Over time the tourism industry has been expanding at an exponential rate to the point that around 1 billion people will have travelled during the year of 2012 (UNWTO, 2012b). This massive amount of people has allowed for the degradation and destruction of multiple touristic destinations around the world. The great numbers of tourist have also negatively impacted the social and economic aspects of the touristic destinations. The current destructive path of the tourism industry has prompted the development of more sustainable and responsible types of tourism. One of the key players in the tourism industry that could address the topics of sustainable and responsible tourism is the tour operator. A path that tour operators can follow to address this destructive path of tourism is through corporate responsibility. Most of the other industries are in more advanced stages of approaching corporate responsibility while the tourism industry is still within the good practice phase of corporate responsibility. This aim of this study is to analyse what a group of tour operators are reporting concerning corporate responsibility. The questions focus on the different aspects the tour operators are communicating concerning their corporate responsibility and does this corporate responsibility communication add value to the consumer. The study shows that the tour operators are not exactly communicating their responsibility similar across the board, which shows the communication fragmentation among the tour operators. Most the tour operators mention corporate responsibility through the lens of sustainable or responsible tourism. Through this that the tour operators discuss their sustainable tourism or responsible tourism could possibly lead to adding consumer value to thetourists.

A growing concern among investors for social responsibility in relation to the business world and its effect on the environment, society, and government has increased and therefore different types of stock indices and funds that incorporate socially responsible ideals have been developed. However, a literature review revealed that there does not seem to be much information about the volatility of Green Funds or Socially Responsible Investments (SRI). Volatility is an important part of understanding the financial markets and is used by many to understand asset allocation, risk management, option pricing and many other functions. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the volatility performance of SRIs, REFs and Conventional Indices by using different models CAPM, SR, JA and EGARCH, and monthly and daily data from the US, UK, Japan and Eurozone financial markets to compare results.   This thesis has been conducted by following an objective ontological and positivist epistemological position, because the data used for analysis in this thesis is independent from the author and has studied what actually exists, not what the author seeks to interpret. The research approach is functionalist, because this thesis sought to explain how the investments function in relation to volatility comparisons in different financial markets and if this volatility can be predicted through a framework of rules designed by previous researchers. The design is a deductive study of quantitative, longitudinal, secondary data, because hypotheses are derived from theory to test the volatility of time series data between the year 2007 and 2012 through empirical evidence.   Statistical evidence was found to suggest that the EGARCH model for volatility measurement is the best fit to model volatility and daily data can give more information and better consistency between results. SRIs were found to be less volatile than CIs in all financial markets; REFs were found more volatile than CIs in the US and Eurozone markets but not in the UK and Japan markets; REFs were found to be more volatile than SRIs in all markets except the UK; REFs were also found to be more volatile than SRIs and CIs during a recession in all markets except the UK. Evidence also indicated that the correlations between REFs and SRIs in the US and Eurozone were significant, but not significant in the UK and Japan market samples. The correlations were low between the UK and Japan SRIs, Japan and Eurozone SRIs and Japan SRI and Eurozone REF, which suggest that an investor may consider to diversify between these investments. However, all other statistically significant correlations between financial markets were high and could consequentially deliver poor long term investment performance.

This study on engagement in environmental activism can offer valuable insights into how Ontario’s young people come to be responsible stewards of the earth. This research seeks to understand the narrative complexities put forth by teachers and students (Gr. 11-12) about the influence school plays for environmental activists. The teachers’ involvement with activism is mediated by students and the social networks that support their actions. The students’ involvement in action is influenced by teacher mentors, learning about/in the environment, and having a venue for activism. These findings suggest that in order to live up to Acting Today, Shaping Tomorrow schools should be seeking to have at least one environmentally literate teacher who wants to provide students with a venue for action. To assist the teachers and students with activism, there needs to be support for environmental action initiatives from the school administration and the community.

In the United States, the state of fathering has been a concern across all racial groups. Approximately 73% of Black men father children prior to marriage in comparison to 56% of Hispanic men and 30% of White men. The proportion of children born outside of marriage rose from 40% to 47% between 2002 and 2006-2010 (Martinez, Daniels, & Chandra, 2012). Shifts in economic opportunities, cultural, social, and political factors have strong influences on the way in which fatherhood is defined, experienced, and judged. Although there is a plethora of research on fathering involvement in the area of non-resident fathering, this research is dominated by a sampling pool of middle-class European Americans. The purpose of this study was to examine parenting practices of non-residential African American fathers residing in the Midwest. I explored how these men defined what it meant to be a father and their perceptions of the influences on their fathering behaviors. Ten African American non-residential fathers from the Midwest were interviewed utilizing a phenomenological interview approach. Data were collected using one-hour semi-structured interviews that were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. The data were then critically and rigorously analyzed, utilizing a four part coding, data analytic method including (1) applying open coding to identify emerging concepts, (2) applying in vivo coding by grouping similar comments into categories based on their common properties, (3) applying axial coding to group codes and to create themes, and (4) organized themes into categories that was based on the theory of planned behavior constructs. Five thematic domains (i.e. external variables, attitudes towards behavior, subjective norms, perceived control, and intentions), along with seventeen themes emerged from the phenomenology data analysis procedure including: bonding, father vs. sperm donor, father warmth, identity, father roles, influences, number of children, parent’s individual differences, sex and age of the child, employment, financial support, emotions, inter-parental conflict, inter-parental relationships, relationship quality, distance, and limit setting. Findings from this study lead to several recommendations for ways to strengthen the role of fathers within the non-residential family dynamic, with the ultimate goal of improving the health and well-being of all the members of the family.

The study critically reviews the application of the Sharia investment screening process, from both Sharia and practical perspectives. In practice, there appears to be inconsistencies in the Sharia investment screening criteria among Islamic investment institutions, especially in terms of the tolerance level, as well as the changing of the Sharia rules. This certainly affects the confidence in the Sharia screening criteria standards, which might adversely affect the Islamic mutual funds industry. The non-income generating aspects, such as social and environmental concerns, are not incorporated in the contemporary Islamic investment screening process. This seems to be rather paradoxical, since it contradicts the Sharia-embedded ethical values of fairness, justice and equity. The thesis contends that external audits regarding the implementation of Sharia rules should be adopted to ensure the compliance of the investment with Sharia guidelines. Furthermore, it is desirable for Sharia boards to adopt corporate governance practice and take proactive roles, especially in Muslim countries, in order to influence companies to adopt Sharia-compliant investment practices. The tolerance levels of conventional finance activities of companies in Muslim countries should be re-evaluated and lowered in the Islamic investment screening criteria. This is partly due to the popularity and wide availability of Islamic banking and alternative Sharia instruments to interest-based finance, coupled with the fact that Muslim shareholders form the majority and hence, can vote to influence companies to adopt Sharia-compliant financing modes. In addition, the study provides empirical evidence that the Sharia screening process does not seem to have an adverse impact on either the absolute or the risk-adjusted performance of Islamic equity mutual funds in Saudi Arabia, compared to their conventional counterpart equity mutual funds and also compared to their market benchmarks. This is regardless of the geographical investment focus subgroup examined and the market benchmark used (whether Islamic or conventional). Furthermore, the systematic risk analysis shows that in most cases Islamic equity mutual funds in Saudi Arabia tend to be significantly less exposed to market risk compared to their conventional counterpart equity mutual funds, and compared to their conventional market benchmarks. Thus, the assumption that Sharia investment constraints lead to inferior performance and riskier investment portfolios because of the relatively limited investment universe seems to be rejected. This implies that Muslim investors in Saudi Arabia can choose Islamic investments that are consistent with their beliefs without being forced to either sacrifice performance or expose themselves to higher risk. The investment style analysis also shows that the Sharia screening process does not seem to influence Islamic equity mutual funds in Saudi Arabia towards small or growth companies compared to their conventional counterparts of similar geographical investment focus. Moreover, the study provides empirical evidence that the performance difference between Islamic and conventional socially responsible indices is insignificant despite applying different sets of screening criteria. However, Islamic indices tend to be associated with relatively lower systematic risk compared to their conventional socially responsible counterparts. Therefore, Islamic investment portfolios can be marketed to socially responsible investors who share similar beliefs in terms of excluding certain industries such as tobacco, alcohol, pornography, defense, etc., in spite of no financial filters being used by conventional socially responsible investors. This finding is especially appealing in Muslim countries where there are usually no mutual funds categorized as socially responsible, but rather Islamic. Moreover, the study also provides empirical evidence that incorporating conventional sustainability criteria into the traditional Sharia screening process does not lead to inferior performance or higher exposure to systematic risk. The results indicate that regardless of the restriction used - whether Islamic, socially responsible or Islamic socially responsible - restricted investment portfolios do not seem to be associated with inferior performance or higher exposure to risk. This finding opens the door for Sharia scholars and Muslim investors to reconsider broader social and environmental aspects as part of the Sharia investment screening process. With regards to investment style, Islamic and Islamic socially responsible indices seem to be skewed towards growth cap as compared to their conventional and conventional socially responsible indices, while Islamic socially responsible also leans towards a large cap. This implies that despite the performance similarity between, Islamic, conventional and conventional socially responsible indices, the returns driver of each type of investment tends to be different.

Business leaders are increasingly responsible for the societal and environmental impacts of their actions. Yet conceptual views on responsible leadership differ in their definitions and theoretical foundations. This study attempts to reconcile these diverse views and uncover the phenomenon from a business leader's point of view. Based on rational egoism theory, this article proposes a formal mathematical model of responsible leadership that considers different types of incentives for stakeholder engagement. The analyses reveal that monetary and instrumental incentives are neither sufficient nor necessary for business leaders to consider societal and environmental stakeholder needs. Non-monetary and non-instrumental incentives, such as leaders' values and authenticity, as well as their planning horizons, counterbalance pure monetary and instrumental orientations. The model in this article complements the growing body of research on responsible leadership by reconciling its various conceptual views and providing a foundation for future theory development and testing.

Exploring the construct of social-responsibility orientation across three Asian and two Western societies (Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and the United States), we show evidence that top-level executives in these societies hold fundamentally different beliefs about their responsibilities toward different stakeholders, with concomitant implications for their understanding and enactment of responsible leadership. We further find that these variations are more closely aligned with institutional factors than with cultural variables, suggesting a need to clarify the connection between culture and institutions on the one hand and culture and social-responsibility orientations on the other. (authors' abstract)

This study on engagement in environmental activism can offer valuable insights into how Ontario’s young people come to be responsible stewards of the earth. This research seeks to understand the narrative complexities put forth by teachers and students (Gr. 11-12) about the influence school plays for environmental activists. The teachers’ involvement with activism is mediated by students and the social networks that support their actions. The students’ involvement in action is influenced by teacher mentors, learning about/in the environment, and having a venue for activism. These findings suggest that in order to live up to Acting Today, Shaping Tomorrow schools should be seeking to have at least one environmentally literate teacher who wants to provide students with a venue for action. To assist the teachers and students with activism, there needs to be support for environmental action initiatives from the school administration and the community.

In Canada, individuals accused of a criminal offence can raise a defence of Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD), stating they were suffering from a mental disorder that rendered them incapable of appreciating the nature or quality of the act, or of appreciating that it was wrong. Individuals found NCRMD are then rendered under the jurisdiction of a provincial mental health review board tasked with evaluating whether or not the individual represents a significant risk to the safety of the public. This study adopted a methodological approach using qualitative content analysis to investigate the construction of risk in the decision-making process of the Ontario Mental Health Review Board (ORB). Results from the analysis of 30 printed rationales for decision, the justificatory document for any disposition made by a review board, indicate some ambiguity in conceptualizing risk and justifying the dispositions made by the ORB. In an effort to open the black-box of these justificatory documents, this study notes the objectivity effect of a medicalized language that obfuscates understanding of terms used by the ORB to justify risk assessments. Ultimately, the complexity of the notion of risk is reduced to a function of medical-biological psychiatric diagnostics and intervention, community or social normativity, and secondary risk management (defensive decision-making by professionals involved in the review process). These interpretations are then discussed in terms of policy implications under a new politics of uncertainty (Power, 2004).

Identifying factors that affect the flow of mutual fund capital and betweenmutualfund types hasthe potential, among others,to relief fund management and investors from unnecessary administrative costs. This study investigated the role media reported weather shocks have on socially responsible and conventional mutual trust funds’capital flow.The study also has compared the magnitude of influence media reported weather shocks has on capital flow between socially responsible-and convectional mutualtrustfunds.It gives conclusionafter empirically studying all accessible socially responsible mutual trust fundswith relevant accessible financial data, originated, and actively traded in the Swedish financial market with the Swedish currency (Kronor) as well as taking conventional mutual trustfundswith similar maturity. And, the study result shows that media reported weather shocks has statistically significant role in the flow of capital, on bothsocially responsible-and conventional mutual funds in Sweden. It also shows that there is no significant difference in the role media reported weather shocks play between the two fundtypes. The result is concurrent with Hirshleifer & Shumway (2003)’s study which indicate that weather affecting investors mood and behavior. The result is interesting as it implicates to the psychological and emotional factorsplaying a significant role in affecting the flow of investment capital in general, in contrast to the rational economic behavior characterized by fund return and risk performance.