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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between annual report human capital (HC) disclosures and HC management practices.

The paper used two sets of data. Disclosure data were collected from annual reports. Data on management practices was collected by e‐mail questionnaire. Sixteen of the most traded companies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange (SSE) were included in the study.

Results indicated that there is limited association between the two sets of data. Even though the association was significant on an aggregate level, more detailed testing showed no systematic associations. There was, however, a significant association between internal management practices and companies' perceived importance of disclosure, even though this was not reflected in actual disclosure.

The most important limitations of the study are that it was based on a small non‐random sample of companies from only one country and used annual report disclosures from a single year. Also, the study focuses on quantity rather than quality of disclosures.

A feature of previous research is that it tends to focus on HC (intellectual capital) from either an external or internal perspective. This study is the first that links HC annual report disclosure and internal HC management practices.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

The Neoclassical approach to analysing personal choice is compared with an approach contained in a Biblical Christian mode of analysis. This paper compares the Neoclassical and Christian positions via analysis of characteristics of the Neoclassical rational choice model. The main characteristic examined is a basic assumption of the rational choice model that human choice is explained as the optimisation of utility via rational self‐interest. The two positions are compared in terms of how they treat self‐interest and rationality, the degree to which basic assumptions about human behaviour are specified, the importance they attach to the realism of assumptions underlying their models, and the explanatory and predictive purposes for which the models are used. The conclusion of the comparison is that the Biblical Christian perspective encompasses the variables regarded as important in Neoclassical explanation, but presents them in the context of a more embracing worldview perspective than the Neoclassical. This Christian belief perspective is applicable to human behaviour in both “economic” and “non‐economic” domains.

The purpose of this chapter is to characterize knowledge organization (KO) as a field that is affected by geographic and diachronic variations in such a way that the recognition of a slanted KO could be considered an ethical option in the KO theory and practice. KO can be considered a dynamic social product that reflects a construction that is altered in space and time. Slants are inherent to any organization of knowledge and are manifested in multiple dimensions. There is a need to find a balance between the respect for the local specificities and the necessity of global access to information. Conceptual and terminological time and space slants in KO are presented. Examples of possible day-by-day searches are analyzed in order to evidence the different cultures that are involved in the different social-linguistic characteristics. The recognition of time and space as operational axes for an ethical approach to a slanted KO is important because: (a) it tries to intervene in represented and possibly disseminated biases that are practiced so far; (b) it recognizes the coexistence of diverse groups and communities, with local characteristics, meanings, and idiosyncrasies, that will need to communicate with each other in global information systems of information; and (c) it can promote an intercultural ethics of mediation, culturally warranted, in order to avoid cultural damages and to guarantee that descriptions can reflect the past while keeping an eye in the future, based on KOS whose functionality remains over time.

Fashionable brands need to develop brand attachment so that their consumers become fans and act as apostles by recommending them. But how can companies develop brand attachment? This paper aims to investigate, on the one hand, the role of four drivers of brand attachment (perceived quality, brand personality, credibility and awareness) and three effects (loyalty, buying intention and perceived risk). On the other hand, three groups of fashionable brands with different positioning strategies are compared to analyze if the brand positioning strategy moderates the proposed relationships in the analyzed country.

To achieve the two objectives, surveys with the same instrument were conducted twice, and a sample of 1,922 consumers from the three most populated cities of Ecuador (Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca) took part in the study. They chose fashionable brands with functional (n = 1,066), hedonic (n = 463) and symbolic (n = 393) positioning strategies. They mentioned, for example, functional brands such as Avon, La Lechera, Nokia or Converse; hedonic brands such as Christian Dior, Oreo, Apple or Timberland and symbolic brands such as Axe, Coca-Cola/Coke, Motorola or DBond.

The results of this study show that (1) brand positioning affects attachment, (2) a functional positioning leads to higher consumers' loyalty, (3) a hedonic positioning leads to the strongest brand personality and credibility and (4) a symbolic positioning seems to be the less useful option in terms of desired effects.

First, this paper considers three different subscenarios in launching a new product: hedonic, functional and symbolic brand positioning. The comparison of these three scenarios makes progress with respect to previous research since the connection between consumers' brand attachment and positioning brand strategy has been scarcely addressed to date. Second, no study has been found that assesses the simultaneous effect of four key antecedents capable of enhancing brand attachment (personality, quality, awareness and credibility), causing three major effects (loyalty, purchase intention and decrease in perceived risk).

The archaeological record of small-scale societies is replete with examples of people expending considerable labor to craft both places and objects for communal rituals. Archaeologists often infer these efforts to have been the product of aspiring elites. This chapter focuses instead on the larger community responsible for the construction of places and objects, through a ritual economy analysis of the social logic people use to organize the production of ritual places and paraphernalia. A review of ethnographic and archaeological data suggests that the production of communal ritual places often involves the creation of sociograms, while the production of objects for use within these places encompasses a web of complementary and competitive relations. Two examples of large-scale communal ritual spaces, the early British Neolithic causewayed enclosures and the Ohio Hopewell geometric earthworks, are explored in light of these ethnographic and archaeological patterns.

After Papua New Guinea’s contact with the western world several western scholars turned their attention toward the indigenous population and showed a special interest in the cults that were formed afterward as well as the (following) conversions of almost all indigenous population to the Christian faith. While the majority of the literature focuses on this process either as an act of desperation or as one of calculation, this chapter focuses on the practices in the actual process of “becoming a Christian,” viewing them as expressions of self-change and thus offering a new perspective for understanding those changes. Drawing on and expanding interactionist ideas of dramatic self-change, this chapter identifies the practices used to portray that a change of identity has occurred. Data was gathered through the analysis of existing anthropological and ethnological work, which provides information about a broad range of tribes, yet is limited to the information provided by the respective researcher. The practices found are divided into practices which need not be secured, which demonstrate the acceptance of the new religion in a way that is usually not challenged (like public confessions, verbal denigration of the old tradition, integration into the new structure, adopting new symbols, and destroying the old) and practices that need to be secured, ones which might be regarded as odd (like dramatizing enlightenment) and thus need another way of accounting to secure them from being challenged.

At present, Higher Education Institutions around the world are developing and implementing university social responsibility(USR) as part of their strategy. They do so because they seek to assure the quality of higher education systems, as well as to positively impact their surrounding environment. This chapter aims to analyze the university’s role in the process of building social responsibility in line with efforts to adequately fulfill its three missions of teaching, research, and linking with society. The case study herein refers to the Universidad Panamericana (UP), a private university in Mexico with humanistic and Christian roots, which recently celebrated its 50th year. The analysis demonstrates the UP’s significant efforts to build a social responsibility system and its achievement of significant social impact through programs that support the community, healthcare, and people with disabilities. However, management of USR should be done at an institutional level and across the board.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

The archives of François Perroux deposited at IMEC bear witness to the fact that he has devoted, beyond his scientific production, great energy to the most material aspects of research: setting up and maintaining networks to publicize his work and that of other economists, either directly or through the institutes and the journals he headed; organize seminars and symposiums; take care of relations with colleagues and the press; create collections and journals; and so on.

In this chapter, we concentrate our attention on the archives relating to the management of the institutes, those attesting to the lines and themes of the producer’s research, and those concerning his important correspondence.

Thanks to the archives deposited at IMEC, it is possible to follow the development of the theoretical work of François Perroux by contextualizing it. They also show the itinerary of a Christian intellectual, whose attachment to social Catholicism constitutes a guiding thread and is reflected in all his activities. Finally, the archives illuminate his substantial role in the institutionalization of research in economics in the France of the twentieth century.