私人领域环境行为的影响因素分析研究

基于2010年中国综合社会调查数据,探讨了人口与社会特征变量、主观因素及客观因素与私人领域环境行为的相关关系。结果表明：人口与社会特征变量中,随着年龄增长,越是表现出积极的个人环境行为;城镇地区比农村地区的人更具有积极的个人环境行为。主观因素中的环境态度、环境责任感、环境关注度和环境常识都与私人领域环境行为呈显著正相关性。客观因素中,收入水平越高,越是表现出积极个人环境行为;随着教育程度的增高,越是表现出积极的个人环境行为。     

Evaluating Children's Conservation Biology Learning at the Zoo

Millions of children visit zoos every year with parents or schools to encounter wildlife firsthand. Public conservation education is a requirement for membership in professional zoo associations. However, in recent years zoos have been criticized for failing to educate the public on conservation issues and related biological concepts, such as animal adaptation to habitats. I used matched pre‐ and postvisit mixed methods questionnaires to investigate the educational value of zoo visits for children aged 7–15 years. The questionnaires gathered qualitative data from these individuals, including zoo‐related thoughts and an annotated drawing of a habitat. A content analysis of these qualitative data produced the quantitative data reported in this article. I evaluated the relative learning outcomes of educator‐guided and unguided zoo visits at London Zoo, both in terms of learning about conservation biology (measured by annotated drawings) and changing attitudes toward wildlife conservation (measured using thought‐listing data). Forty‐one percent of educator‐guided visits and 34% of unguided visits resulted in conservation biology‐related learning. Negative changes in children's understanding of animals and their habitats were more prevalent in unguided zoo visits. Overall, my results show the potential educational value of visiting zoos for children. However, they also suggest that zoos’ standard unguided interpretive materials are insufficient for achieving the best outcomes for visiting children. These results support a theoretical model of conservation biology learning that frames conservation educators as toolmakers who develop conceptual resources to enhance children's understanding of science. Evaluación del Aprendizaje de Biología de la Conservación por Niños en el Zoológico Jensen     

三峡库区(重庆段)涨落带土地资源的开发利用模式初探

三峡水库是我国特大型水利枢纽工程,到2009年水库全部建成运行后将出现一个落差达30m的涨落带。涨落带土地肥沃,出露水面的时间长,光、热、水、土条件匹配好,有较大的开发价值。对涨落带进行保护性的开发利用,将缓解库区的人地矛盾、促进库区小康进程与可持续发展。论文以三峡库区的主体--重庆段为例,论述了三峡重庆库区涨落带土地资源的分布、特征及开发价值;阐明了涨落带土地资源开发利用应注意的5个原则问题;结合库区气候、地貌及水位变动等条件,初步探讨了涨落带土地资源开发利用的6种模式;对开发利用中可能存在的生态与环境问题进行了分析,提出了有针对性的建议;为合理制定涨落带的土地资源利用与保护规划提供科学依据。     

An assessment of health and safety management within working groups in the UK manufacturing sector

Problem: In response to the demands of competitiveness, there has been a proliferation of management delayering in order to move responsibility to those people carrying out the operations and to focus on working as a team. Teams can be managed in different ways: using supervisors, team leaders, or self-managed. The management of health and safety and other business risks is dependent on the way in which the team is managed. Method: This study has assessed, through the use of semistructured interviews, how UK manufacturing companies have addressed a range of health and safety management issues (i.e., the setting, communication, and measurement of company objectives, employee participation and empowerment, and risk assessment) in relation to different styles of group working (i.e., supervised groups, groups with team leaders, and self-managed groups). Discussion: Although the differences are not always significant, it is noticeable that within organizations using supervised work environments, there is a lack of communication of specific health and safety information, little involvement and participation in safety activities, and a greater reliance on the safety function. However, in organizations using team leaders and self-managed groups, there is evidence of greater management involvement, more open communication, and greater employee involvement in health and safety, although empowerment in its true sense was still limited in these organizations. Impact on industry: The results obtained illustrate the impact of different working groups on the management of health and safety in the UK manufacturing sector.     

Controversial sectors in banks’ sustainability reporting

Albeit indirectly, through its lending and investing, the financial sector can contribute substantially to achieve sustainable development. One of such practices concerns investment on or financing of entities that deal with environmentally or socially sensitive transactions (gambling, tobacco, alcohol, arms, etc.). Although there is a wealth of literature on banks’ CSR and its reporting, one can count on the fingers of one hand the studies mentioning explicitly these issue. What is more, this CSR practice gets treated only cursorily in these few studies. This study focuses on the communication of information on investment and financing of firms from controversial sectors in banks’ sustainability reports. We begin by examining whether financial institutions in our sample report having such policies or not. Then, we investigate what kind of policies are reported. In addition, this study seeks to capture the influence of national culture and firm-specific characteristics (type of property, listing status and multinationality) on the reporting of such issues. Ordinal regression analysis is used to analyse the relation of these factors with such reporting. Our findings suggest that the disclosure of information on policies regarding investment on and financing of firms from controversial sectors is not widespread, and the organizations reporting policies of total exclusion of some sectors or projects on ethical grounds are few. This study may encourage more detailed analyses of the type of CSR policies examined and of their impacts. It also may be of utility to banks by raising awareness about the need to consider these issues.     

Determinants of foreign direct investment in the mining sector in Asia: A comparison between China and India

The aim of this paper is to assess the conditions that influence foreign direct investment in the mineral industries of China and India. The paper first surveys literature on the determinants of foreign direct investment to identify key conditions, under which host countries attract mining FDI. It then builds an evaluative framework which allows for comparative analysis. The paper then comparatively evaluates the performance of foreign investment regimes that govern mineral industries in China and India. Its findings show that the overall conditions for foreign mining investment in China and India are not favourable and that substantial policy, regulatory and other changes in both countries need to be made if more investment is to flow.     

非正规就业部门的形成机理研究:理论、实证与政策框架

包括农民工在内的庞大非正规就业部门日益引起关注,传统发展经济学的二元结构理论,已经不能完全解释转型中国的现实。本文运用比较研究、计量经济等方法,对中国独特的四元就业结构进行了分析,梳理了非正规就业理论体系,在此基础上,讨论了中国非正规就业部门的形成机理与主要驱动因素,并提出了消解非正规就业部门就业压力的政策框架。研究表明:中国的非正规就业部门有其独特的形成机理,是多项公共政策综合作用和主动选择的结果。城乡人均收入落差、伪城镇化、经济垄断程度等则是其主要驱动因素。因此,在坚持小城镇化与农业现代化、精细化同时推进的同时,要践行去管制政策以释放自由市场力量,建立统一且平权的劳动力市场以推进非正规就业部门与正规就业部门的融合进程。     

Supplier assessment based on corporate social responsibility criteria in Indian automotive and textile industry sectors

Mandatory disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting forces supply chain members to consider CSR issues in developed countries. Researchers have viewed CSR content within different themes, such as human (social), ethical and environmental perspectives. So far, in India, very little research has been done to study the impact of human issues in employment (social), ethical issues in business operations and pollution (environmental) issues at both regional and specific sector level. This paper emphasises the perspective view of supplier selection, considering CSR issues as opposed to traditional methods using conventional selection criteria such as cost, quality, delivery and service. It employs six CSR criteria such as discrimination, abuse of human rights, child labour, long working hours, unfair competition and pollution to assess small- and medium-sized suppliers who produce and deliver products to the automotive and textile industry sectors. The results of this study indicate that to prevent discrimination against pay variation, minimise cases of abuse of human rights and incidence of child labour, suppliers must put in place proper policies and procedures regarding employment contract, identification and verification records. Furthermore, to reduce unfair competition, suppliers of both automotive and textile sectors may introduce processes for investigating reports of unethical conducts and take severe disciplinary action. The suppliers of both automotive and textile sectors believe that the competitive advantage can be achieved through environmental oriented business practices. However, they differ in their approaches in attaining this objective.     

Macroergonomics and Total Quality Management: How to Improve Quality of Working Life?

Abstract

In this paper, we present a macroergonomic model of work design that is applied and tested to examine Total Quality Management (TQM) in the public sector. According to the model, TQM can influence different aspects of work design and quality of working life (QWL), Questionnaire data collected in 2 public sector organizations in the USA show that TQM can have both positive and negative impact on work design and QWL. The main positive impact of TQM was found on job content, job control and participation, and social relationships. The main negative impact of TQM was on workload, uncertainty, and clarity of job duties. The impact of TQM on QWL was mixed. Our results show that the impact of TQM on work design and QWL varied very much across the 6 participating departments, as well as within the departments. Further research is warranted to assess the human impact of TQM, in particular research on the linkage between various aspects of TQM, on one hand, and work design and QWL, on the other hand.     

Causation of Severe and Fatal Accidents in the Manufacturing Sector

The main purpose of this paper is to identify the most frequent causes of accidents in the manufacturing sector in Andalusia, Spain, to help safety practitioners in the task of prioritizing preventive actions. Official accident investigation reports are analyzed. A causation pattern is identified with the proportion of causes of each of the different possible groups of causes. We found evidence of a differential causation between slight and non-slight accidents. We have also found significant differences in accident causation depending on the mechanism of the accident. These results can be used to prioritize preventive actions to combat the most likely causes of each accident mechanism. We have also done research on the associations of certain latent causes with specific active (immediate) causes. These relationships show how organizational and safety management can contribute to the prevention of active failures.