This research sought to find local evidence within the Israeli context that corporate social responsibility can have positive impact on corporate financial performance, similar to research findings in leading western economies. Such local based evidence, if found, would encourage the inclusion of CSR as part of strategic management of companies in Israel. The investigation focused on a sample of leading companies in Israel, forming part of the TA-100 stock exchange index, and was undertaken between 2005 and 2006. The research used quantitative investigation of secondary data on financial performance that is available for companies traded on the stock exchange. It included social responsibility ranking undertaken by the association of 'Business for social responsibility in Israel' – MAALA. This data was used to compare financial performance between groups of companies with different levels of social responsibility. The research found that higher social responsibility for companies in Israel was associated with higher financial performance, in comparison to their counterpart companies ranked as lower in social responsibility. However at the extreme, a very high level of social responsibility is associated with decline in financial performance. The research conclusion was that companies in Israel face the same CSR-to-CFP relationship, as their counterparts in leading western economies. This provides the rationale for Israeli companies to incorporate social responsibility as part of their business strategy aimed at improving financial performance.

The author in this thesis titled Children and young people from socially excluded localities and their failure in non-formal education deals with the causes of failure of children and young people from socially excluded localities in the process of informal education. Informal education is now perceived as a group, institutionalized, planned process that takes place outside or out of the formal education curriculum, ie, in free, "optional" or after-school time. To determine the causes of failure of children and youth in the formal education process, the chosen method of individual interviews. The research sample consisted of five clients open club. People in Need in Bilina, who have failed or are failing in the process of informal learning in institutionalized facilities. In conclusion there are recommendations for working with this client segment. Keywords: Rom, ethnic minority, socially excluded, socially excluded localities, community, neformal education

Recent technological advances have witnessed the rapid encroachment of computing systems into our social spaces. Their acceptance in these social spaces by other occupants, however, might be mostly contingent on their social appropriateness. Notions of social appropriateness might seem vague but even people who don’t act on this commonsense knowledge, and accord to social norms, can sometimes find themselves ostracized from society. It is reflected in behavior that supports a sense of successful engagement and connection. Such behavior communicates a desire to be accepted and a willingness to engage, as opposed to inappropriateness that conveys indifference, rejection or even danger. As social actors, how can systems improve their interactions with us in order to better succeed at their tasks? Perhaps, more interestingly, how might they even improve our communications with each other? In this thesis we describe a framework to identify opportunities to design systems that can begin to act appropriately in social settings, which we call Considerate Systems. It includes a design process and guidelines, which allows an interaction to be viewed from the perspectives of the user, system and task. It also includes an architecture that guides the addition of productive social responses to interactive systems. We demonstrate the utility of this framework by exploring two types of scenarios that impact social interactions in contrasting ways. Remote interactions (such as on a conference call) suffer from an impinging of social cues that people rely on while communicating. On the other hand, situated multitasking interactions (such as texting while driving) can easily overwhelm users and detract from their performance. The framework is applied towards the design of autonomous agents tackling problems endemic to such scenarios. We evaluate their success with respect to specific scenario goals. We conclude by noting that while the challenges of instilling computing systems with a sense of appropriateness seem daunting, our productive use of systems can be enhanced with them.

The aim of this this diploma thesis is to explore the relationship between the art galleries and the public. The key focus is to analyze indispensable approaches galleries should employ in order to survive on the cultural market. Firstly, the thesis discusses the economic aspects with the particular focus on the value added to the management and marketing of galleries. The next part deals with the social aspects. In addition to the gallery visitors and the influence of gallery interior on the visitor, the division of art on commercial and non-commercial sphere is explored. Furthermore, the term "socially engaged art" will be specified. The final discussion then shows the previous research by presenting practical examples to illustrate the importance of the issue, particularly focusing on the Egon Schiele Art Center in Český Krumlov.

The master thesis is focused on the prevention of addictions in the education of pupils with social disadvantage. The theoretical part deals with the period of adolescence and describes its biological and psycho - social aspects. The attention is focused mainly on pupils with the need for support in education due to social disadvantage. The thesis defines this term, deals with individual manifestations of social disadvantage and supports these pupils. The following part is dedicated to the topic of addiction and risks of development of addiction in adolescents. Thetheoretical part also describes specific risks of substance and non-substance dependencies. The last chapter introduces the theme of prevention in school and preventive program. The practical part consists of there search were three elementary schools in Prague participated. The thesis describes them and analysis their preventive programs. The research was based on the methods of the questionaire, which was presented to pupils and interviews with prevention methodologies and pupils of the sixth grade. The research aimes on finding specific recommendations for the prevention of addictions in the education of pupils with social disadvantage. These recommendations include, for example, meetings with abstinent, demontration of the...

The study assessed how stimuli that contradict pre-experimental histories affect the formation of new relations. The study also assessed whether social variables such as race would influence college students’ perceptions of people of different races and job types. Twenty-six college students at a Midwestern University participated in the study. During the pre-test, participants rated the degree of “Good” or “Bad” of various pictures of African American males, police officers, and random objects on a Likert-type scale. Next, based on their pre-test results, participants completed a match to sample task that paired pictures of African American males and police officers opposite of their initial perceptions. Afterward, all participants again completed the Likert-scale rating task. Pre-test results revealed that some participants demonstrated strong negative pre-experimental biases toward police officers and that the race of the participants influenced their pre-test ratings. Individual data showed that 22 out of 24 participants changed their perceptions for at least one stimulus. Match to sample and post-test results revealed that participants with strong pre-experimental biases took more trials to complete the task, scored less accurately when conditions included socially loaded stimuli, and were less likely to change mean ratings for police officers during the post-test rating scale.

O modelo econômico capitalista é constantemente questionado quanto à sua débil capacidade de distribuir riqueza e, por consequência, linhas de pensamento com modelos alternativos são frequentemente propostas. Uma linha de pensamento que tem ganhado notoriedade toma o sistema capitalista atual como ponto de partida, não propõe uma ruptura, mas uma evolução do seu conceito ao inserir premissas de impacto social. Nesse modelo, algumas definições de negócios têm sido cunhadas, como negócios sociais, negócios inclusivos e empreendimentos sociais. Este projeto tomou como ponto de partida a experiência vivida em uma startup de recrutamento de pessoal para posições operacionais, a ADS, e seu plano de transformação do modelo de negócio atual para um negócio inclusivo, onde buscava não apenas inserir a temática responsabilidade social em suas ações mas incluí-la em sua atividade central como forma de solução a um problema operacional do empreendimento. Para atender ao objetivo da empresa, o estudo, uma pesquisa-ação, propôs e testou um modelo de negócio inclusivo no mercado de recrutamento e seleção. Para tanto, percorreu as etapas de: (1) investigação (análise do caso de negócio inclusivo da Danone Kiteiras e execução de teste); (2) proposição (planejamento do negócio); (3) ação (execução do plano de negócio ao longo de onze meses). O estudo revelou, ainda na primeira etapa da pesquisa, a necessidade de romper com o modelo de negócio da ADS, uma consultoria de recrutamento e seleção, e criar uma plataforma que conectasse empregadores e mães, que fariam o trabalho de recrutar e selecionar profissionais em suas comunidades. Nesse novo modelo, a empresa nascente (Kunla) assumiu a responsabilidade de capacitar as mães para entregarem o serviço de recrutamento e seleção (estruturar a oferta) e, ainda, vender o serviço dessas mulheres a empresas (gerar demanda). Ao final dos onze ciclos de execução do plano de negócio, a pesquisa conseguiu viabilizar um modelo operacional inclusivo para a atividade de recrutamento e seleção, dando condições à empresa de seguir adiante para a etapa de comercialização massiva do serviço. / The capitalist economic model is constantly questioned about its weak ability to distribute wealth and, as consequence, lines of thought with alternative models are often proposed. A line of thought that has gained notoriety takes the current capitalist system as a starting point, does not propose a rupture, but an evolution of its concept by inserting assumptions of social impact in it. In this model, some business definitions have been minted, such as social business, socially inclusive business, and social enterprises. This project took as its starting point the experience of a staff recruitment startup focused on operational positions, ADS, and its plan to transform the current business model into a socially inclusive business, where it sought not only to insert the social responsibility theme in its actions, but include it in its central activity as a way of solving an operational problem of the enterprise. To meet the company\'s goal, the study, an action-researched, proposed and tested a socially inclusive business model in the recruitment and selection market. To do so, it went through the steps of (1) investigation (analysis of Danone´s Kiteiras\'s socially inclusive business case and testing); (2) proposition (business planning); (3) action (execution of the business plan over eleven months). The study also revealed the need to break up with the ADS business model, a recruitment and selection consultancy, and create a platform that would connect employers and mothers, who would do the job of recruiting and selecting professionals in their communities. In this new model, the startup company (Kunla) assumed the responsibility of capacitating the mothers in order to deliver the recruitment and selection service (structuring the offer) and also selling of these women´s services to companies (generate demand). By the end of the eleven cycles executing the business plan, the research succeeded in building an inclusive operational model for the recruitment and selection activity, enabling the company to move forward to mass marketing the service.

In recent years socially responsible investing has become an increasingly more popular subject with both private and institutional investors. At the same time, a number of scientific papers have been published on socially responsible investments (SRIs), covering a broad range of topics, from what actually defines SRIs to the financial performance of SRI funds in contrast to non-SRI funds. In this paper, we revisit Markowitz' Portfolio Selection Theory and propose a modification allowing to incorporate not only asset-specific return and risk but also a social responsibility measure into the investment decision making process. Together with a risk-free asset, this results in a three-dimensional capital allocation plane that allows investors to custom-tailor their asset allocations and incorporate all personal preferences regarding return, risk and social responsibility. We apply the model to a set of over 6,231 international stocks and find that investors opting to maximize the social impact of their investments do indeed face a statistically significant decrease in expected returns. However, the social responsibility/risk-optimal portfolio yields a statistically significant higher social responsibility rating than the return/risk-optimal portfolio.

This study was designed to determine the effects of play therapy on the adjustment of children identified as socially and psychologically maladjusted. The effects of play therapy on six variables were investigated. Those variables were: social adjustment, personal adjustment, self-concept, school-related self-concept, behavioral maturity as rated by the teacher, and inferred self-concept as rated by the parent. The general nature of the research hypotheses was that play therapy would effect positive change in the children on the six variables. The results of the study led to the conclusion that during a fifteen-week period play therapy effects statistically significant change in social adjustment, but not in personal adjustment, self-concept, or behavior as perceived by others. Implications of the study based on observations of the experimenter were that all changes made during the therapy process were not reflected by the tests which were available. It was recommended that further research on the effects of play therapy place special emphasis on the selection or development of instruments to measure changes made during therapy.

This investigation examined the effect of a modeling/role playing counseling technique upon the social adjustment of second-grade socially withdrawn children. The specific hypotheses investigated dealt with changes in the socially withdrawn child's social adjustment as measured by a peer sociometric instrument, teacher rating, trained observer rating, and self-rating which were administered one week prior to the initial session. A one-way analysis of covariance was employed to test the hypotheses. The following conclusions are presented as a result of these findings: 1. The symbolic modeling/role playing procedure as utilized in this study is effective in increasing the frequency of social interaction of socially withdrawn children. 2. The symbolic modeling/role playing -procedure as utilized in this investigation is effective in increasing the sociometric status of socially withdrawn children. 3. The symbolic modeling/role playing counseling procedure as utilized in this study appears to be ineffective with respect to changing children's self-perception.