513 research outputs found
Corporate Boards and Ownership Structure as Antecedents of Corporate Governance Disclosure in Saudi Arabian Publicly Listed Corporations
No full textWe investigate whether and to what extent publicly listed corporations voluntarily comply with and disclose recommended good corporate governance (CG) practices, and distinctively examine whether the observed cross-sectional differences in such CG disclosures can be explained by ownership and board mechanisms with specific focus on Saudi Arabia. Our results suggest that corporations with larger boards, a big-four auditor, higher government ownership, a CG committee and higher institutional ownership disclose considerably more than those that are not. By contrast, we find that an increase in block ownership significantly reduces CG disclosure. Our results are generally robust to a number of econometric models that control for different types of disclosure indices, firm-specific characteristics and firm-level fixed-effects. Our results have important implications for policy-makers, practitioners and regulatory authorities, especially those in developing countries across the globe
Structural changes in metals consumption
No full textFor 15 years the metals market has been characterized by slow growth - in some cases, even decline - in consumption. To test the proposition that structural changes in demand were the main cause of the slowdown, the author - drawing on U.S. data - uses an extended metals demand model that recognizes energy, labor, capital, and other materials as major inputs. The traditional model explains metals consumption in terms only of output and the prices of metal and its substitutes. It is inadequate to address the issue of structural change because it ignores other factors of production, such as energy, which have experienced dramatic changes. With the extended model, the null hypothesis of no structural change cannot be rejected for most metals. With the conventional model, the null hypothesis of no structural change is strongly rejected. Results with the extended model show that the downturn can be explained mostly by changes in the input variables, particularly such nonmetal inputs as capital and energy, which are much more important cost items than metals and have undergone drastic cost changes over the period.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Montreal Protocol,Mining&Extractive Industry (Non-Energy),Primary Metals
Concluding narratives of a career with dementia: accounts of Iris Murdoch at her death
No full textObituaries and other accounts of well-known people at their death offer a narrative defining identity through the life story. It is particularly poignant when the story is told of an author, and draws upon not only life course metaphors but also features of the author's fiction. In this paper we look at a case where the dementia of a famous author figures in the tributes at her death. The predominant narrative of dementia has until recently been that of a tragic loss of self. This has reinforced an image of social death. Biomedical determinism has similarly focused on the disease, rather than seeing the person and allowing their voice to be heard. While Iris Murdoch may not have wanted tributes to tell her story, they have allowed us to examine conventional narratives of a person with dementia. We chart the ‘career’ of a person with dementia, and their perceived transformation of identity, defined in terms of being demented rather than with dementia. Bad and good are attributed to aspects of Iris Murdoch's life through a repertoire of available stereotypes. These appear to involve the retrospective application of characteristics of dementia, along with those of goodness and purity. Common gender representations relating to Iris Murdoch's married life and the caring situation are interwoven in the accounts. We are told a story that reflects and reproduces conventional narratives of the life course and of dementia, characterising the deceased in terms of a moral career
An Integrative Socio-Technical Enterprise Approach to Urban Design/Planning for Sustainable Development
No full text
J.C. Bach's London keyboard sonatas : style and context
No full textJ. C. Bach's keyboard works include several sets of accompanied sonatas, a genre that enjoyed a wide popularity during the Classical era, but never
found its way into the concert repertoire. The accompanied sonata was a genre meant for domestic performance; the solo keyboard sonata, on
the other hand, was adopted in due course by concert audiences. J. C. Bach composed works within both genres during most of his productive years, and his output constitutes a corpus of remarkable consistency. J. C. Bach's removal to London in 1762 coincided with his clear adoption of a galant style, marked by the Italianate influence, and the abandonment of most Baroque traits. The British milieu provided additional factors: the rise of the pianoforte, a thriving music-publishing market, and a great interest in domestic music making among the affluent classes. These factors marked J. C. Bach's output at various levels. Keyboard works had to conform to the proficiency of the amateur performer, a
fact reflected in the accompanied output mostly. The number of movements, their length, and the inclusion of particular technical devices are readily observable differences between the two genres. The most remarkable
distinction lies perhaps in the preference for binary sonata format in the accompanied. sonatas from the mid 1760s to the 1770s, in spite of a later tendency for tripartite designs in both genres. J. C. Bach's lifelong preference for motivic phrase structure conditioned his keyboard production and partly explains the gap in quality between some of his works and sonatas composed around the same time by Haydn and Mozart, who developed more effective means to connect the melodic material
to higher structural units. J. C. Bach's influence, however, endured in Mozart's handling of melody, and his keyboard production constitutes, in spite of some flaws, a noteworthy example of elegance and craftsmanship
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