MULTIFILE
In May 2007, our Centre for Research in Intellectual Capital hosted the International Congress on Intellectual Capital: The future of business navigation. The Congress – which took place in Haarlem, The Netherlands – was attended by more than 140 participants from 23 countries. Based on almost 70 papers, we designed a conference program that consisted of more than 90 sessions. This special issue is based on a selection of the best papers of our conference.
The 5th International CSR Communication Conference was hosted in Stockholm, by the Stockholm School of Economics in September 2019. Scholars and practitioners from all five continents were present at this great event. Alongside with around 60 academic presentations included in the proceedings, the program was set to introduce and discuss various trending topics in CSR and sustainability. The list of keynote and panelguests included several renowned authors in CSR and sustainability research, such as: Mats Alvesson, Annavon Bergen, Nils Brunsson, Itziar Castello, Michael Etter, Mikkel Flyverbom, Jean-Pascal Gond, Ellen Quigley,Dennis Schoeneborn, and Laura J. Spence. This ‘all-star cast’, together with a number of young scholars andestablished researchers in CSR who continue to express their loyalty to this conference, have once againconfirmed the importance of the event for the CSR communication research community.Five conferences later, studying communicational aspects of CSR has become firmly institutionalized and the field of CSR communication has been established. From the start of this biannual event, the conference has produced more than 300 papers on various CSR communication-related topics. An overview of the past conferences reflects the changing agenda of CSR communication research with several new themes and research approaches emerging. Starting with the instrumental perspective that was focused on strategic management of CSR communication, the research topics moved towards more relational views featuringengagement, relationships, digital environments and internal, employee-focused aspects. And lately, agraduate emergence of communicative constitutive perspectives, the role of talk and performativity in CSR isevident.Development of CSR communication filed and scholars’ participation over time has certainly been dynamic,with several voices driving the change from within, searching new paths to study CSR, stimulating participation of scholars and inviting alternative interpretations. This (positive) dynamic seems to be critical for moving the field forward (Verk, Golob, & Podnar, 2019). Proceedings of the 5th International CSR Communication Conference reflect some of the dynamics. They are divided into several sections that cover such topics as CSR engagement, talk and dialog; CSR reporting,perceptions and internal CSR perspectives; digital media and organizing, CSR across industries, NGOengagement, corporate irresponsibility; CSR and educational organizations, and communicative aspects ofsustainability.Thank you to all conference keynote speakers and panelists, as well as to all reviewers, presenters, discussantsand participants from academia and practice for sharing new thoughts and ideas and yet again contributing to the enrichment of CSR communication debate.
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The denim industry faces many complex sustainability challenges and has been especially criticized for its polluting and hazardous production practices. Reducing resource use of water, chemicals and energy and changing denim production practices calls for collaboration between various stakeholders, including competing denim brands. There is great benefit in combining denim brands’ resources and knowledge so that commonly defined standards and benchmarks are developed and realized on a scale that matters. Collaboration however, and especially between competitors, is highly complex and prone to fail. This project brings leading denim brands together to collectively take initial steps towards improving the ecological sustainability impact of denim production, particularly by establishing measurements, benchmarks and standards for resource use (e.g. chemicals, water, energy) and creating best practices for effective collaboration. The central research question of our project is: How do denim brands effectively collaborate together to create common, industry standards on resource use and benchmarks for improved ecological sustainability in denim production? To answer this question, we will use a mixed-method, action research approach. The project’s research setting is the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (MRA), which has a strong denim cluster and is home to many international denim brands and start-ups.
The automobile industry is presently going through a rapid transformation towards autonomous driving. Nearly all vehicle manufacturers (such as Mercedes Benz, Tesla, BMW) have commercial products, promising some level of vehicle automation. Even though the safe and reliable introduction of technology depends on the quality standards and certification process, but the focus is primarily on the introduction of (uncertified) technology and not on developing knowledge for certification. Both industry and governments see the lack of knowledge about certification, which can ensure the safety of autonomous technology and thus will guarantee the safety of the driver, passenger, and environment. HAN-AR recognized the lack of knowledge and the need for novel certification methodology for emerging vehicle technology and initiated the PRAUTOCOL project together with its SME partners. The PRAUTOCOL project investigated certification methodology for two use-cases: certification for automated highway overtaking pilot; and certification for automatic valet parking. The PRAUTOCOL research is conducted in two parallel streams: certification of the driver by human factors experts and certification of vehicle by technology experts. The results from both streams are published and presented in respective but limited target groups. Also, an overview of the PRAUTOCOL certification methodology is missing, which can enable its translation to different use-cases of automated technology (other than the used ones). Therefore, to realize a better pass-through of PRAUTOCOL's results to a broader audience, the top-up is required. Firstly, to write a (peer-reviewed) Open Access article, focusing on the application and translation of PRAUTOCOL's methodology to other automated technology use-cases. Secondly, to write a journal article, focusing on the validation of automatic highway overtaking system using naturalistic driving data. Thirdly, to organize a workshop to present PRAUTOCOL's results (valorization) to industrial, research, and government representatives and to discuss a follow-up initiative.
A huge amount of data are being generated, collected, analysed and distributed in a fast pace in our daily life. This data growth requires efficient techniques for analysing and processing high volumes of data, for which preserving privacy effectively is a crucial challenge and even a key necessity, considering the recently coming into effect privacy laws (e.g., the EU General Data Protection Regulation-GDPR). Companies and organisations in their real-world applications need scalable and usable privacy preserving techniques to support them in protecting personal data. This research focuses on efficient and usable privacy preserving techniques in data processing. The research will be conducted in different directions: - Exploring state of the art techniques. - Designing and applying experiments on existing tool-sets. - Evaluating the results of the experiments based on the real-life case studies. - Improving the techniques and/or the tool to meet the requirements of the companies. The proposal will provide results for: - Education: like offering courses, lectures, students projects, solutions for privacy preservation challenges within the educational institutes. - Companies: like providing tool evaluation insights based on case studies and giving proposals for enhancing current challenges. - Research centre (i.e., Creating 010): like expanding its expertise on privacy protection technologies and publishing technical reports and papers. This research will be sustained by pursuing following up projects actively.