This paper explores one organisation’s journey into non-financial reporting, initially motivated by a crisis in public confidence that threatened the organisation’s legitimacy to the present with the organisation embracing integrated reporting. The organisation’s journey is framed through a legitimation lens and is illustrated by aligning internal reflections with external outputs guided by predominant paradigms of good practice, such as the GRI guidelines and more recently integrated reporting 〈IR〉. We find that the organisation’s relationship with external guidelines has evolved from pragmatic (...) adoption as a means of seeking external legitimation to the present position where those that prepare external reports are informed by the organisation’s strategic positioning and not constrained by the promulgation of voluntary guidelines. From the case study, we suggest that the International Integrated Reporting Council may face two hurdles: First, organisations may define social norms based on a broader definition of stakeholders than the definition currently published by the IIRC. The second hurdle is to convince report preparers that adopting integrated reporting 〈IR〉 will positively impact on capital flows. (shrink)

In recent debates about inequality, many have pointed to the predominant position of the finance. This article highlights that structural power, not lobbying resources, are key to explaining variations across countries. It examines finance-government negotiations over national bank rescue schemes during the recent financial crisis. Given the structural power of finance, the variation in bank bailouts across countries cannot be explained by lobbying differences. Instead of observing organized interest intermediation, we can see that disorganization was crucial for the financial industry (...) to get off the hook and let the government carry the burden of stabilizing the economy. Put differently, structural power is strongest when finance remains collectively inactive. In contrast to traditional accounts of the lobbying influence of finance, the comparison highlights that the lack of organization can have crucial redistributive consequences. (shrink)

Studies on why small and medium enterprises engage in pro-environmental behavior suggest that managers’ environmental responsibility plays a relatively greater role than competitiveness and legitimacy-seeking. These categories of drivers are mostly considered independent of each other. Using survey data and comparative case studies of wine firms in South Africa, this study finds that managers’ environmental responsibility is indeed the key driver in a context where state regulation hardly plays any role in regulating dispersed, rural firms. However, especially proactive firms are (...) also characterized by expectations of competitiveness gains. The authors thus emphasize the role of institutional context and potential interaction effects between these drivers in explaining the reasons why SMEs engage in pro-environmental behavior in developing countries. (shrink)

In spite of many attempts to define courage, from Plato’s Laches and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to recent moral philosophy, courage remains ambiguous: it is a classical virtue and a requirement of soldiers, and yet, it is not clear what courage means in specific situations. In this article, I investigate courage in view of a complex military context stretching beyond the battlefield into an ethically grey area of war and military operations, namely, a case from ISAF Afghanistan. I explore courage in (...) relation to context-specific factors that inspire soldiers’ judgments and choice of action, and look at the meaning of both physical and moral courage in the given context. The relationship between character and situation plays an important part in the quest to be courageous, and courage proves to be a notion dependent on such factors as level of risk. One of the more essential questions regarding courage seems to be: What should soldiers fear? I argue that we need a deeper understanding of risk and fear to understand courage in complex military contexts. Furthermore, courage is dependent on other virtues, which corresponds with an understanding of courage that is close to Plato’s notion of the unity or interdependence of the virtues. (shrink)

In Vytal and Hamann (2010) we reported a neuroimaging meta-analysis that found that basic emotions can be distinguished by their brain activation correlates, in marked contrast to Lindquist et al.'s conclusions in the target article. Here, I discuss implications of these findings for understanding emotion, outline limitations of using meta-analyses and neuroimaging as the sole basis for deciding between emotion views, and suggest that these views are essentially compatible and could be adapted and combined into an integrated emotion framework.

Selective protein degradation maintains cellular homeostasis, but this process is disrupted in many diseases. Targeted protein degradation (TPD) approaches, built upon existing cellular mechanisms, are promising methods for therapeutically regulating protein levels. Here, we review the diverse palette of tools that are now available for doing so throughout the gene expression pathway and in specific cellular compartments. These include methods for directly removing targeted proteins via the ubiquitin proteasome system with proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) or dephosphorylation targeting chimeras (DEPTACs). Similar (...) effects can also be achieved through the lysosomal system with autophagy‐targeting chimeras (AUTACs), autophagosome tethering compounds (ATTECs), and lysosome targeting chimeras (LYTACs). Other methods act upstream to degrade RNAs (ribonuclease targeting chimeras; RIBOTACs) or transcription factors (transcription factor targeting chimeras; TRAFTACs), offering control throughout the gene expression process. We highlight the evolution and function of these methods and discuss their clinical implications in diverse disease contexts. (shrink)

First published in 2010, Cornelia Vismann’s article has already attained the status of a classic. In a formulation inspired by linguistic theory, the author argues that the relation between cultural techniques and media can be understood in analogy to grammatical operations. Thus, cultural techniques define the agency of media and execute the procedural rules which the latter set in place. Together, they articulate a critique of subjectivity and sovereignty that proceeds by re-examining the notion of ‘culture’ via its agricultural (...) origins to the current moment when the ‘preservation of cultural techniques’ has entered legal and academic discourse. Ultimately, despite their apparent separation from praxis, cultural techniques continue to proliferate through axes of substitution and displacement. (shrink)

While generally accepted as an interpretive theory, Bull’s emblematic text demonstrates strong structural characteristics. Subsequent attributions move between the interpretive or ‘reflexive’ and t...

In light of the sociological insight that it is left to the art system what counts as art, new artistic forms inevitably alter the prevailing concept of art. The article examines how artistic morphogenesis occurs in a twofold manner in the case of contemporary art: as self-referential process through new form combinatorics or asynchronous artistic operations whose artworks elude the gaze, and as other-referential relation. One of the main features of contemporary art lies in its strong reference to the present, (...) based on a conception of operative time. Time is not understood as a sequence of past, present, future, but rather as the linking of respective presences. Contemporary art shares this understanding of time with event-based social theories. This is analysed as other-referential act of synchronization within the art system with its societal environment. Empirical evidence is provided by select works of art and by self-descriptions of the art system. (shrink)

Ratzel's Time in Munich . When zoologist Friedrich Ratzel came to Munich in 1875, he switched from earning money from travel journalism to going back to university studies analysing the observations of his last trip to North and Middle America. He loved the comfortable way of life of the Bavarian town with its beergardens and inns, where everybody sat together regardless of social difference. Geologist Karl Zittel and ethnologist Moritz Wagner introduced him to the learned circles of the town. Especially (...) Wagner became his fatherly friend. Ratzel also made friends with his colleagues Max Haushofer and his brother Karl von Haushofer. At the end of the year Ratzel finished his studies with habilitation and became professor of geography at the Technical University of Munich. Besides his duty of teaching economic geography and general geography, he gave special lectures representing his actual interests and book projects like geography of high mountains, geography of polar regions, and ethnology. Besides his teaching, he began to investigate different problems in the Alps. Ratzel mostly engaged himself in the Geographical Society in Munich. A member since 1875, he influenced it very much in making it more scientific: he did so by introducing special talks and discussions only among members as well as invited papers concerning Bavarian geography in addition of reports and papers for the public. He also was involved in the Munich Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory, where he served as second secretary for two years. Finally the paper describes the connection of Ratzel's social life and personal commitment with his publications between 1875 and 1886, before he left Munich to become head of the chair of geography at Leipzig. (shrink)

Dieses Buch schreibt Theorie. Es entwirft am Beispiel von Wilhelm Raabes Erzähltexten zwischen 1856 und 1902 den Grundriss einer ontologischen Narratologie, der über seinen historischen Gegen-stand hinaus systematische Gültigkeit beansprucht. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet die Frage: Was ist Welt?

This paper illustrates the relevance of Foucault’s analysis of neoliberal governance for a critical understanding of recent transformations in individual and social life in the United States, particularly in terms of how the realms of the public and the private and the personal and the political are understood and practiced. The central aim of neoliberal governmentality (“the conduct of conduct”) is the strategic creation of social conditions that encourage and necessitate the production of Homo economicus, a historically specific form of (...) subjectivity constituted as a free and autonomous “atom” of self-interest. The neoliberal subject is an individual who is morally responsible for navigating the social realm using rational choice and cost-benefit calculations grounded on market-based principles to the exclusion of all other ethical values and social interests. While the more traditional forms of domination and exploitation characteristic of sovereign and disciplinary forms of power remain evident in our ”globalized” world, the effects of subjectification produced at the level of everyday life through the neoliberal “conduct of conduct” recommend that we recognize and invent new forms of critique and ethical subjectivation that constitute resistance to its specific dangers. (shrink)

Baselitz is one of the most important artists of today. His works can be found in major museums around the world. For over 30 years, photographer Benjamin Katz has been documenting Baselitz at work in different studios. This volume now captures Baselitz's exceptional life at work and at home. Benjamin Katz is famous for his photographic portraits of artists. Among his previous subjects are Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Rosemarie Trockel, and Martin Kippenberger. Because Katz is friends with most (...) of the artists, he is able to capture them when they are completely at ease. But, as he explains in this book, he prefers to photograph people while they are in the process of doing something. Katz shows Baselitz with paintbrush and hammer, and dog and cigar - the close relationship between the two artists is almost palpable. The photographs are the result of a friendship in an artistic world that they have been sharing for many decades. Cornelia Gockel's essay discusses Katz's unique, new window on the world of Georg Baselitz. (shrink)

The question of how multinational enterprises respond to local corporate social responsibility expectations remains salient, also in the context of many African governments’ attempts to define and regulate business responsibilities. What determines whether MNEs respond to such local, state-driven expectations as congruent with their global commitment to CSR? Adopting an institutional logics perspective, we argue that a higher global CSR commitment will lead to higher local responsiveness when regulatory distance is low, but it will lead to lower local responsiveness when (...) regulatory distance is high. We find support for our hypothesis using data on 93 MNEs’ responses to the South African state’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment policy. We thus contribute to the global–local CSR literature and show how MNEs’ local CSR responsiveness will be shaped by not only the local context but also their home country and firm-internal environments. (shrink)

Ecological-cognition approaches share the overall assumption that cognition is enacted, extended, embedded, and embodied. In this article, these basic assumptions are illustrated and critically evaluated from the point of view of gesture and film studies. In a theoretical introduction, the idea of metaphorizing as embodied interactivity is developed and connected with these basic assumptions of an ecological cognition approach to metaphor. Four case studies illustrate how metaphoricity in face-to-face contexts and in film viewing is enacted, extended, embedded, and embodied. Examples (...) from gesturing face-to-face and a case study of a television news report serve to illustrate how metaphors in these ecologies have important common characteristics: they emerge from metaphorizing as embodied interactivity. (shrink)

Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) is a major figure not only in German philosophy but also in literature and religious history. In his own time he wrote penetrating criticisms of Herder, Kant, Mendelssohn, and other Enlightenment thinkers; after his death he was an important figure for Goethe, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and others. It was only in the twentieth century, however, that the full and radical extent of his 'linguistic' critique of philosophy was recognized. This volume presents a new translation of a (...) wide selection of his essays, including both famous and lesser-known works. Hamann's enigmatic prose-style was deliberately at odds with Enlightenment assumptions about language, and a full apparatus of annotation explains the numerous allusions in his essays. The volume is completed by a historical and philosophical introduction and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

This article contests the popular assumption that literature is ever less politically relevant. Quite the contrary is the case: literature and literary language becomes increasingly important for the alter-globalization movement and for the notion that ‘another world is possible.’ The work of four authors—Manu Chao, Eduardo Galeano, Subcomandante Marcos, and José Saramago—are comparatively analysed in light of their contribution to an alternative globalism and to an alternative practice of politics. All four authors contribute from different perspectives to the literary articulation (...) of a political project. Their work shares characteristics such as the permeability of genres, the emphasis on the poetical over the narrative, a meandering structure that expresses the search for and step-by-step construction of a cultural and political alternative, and an emphasis on translation and encounter as principles of interaction with difference. (shrink)

: The love of ruins has generated various epistemes and disciplines: In the sixteenth century it informed philology, in the nineteenth century historiography and criminology. Its status has changed from an allegorical one in the Renaissance to a literal, positivistic one at the beginning of the twentieth century. Johann Gustav Droysen was among the first who reflected the positivistic treatment of ruins systematically. The Prussian historiographer formulated a theory of remains including both written documents and material objects. In the twentieth (...) century the positivistic view lost its appeal for scholars. They began to question the supposed ability of ruins to access the past. The physicality of remains was no longer trusted to guide the process of memory. This disillusion in the power of remains led to a practice of mere tabulation where statistics instead of historical narrative were generated. The contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben proposes yet another way of dealing with remains. He liberates ruins from their materialistic shell altogether and takes them consequently in their. (shrink)

Observers generally assume that firms which engage in lobbying know what they want. Business—government relations and especially the corporate political activities of network operators during the basic telecommunication negotiations of the World Trade Organization present a slightly different picture. European monopoly providers benefited from the old international regime and initially ignored trade discussions in their sector. In the course of negotiations, however, they became part of a three-level game, which obliged them to consider national, European, and multilateral objectives simultaneously. In (...) the course of these complex negotiations, their preferences evolved. Because governments advanced independently on the liberalization project, companies adapted their policy stances from reluctance to support for the negotiations. This article thus cautions against treatments of lobbying that consider preferences as exogenously given. (shrink)

In the preliminary work for his Theses On the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin quotes a passage from Henri Focillon’s La vie des formes, using Focillon’s description of classical style for his own notion of the dialectical image. The Essay locates Benjamin’s surprising reception of Focillon in their common interest in a life of forms, not so much in the sense of aesthetic liveliness as defined by Kant, but in its productiveness of other forms. Focillon’s idea of art history is (...) based on the dynamis or potentiality of artistic shapes giving way to ever new figures and forms. This is not only a key to Benjamin’s concepts of Fortleben/Nachleben in the early Essay The Task of the Translator but also to the ‘dialectical image‘ outlined in the Arcades Project. Benjamin, this Essay argues, refers to Focillon’s life of forms to conceptualise disharmonious and sudden changes of form. (shrink)

In the age of surveillance capitalism, the prevailing business model underlying the use of social media applications (“apps”) foresees the exchange of personal data for the allowance to use an online service. Such a data business model comes with many potential negative side effects ranging from violation of privacy issues to election manipulation. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to think of alternatives to the current data business model. The present study investigated how strong the support would be for a (...) monetary payment model among a sample of 210 participants. Participants were asked about their willingness to pay for social media, if in turn their data would be private and other problems concerning social media use would be tackled. Only one-fifth of participants (21.43%) supported such a model. From the Big Five Personality traits, Agreeableness was positively associated with support of such a model. Finally, data are also provided on how much participants would be willing to pay for social media on a monthly basis. The present study’s findings are of a preliminary nature and will contribute to the start of an important discussion. (shrink)