Drilling their own graves:How the European oil and gas supermajors avoid sustainability tensions through mythmaking

This study explores how paradoxical tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided through organizational mythmaking. By examining the European oil and gas supermajors’ ‘‘CEOspeak’’ about climate change, we show how mythmaking facilitates the disregarding, diverting, and/or displacing of sustainability tensions. In doing so, our findings further illustrate how certain defensive responses are employed: (1) regression, or retreating to the comforts of past familiarities, (2) fantasy, or escaping the harsh reality that fossil fuels and climate change are indeed irreconcilable, and (3) projecting, or shifting blame to external actors for failing to address climate change. By highlighting the discursive effects of enacting these responses, we illustrate how the European oil and gas supermajors self-determine their inability to substantively address the complexities of climate change. We thus argue that defensive responses are not merely a form of mismanagement as the paradox and corporate sustainability literature commonly suggests, but a strategic resource that poses serious ethical concerns given the imminent danger of issues such as climate change

The Impact of Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy on Executive Functions

Background: Idiopathic generalized epilepsy is defined as seizures with a possible hereditary predisposition without an underlying cause or structural pathology. Assessment of executive dysfunction in idiopathic generalized epilepsies based on standard Indian battery is not available in the literature. Aims and Objectives: To assess specific executive functions affected in patients with idiopathic epilepsy and their association with various variables. Materials and Methods: Type of observational cross-sectional study, where clinical profile of all idiopathic epilepsy patients attending the neurology OPD was studied and their executive higher mental functions were assessed using the NIMHANS battery. Results: A total of 75 idiopathic generalized epilepsy patients were included in the study. Executive functions that were commonly found abnormal in our study were word fluency ( P ≤ .001), category fluency ( P &lt; .001), verbal n-back ( P &lt; .001), Tower of London ( p &lt; 0.01), and Stroop test ( P &lt; 0.01). Executive functions showed a significant correlation with age at symptom onset, duration of epilepsy, and in those with uncontrolled seizures. Conclusion: Patients of idiopathic generalized epilepsy according to the present study were found to have significant executive dysfunction in multiple domains. This necessitates the screening for executive dysfunctions, which if detected should prompt the clinician to initiate cognitive retraining. </jats:p