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This study aims to analyze the relationship between companies’ business ethics (BE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), with particular reference to policies toward employees, with the aim of understanding if and how the two concepts are linked and to foster a better management of the company-employee relationship through BE and CSR policies.

Through a content analysis, the authors study three issues related to employees disclosed in Code of Ethics (CE) and CSR report of a sample of Italian companies. Next, using a multivariate regression model, the authors examine the relation between the BE and CSR initiatives, related to employees.

The findings show that CE and CSR initiatives are negatively related. They are distinct concepts, but since the authors find that they are connected, they must also be considered in terms of their mutual dependence. To standardize practices toward employees in a code may induce the need to establish additional corporate social responsibility initiatives that elicit legitimate stakeholder satisfaction.

The analysis focuses on employees, whereas several other CSR aspects that can be explored. Furthermore, additional investigation (through questionnaires or interviews) could deepen this analysis. Furthermore, it might be interesting to consider different countries or more variables, such as cultural differences or different regulations.

The results of this research reveal that BE and CSR initiatives require precise and personalized observations to be properly understood; however, as they are linked, they must also be studied in their mutual interdependencies; this can be very useful to define governance bodies and organizational procedures devoted to BE and CSR issues.

This research provides a tool for evaluating and monitoring CSR and BE principles and can be adapted to many business contexts and refer to different stakeholders.

The existing literature on BE and CSR presents opportunities for further study, as these concepts are often studied without insights into their mutual impacts.

Over the past 20 years, the European Union has developed a comprehensive policy on gender equality (GE) in the fields of research, innovation and higher education. While North European countries have actively implemented policies in this direction, South and East European countries have been far less active and made limited progress, resulting in widening policy gaps across countries. Drawing from the experience of a capacity-building project (TARGET), this chapter explores the factors that impede the implementation of gender equality plans (GEPs) in research and higher education institutions across five countries – Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Italy and Serbia. It argues that the lack of a coherent GE discourse in research and innovation policies that sheds light on structural barriers and implicit bias is a central impediment: it severely limits the potential of GEPs and the power of change agents in research and higher education organisations in Southeast Europe to stimulate institutional change.

This study introduces an ecological framework for disabilities meant to provide a new model of viewing and learning about disabilities and special education. This model projects a multi-systemic view of factors that influence a person's life, where people with disabilities are active actors in the development of the world. The increased awareness about interconnectedness, globalization, inter- and trans-disciplinarity, influences on human experience, greening, sustainability, inequality, inequity and lack of opportunities is shifting how people think about potential and growth.

The methodological approach is qualitative, interpretive research.

In disability studies, the Ecological Model of Disabilities helps reframe this uniqueness as part of the spectrum of human experiences. In special education, the Ecoducation Model helps reframe the learning experience.

This research is conceptual, but it is also all-inclusive, rendering itself to a wide application in educational settings.

The Ecoducation Model for Special Education is specific to the education of children and adults with disabilities, and it is directly compatible with the broader Ecological Model of Disabilities. These ecological models can be applied to all levels of the ecological system, and to different ecodemes of population. Nevertheless, the ecological models need to be locally implemented, with general principles tailored to national traditions, laws and resources.

Advocating for the pursuit of individual well-being within the larger society, both models call for practical changes in a multitude of areas, including legislation and policy, training of professional personnel, sufficient financial input in programs designed for the care of children and adults with disabilities, change in societal mentalities to fight discrimination, disempowerment and isolation. Because the scope of ecological frameworks is incommensurate, being both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, further research possibilities are countless. The ecological perspective opens the fields of disability studies and special education to new theoretical and empirical possibilities.

Two epistemological models are described as new frameworks in disability studies: the Ecological Model of Disabilities and the Ecoducation Model for Special Education. Both are original models that look into the education and inclusion of the person with disabilities.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 5 and 8, respectively, indicate that decent work and gender equality are challenges that business organizations must face in order to achieve the social well-being and sustainable development of communities. Considering these goals, the present article aims to define the concept of fair work and examine the current degree of knowledge among staff in the hotel sector in Barcelona about the indicators of the Fair Labor Responsible Hotels (HJLR) certification.

A mixed methodology is used to analyze the primary data. A survey of 248 employees is complemented by nine semi-structured interviews with experts, general managers and heads of department of independently owned hotels and national and international chains.

The results show that this certification is necessary for the economic and social sustainability of the hospitality sector and to raise awareness that fair work is an urgent need. However, these currently tend to be little more than artificial actions.

The paper aims to emphasize the perspective of real actors in hotel industry about the actors' considerations of fair work to enhance the actors' job involvement and satisfaction.

Contrasting two countries with different gender regimes and welfare states, Sweden and Tanzania, this paper aims to analyse how the institutional context affects the ways in which a neo-liberal reform agenda is translated into institutional changes and propose how such changes impact the preconditions for women’s entrepreneurship.

This study uses document analysis and previous studies to describe and analyse the institutions and the institutional changes. This paper uses Scandinavian institutional theory as the interpretative framework.

This study proposes that: in well-developed welfare states with a high level of gender equality, consequences of neo-liberal agenda for the preconditions for women entrepreneurs are more likely to be negative than positive. In less developed states with a low level of gender equality, the gendered consequences of neo-liberal reforms may be mixed and the preconditions for women’s entrepreneurship more positive than negative. How neo-liberalism impacts preconditions for women entrepreneurs depend on the institutional framework in terms of a trustworthy women-friendly state and level of gender equality.

The study calls for bringing the effects on the gender of the neo-liberal primacy of market solutions out of the black box. Studying how women entrepreneurs perceive these effects necessitates qualitative ethnographic data.

This paper demonstrates why any discussion of the impact of political or economic reforms on women’s entrepreneurship must take a country’s specific institutional context into account. Further, previous studies on neo-liberalism have rarely taken an interest in Africa.

This paper empirically explores the types and extent of cultural diversity strategies in Sweden, a developed economy with many migrant workers. The role of organizational culture as the context and the association with diversity strategy and the selection of international skilled migrant workers are examined.

Empirical data are collected by surveying 249 Swedish large or medium-sized firms. Cluster analysis is used to explore the configuration of organizational culture, cultural diversity strategy (CDS) and selection and development criteria.

The authors identify five clusters of organizations. Organizational culture is the main contextual factor that influences the CDS and human resource (HR) approaches for selecting skilled migrant workers. The profile of the clusters including organizational culture, diversity strategies, the selection criteria and firm demographics is presented. The empirical results indicate that organizational culture and demographics are associated with the choice of diversity strategy and, consequently, HR processes.

This study's main focus is on international skilled migrants, which is among empirically less-studied areas in global mobility literature. Furthermore, until now more attention has been directed toward studying the consequences of diversity than toward understanding the factors that influence choice of diversity strategies and practices. This study focuses on antecedents of diversity and attempts to understand the factors that influence adoption and implementation of different cultural diversity strategies.

As a form of gender-based violence, sexual harassment represents one of the most serious obstacles to gender equality in higher education institutions. A systematic and institutional response is required in order for the problem to be regulated. This chapter provides a short overview of the existing institutional mechanisms adopted – with the support system built within the TARGET project – at the University of Belgrade and its member institutions, as a possible and good practice model of institutional interventions dealing with this issue. With three member faculties already having previously introduced their own rulebooks, the first University of Belgrade Rulebook on the Prevention of and Protection from Sexual Harassment was adopted university-wide in 2021. This document represents an important step forward and a substantial support to all the member institutions in the process of regulating the prevention of and protection from sexual harassment and thus contributes substantially to gender equality at all levels of the institution.

Because of the expansion of the internet and Web 2.0 phenomenon, new challenges are emerging in the disclosure practises adopted by organisations in the public-sector. This study aims to examine local governments’ (LGOs) use of social media (SM) in disclosing environmental actions/plans/information as a new way to improve accountability to citizens to obtain organisational legitimacy and the related sentiment of citizens’ judgements.

This paper analyses the content of 39 Italian LGOs’ public pages on Facebook. After the distinction between five classes of environmental issues (air, water, energy, waste and territory), an initial study is performed to detect possible sub-topics applying latent Dirichlet allocation. Having a list of posts related to specific environmental themes, the researchers computed the sentiment of citizens’ comments. To measure sentiment, two different approaches were implemented: one based on a lexicon dictionary and the other based on convolutional neural networks.

Facebook is used by LGOs to disclose environmental issues, focussing on their main interest in obtaining organisational legitimacy, and the analysis shows an increasing impact of Web 2.0 in the direct interaction of LGOs with citizens. On the other hand, there is a clear divergence of interest on environmental topics between LGOs and citizens in a dialogic accountability framework.

Sentiment analysis (SA) could be used by politicians, but also by managers/entrepreneurs in the business sector, to analyse stakeholders’ judgements of their communications/actions and plans on corporate social responsibility. This tool gives a result on time (i.e. not months or years after, as for the reporting system). It is cheaper than a survey and allows a first “photograph” of stakeholders’ sentiment. It can also be a useful tool for supporting, developing and improving environmental reporting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to apply SA to environmental disclosure via SM in the public sphere. The study links modern techniques in natural language processing and machine learning with the important aspects of environmental communication between LGOs and citizens.

While only one aspect of fulfilling equal rights, effectively addressing workplace discrimination is integral to creating economies, and countries, that allow for everyone's full and equal participation.

Labor, anti-discrimination, and other relevant pieces of legislation were identified through the International Labor Organization's NATLEX database, supplemented with legislation identified through country websites. For each country, two researchers independently coded legislation and answered questions about key policy features. Systematic quality checks and outlier verifications were conducted.

More than 1 in 5 countries do not explicitly prohibit racial discrimination in employment. 54 countries fail to prohibit unequal pay based on race. 107 countries prohibit racial and/or ethnic discrimination but do not explicitly require employers to take preventive measures against discrimination. The gaps are even larger with respect to multiple and intersectional discrimination. 112 countries fail to prohibit discrimination based on both migration status and race and/or ethnicity; 103 fail to do so for foreign national origin and race and/or ethnicity.

Both recent and decades-old international treaties and agreements require every country globally to uphold equal rights regardless of race. However, specific national legislation that operationalizes these commitments and prohibits discrimination in the workplace is essential to their impact. This research highlights progress and gaps that must be addressed.

This is the first study to measure legal protections against employment discrimination based on race and ethnicity in all 193 UN countries. This study also examines protection in all countries from discrimination on the basis of characteristics that have been used in a number of settings as a proxy for racial/ethnic discrimination and exclusion, including SES, migration status, and religion.

This paper attempts to investigate through empirical exercise how the chances of female employment opportunities rise in a developing country like India, against the backdrop of changes in institutions that are associated with globalization.

The paper develops a simultaneous equation model through a growth equation, gender equation and globalization equation to identify the factors impacting female labor market opportunities in India, based on annual time series data 1991–2019.

The major results of this study are as follows: (1) It is social globalization that positively impacts gender equality in employment opportunities apart from economic growth and trade diversification; (2) Evidence of “feminization of labor force” in the context of trade diversification is found; and (3) Equal gender opportunities reflect in equalizing outcomes in the labor market.

Growth strategies need to be constructed in such a way in India that it has redistributive implications and benefits women. The state agency needs to optimize the productive base of human resources and increase women's empowering capability through social and legal sanctions.

The uniqueness of the present paper lies in contributing to the existing literature on how gender inequality impacts trade diversification and how trade diversification impacts gender.