This article examines the political perspective of corporate social responsibility from the standpoint of normative Islam. We argue that large firms within Muslim majority countries have the moral obligation to assist governments in addressing challenges related to sustainable socioeconomic development and in advancing human rights. In substantiating our argument, we draw upon the Islamic business ethics, stakeholder theory, and corporate governance literatures, as well as the concepts of Maqasid al Shariah (the objectives of Islamic law) and fard al ‘ayn (obligation upon all individuals within society) versus fard al kifayah (obligation upon some individuals within society) to introduce a normative model elucidating critical Islamic precepts. Finally, we propose an Islamic “political” corporate governance framework, which democratizes firm decision making by embedding “core” stakeholders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and Shariah scholars in the corporate board, thereby enhancing the ability of businesses to respond to stakeholder concerns and priorities, while mitigating interstakeholder and intraboard power asymmetries.

No abstract

The accuracy of 60 first-year psychology degree students using either the method of momentary time sampling (MTS) or partial interval recording (PIR) was estimated by agreement measures in an independent groups study. The purpose of the study was to investigate possible method differences in a design that maximized their comparability. After training, observers were randomly allocated to MTS or PIR methods and, after further practice, recorded either one, two or three behaviours (namely, reading, writing, hand-clasping) from a constructed 10-minute videotape of human studying behaviour from which a criterion record had been derived. Results showed MTS introduced significantly less error into observers' records than PIR across all levels of complexity. However, there was no generally significant increase in error with increasing complexity and PIR showed relatively more accuracy in recording writing behaviour. Despite the apparent support offered to practitioners for the use of MTS in behavioural investigations, the experimenters qualify their findings and indicate the need for a more extensive series of experiments comparing these methods.

A state space model for two-dimensional motion blurs is descdbed and is employed in developing recursive restoration procedures for images degraded by motion blurs. Inverse system methods and Kalman/Bncy estimation techniques are invoked in deriving the restoration algorithms for the noise-free and noisy cases, respeCtmely. Computer implementations demonstrate the effectiveness of the new restoration schemes.

Momentary time sampling (MTS) is an unbiased method of estimating the duration of time for which a behaviour occurs, unlike partial interval recording (PIR) which introduces bias. This lack of bias does not, however, permit the researcher to make the further assumption that MTS allows multiple behaviours to be monitored accurately or in a way that is sensitive to behaviour change. Further considerations of the use of MTS and PIR are discussed.