The University of Cádiz (in Spanish: Universidad de Cádiz), commonly referred to as UCA, is a public university located in the province of Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain, noted for its medicine and marine sciences curricula. It was founded in 1979, and has the Latin motto Non Plus Ultra ("No Further Beyond"). Its headquarters are located in Cádiz, where the Rectorate is.During the 2007/2008 academic year, there were 17,280 students, 1698 lecturers, and 680 administration and services workers associated with the university.
In the context of emerging market firms, this paper considers the relationship between their environmental international diversification and environmental proactivity, incorporating the influence of home country institutional constraints, with particular regard to the moderating roles of home country corruption and innovation. The study was conducted using a panel dataset obtained from the LSEG Workspace database to analyse the published results of 370 firms across ten business sectors for the period 2012–2022. The main findings provide evidence of a significant relationship between firms’ environmental proactivity and their international expansion. The findings indicate that environmental proactivity serves as a critical legitimacy-building mechanism for firms seeking to escape corrupt home-country institutions, thereby strengthening its effect on environmental international diversification. In contrast, strong domestic innovation systems reduce the need for such legitimacy-driven internationalisation, weakening the relationship between environmental proactivity and environmental international diversification. The present study contributes to the international business literature by revealing how institutional factors in emerging markets influence the relationship between environmental proactivity and environmental international diversification. It also offers valuable insights for policymakers and business leaders wishing to enhance emerging market firms’ global market presence through policies focused on environmental proactivity.
Treeless habitats have historically been undervalued and extensively afforested. While these afforestation programs aim to deliver economic and ecological benefits, they can negatively impact biodiversity, particularly of ground-dwelling arthropods, due to changes in microhabitat conditions and food resources. This study examines the effects of pine afforestation on the diversity of ground-dwelling arthropods in the Mediterranean heathland (herriza), a unique treeless habitat in the western Mediterranean Basin, subject to extensive afforestation in the second half of the 20th century. We assessed alpha diversity (taxonomic richness, abundance, and inverse Simpson index) and beta diversity (changes in taxonomic composition) of ground-dwelling arthropods (identified at the family level), and the group of spiders (identified at the species level). We also explored changes in functional traits (functional beta diversity) in spiders. Field observations were conducted over five seasonal periods within one year, using pitfall traps in five sites, each with adjacent open and afforested herriza plots. While afforestation had no significant effect on the alpha diversity or abundance of ground-dwelling arthropod families and spider species within individual seasons, pooled analyses revealed distinct trends. Specifically, afforested plots exhibited higher overall arthropod abundance at the family level, yet significantly lower spider species richness and abundance. In contrast, beta diversity analyses showed significant shifts in taxonomic composition between open and afforested herriza plots for both groups. Despite these compositional shifts and high functional beta diversity, overall functional diversity indices for spiders did not significantly change with afforestation. Our results suggest that while afforestation may not collapse existing functional niches, it significantly reshapes the taxonomic assembly of ground-dwelling arthropod fauna, posing a potential threat to the specialized biodiversity of open ecosystems.
Aims Drylands account for 40% of global net primary productivity, playing an important role in the global carbon (C) budget. As a key surface component, biocrusts are vital contributors to C sequestration in these regions. However, owing to the complexity of climate change, including concurrent changes in precipitation and temperature, their future role as regulators of the global C cycle is not well understood. Methods To address this gap, we conducted a study in the northern Loess Plateau of China, continuously monitoring the main C fluxes (photosynthesis (P-n), respiration (R-s), and net C flux (NCF)) of moss-dominated biocrusts under eight climatic scenarios. Experimental treatments included ambient controls, warming alone, and warming in combination with various precipitation scenarios, including reductions (- 50%, - 30%, and - 10%) and increases (+ 10%, + 30%, and + 50%) in rainfall. Results Warming and increased rainfall significantly enhanced R-s and P-n during the growing season, particularly under + 50% rainfall additions, while warming and rainfall reductions had the opposite effect. Due to the asymmetric responses of R-s and P-n, precipitation increases and reductions combined with warming led to enhanced and reduced C gains in biocrusts, respectively, resulting in a net C loss with rainfall reduction scenarios exceeding 30%. Structural equation modeling indicated that biocrust C fluxes were governed by moss density and soil water content. Conclusions We conclude that a threshold of 30% reduction in precipitation determines the shifts in biocrust net C flux induced by climate warming. This aids the accurate prediction of their future C sink/source dynamics.
En este trabajo, brindamos una presentación crítica de tres aproximaciones clásicas al análisis de la primera persona en la literatura analítica contemporánea: las que respectivamente ofrecieron Elizabeth Anscombe, Gareth Evans y Saul Kripke. A partir de la discusión pormenorizada de cada una de estas tres influyentes vistas sobre el estado de la cuestión debatida, elaboramos una interpretación propia. Contemplamos aquí la accesibilidad al pensamiento egológico desde el prisma metafísico de la construcción ontológica del yo. Queremos poner de manifiesto lo que entendemos como el arraigamiento fundacional y antropológico del individuo y de su discurso autorreferencial. Para nosotros, en la lectura intencional por la que abogamos, el objeto, el sujeto y su expresión metalingüística se encuentran insertados en la praxis de la realidad social, de la que son partícipes, por lo que rellenan así la necesaria incompletitud del mundo de la vida.
This study aims to investigate whether companies engage high-quality assurance in response to legitimacy threats caused by media coverage of negative sustainability events. Since responsive strategies designed to maintain or repair legitimacy directly emanate from boards, the paper also analyses whether board effectiveness reinforces defensive strategies to maintain a company’s reputational capital and public image under environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns by supporting high-quality sustainability assurance. Using a sample of STOXX Europe 600 index firms from 2015 to 2020, the empirical results confirm the substantive role of assurance. When a company’s legitimacy is at risk due to media coverage of ESG misconduct, the assurance of sustainability information is employed as an instrument to aid in repairing the company’s legitimacy. In addition, our results confirm that boards with desirable attributes of independence and activity act jointly with assurance quality to legitimise companies. In addition, this paper also brings evidence about the mediating effect of board effectiveness; the impact of negative media ESG coverage on sustainability assurance quality appears to be justified by the effectiveness of the board. The evidence also points to interesting findings concerning controversial industries and countries with tight cultures, where the assurance quality seems not to respond to the legitimacy threats associated with media coverage of undesirable ESG. However, and after studying how the European Directive 2014/95/EU affected the symbolic use of assurance, results confirm that there are no significant differences in the legitimising use of assurance quality after irresponsible ESG actions before and after the directive, and neither, depending on the level of sustainability performance or public enforcement.
