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1 – 10 of over 1000The cement industry's environmental implications place climate change at the centre of sector organisations' corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies, such as the Secil…
Abstract
Purpose
The cement industry's environmental implications place climate change at the centre of sector organisations' corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies, such as the Secil Group. The organisation's CSR policies definition, narrative framing and communication are fundamental, as they can affect its reputation. This article aims to highlight the climate change framing in the Secil Group sustainability report (SR) narrative.
Design/methodology/approach
The framing theory is applied to analyse the international and sectoral climate change regulatory measures and the Secil Group SR. Document analysis is used to characterise Secil SR as a communication tool. Qualitative content analysis is used to highlight how Secil and the international and sectoral regulatory measures on climate change frame their narrative and compare each other.
Findings
The international and sectoral regulatory measures on climate change and the Secil's SR broadly frame climate change, using ethical, efficiency and effectiveness, communication and relations and law and regulation framings. The Secil's Group SR also highlights the financial frame, exposing the challenge of reconciling economic with collective interests. There is room for researchers to explore the concepts of CSR, sustainability and environment, social and governance (ESG) through the lens of complementarity.
Originality/value
This study shows that the Wehmeier and Raaz (2012) model, created to study transparency, can be applied to other communication studies. This paper explores a case study and, for this reason, is not generalisable. Although, the method and theoretical framework can be applied to any organisation.
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Nancy Omolo and Paramu L. Mafongoya
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between gender and social capital in adapting to climate variability in the arid and semi-arid regions in Turkana in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between gender and social capital in adapting to climate variability in the arid and semi-arid regions in Turkana in Kenya.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper undertook literature review of secondary data sources, conducted focus group discussions (FGDs) and key informant interviews (KIIs). The statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze data for the quantitative part of the paper.
Findings
Vulnerability is influenced by age, gender, education and disability. Elderly women are considered to be the most vulnerable to climate variability and change because they are the poorest in the community, followed by elderly men, the disabled, female-headed households, married women, men and, finally, the youth. Less than 30 per cent of women and men in both Katilu and Loima are able to read and write. The cross-tabulation results show that there is a statistical significant relationship between gender, age and education level and climate change vulnerability. This implies that gender, age and education level have a significant effect on climate change vulnerability.
Research limitations/implications
The research coverage was limited to only two regions in Turkana because of time and economic constraints.
Practical implications
The lack of attention to gender in the climate change literature has time and again resulted in an oversimplification of women’s and men's experience of climate risks. Improved development assistance, investments and enhanced targeting of the truly vulnerable within pastoral societies demand an acceptance of underdevelopment in arid and semi-arid regions in Kenya because of historical imbalances in investment; the recognition that vulnerability of pastoralists is neither uniform nor universal and the need to consider differences like age, gender and education. Policy-makers should understand that pastoralists in the past have used indigenous knowledge to cope with and adapt to climate change. The current-recurrent and intensity droughts require investment in modern technology, equipping pastoralists with relevant information and skills to make them resilient to climate change and implementing existing and relevant policies for northern Kenya.
Social implications
This paper draws from several other efforts to show the critical relationships between gender, social capital and climate change. They are tracking adaptation and measuring development framework; ending drought emergencies common programme framework; and feminist evaluation approach.
Originality/value
This paper is important in identifying the link between gender, social capital and adaptation to climate change.
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The purpose of this paper aims to investigate the relationship between the audit firm's ethical climate and workplace bullying perceived by trainee auditors in Chinese audit firms.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper aims to investigate the relationship between the audit firm's ethical climate and workplace bullying perceived by trainee auditors in Chinese audit firms.
Design/methodology/approach
An Ethical Climate Questionnaire and a Negative Acts Questionnaire are adapted from the existing organization studies and business ethics literature to fit in the audit firm context and are administered in a survey on 205 trainee auditors with a four-month long work placement in audit firms. SPSS is used in statistical analyses and tests.
Findings
This study confirms that some but not all types of organizational ethical climate significantly affect the perceived workplace bullying in audit firms. The results of testing for the relations between workplace bullying and ethical climate after breaking down workplace bullying into the work-related and person-related bullying sub-categories provide some different conclusions. Besides the impacts of the ethical climate on workplace bullying, this paper also finds out that trainee auditor's gender, the leader–subordinate gender difference, firm size and audit engagement team size are more likely to affect the perception of one or more of the bullying categories in audit firms.
Practical implications
This study implies some guidance for the audit firms to establish healthy ethical climates that can help them to recruit, train and retain young skilled auditing professionals.
Social implications
The findings of this study imply that a healthy ethical climate can help develop the audit profession and markets by deterring workplace bullying in audit firms.
Originality/value
This paper extends the organizational studies on the impact of the audit firm's organizational ethical climate on workplace bullying in the auditing profession. It also extends the gender roles in organization studies by stratifying the levels of workplace harassment.
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Marc Zebisch, Stefan Schneiderbauer, Kerstin Fritzsche, Philip Bubeck, Stefan Kienberger, Walter Kahlenborn, Susanne Schwan and Till Below
This paper aims to present the “Vulnerability Sourcebook” methodology, a standardised framework for the assessment of climate vulnerability and risk in the context of adaptation…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present the “Vulnerability Sourcebook” methodology, a standardised framework for the assessment of climate vulnerability and risk in the context of adaptation planning. The Vulnerability Sourcebook has been developed for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and has been applied in more than twenty countries worldwide.
Design/methodology/approach
It is based on a participative development of so-called climate impact chains, which are an analytical concept to better understand, systemise and prioritise the climate factors as well as environmental and socio-economic factors that drive climate related threats, vulnerabilities and risks in a specific system. Impact chains serve as the backbone for an operational climate vulnerability assessment with indicators based on quantitative approaches (data, models) combined with expert assessments. In this paper, the authors present the concept and applications of the original Vulnerability Sourcebook, published in 2015, which was based on the IPCC AR4 concept of climate vulnerability. In Section 6 of this paper, the authors report how this concept has been adapted to the current IPCC AR5 concept of climate risks.
Findings
The application of the Sourcebook is demonstrated in three case studies in Bolivia, Pakistan and Burundi. The results indicate that particularly the participative development of impact chains helped with generating a common picture on climate vulnerabilities and commitment for adaptation planning within a region. The mixed methods approach (considering quantitative and qualitative information) allows for a flexible application in different contexts. Challenges are mainly the availability of climate (change) and socio-economic data, as well as the transparency of value-based decisions in the process.
Originality/value
The Vulnerability Sourcebook offers a standardised framework for the assessment of climate vulnerability and risk in the context of adaptation planning.
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Botong Xue, Feng Xu, Xin Luo and Merrill Warkentin
A growing number of studies have investigated the effect of ethical leadership on behavioral outcome of employees. However, considering the important role of ethics in IS…
Abstract
Purpose
A growing number of studies have investigated the effect of ethical leadership on behavioral outcome of employees. However, considering the important role of ethics in IS security, the security literature lacks a theoretical and empirical investigation of the relationship between ethical leadership and employees' security behavior, such as information security policy (ISP) violation. Drawing on social learning and social exchange theories, this paper empirically tests the impact of ethical leadership on employees' ISP violation intention through both information security climate (i.e. from a moral manager's perspective) and affective commitment (i.e. from a moral person's perspective).
Design/methodology/approach
The research was developed based on social learning theory and social exchange theory. To measure the variables in the model, the authors used and adapted measurement items from previous studies. The authors conducted a scenario-based survey with 339 valid responses to test and validate the research model.
Findings
Results indicated that information security climate fully mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and ISP violation intention. The authors also found that information security climate enhances the negative effect of affective commitment on ISP violation intention.
Originality/value
This research contributes to the literature of information security by introducing the role of ethical leadership and integrating two theories into our research model. This study also calls attention to how information security climate and affective commitment mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and employees' ISP violation intention. The theory-driven study provides important pragmatic guidance for enhancing the understanding of the importance of ethical leadership in information systems security research.
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Md. Zakir Hossain and Md. Ashiq Ur Rahman
The purpose of this paper is to examine pro-poor urban asset adaptation to climate variability and change. It constructs a conceptual framework that explores the appropriate asset…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine pro-poor urban asset adaptation to climate variability and change. It constructs a conceptual framework that explores the appropriate asset adaptation strategies for extreme poor households as well as the process of supporting these households and groups in accumulating these assets.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative data are obtained from life histories, key informant interviews (KIIs) and focus-group discussions (FGDs). These data are collected, coded and themed.
Findings
This research identifies that households among the urban extreme poor do their best to adapt to perceived climate changes; however, in the absence of savings, and access to credit and insurance, they are forced to adopt adverse coping strategies. Individual adaptation practices yield minimal results and are short lived and even harmful because the urban extreme poor are excluded from formal policies and institutions as they lack formal rights and entitlements. For the poorest, the process of facilitating and maintaining patron–client relationships is a central coping strategy. Social policy approaches are found to be effective in facilitating asset adaptation for the urban extreme poor because they contribute to greater resilience to climate change.
Originality/value
This study analyses the empirical evidence through the lens of a pro-poor asset-adaptation framework. It shows that the asset-transfer approach is an effective in building household-adaptation strategies. Equally important is the capacity to participate in and influence the institutions from which these people have previously been excluded.
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Anne-Sophie Gousse-Lessard, Philippe Gachon, Lily Lessard, Valérie Vermeulen, Maxime Boivin, Danielle Maltais, Elsa Landaverde, Mélissa Généreux, Bernard Motulsky and Julien Le Beller
The current pandemic and ongoing climate risks highlight the limited capacity of various systems, including health and social ones, to respond to population-scale and long-term…
Abstract
Purpose
The current pandemic and ongoing climate risks highlight the limited capacity of various systems, including health and social ones, to respond to population-scale and long-term threats. Practices to reduce the impacts on the health and well-being of populations must evolve from a reactive mode to preventive, proactive and concerted actions beginning at individual and community levels. Experiences and lessons learned from the pandemic will help to better prevent and reduce the psychosocial impacts of floods, or other hydroclimatic risks, in a climate change context.
Design/methodology/approach
The present paper first describes the complexity and the challenges associated with climate change and systemic risks. It also presents some systemic frameworks of mental health determinants, and provides an overview of the different types of psychosocial impacts of disasters. Through various Quebec case studies and using lessons learned from past and recent flood-related events, recommendations are made on how to better integrate individual and community factors in disaster response.
Findings
Results highlight the fact that people who have been affected by the events are significantly more likely to have mental health problems than those not exposed to flooding. They further demonstrate the adverse and long-term effects of floods on psychological health, notably stemming from indirect stressors at the community and institutional levels. Different strategies are proposed from individual-centered to systemic approaches, in putting forward the advantages from intersectoral and multirisk researches and interventions.
Originality/value
The establishment of an intersectoral flood network, namely the InterSectoral Flood Network of Québec (RIISQ), is presented as an interesting avenue to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and a systemic view of flood risks. Intersectoral work is proving to be a major issue in the management of systemic risks, and should concern communities, health and mental health professionals, and the various levels of governance. As climate change is called upon to lead to more and more systemic risks, close collaboration between all the areas concerned with the management of the factors of vulnerability and exposure of populations will be necessary to respond effectively to damages and impacts (direct and indirect) linked to new meteorological and compound hazards. This means as well to better integrate the communication managers into the risk management team.
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Nani Maiya Sujakhu, Sailesh Ranjitkar, Hua Yang, Yufang Su, Jianchu Xu and Jun He
This paper aims to document the adaptation strategies developed by local farmers to adjust to climate change and related hazards in Lijiang Prefecture in Southwest China, and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to document the adaptation strategies developed by local farmers to adjust to climate change and related hazards in Lijiang Prefecture in Southwest China, and quantify the determinants of the adaptation measures.
Design/methodology/approach
The study conducted a household survey with 433 respondents in Lijiang to documents adaptation measures. The authors used a multivariate probit model to quantify five categories of adaptation measures against a set of household features, extension and information, resources, social network, financial assets and perception variables.
Findings
The most significant determinants consisted of information on early climate warnings and impending hazards, ownership to land and livestock, irrigation membership in community-based organisations, household savings, cash crop farming and perceptions of climate change and its related hazards. Adaptation strategies and policies highlighting these determinants could help to improve climate change adaptation in the region.
Originality/value
This study quantified the determinants of adaptive strategies and mapped important determinants for the region that will provide farmers with the appropriate resources and information to implement the best practices for adapting to climatic changes. The method and findings could be useful and easily replicable for future agriculture policies.
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Constance Mambet Doue, Oscar Navarro Carrascal, Diego Restrepo, Nathalie Krien, Delphine Rommel, Colin Lemee, Marie Coquet, Denis Mercier and Ghozlane Fleury-Bahi
Based on social representation theory, this study aims to evaluate and analyze the similarities and differences between social representations of climate change held by people…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on social representation theory, this study aims to evaluate and analyze the similarities and differences between social representations of climate change held by people living in two territories, which have in common that they are exposed to coastal risks but have different socio-cultural contexts: on the one hand, Cartagena (Colombia) and on the other, Guadeloupe (French overseas department, France).
Design/methodology/approach
A double approach, both quantitative and qualitative, of social representation theory was adopted. The data collection was undertaken in two phases. First, the content and organization of social representation of climate change (SRCC) was examined with a quantitative study of 946 participants for both countries, followed by a qualitative study of 63 participants for both countries also.
Findings
The study finds unicity in the SRCC for the quantitative study. In contrast, the qualitative study highlights differences at the level of the institutional anchoring of the climate change phenomenon in these two different socioeconomic and political contexts.
Practical implications
These results are relevant for a reflection in terms of public policies for the prevention and management of collective natural risks, as well as for the promotion of ecological behavior adapted to political and ideological contexts.
Originality/value
The use of a multi-methodological approach (quantitative and qualitative) in the same research is valuable to confirm the importance of an in-depth study of the social representations of climate change because of the complexity of the phenomenon.
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Titay Zeleke, Fekadu Beyene, Temesgen Deressa, Jemal Yousuf and Temesgen Kebede
Change of climate is attributed to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere observed over comparable periods. The purpose of this paper is to explore…
Abstract
Purpose
Change of climate is attributed to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere observed over comparable periods. The purpose of this paper is to explore smallholder farmers' perceptions of climate change and compare it with meteorological data, as well as to identify perceived adaptation barriers and examine the factors that influence the choice of adaptation options in eastern Ethiopia.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 384 sample households were chosen from four districts of the zone. A cross-sectional survey was used to conduct the study. Primary data was acquired through key informant interviews, focus group discussions and semistructured interviews, whereas meteorological data was collected from the National Meteorological Service Agency of Ethiopia. A Mann–Kendall statistical test was used to analyze temperature and rainfall trends over 33 years. A multivariate probit (MVP) model was used to identify the determinants of farmers' choice of climate change adaptation strategies.
Findings
The result indicated that temperature was significantly increased, whereas rainfall was significantly reduced over the time span of 33 years. This change in climate over time was consistently perceived by farmers. Smallholder farmers use improved varieties of crops, crop diversification, adjusting planting dates, soil and water conservation practices, reducing livestock holdings, planting trees and small-scale irrigation adaptation strategies. Moreover, this study indicated that sex of the household head, landholding size, livestock ownership, access to extension, access to credit, social capital, market distance, access to climate change-related training, nonfarm income, agroecological setting and poverty status of the households significantly influence farmers’ choice of adaptation strategies.
Research limitations/implications
Further research is required to evaluate the economic impact of each adaptation options on the livelihood of smallholder farmers.
Practical implications
Institutional variables significantly influenced how farmers adapted to climate change, and all of these issues might potentially be addressed by improving institutional service delivery. To improve farm-level adaptation, local authorities are recommended to investigate the institutional service provision system while also taking demographic and agroecological factors in to account.
Originality/value
This study compared farmers' perceptions with temperature and rainfall trend analysis, which has been rarely addressed by other studies. This study adopts an MVP model and indicated the adaptation strategies that complement/substitute strategies each other. Furthermore, this study discovered that the choice of adaptation options differed between poor and nonpoor households, which has been overlooked in previous climate change adaptation research.
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