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This paper aims to propose and test a modified interpretation of long-standing issues on the corporate responsibility (CR)–corporate financial performance (CFP) relationship: companies involved in CR are in general no better and no worse in their level of financial performance than companies without such engagement because of the trade-off between benefit and cost at firm level and imbalance between supply and demand at industry (market) level.

The authors apply this frame to a data set with more than 12,000 observations over a 14-year period, using confidence intervals, as a useful and statistically valid approach for testing the null hypothesis.

The present study’s findings support neutrality between CR and CFP at the firm and industry levels, implying that a firm’s CR involvement neither penalizes nor improves its CFP.

CR activities may provide windows of opportunity for companies but do not systematically improve financial performance.

“Doing good” is not a panacea for corporate achievement with respect to market-facing activities. For firms to succeed, instead, they need to create and implement their business cases and models by converting their involvement in CR activities into drivers for better outcomes because investments in CR practices do alone not guarantee improved financial performance.

The innovations in this study are twofold. Conceptually, this paper proposes a comprehensive approach for a neutral CR–CFP linkage. Empirically, it introduces a novel and appropriate method for testing neutrality. These will mark an important advance in the theoretical and empirical debates over CR and CFP.

For years suspicions have abounded that institutional investors are notoriously short‐sighted when it comes to making their investment decisions. Faced with performance assessment on a monthly if not daily basis, institutional investors need to show timely results and hence may be under considerable pressure to improve short‐term payoff at the expense of long‐term performance. Because institutions today now own more than 50% of corporate equity, they wield an increasingly powerful influence on companies. This influence has recently been magnified with the emergence of activist institutions, lead by certain institutional investors such as CALPERS or TIAA‐CREF. As a result, there have been concerns among stakeholder groups and scholars that company decision makers will themselves yield to pressures to forego investments in longer‐term opportunities.

Examines the trade‐off between system redundancy and acceptance sampling as alternative means to improve system reliability. We assume that components of the system follow an exponential failure law and investigate expected times to failure of systems of various levels of component redundancy which have been exposed to acceptance sampling plans of various levels of stringency. We also show the probability distributions of system reliability for outgoing lots at various levels of component redundancy and sampling stringency. The paper shows a straightforward method for calculating these trade‐offs and provides the decision maker with a previously unavailable tool of system design and testing.

To examine the utility of multiple reading speeds during rereadings toward enhancing comprehension and application of subsequently gained knowledge.

Representations of slow, mindful reading as well as analyses of eye training and speed reading techniques are described to serve as the theoretical foundation for the meta-strategy – read fast, read slow (RF/RS).

This meta-strategy encompasses aspects of rereading, eye training exercises, and speed reading; it is derived from a cognitive concept that a blueprint can be formed from reading at an increased speed from one’s normal speed. Further, the gaps along with that information which was not fully understood from the initial reading can be secured by following the initial fast read with a slower than normal reading of the text. The idea is to refine that which is important versus unimportant (main idea vs. details), and enhance the surface level of understanding into one that is critical and analytical after having been confronted against existing schematic notions.

Concepts of text structure, word reading automaticity, and content interest are natural by-products of using the RF/RS strategy. Together, these benefits allow for holistic growth and moreover, provide successful reading experiences. Successful reading prompts additional reading, as it has been widely established that better readers read more often and more widely.

As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction. States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, all without notice to her parents, but require parental notice or consent for abortion. This chapter argues that this oft-noted contradiction in the law on teenage reproductive decision-making is in fact not as contradictory as it first appears. A closer look at the law’s apparently conflicting approaches to teenage abortion and teenage childbirth exposes common ground that scholars have overlooked. The chapter compares the full spectrum of minors’ reproductive rights and unmasks deep similarities in the law on adolescent reproduction – in particular an undercurrent of desire to punish (female) teenage sexuality, whether pregnant girls choose abortion or childbirth. It demonstrates that in practice, the law undermines adolescents’ reproductive rights, whichever path of pregnancy resolution they choose. At the same time that the law thwarts adolescents’ access to abortion care, it also fails to protect adolescents’ rights as parents. The analysis shows that these two superficially conflicting sets of rules in fact work in tandem to enforce a traditional gender script – that self-sacrificing mothers should give birth and give up their infants to better circumstances, no matter the emotional costs to themselves. This chapter also suggests novel policy solutions to the difficulties posed by adolescent reproduction by urging reforms that look to third parties other than parents or the State to better support adolescent decision-making relating to pregnancy and parenting.

We examine whether discretionary accruals of firms obtaining substantial external financing can be explained by managerial manipulation or managerial overoptimism. Insider trading patterns and press releases around equity and debt financing suggest that managers are more optimistic about their firms around debt financing. Consistent with earlier studies, we find that discretionary current accruals peak when firms obtain equity financing. However, we also find that discretionary accruals peak when firms obtain debt financing. Moreover, discretionary accruals are higher for firms that rely on debt rather than on equity financing. The results are robust to controlling for firm characteristics, excluding small and distressed firms, and using alternative measures of discretionary accruals. These findings support the hypothesis that managerial overoptimism distorts financial statements of firms obtaining external financing.

To describe the connections between reading and writing and to discuss new ways of understanding the nuisances associated with their development beginning with consideration to language appreciation.

Theoretical advances related to the complexity of reading, thinking, and writing are discussed alongside an ongoing description of how wide reading, interventions, language study, and risk taking are foundational to language creation.

The linkages between reading and writing are inseparable. Reading and writing must be developed in unison. The best writers are avid readers and vice versa. Generally speaking, students will have preferences regarding which they enjoy partaking in more but this just gives the motivation to utilize an appreciate approach to grow, that is utilizing existing strengths of the student in either reading or writing toward improving the other.

A host of instructional practices can extend from these new theoretical understandings of language creation including free verse journals, usage of non-examples to jolt previous understandings, language play, feedback, diverse literature, and finalization processes related to writing development.