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Vocabulary learning is a difficult task for children without hearing ability. Absence of enough learning centers and effective learning tools aggravate the problem. Modern technology can be utilized fruitfully to find solutions to the learning difficulties experienced by the deaf. The purpose of this paper is to present SiLearn – a novel technology based tool for teaching/learning sign vocabulary.

The proposed mobile application can act as a visual dictionary for deaf people. SiLearn is equipped with features that can automatically detect both text and physical objects and convert them to their corresponding signs. For testing the effectiveness of the proposed mobile application quantitative analyses were done. Quantitative analysis is based on testing a class of 28 students belonging to St Clare Oral School for the Deaf, Kerala, India. This group consisted of 17 boys and 11 girls. Analysis was also done through questionnaire. Questionnaires were given to teachers, parents of deaf students learning sign language and other sign language learners.

Results indicate that as SiLearn is very effective in sign vocabulary development. It can enhance vocabulary learning rate considerably.

This is the first time that artificial intelligence (AI) based techniques are used for early stage sign language learning. SiLearn can equally be used by children, parents and teachers for learning sign language.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between the globalization/adaptation debate and corporate foundation activity within a small subset of such foundations. In the light of this debate, the study analyzes the corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches of this sample of corporate-owned foundations using the tri-dimensional CSR research model of Arthaud-Day (2005) to articulate the perspective, content and strategic orientations of the companies.

The study selects three different corporate foundations based on internationalization scale and field of activities. A content analysis methodology is applied to the data collected from the official web sites of 24 corporate foundations.

The analysis results show a general compatibility between the subsidiaries and the main branches of the corporate foundations, at least on the conceptual level. However, the practices of CSR activities, targeted stakeholders or content domains differ at the operational level. Nevertheless, local governance is still not totally independent, especially in terms of received funds. Therefore, this study concludes that the internationalization strategies of these corporate foundations are still at a formative stage of transnationalization.

The study explores the three selected international companies and their corporate foundations. Future studies may extend the number of selected industries and companies. Together with increased coverage, future survey studies may help explain the global or local orientations of corporate foundations’ CSR in different domains.

Corporate foundations may extend their transnational strategies to further stages by differentiating between those units that should be managed on a global scale and those that should be managed by local authorities. They may balance the amount of investment in different regions while adopting collaborative governance models to respond to regions where grant applications are not an easy tool for stakeholders to use.

Given the relatively paucity of CSR studies with an international focus, this study contributes to the standardization or localization debate in the international business literature. The study’s originality lies in its attempt to operationalize the theoretical research model and through its use of corporate foundations as the unit of analysis.