Covid-19 in Central America: Firm resilience and policy responses on employment

This paper examines how government support interacts with firm-level resilience capabilities in the reduction of layoffs among formal firms in Central America. Our analysis suggests that government support measures play a role in reducing the probability of layoffs among firms with only dynamic resilience capabilities (i.e., those that are developed after the pandemic onset). The effect of government support is not statistically different from the effect of static resilience capabilities alone (i.e., those that were present before the pandemic); thus, in firms with such capabilities, the effect of government support will be marginal. These results hold across sectors - exhibiting a marginally higher treatment effect in service sectors. Our results do not imply that Covid-19 supportive measures are to be disregarded, but instead raise the question of how government support policies could improve the allocation of support among firms in times of crises. Moreover, it underlines the necessity of policies that enhance resilience more broadly – a task that hints at structural issues and requires continuous government support in lieu of ad-hoc measures.     

Transformer in navigation: Diverse government roles for open innovation in China's high-speed rail

Based on a longitudinal case study of China's high-speed rail embedded in the emerging economy context, we focus on what role the government plays and how that matters to open innovation (OI) for competitive advantage. By linking the OI literature with the national political institutions literature to motivate our research question, we propose a statist-based OI view to differentiate diverse government roles, investigating how government adopts roles in a combined way to push OI in stages. Our findings suggest that government is an important strategic decision-maker for OI. Specifically, the government plays various roles as commander, protector, cultivator, and intermediator, reflecting state activism derived from national political institutions, to construct institutional-level OI for domestic OI activities, and inbound and outbound OI across national borders. We find government can deliberately and strategically use its diverse roles in a combined way to push OI for competitive advantage through the industrial evolutionary process over time. Our study contributes to the OI literature and integrates the strategic management literature with the study of OI to provide new insights to explain the origins of competitive advantage from the state perspective.     

Conjuncture and cultural reproduction in the process of embedding: social work practice in the context of government purchase of services in China

This paper focuses on the Chinese government’s policy of purchasing social services and discusses how relevant organisations provide social work and develop it within local socio-political and cultural contexts. An ethnographic research method was adopted for the study by the first author while participating in social work development in Q City. We argue that the policy of purchasing social services succeeded in achieving “embedded development” but also created a “conjuncture structure” in cultural reproduction. However, due toprofessional social workers in China have, in practice, passively responded to the conjuncture there has been a failure to reproduce professional values of social work in the Chinese cultural context. Therefore, further development of social work in China needs to strengthen cultural reflection in practical actions, focus on the exploration of cultural connections between social work practice and local communities, and enhance the cultural capacity of social workers in the local cultural context.     

流水不腐,户枢不蠹:创新型地方政府与经济高质量发展——基于僵尸企业的研究视角

本文采用文本分析法从政府工作报告中提炼出创新型地方政府的风格特征,在验证该量化方法合理性的基础上,以僵尸企业为研究切入点,以我国工业企业为研究样本,实证检验政府施政风格所扮演的角色。研究发现:当地方政府施政风格创新程度越高时,当地企业僵尸化程度越低。异质性检验还发现:创新型地方政府会更多地促进社会重要性相对较低的僵尸企业“脱僵”,减少这部分企业的僵尸化现象。本文研究对于探索新发展格局下如何转化政府职能、寻求经济增长新动力、实现经济高质量发展具有积极的实践意义。     

H-Day 1967 – An alternative perspective on “propaganda” in the historiography of public relation

This article presents an alternative perspective regarding the concept of “propaganda” in the historiography of public relations. Recent scholars of public relations have rightly criticized early attempts to write the field’s history as a linear progression, from propaganda to excellence. At the same time, however, the same recent scholars have come to accept a linear conceptual change, and that “propaganda” became an impossible term in liberal democratic countries in the 1960s. By using the empirical case of the massive communication efforts initiated by the Swedish Commission on Right-Hand Traffic, which was assigned to implement right-hand traffic in 1967, this article shows that the concept of “propaganda” both occurred frequently and was used in a neutral sense. To deepen the understanding of this alternative perspective, the article both presents how the historical actors conceptualized their work, and describes how the communication work of the Commission was performed.     

试论社会治理背景下政府与市场关系的经济法规制

政府与市场的关系问题是经济法规制的基于问题，如何正确看待政府与市场在经济生态系统内各自的功能及作用，是经济法规制的核心问题。因为这样的认识直接导致了经济立法的体系构建与内容规则。经济法规制是国家实施经济治理与尊重市场调节的基本依据，也是施行经济法治与社会治理的根本前提。所以，从社会治理的背景下来讨论经济法规制的社会经济发展的制度条件及制度生成条件，有利于真正建立和完善经济法规制的体系和内容，从而使得经济法治生态化地融入社会治理的结构体系内，达到优化社会制度以促进经济发展的目的。     

Tweeting about emergency: A semantic network analysis of government organizations’ social media messaging during Hurricane Harvey

While social media like Twitter have been increasingly adopted by public-sector organizations, it remains less explored as to how government and emergency management (EM) organizations use these platforms to communicate with the public in response to emerging natural disasters. Extending the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to the realm of social media, this study examines the emerging semantic networks from 67 government and EM organizations’ official tweets during Hurricane Harvey over a three-week period. It identifies how multiple crisis response strategies—including instructing information, adjusting information, and bolstering—are constituted of different issues, actions, and organizational actors before, during, and immediately after the disaster event. Results suggest that government agencies use the strategy of instructing information predominantly before and during the disaster, whereas adjusting information and bolstering strategies are utilized more during post-disaster recovery. The study offers theoretical and practical implications of using a semantic network approach to studying organizational crisis responses.     

北洋政府时期的劳动立法问题探析

中国的劳动立法开始于20世纪20年代的北洋政府时期。这一时期，迫于工人运动的压力，政府相继出台了工厂法、矿山交通劳动法、工会组织法、劳工福利法等方面的法规。这些劳动立法，从理论和制度层面上来讲是一大进步。然而，北洋政府制定劳动法规的根本目的是为了抑制工人反抗，调和劳资矛盾，维护统治秩序，并未想从根本上改变劳工的劳动和生活状况及其社会地位。因此，北洋政府时期劳动立法的实施成效欠佳，其制度的建设意义远大于对工人保障的实际意义。     

陶澍与漕政改革

自隋炀帝开通运河之后，漕运成为历朝历代统治者所重视的一项内容。延续到了清代，更是被称为“三大政”之一。清中叶以后，清朝的封建统治日益腐败，世风日下，萎靡不振，漕政也是弊病丛生，已严重威胁到京师的粮食和财政供应。有着“干国良臣”美誉之称的陶澍，为了打通这条大动脉，维系清政府的正常运转，在“经世致用”思想的指导下，通过裁汰冗员，删除浮费；严禁包漕，严格制度；治理运河，疏通河道；另辟新径，漕粮海运等措施，对漕政进行了大刀阔斧的改革，并且取得了明显的成效，给后世留下了深远而广泛的影响。文章试以陶澍漕政改革为中心，做一些探讨。     

Reading Polanyi in Erbil: understanding socio-political factors in the development of Iraqi Kurdistan

ABSTRACT

The Kurdistan Regional Government emerges out of the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq as a rare positive, providing both political stability and economic growth. However, the outward display masks a more complex domestic settlement where the trappings of the free market coexist with political parties who are significant economic actors. How can this model of development in Iraqi Kurdistan be explained? Turning to the writings of political economist Karl Polanyi, does his thinking on relations between society and economy offer a way to unpack the development? And what does this analysis tell us of prospects for Iraqi Kurdistan?