• Cultural Antecedents of Sustainability and Regional Economic Development - A Study of SME ‘Mittelstand’ Firms in Baden-Württemberg (Germany)

  Kraus, Patrick; Stokes, Peter; Cooper, Sir Cary; Liu, Yipeng; Moore, Neil; Britzelmaier, Bernd; Tarba, Shlomo (Informa UK Limited, 2020-01-20)
• A Teleological Mode of Conditionality in Early Buddhism

  Jones, Dhivan Thomas; University of Chester

  In addition to the twelve links (nidānas) of dependent arising (paṭicca-samuppāda), early Buddhist texts record a series of stages of the path to awakening, called “preconditions” (upanisās), which in the Pāli Upanisā Sutta (S 12: 23; pts ii.29–31) are joined in one series. Modern western Buddhists take this one series to imply that nidānas and upanisās exemplify an over-arching principle of conditionality. In this article I argue that the upanisās exemplify a distinctively teleological mode of conditionality. I investigate (i) the images of a tree coming to full growth and rain flowing to the seas used to illustrate the upanisās, (ii) the distinctly goal-directed language used in relation to the stages of the path, and finally (iii), I propose, via a discussion of Aristotle on teleology, that the upanisās represent a teleological mode of conditionality, such that each stage of the path becomes the condition for the next, in relation to an aim or goal of awakening. I argue that the series of upanisās has a normative, rather than phenomenological, character, and I compare the series to a recipe. I conclude with the suggestion that the similarity between upanisās and nidānas lies in their being necessary conditions, and that this similarity constitutes a “family resemblance” (in Wittgenstein’s phrase). The over-arching principle of conditionality is not a feature of reality over and above such a family resemblance.
• 

  VRIA: A Web-based Framework for Creating Immersive Analytics Experiences

  Butcher, Peter; John, Nigel W; Ritsos, Panagiotis D.; University of Chester and Bangor University

  We present<VRIA>, a Web-based framework for creating Immersive Analytics (IA) experiences in Virtual Reality.<VRIA>is built upon WebVR, A-Frame, React and D3.js, and offers a visualization creation workflow which enables users, of different levels of expertise, to rapidly develop Immersive Analytics experiences for the Web. The use of these open-standards Web-based technologies allows us to implement VR experiences in a browser and offers strong synergies with popular visualization libraries, through the HTMLDocument Object Model (DOM). This makes<VRIA>ubiquitous and platform-independent. Moreover, by using WebVR’s progressive enhancement, the experiences<VRIA>creates are accessible on a plethora of devices. We elaborate on our motivation for focusing on open-standards Web technologies, present the<VRIA>creation workflow and detail the underlying mechanics of our framework. We also report on techniques and optimizations necessary for implementing Immersive Analytics experiences on the Web, discuss scalability implications of our framework, and present a series of use case applications to demonstrate the various features of <VRIA>. Finally, we discuss current limitations of our framework, the lessons learned from its development, and outline further extensions.
• Investor Regret, Share Performance and the role of Corporate Agreeableness

  Vohra, Shalini; Davies, Gary; Sheffield Hallam University and University of Chester

  Drawing on regret and reputation literatures, the authors demonstrate how positive corporate associations can mitigate the effects of share performance on investor regret. Three studies are presented, the first involved the observation of six investment club meetings. The second is a survey of investors exploring some of the findings of the first study, specifically the relationship between investor regret and corporate associations. The final study uses an experimental design to test whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) messaging can influence regret in the context of disappointing share performance by influencing corporate agreeableness. The main findings are that a range of corporate associations are important to investors, more so than actual share performance, in their decision-making. Specifically, the more agreeable (e.g. trustworthy, supportive) the company is perceived to be, the lower will be any regret felt over share performance. Finally, CSR information was found to affect regret via an influence on agreeableness.
• The Furling of the Sails

  Piasecka, Shelley; University of Chester

  Conference report on the Mystic Seaport Museum, Connecticut. A post-conference day trip for presenters and participants of "Melville’s Origins: The Twelfth International Melville Conference.”

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