Abstract Problem background and problem discussion: The increased demands on companies and their ability to operate sustainably has made corporate social responsibility (CSR) a very hot topic in modern society. The academic debate has yet to put a definite answer on whether the engagement in CSR activities has a positive effect on a company financially. Previous research on stock listed in Sweden indicate that there is a positive relationship between environmental performance and that there is an asymmetry in how it is valued across company sizes. However, there has not yet been any research made into what impact size has on the value relevance of social CSR ratings. This will be tested by drawing from resource-based theory and legitimacy theory. Research question: How is the value relevance of social ratings affected by accounting for company size? Purpose: The purpose is to examine what effect the inclusion of corporation size has on the value relevance of social CSR ratings. Theory: The study primarily utilizes Stakeholder theory, the resource-based theory and legitimacy theory. Method: This is a quantitative study in a panel data setting with a deductive research approach. The practical method is a regression analysis that assesses the value relevance of CSR measures at the OMX Stockholm for the years of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2013. The study encompasses 349 Small-, medium- and large-sized companies and has a total of 1429 observations, which have been subject to statistical significance tests. Results and analysis: The results show that social, environmental and overall CSR ratings are value relevant and associated with lower market values. There also seems to be little impact on results by including company size as a variable. Furthermore the results of this study differ from previous research, implying that results are very sensitive to changes in the regression model. Conclusion: The results of the study lead us to believe that size has little impact on how value relevant social ratings are. This implies that regardless theory such as the resource-based and legitimacy theory these cannot be supported in practice among Swedish firms listed at OMX Stockholm. Furthermore, our method gives different results with regard to previous research done on the Swedish market and indicates that there is a negative relationship between CSR ratings and market value.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, November, 1994. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-113). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, June 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The use of customer ratings to evaluate worker performance is increasingly worrisome because of its widespread use in the gig-economy. As scholars in computer and social sciences denounce, this practice entails the risk of producing discriminatory outcomes, by reproducing biases existing in society. By drawing an analogy with discriminatory practices adopted by an employer to satisfy its customers' preferences, we propose a legal analysis of this phenomenon grounded in EU non-discrimination law. Thus, we first analyse the issues related to the application of non-discrimination law to (alleged) self-employed workers. Then, we address the lack of access for the individual worker to the data regarding customers' ratings. We conclude by arguing that the use of customer ratings should be considered as a suspect criterion, while the current (EU) non-discrimination laws should be modernised through a clearer inclusion of (alleged) self-employed workers. / Series: ohne Reihe

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:08:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo255_1.pdf: 546370 bytes, checksum: 36238f887c1243b1677559bcdbc93462 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Alagoas / Em um mercado competitivo, algumas empresas procuram se diferenciar como empresas com boa governança , e assim, tornam-se mais atraentes para aos investidores, aumentando a quantidade de investidores interessados em alocar recursos em seus projetos. Outro aspecto relevante para os investidores são os ratings de crédito, que auxiliam no processo de compra ou venda de títulos destas empresas. O objetivo principal deste estudo é verificar se a qualidade das práticas de governança corporativa das empresas listadas na Bovespa tem alguma relação com a qualidade dos ratings e o spread das debêntures emitidas pelas empresas, entre 2005 e 2007. Os dados foram coletados no site da Comissão de Valores Mobiliários e do Sistema Nacional de Debêntures e tratados com a utilização do método Probit Ordenado e Mínimos Quadrados Ordinários. Os resultados mostraram que as práticas de governança (medido pelo IGC) influenciam negativamente a qualidade de crédito, em relação à variável concentração de propriedade (CP) quando em substituição ao IGC apresentou sinal positivo, resultado que corrobora com outros estudos semelhantes. Com relação ao spread obteve-se resultados não conclusivos, pois o índice de governança não apresentou sinal constante em conjunto com a variável de desempenho ROA. No entanto, ao substituir o índice de governança pela variável de concentração de propriedade foi encontrada uma relação negativa com o spread, sinalizando que os spreads pagos pelas empresas tendem a ser menores com a alta concentração de propriedade

The present study investigated the impact of a number of assessor characteristics upon the relative contribution of individual assessor ratings to the final assessment centre decision. Berger, Cohen and Zelditch (1966) have suggested that status characteristics such as gender can affect the influence hierarchy of the group in that women are seen to be of a lower status than men and as such are allowed less influence over the group task. It was therefore proposed that male assessors would have more influence over the final assessment centre decision than female assessors. It has also been suggested that personality characteristics may affect the amount of influence that an individual is allowed over a group discussion. Previous literature has proposed that individuals who demonstrate high dominance and masculinity and low femininity may be allowed more influence over a group decision. The present study also proposes therefore that assessors who show high dominance or masculinity and low femininity will have more influence over the consensus discussion in an assessment centre. These hypotheses were investigated using two alternate studies. The first of these consisted of a laboratory-based simulation of an assessment centre. The results showed that sex, dominance and masculinity did not have an impact on influence, whereas femininity had a negative effect in that assessors who were less feminine had more influence over the consensus discussion. The second study was designed to assess the external validity of the findings of the first study using information that from archive records of candidates who participated in a real life assessment centre. The results demonstrated an effect of sex but not of femininity upon influence therefore contradicting the findings of study one. These findings are discussed with regard to the literature on sex and personality differences in group-decision-making.

The objective of this investigation is the development of an instrument for use by administrators, faculty members, and students in teachers training colleges in Bangkok, Thailand for the measurement and evaluation of the total requirements, responsibilities, and activities of faculty members. The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating faculty performance effectiveness, as a means of improving instruction and learning, and as a standard for faculty promotion in Bangkok's teachers training colleges.

The purpose of this study was to devise and test a rating scale for humanities division chairpersons in four community colleges. The study sought resolution of the following problems: determine humanities division faculty's perceptions of effective and ineffective characteristics of humanities division chairpersons; determine the validity and estimates of reliability for the Humanities Division Chairperson Scale (HDCRS); and to determine the relationship that existed between the responses of the faculty and selected demographic variables and division chairperson's self-evaluation.

Music’s allure lies in its power to stir the emotions. But the relation between the physical properties of an acoustic signal and its emotional impact remains an open area of research. This paper reports the results and possible implications of a pilot study and survey used to construct an emotion index for subjective ratings of music. The dimensions of pleasure and arousal exhibit high reliability. Eighty-five participants’ ratings of 100 song excerpts are used to benchmark the predictive accuracy of several combinations of acoustic preprocessing and statistical learning algorithms. The Euclidean distance between acoustic representations of an excerpt and corresponding emotionweighted visualizations of a corpus of music excerpts provided predictor variables for linear regression that resulted in the highest predictive accuracy of mean pleasure and arousal values of test songs. This new technique also generated visualizations that show how rhythm, pitch, and loudness interrelate to influence our appreciation of the emotional content of music.