Visual cryptography on graphs

In this paper, we consider a new visual cryptography scheme that allows for sharing of multiple secret images on graphs: we are given an arbitrary graph (V,E) where every node and every edge are assigned an arbitrary image. Images on the vertices are “public” and images on the edges are “secret”. The problem that we are considering is how to make a construction such that when the encoded images of two adjacent vertices are printed on transparencies and overlapped, the secret image corresponding to the edge is revealed. We define the most stringent security guarantees for this problem (perfect secrecy) and show a general construction for all graphs where the cost (in terms of pixel expansion and contrast of the images) is proportional to the chromatic number of the cube of the underlying graph. For the case of bounded degree graphs, this gives us constant-factor pixel expansion and contrast. This compares favorably to previous works, where pixel expansion and contrast are proportional to the number of images.     

Innere Bilder und beruflicher Lebensweg

This article gives an introduction into working with inner images. In the background of professional work and career there are inner images at work. They trigger which roles we take and which plays on which stages we choose or accept as meaningful. A Case study elaborately illustrates working with inner background images. Simple questions lead to relevant images, which influence professional life. A guide for interviewing and practical approaches can be found in the supplement.     

Commodification, construction and compression: a review of time metaphors in organizational analysis

This paper offers a historical review of forms of temporal structuring and experience in the evolution of work organization. Initially, we review some key images of time and temporality to emerge from philosophy and social theory. In particular, we discuss images of temporal structuring reflected in the two key time metaphors, the line and the cycle. Secondly, we examine some of the main images of time to emerge from the history of work organization. While initially the focus is upon those linear time images that stem from the progressive commodification of the labour process, subsequently this analysis is qualified by time images that reflect the social construction of organizational culture. An examination of the homogeneous time-reckoning systems of Taylorism is complemented by examples of heterogeneous time-reckoning from anthropological and ethnographic studies. Finally, we discuss the postmodernist debate in the sociology of time. Much of the foregoing analysis having been devoted to issues of clock-time, this section sees discussion of what has been referred to as "instantaneous-time", whereby organizational practices are based on time-frames that lie beyond conscious human experience. This concept is associated with the complex shifts from Fordism to the flexible accumulation of "post-Fordism". Central to this debate is the notion of the time–space compression of physical processes and human experiences.     

基于属性水平的品牌来源国作用机制研究——信息处理的视角

制造和质量控制技术在全球范围的转移,导致制造国影响减弱,这对传统原产地研究提出了新的挑战。本研究在区分品牌来源国和产品制造国的基础上,通过把产品属性划分为搜索属性和信任属性,探索品牌来源国如何在属性评价层面上影响消费者。本研究发现,品牌来源国主要在信任属性上影响消费者对产品的评价。不仅如此,与新手型消费者相比,专家型消费者评价信任属性时更多地受到品牌来源国刻板印象的影响。     

Satellite downlink scheduling problem: A case study

The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology enables satellites to efficiently acquire high quality images of the Earth surface. This generates significant communication traffic from the satellite to the ground stations, and, thus, image downlinking often becomes the bottleneck in the efficiency of the whole system. In this paper we address the downlink scheduling problem for Canada׳s Earth observing SAR satellite, RADARSAT-2. Being an applied problem, downlink scheduling is characterised with a number of constraints that make it difficult not only to optimise the schedule but even to produce a feasible solution. We propose a fast schedule generation procedure that abstracts the problem specific constraints and provides a simple interface to optimisation algorithms. By comparing empirically several standard meta-heuristics applied to the problem, we select the most suitable one and show that it is clearly superior to the approach currently in use.     

Exploring the link between human resource practices and turnover in multi-brand companies: The role of brand units’ images

Using exploratory qualitative research undertaken in a multi-brand fashion company, this article investigates the role that brand units’ images play in the link between human resources management (HRM) practices and employee internal and external turnover. Our results suggest that the existence of imbalanced and differently attractive brand units’ images might weaken or remove the effectiveness of corporate HRM practices in keeping internal and external turnover rates low. This because employees may be interested in transferring to the most appealing brand(s) or, if not possible to do so, leaving the company. This article contributes to the debate regarding the use of HRM practices in multi-brand companies, especially in industries where both the brand and the product have a highly-symbolic content. Based on our conclusions, we recommend that brand units with less prestigious images compensate for their lower attractiveness with specific brand unit HRM practices to attract and retain their employees. Theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

Age Work in Organizations: Maintaining and Disrupting Institutionalized Understandings of Higher Age

Age diversity research calls for new approaches in explaining the persistence of age inequalities, which integrate different levels of analysis and display greater context sensitivity. Concurrently, neoinstitutionalist research interested in social inequalities calls for merging institutional theory with critical perspectives and to account for issues of power. In this study, we address the calls of both research streams through developing the concept of ‘age work’: the institutional work actors undertake on age as a social institution. Applying our novel concept to a multi‐actor study of four German organizations known for their age management, we come across a counterintuitive insight regarding actors’ age work: maintaining stereotypical age images can serve to counter age inequalities, whereas deconstructing age images can reinforce age inequalities. The multi‐actor perspective of our study allows us to categorize different forms of power‐laden and interest‐driven age work and to portray the reproduction of age inequalities as a result of actors’ age work, embedded in different contexts and complex power relations. Comparing employees’ forms of age work across sectors and organizations, we detail how notions of masculinity as well as income and job security shaped the categorized forms of age work.     

Organizational Change and the Importance of Embedded Assumptions*

‘Managing change’ appears a simple enough term. However, no common ontological assumption underlies either the notion of ‘managing’ or that of ‘change’. In this paper, we identify different assumptions about both what it means to manage and the nature of change outcomes. From these assumptions we derive six different images of managing organizational change: directing, navigating, caretaking, coaching, interpreting and nurturing. We show how each image is underpinned by different organization theories. We then take each image and show how the differing ontological assumptions about managing and change outcomes are associated with different research agendas. We illustrate this by focusing on three elements commonly associated with managing organizational change: vision, communication and resistance.     

Empowerment as a success factor in start-up companies

In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of employee empowerment in start-ups by integrating different management-oriented approaches in the literature. To test this model, we use recent survey data from start-up companies in high-growth industries based in Germany. In particular, we examine the degree to which employee empowerment as a modern concept of delegative leadership contributes to a higher organizational effectiveness within the firm and eventually to higher growth.

Media Exposure to Terrorism and Perception of Immigrants as a Threat: The Role of Emotional Intelligence and Psychophysiological Self-Regulation

To better understand how media exposure to terrorism-related images can lead to perceiving immigrants as more threatening, in the present study we manipulated participants’ exposure to media coverage of terrorist attacks and investigated how this may influence people's perception of Arab immigrants. Considering the important role of regulatory abilities when facing stressful events like terrorist attacks, we measured individual differences in both trait emotional intelligence and resting heart rate variability (HRV). Results showed that participants perceived Arab immigrants as more threatening in the media exposure condition than in the control condition. Importantly, there were moderating effects of both trait emotional intelligence and HRV. People with lower trait emotional intelligence or lower HRV at rest felt more threatened in the media exposure condition compared to the control condition, whereas this effect was not observed among participants with higher trait emotional intelligence or higher resting HRV. The present study highlights some of the complexities related to how media exposure to terrorism-related images influences people's reactions to, and evaluations of, an outgroup that is related to the perpetrators of the attacks.     

The role of risk preferences and flexibility for risk management: lessons from a custom manufacturing environment

In this paper, we study the management of financial risks of a custom manufacturer in the specialty chemicals industry arising from increased volatility of profits caused by market uncertainty and growing competitive pressure due to globalization. We argue that such risk management can be established either by creating and utilizing flexibility or by adjusting the risk preferences. Using a model-based approach, we operationalize flexibility and risk preferences to show their effects on the profit/risk and the decision making of a firm through a stylized example motivated by the specialty chemicals business.

Political leaders in the SYMLOG space: Perceptions of right and left wing leaders by right and left wing constituencies

Systematic Multiple Level Observation of Groups (SYMLOG) was applied to studying images of political leaders. Three left wing and three right wing Israeli leaders were evaluated by left and right wing voters along the SYMLOG's three dimensions—friendliness, task orientation, and dominance. It was found that right wing voters rated right wing leaders higher on friendliness and task orientation than left wing leaders. In a similar fashion, left wing voters viewed left wing leaders as more friendly and task-oriented than right wing leaders. Leaders of the right were viewed as more dominant than leaders of the left by left and right wing voters alike. Right and left wing voters assigned different SYMLOG types to right and left wing leaders. The dimension that distinguished between the various images was the dimension of friendliness. Whereas for right wing voters, all images of right wing leaders included a component of friendliness, none of these three images included an accented component of friendliness when rated by left wing voters. In a similar fashion, left wing voters saw two out of the three left wing leaders as including a component of friendliness, whereas none of the three left wing images included this component for right wing voters. Respondents from the right and the left rated their “ideal leader” as reflecting values of “dominance”, “friendliness,” and “task-orientation”. However, respondents saw leaders affiliated with their own political camp as closer to their image of the ideal leader on friendliness and task-orientation than leaders of the opposite political camp. Both right and left wing voters saw all political leaders as equally similar to their image of “ideal leader” on the “dominance” dimension regardless of that leader's political affiliation.     

Toward a theory of business

What is the purpose of business? While most agree that business minimally involves the creation of value, a blurred double image of value haunts our discussion of purpose. The image of what counts as value for a single firm is laid atop an image of what counts as value for business in general. These two images cannot match. Indeed, the resulting conceptual blurriness is a classic example of a composition fallacy. We should never mistake the properties of a part for the properties of the whole. A theory of the firm is ill equipped to handle the many expectations we hold for business practice. As such, we seek to establish the beginnings of a theory of business, one that is both empirical and normative. Offering four central propositions about the purpose, accountability, control and success of business, we close with a consideration of several important theoretical issues and practical opportunities that await us in the years ahead.     

The influence of executive age,career horizon and incentives on pre-turnover earnings management

In this paper we hypothesize that CEOs will be motivated to manage earnings prior to a turnover decision. This motivation comes from the horizon problem for CEOs nearing retirement age and for CEOs whose profit-based bonus is a large portion of their total compensation. We find that firms in which CEOs are nearing retirement age have large discretionary accruals in the year prior to turnover. Although we find firms with a larger proportion of profit-based bonus pay have larger discretionary accruals, this result is not robust with the inclusion of control variables in the regressions.

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Cross-border mergers and the cross-border effect: the case of the automotive supply industry

In this paper we examine stock price reactions to cross-border mergers and acquisitions in a particular industry, the automotive supply industry. We show that cross-border transactions entail a pronounced value creation for the acquiring shareholders and that this value creation also holds for transcontinental transactions, which to our knowledge have not been investigated so far. Splitting the sample by different types of targets indicates that the value creation mainly stems from takeovers of subsidiaries. By examining differences between national and international takeovers in cross-section, we sustain the recent evidence of a negative cross-border effect (i.e., cross-border mergers and acquisitions entail lower announcement returns than national ones).

Off the rivals’ radar in emerging market segments: Non-mutual rival recognition between new firms and incumbents

We examine the causes of non-mutual rival recognition—a situation in which new firms in emerging market segments recognize incumbents in pre-existing and potentially related market segments as rivals, but the incumbents do not recognize the new firms as rivals. Drawing upon the prototype theory, which makes use of cognitive representations or images in recognition processes, we argue that managers use rival prototypes in making sense of competitive environments. Specifically, we argue that non-mutual rival recognition occurs when new firms are not proximate to the incumbents' prototype of rivals because their organizational attributes, such as size and age, are highly distinct. It also occurs when it is difficult for incumbents, owing to their diversification into multiple product markets, or their strong identity as players in emerging market segments, to clearly assess new firms’ proximity to the prototype. Using the context of U.S. online retailers that went public between 1995 and 2001, we find support for our arguments.     

The organization of project evaluation under competition

This article examines the optimal organizational form of project evaluation under competition. The evaluations are carried out by two fallible screening units that sequentially assess projects. Screening can be organized as a hierarchy or a polyarchy. We show that as competitive pressure rises, the polyarchy becomes less attractive. Therefore, different organizational forms might be found in different industries depending on the degree of competition. In addition, we examine endogenous screening rules under competition: For symmetric situations, we show that polyarchies will employ higher decision thresholds compared to hierarchies. Nonetheless, as in the case of exogenous screening rules, the hierarchy becomes more attractive the higher the degree of competition.

The Effect of Graphics on Environmental Health Risk Beliefs, Emotions, Behavioral Intentions, and Recall

Lay people have difficulty understanding the meaning of environmental health risk information. Visual images can use features that leverage visual perception capabilities and semiotic conventions to promote meaningful comprehension. Such evidence-based features were employed to develop two images of a color-coded visual scale to convey drinking water test results. The effect of these images and a typical alphanumeric (AN) lab report were explored in a repeated measures randomized trial among 261 undergraduates. Outcome measures included risk beliefs, emotions, personal safety threshold, mitigation intentions, the durability of beliefs and intentions over time, and test result recall. The plain image conveyed the strongest risk message overall, likely due to increased visual salience. The more detailed graded image conveyed a stronger message than the AN format only for females. Images only prompted meaningful risk reduction intentions among participants with optimistically biased safety threshold beliefs. Fuzzy trace theory supported some findings as follow. Images appeared to promote the consolidation of beliefs over time from an initial meaning of safety to an integrated meaning of safety and health risk; emotion potentially shaped this process. Although the AN report fostered more accurate recall, images were related to more appropriate beliefs and intentions at both time points. Findings hinted at the potential for images to prompt appropriate beliefs independent of accurate factual knowledge. Overall, results indicate that images facilitated meaningful comprehension of environmental health risk information and suggest foci for further research.     

Are real options more valuable in the presence of agency conflicts?

The theory on real options has extended the traditional net present value rule in order to capture the value of flexibility in investment decisions. Typically, the theory of real options does not take into account agency conflicts (between central and divisional management). In this paper, we investigate the influence of agency conflicts on real options within a LEN-type model. We extend a standard LEN model with investment activities by explicitly considering the possibility to abandon an investment project after all parties involved have received further information about the project’s development. Especially, we analyze how the option’s flexibility value is influenced by the agency conflict. Our analysis shows that the real option alters the trade-off between risk sharing and incentives that underlies the agency conflict. Thereby, situations can occur in which central (and divisional) management evaluates the abandonment option ex ante differently than ex post. Using this framework, we discuss the role of commitment and the advantages of centralization and delegation of the abandonment decision.

Not just hot air: normative codes of conduct induce cooperative behavior

The shirking incentives arising within team production are in general counteracted by monitoring and sanctioning. However, these mechanisms are usually associated with high monitoring costs and cannot be applied to all parts of the production process. In a laboratory experiment we analyze the impact of less costly elements of organizational structure, such as normative codes of conduct and screening tests, on team production efficiency. We find that more allusions to a firm context lead to higher contributions. In particular, codes of conduct significantly increase cooperation and at the same time reduce free-riding behavior. Our study provides empirical evidence that normative codes of conduct are an effective means of increasing team production efficiency.