Corporate social responsibility performance in the Niger Delta: beyond two constitutive orthodoxies

Against the background of attempts to explain the poor Corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of transnational oil corporations in the Niger Delta in the context of flawed approaches, processes and inadequate CSR packages, this paper contests not only the explanations for the failure of CSR, but the core idea that CSR is capable of engendering sustainable community development at all. Given the enormity of the development challenge in the region, corporations cannot, even with the best of intentions, make meaningful impact on host communities, mainly because of the structural constraints arising from the profit-seeking ethos which drives corporate behaviour.     

Lightning Strike as Probable Cause of Death and Determining Identity Based on the Examination of Skeletal Remains

In this article , a case of examining an incomplete human skeleton found in a forest is presented. Based on the assessment of posttraumatic lesions in the skull bones, the cause of death of a man who had died 14 years prior to the examination was determined with high probability to be due to a lightning strike. Moreover, the rare pathological lesions within the skeleton, such as a healed fracture of the humerus and rheumatoid malformations within the hand, in reference to preserved medical records, have also allowed to identify the deceased. Most noteworthy points in this case are, however, initially difficult to comprehend, posttraumatic lesions within the bones of the skull such as carbonization and fracture of the vertex. Their origin can be explained by a lightning strike as the most probable cause of death. Thus, the presented case demonstrates probable cause of death and identity can be established many years after death, based on skeletal remains.     

Management Discretion and Political Interference in Municipal Enterprises. Evidence from Italian Utilities

The attention of scholars and policy-makers is shifting from full privatisation to alternative measures as a means to improve the efficiency of public services. This article focuses on three restructuring measures adopted by local governments: partial privatisation (without transfer of control rights), inter-municipal joint ventures, and the presence of outside directors on the Board. Divergent hypotheses on these measures have emerged from two economic theories, namely public choice and the agency perspective. An empirical analysis investigates the effects of restructuring processes on a sample of Italian municipal utilities. Partial privatisation has been shown to play a significant and positive role, while Board independence from management has a less significant influence. Multi-government utilities have been found to suffer from severe coordination costs, which are not outweighed by scale benefits. Our findings reveal that management discretion is a significant source of inefficiency in municipal enterprises.     

How Does the Business of News Influence Terrorism Coverage? Evidence From The Washington Post and USA Today

Observers argue that the business of news is responsible for worsening the coverage of terrorism, but exactly how economic considerations influence coverage is controversial. Based on an analysis of over 1600 articles from The Washington Post and USA Today, we find that concerns about the effects of economic pressures on terrorism reporting are exaggerated. The business climate affects coverage, but the long-term impact of market pressures on coverage is modest. Articles about terrorist violence are increasingly prominent, but coverage of counterterrorism remains robust. Efforts to inoculate the press against the worst excesses of the market are unnecessary.     

Assessing programs designed to improve outcomes for children exposed to violence: Results from nine randomized controlled trials

Objectives

The study tests whether participation in interventions offered by a subset of sites from the National Safe Start Promising Approaches for Children Exposed to Violence initiative improved outcomes for children relative to controls.

Methods

The study pools data from the nine Safe Start sites that randomized families to intervention and control groups, using a within-site block randomization strategy based on child age at baseline. Caregiver-reported outcomes, assessed at baseline, 6 and 12 months, included caregiver personal problems, caregiver resource problems, parenting stress, child and caregiver victimization, child trauma symptoms, child behavior problems, and social-emotional competence.

Results

Results revealed no measurable intervention impact in intent-to-treat analyses at either 6- or 12-month post-baseline. In 6-month as-treated analyses, a medium to high intervention dose was associated with improvement on two measures of child social-emotional competence: cooperation and assertion. Overall, there is no reliable evidence of significant site-to-site effect variability, even in the two cases of significant intervention effect.

Conclusions

Since families in both the intervention and control groups received some degree of case management and both groups improved over time, it may be advantageous to explore the potential impacts of crisis and case management separately from mental health interventions. It may be that, on average, children in families whose basic needs are being attended to improve substantially on their own.     

Struggling to stay out of high-poverty neighborhoods: housing choice and locations in moving to opportunity's first decade

Improving locational outcomes emerged as a major policy hope for the nation's largest low-income housing program over the past two decades, but a host of supply and demand-side barriers confront rental voucher users, leading to heated debate over the importance of choice versus constraint. In this context, we examine the Moving to Opportunity experiment's first decade, using a mixed-method approach.

MTO families faced major barriers in tightening markets, yet diverse housing trajectories emerged, reflecting variation in: (a) willingness to trade location – in particular, safety and avoidance of “ghetto” behavior – to get larger, better housing units after initial relocation; (b) the distribution of neighborhood types in different metro areas; and (c) circumstances that produced many involuntary moves. Access to social networks or services “left behind” in poorer neighborhoods seldom drove moving decisions. Numerous moves were brokered by rental agents who provided shortcuts to willing landlords but thereby steered participants to particular neighborhoods.     

Brown kids in white suburbs: Housing mobility and the many faces of social capital

Abstract

Social capital has many faces in the geography of urban opportunity, and as such, particular housing policies might have positive effects on some forms of social capital and negative effects on others. The author defines social support and social leverage as two key dimensions of social capital that can be accessed by individuals. A sample of 132 low‐income African‐American and Latino adolescents is used to examine the early impacts of a Yonkers, NY, housing mobility program on social capital.¹

Overall, program participants (^‘’movers^‘’) appear to be no more cut off from social support than a control group of “stayer” youth. On the other hand, movers are also no more likely to report access to good sources of job information or school advice— to leverage that might enhance opportunity. Adding just one steadily employed adult to an adolescent's circle of significant ties has dramatic effects on perceived access to such leverage.