneity present. Sensitivity analysis suggested that this relationship was not contingent on one specific measure of appraisals.Results were consistent with the cognitive behavioural theory of PTSD, demonstrating that appraisals of trauma are strongly related to posttraumatic stress in children and adolescents. However, this relationship was not observed in a sample of 4-6 year olds, indicating that further research is required to explicate cognitive processing of trauma in very young children.<br/