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Cities have been exposed to a variety of natural disasters such as flooding, extreme temperatures, storms, earthquakes, and other natural shocks, and have had to respond and adapt to such pressures over time. In the context of global climate change, natural disasters have increased across the globe. Apart from climate change, many urban environments in Latin America are experiencing significant transformations in land use patterns, socio-demographic change, changing labor markets, and economic growth, resulting from recent decades of globalization. Such transformations have resulted in the internal fragmentation of cities. In this context, the purpose of the present chapter is to demonstrate the importance in both theoretical and methodological terms, of integrating the concept of socio-environmental fragmentation into urban vulnerability research in order to make progress toward higher degrees of local sustainability in those areas of the city that suffer natural disasters and fragmentation.

A mixed methods approach is used in order to combine different technical issues from urban and climate change studies.

The findings are related to the importance of an integrated approach, regarding the complexity of urban life, and the relationship between the urban, the social, and the environmental phenomenon.

This chapter relates to the revisit of the current state of preparedness and to determine whether further adaptations are required. The authors understood that these kinds of mixed approaches are necessary in order to understand the new complexity of urban processes.

Scientists are constructing knowledge about global warming by adapting evidence-based disciplines to reflect the Precautionary Principle. It is equally important to communicate the complexities and uncertainties underpinning global warming because inappropriate vehicles for giving accounts could result in defensive decisions that perpetuate the business-as-usual mindset: the method of communication affects how the risk associated with global warming is socialised. Appropriately constructed accounts should facilitate reflective communicative action. Here Beck's theorisation of risk society, Luhmann's sociological theory of risk and Gandhi's vehicle of communicative action (or satyagraha) are used to construct a risk-based accountability mechanism, whilst providing insight into Schumacher's concept of total accountability. These accountability constructs will be illustrated through the lived experiences of South Australian citrus horticulturists in the context of a richly layered narrative of competing discourses about global warming. The reiterative process of theory informing practice is used to construct a couple of dialogical vehicles of accountability.

Genetic and environmental factors are associated with psychosis risk, but the latter present more tangible markers for prevention. We conducted a theoretical exercise to estimate the proportion of psychotic illnesses that could be prevented if we could identify and remove all factors that lead to increased incidence associated with ethnic minority status and urbanicity. Measures of impact by population density and ethnicity were estimated from incidence rate ratios [IRR] obtained from two methodologically‐similar first episode psychosis studies in four UK centres. Multilevel Poisson regression was used to estimate IRR, controlling for confounders. Population attributable risk fractions [PAR] were estimated for our study population and the population of England. We considered three outcomes; all clinically relevant ICD‐10 psychotic illnesses [F10‐39], non‐affective psychoses [F20‐29] and affective psychoses [F30‐39]. One thousand and twenty‐nine subjects, aged 18‐64, were identified over 2.4 million person‐years. Up to 22% of all psychoses in England (46.9% within our study areas) could be prevented if exposures associated with increased incidence in ethnic minority populations could be removed; this is equivalent to 66.9% within ethnic minority groups themselves. For non‐affective psychoses only, PAR for population density was large and significant (27.5%); joint PAR with ethnicity was 61.7%. Effect sizes for common socio‐environmental risk indicators for psychosis are large; inequalities were marked. This analysis demonstrates potential importance in another light: we need to move beyond current epidemiological approaches to elucidate exact socio‐environmental factors that underpin urbanicity and ethnic minority status as markers of increased risk by incorporating gene‐environment interactions that adopt a multi disciplinary perspective.

The Gandhian-Vedic approach to development is synonymous with the advancement of spiritual agency. It emancipates society by trying to raise people's interconnectedness with nature, mitigating capitalism's hegemony of consumerism on people's psyche and hence reducing the chances of individuals perpetuating the cycle of exploitation by adhering to capitalist norms. That is, the Gandhian-Vedic approach to discursive accountability minimises the risk of circularity in the dialectics of contradictions, which occurs when consenting behaviour replaces existing contradictions with another set of contradictions. It enables the actor to step off capitalism's treadmill of materialism and exploitation by centralising spiritual development. Its spiritual revolution involves caring for the whole whilst engaging with social structures. Here the Gandhian-Vedic logic is extended to emancipatory accounting by developing accounting as a discursive risk assessment tool that minimises the fragmentation of time and space aspects of performance. Its holistic representation of performance could change perceptions about interconnectedness between an individual's behaviour, nature and society. It is the antithesis of conventional accounting's prioritisation of private interest over responsibility for the whole.

The purpose of this paper is to review critical emancipatory literature to identify a discourse that could be used to successfully customise generic Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to particular user‐needs. The customisation exercise is posited in the context of contemporary society, which has to try to become more sustainable amidst uncertainty about the complex interrelationships between elements of the ecosystem. It raises new challenges for the customisation exercise, that of fostering the precautionary ethos and engaging realistically with complexity and uncertainty inherent in emergent knowledge about ecological resilience.

This is a conceptual paper that draws on published research papers to tease out political constructs which are vital for facilitating sustainable decisions.

This paper argues that the critical emancipatory influence on systems design has generated attempts to formulate socio‐ethical information systems. However, these systems are limited by their inability to engage with the politics of asymmetrical distribution of power, even though these systems rely on bottom‐up participation to change the status quo. Hence, it is suggested that systems design should learn from Gandhi's experiences in mobilising social reform to instil a precautionary ethos in the context of asymmetrical power relations. The discourse used to customise ERP should facilitate social learning about ecological resilience as it affects the capacity to reform in the interest of sustainable outcomes. It is proposed that the discourse be socially constructed on the vocabulary of integrated risk because it would enable management to take advantage of lived experiences and enhance the organisation's capacity to learn about formulating sustainable business practices.

The recommended approach to identifying user‐needs (in customising ERP) is based on Gandhi's tried‐and‐tested approaches of mobilising bottom‐up participation in social reform.

This paper brings in Eastern philosophy (namely Advaitic thinking) into the predominately Western‐dominated systems design arena. Its value lies in its practical applicability to real‐world design challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the ways in which companies either reproduce or challenge the growth-based roots of the social imaginary, in order to inform the degrowth debate at the firm level.

This paper offers an epistemic analysis of the ways companies organise, revealing underlying conceptions of organisations' identities and their corresponding ways of organising.

The epistemic analysis derives four conceptual findings allowing the authors to suggest ways of organising in a socio-environmental future not driven by economic growth. The paper suggests new research avenues to study alternative worldviews in organisations.

This paper creatively contributes to the discussion about alternatives to the current unsustainable economy with a special focus on the micro level, where businesses act as a vital driving force for economic growth.

This paper is an empirical response to two of Quattrone’s claims: first, that research in accounting is fragmented; and then that this follows from the blocking of communication by intra‐ and inter‐disciplinary boundaries. Although we agree with much of Quattrone’s argument, and in particular with his problematising of “economic man”, we draw an opposite conclusion. Rather than looking to a trans‐disciplinary removal of boundaries, we use a survey of 30 years of research in corporate annual reports to defend narrowly disciplinary work. We make our case through discussing problems of intra‐ and inter‐disciplinary unity in research, the puzzle of the role of “economic man” in the study of annual reports, and the alternative to him in science and technology studies (STS). Our approach yields a better fit than Quattrone’s own solution with his aims of an evolutionary perspective that allows for historical shifts, and for a reflexivity that includes the inevitable entanglement of researchers in what they study. We conclude by noting that our approach is applicable to the study of corporate communication more generally.

The purpose of this paper is to present a model of corporate social entrepreneurship. The case of Odebrecht demonstrates how companies are using society's sustainability challenges to innovate, in particular by adopting a corporate social entrepreneurship approach that allows the company to differentiate from competitors and create shared value.

This research applies a comparative case study design in combination with a review of the literature in order to present a model of corporate social entrepreneurship.

The case study of two major projects within the Odebrecht group allows us to design a model of corporate social entrepreneurship explaining how the company transforms external triggers such as socio-environmental risks into sustainability innovations, creating competitive advantages.

The two case studies provide some evidence of how companies blend sustainability and innovation within corporate social entrepreneurship strategies. More research is needed in order to refine the patterns and components of the corporate social entrepreneurship model.

Integrating sustainability into the innovation process allows Odebrecht to differentiate itself from competitors and have meaningful engagement with stakeholders. This helps the company to grow, especially in developing economy markets, which face similar sustainability challenges as Latin America.

The combination of corporate entrepreneurship models and these case studies of sustainability innovation helps to create a model of corporate social entrepreneurship explaining how companies can transform external sustainability challenges into shared value creation.