Insularity and Governance: The Case of French Polynesia

Insularity, smallness and remoteness help explain specific tendencies noted in the governance of French Polynesia, a partially self-governing French overseas territory in the South Pacific, with a population of 220,000. Professional relations tend to become personalized, and impersonal and impartial procedures are hard to apply. The market for experts is small: some people are able to claim a monopoly on some type of expertise and then defend it by every means. Solidarity is vertical, not horizontal, which makes for a fragile democracy.     

可辩解型产品伤害危机应对策略对品牌资产的影响研究:调节变量和中介变量的作用

企业创建品牌资产需要多年努力,但毁掉它可能仅需一场危机。在可辩解型产品伤害危机发生后,不同的企业采取了不同的应对策略。这说明,对哪种应对策略能有效保护品牌资产这一问题,企业之间没有共识。为解答上述问题,本文用实验法展开研究,结果表明:(1)对企业自身而言,最优的是辩解策略,其次是攻击策略和缄默策略,最差的是和解策略;(2)外界澄清的说服力更强,会淡化企业应对策略间的差异,更有利于保护品牌资产;(3)在无外界应对、采取辩解策略时,企业声誉会正向调节企业应对策略对品牌资产的影响;(4)在各种自变量影响品牌资产的过程中,心理风险充当了中介作用。以上发现为正确应对可辩解型产品伤害危机、有效保护品牌资产提供了启示。     

Management of medically fragile infants and children

Medically fragile infants and children present a host of challenges. The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is initially the mainstay of care for these infants, but it does not meet the critical developmental interactive needs of the child and parents to ensure positive psychosocial bonding. The care of these infants is further complicated by high daily costs (ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 per neonatal intensive care bed day) and lengthy, expensive inpatient stays (typically ranging from one week to five months or more). FHP Utah, a managed care organization, met these challenges through an innovative case management-oriented home care program called "Welcome Home." The program has produced a major impact on the quality and the cost of care for medically fragile infants. This article summarizes the first year's experience in implementing and operating the program.     

Tenacity: The American Pursuit of Corporate Responsibility

This article attempts to answer the question, “What are the most important ideas from serving as Executive Editor of the five‐year history project that culminated in the book, Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience?” The ideas focus on (1) clarifying the phenomenon of tenacity; (2) looking at three foundations of our tenacity; and (3) asking “How fragile is our tenacity?” This article also presents three foundational principles that underlie the American experience of corporate responsibility. First, the Checks & Balances Principle tells us that there are checks and balances in democratic capitalism which give us confidence that the pursuit of economic goals will be moderated for the common good. Second, the Moral Projection Principle shows that there is good reason to consider the corporation not only as a legal person under corporate law but also as a moral person. And, last, the Moral Common Ground Principle reflects that there are shared moral values ascertainable by well‐developed consciences in individuals and in corporations. The article concludes with this argument: The tenacity regarding corporate responsibility that has been so characteristic of American capitalism is fragile—calling for serious vigilance if it is to endure.     

Mental load and work stress as two types of energy mobilization

A conceptual framework is presented in which mental load and stress are regarded as two distinct biobehavioural states in the work environment that differ in energy mobilization, mood and coping strategy. The framework combines two types of theory that are based on human performance research using laboratory tasks on the one hand and applied research in the work environment on the other. A high workload is regarded as an important but not a critical factor in the development of stress symptoms. Even under unfavourable conditions it is possible to work intensively and to be highly activated without feelings of strain or psychosomatic complaints. In contrast, working conditions that provide few possibilities for control and little social support or are associated with reduced well-being and increased health risks. The two states differ in activation, coping style and mood. A proper distinction is important not only for theory building but also for the reconstruction of the work environment. It may lead to recommendations that aim to enhance the work efficiency of employees while reducing the probability that stress responses will occur.     

产业结构有序度的测算方法-基于熵的视角

本文利用申农的信息熵理论,分别从静态和动态角度构建了产业联系熵和产业运行熵数学模型,给出了模型求解方法.数学模型可以反映产业之间的有机联系和发展水平,描述产业结构合理化与高度化程度.应用以上理论和方法,对某工矿城市进行了实证测算,同时对测算结果进行了分析和讨论.     

Racing to the bottom or seeking legitimacy? National environmental performance and the location strategies of Chinese MNEs

This paper studies the extent to which the international location patterns of Chinese MNEs privilege economies with environmentally sustainable practices. We develop a theoretical framework confronting the traditional race-to-the-bottom arguments with the Chinese MNEs' need to gain legitimacy abroad and signal their global citizenship. We also examine a set of conditioning factors pertaining to the heterogeneity of both host countries and firms, to explore potential sources of ethical pluralism in Chinese MNEs' location strategies. Empirically, we study 948 greenfield investments in manufacturing undertaken by Chinese companies in 82 countries over the 2013–2019 period. Our results suggest that Chinese MNEs may feed a downward spiral by favouring locations with fragile ecosystem vitality, that is, a weak sustainable use of natural resources with the consequent erosion of environmental quality. This result is driven by Chinese FDI in developing countries and locations with fragile institutional setting. Furthermore, the attracting force of a degraded environmental situation holds especially for Chinese MNEs operating in most polluting sectors and with private ownership.     

城市化建设在西部开发中的重要作用研究

西部地区生态环境脆弱,基础设施较差,要想尽快缩小东西部之间的发展差距,进行大规模的西部开发,必须在生态建设和环境保护的前提下,尽快、有序地把农村人口向城市转移,加快城市化建设的步伐。在城市化建设的过程中,大、中城市是建设的重点;城市经济辐射能力的加强、投资环境的改善和第三产业的规模经济效益是城市化发展的方向;在互联网日益普及、国家全面实施"禁采"、"禁伐"以及"退耕还林、还草"的背景下,尽快改革目前的二元户籍制度,建立新的、科学公正的一元户籍制度,是加快城市化进程的必要条件;另外,西部的城市化建设还必须考虑东西联动和区域经济不平衡协调发展等因素。     

FINANCIAL FRAGILITY,LIQUIDITY, AND ASSET PRICES

We define a financial system to be fragile if small shocks have disproportionately large effects. In a model of financial intermediation, we show that small shocks to the demand for liquidity cause either high asset‐price volatility or bank defaults or both. Furthermore, as the liquidity shocks become vanishingly small, the asset‐price volatility is bounded away from zero. In the limit economy, with no shocks, there are many equilibria. However, if banks face idiosyncratic liquidity shocks, then the only equilibria that are robust to the introduction of small aggregate risk involve stochastic consumption as well as volatile asset, prices. (JEL: D5, D8, G2)     

Engaging Stakeholders Through Corporate Political Activity: Insights From MNE Nonmarket Strategy in an Emerging African Market

As interest increases in the political engagement between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and emerging economy host governments, less is known about wider MNE stakeholder engagement and the development of nonmarket capabilities in institutionally fragile environments. This study investigates how MNEs engage stakeholders through corporate political activity (CPA) during the pro-market reform of Uganda's electricity generation sector. Data is collected through semi-structured interviews, archival materials and fieldwork notes, and is analyzed using an NVivo-supported grounded analytic method. We find both proactive and reactive leveraging of CPA to manage diverse stakeholders. We argue that the host government remains the most important political stakeholder in the early phases of reform, but changes in institutional and political environments necessitate strategic adaptations as the reform process progresses. These adaptations include the need for local engagement and the accommodation of multi-level stakeholder pressures. Our findings contribute to an understanding of corporate political capabilities in Africa's emerging markets, and illustrate how these capabilities can be strategically leveraged to effectively manage diverse stakeholders.     

新能源风电技术人才成长最优路径研究

新能源风电的可持续发展需要可持续的人才支撑。而风电作为多学科交叉的新兴产业，其技术人才的培养和聚集周期长。因此，如何有效提升风电技术人才成长速度和质量至关重要。本文在对技术人才成长网络特征分析的基础上，利用成长代价函数量化标度不同成长状态关系，构建了风电技术人才加权小世界网络，并通过改进Floyd算法，优化风电技术人才成长路径选择。且通过仿真实验证明这种组合方法有效提高了计算速度和精度，降低了时间复杂度，为有效提升新能源风电技术人才成长速度与质量提供了量化方法支撑。     

Machinery of Government in Small States: Issues,Challenges and Innovatory Capacity

Small states present particular challenges to designers of political and administrative systems, and far too often their governing patterns have been imposed by former colonial powers. There are nonetheless excellent examples of efforts to design systems which are appropriate to the needs of the small states themselves. This is explored in relation to the pattern of ministries and departments, the use of executive committees, the structure and size of legislatures, head of state/head of government arrangements, and a range of other machinery-of-government issues. Consideration also is given to factors which can be exploited to develop innovative capacity in small states, and some areas for further research are suggested.     

Narcissistic leadership

Narcissism—a personality trait encompassing grandiosity, arrogance, self-absorption, entitlement, fragile self-esteem, and hostility—is an attribute of many powerful leaders. Narcissistic leaders have grandiose belief systems and leadership styles, and are generally motivated by their needs for power and admiration rather than empathetic concern for the constituents and institutions they lead. However, narcissists also possess the charisma and grand vision that are vital to effective leadership. We review and critically assess the theoretical and research literature on narcissistic leaders in order to understand the potential positive and negative consequences of their leadership, the trajectories of their leadership, and the relationship of narcissism to established models of leadership. We conclude that the study of narcissistic leaders is inherently limited in scope, and propose a new definition of narcissistic leadership in order to reframe the discussion and better incorporate the topic of narcissism into the field of leadership studies.     

Are Nuclear-Weapon States not Parties to the Non-proliferation Treaty Ready to Renounce to the Possession of Nuclear Weapons?

The situation of nuclear-weapon states not parties to the NPT is different from the situation of the nuclear-weapon states parties to that treaty. This last group of countries has signed and ratified a treaty that encourage them to begin negotiations in good faith for the discussion of concrete measures that lead them to nuclear disarmament, while the first group of states have made no commitment to do that. In other words, nuclear-weapon states not parties to the NPT have made no commitment to nuclear disarmament and are not obliged to report anything related to the possession of nuclear weapons to the any specific body or organ or to the international community. Taking into account the position of nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT regarding the possession of nuclear weapons, there is no possibility to convince nuclear-weapon states not parties to this treaty to renounce to the possession of this type of weapons under the present circumstances.     

Financial Market Globalization,Symmetry‐Breaking,and Endogenous Inequality of Nations

This paper investigates the effects of financial market globalization on the inequality of nations. The world economy consists of inherently identical countries, which differ only in their levels of capital stock. Each country is represented by the standard overlapping generations model, modified only to incorporate credit market imperfection. An integration of financial markets affects the set of stable steady states, as it changes the balance between the equalizing force of the diminishing returns technology and the unequalizing force of the wealth‐dependent borrowing constraint. The model is tractable enough to allow for a complete characterization of the stable steady states. In the absence of the international financial market, the world economy has a unique steady state, which is symmetric and stable. In the presence of the international financial market, symmetry‐breaking occurs under some conditions. That is, the symmetric steady state loses its stability and stable asymmetric steady states come to exist. In the stable asymmetric steady states, the world economy is endogenously divided into the rich and poor countries; the borrowing constraints are binding in the poor but not in the rich; the world output is smaller, the rich are richer and the poor are poorer in any of the stable asymmetric steady states than in the (unstable) symmetric steady state.     

Efficient estimation of the accuracy of the maximum likelihood method for ancestral state reconstruction

The marginal maximum likelihood method is a widely-used method for ancestral state reconstruction. Given an evolution model (a phylogeny tree and the edge mutation rates) and the extant states (states on leaves), the method computes efficiently the most likely ancestral state on the root. However, when the extant states are randomly generated by using the evolutionary model, it is unknown how to efficiently calculate the expected reconstruction accuracy of the marginal maximum likelihood method. In this paper, a fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS) is presented for the calculation.     

Performance analysis of serial supply chain networks considering system disruptions

The supply chain networks could be very fragile in global environment due to unexpected events such as emergencies, normal disruptions and industrial accidents. The supply chain members may lose their production capacities temporarily, which might have significant impacts on the performance of the whole supply chain network. This article proposes a discrete time model to characterise the unreliable production capacity in serial supply chain networks. Based on the proposed model, the exact probability distributions are available for the performance analysis of a single-stage system in the lost sales scenario. The iterative methods are developed to derive the approximate performance measures for single-stage systems in the backorder scenario and multi-stage systems in both the lost sales and backorder scenarios. The proposed methods are verified through a series of numerical experiments. The analysis results suggest that the performance of the supply chain network suffers more from the downstream-stage unreliability than the upstream-stage unreliability. Furthermore, some application examples are illustrated to show the possible solutions for practical problems.     

State Capacity,Conflict, and Development

The absence of state capacities to raise revenue and to support markets is a key factor in explaining the persistence of weak states. This paper reports on an ongoing project to investigate the incentive to invest in such capacities. The paper sets out a simple analytical structure in which state capacities are modeled as forward looking investments by government. The approach highlights some determinants of state building including the risk of external or internal conflict, the degree of political instability, and dependence on natural resources. Throughout, we link these state capacity investments to patterns of development and growth.     

A Robust Model of Bubbles With Multidimensional Uncertainty

Observers often interpret boom–bust episodes in asset markets as speculative frenzies where asymmetrically informed investors buy overvalued assets hoping to sell to a greater fool before the crash. Despite its intuitive appeal, however, this notion of speculative bubbles has proven difficult to reconcile with economic theory. Existing models have been criticized on the basis that they assume irrationality, that prices are somewhat unresponsive to sales, or that they depend on fragile, knife‐edge restrictions. To address these issues, I construct a rational version of Abreu and Brunnermeier (2003), where agents invest growing endowments into an asset, fueling appreciation and eventual overvaluation. Riding bubbles is optimal as long as the growth rate of the bubble and the probability of selling before the crash are high enough. This probability increases with the amount of noise in the economy, as random short‐term fluctuations make it difficult for agents to infer information from prices.