ISO 9001 and ISO 14001: Towards a Research Agenda on Management System Standards*

Management system standards, also called meta‐standards, have been adopted by an increasing number of organizations across the world. Although these management system standards are based on the same type of management principles and institutional arrangements, the literature remains scattered, with diverse studies focused on specific standards and published in various journals. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the academic research on meta‐standards through an integrative review intended to shed light on the main conclusions and substantial advances made in this area. This integrative review focuses more specifically on the two main meta‐standards which have been adopted by more than 1.3 million organizations worldwide: ISO 14001 and ISO 9001. The paper contributes insights into the main streams of the literature and current knowledge gaps to be addressed in future research on the various issues related to meta‐standards: global governance, diffusion processes, motivations, benefits of adoption and impacts on performance, internalization, integration, consultancy and auditing.     

欧洲传统游记中的嘉绒藏区社会

19世纪下半叶到20世纪中叶,游历于藏区东缘嘉绒地区的外国传教士、探险家、动植物学家和驻华领事官员络绎不绝于途,并且留下了不少考察观光型文字资料,较少为学界所知。通过对这些文献的比较阅读,可以使我们获得不少相关区域的有价值的资料,加深我们对汉藏边缘嘉绒藏区经济、政治、风俗、语言、宗教与族群认同的了解。当然,在使用这些游记资料时,还需做比较阅读,避免单个游记在知识上的局限。     

族群边缘的神话缔造:湘西的白帝天王信仰(1715-1996)

自清朝以来,湘西地区的苗人、汉人移民、汉人士兵和土家族人都普遍信仰＂白帝天王＂,白帝天王的庙宇遍布各处。然而在不同信众群体的心中,这个神灵的形象以及对它的理解很可能是不同的。尽管如此,白帝天王信仰在当地却起到了次官方政治的作用。无论信徒是谁,尽管信仰仪式的对象相同,但是神话阐释可以是多种多样的。对一个群体来说,神话解释之所以灵验,是因为它的某个版本满足了此群体的意识与需求。湘西地区不同信众群体在不同时期所缔造的关于白帝天王的故事就鲜明地呈现了此条规则。他们采用＂挪用＂与＂叙事化＂的双重手法,把借用的或原创的事件与本群体中已经存在的符号和神秘历史融合起来,再加上别处而来的口传或文本元素,然后加入与本群体相关的地点、事件和共同记忆,完成神话的本地化。在湘西这个动荡多变的社会中,对秩序和身份之另类形式的讨论,就体现在关于白帝天王的神话圈以及其中的各个叙事里。     

从华北农村妇女的手工纺织活动变迁看地方社会的社会主义实践

1949-1976年的社会主义实践彻底改变了农村地区存在的劳动分工方式和日常生活模式。以关中地区为例,社会主义改造以前,农村妇女生命历程的每一个阶段都与纺织密切相关。社会主义改造初期,乡村妇女成为劳动力的重要来源,此前附着在妇女身上的纺织任务被田间劳作所取代。在这种状况下,中国农村地区的妇女实际参与了四种类型的经济：首先是计划经济,此种类型的经济首先满足国家对土地、劳动力、产品的需求,仅根据国家的估计留给集体和个人必须的物资;其次是家庭经济,妇女们供养孩子,为丈夫和公婆的需要而劳作;再次是黑市经济,黑市的市场流动将棉花、布匹、各种票券等资源从农村转移到城市;第四是礼物经济,如果没有仪式性的布匹交换,婚姻无法缔结,新生儿不会被家族接受,也无法为逝者举行葬礼。从1949-1976年,中国农村女性的生活发生了根本性的改变,然而相关的叙述却与土地改革、阶级斗争、群众运动和政治运动叙事大相径庭。     

‘Loyal resistance’: N.P. van Wyk Louw (1906–1970) and the intellectual

The article analyses the seminal role played by the poet N.P. van Wyk Louw in defining the intellectual in Afrikaans public discourse. It shows that Van Wyk Louw’s defence of key concepts such as ‘liberal nationalism’ and ‘the open discussion’ in the 1950s was a movement away from his earlier views on Afrikaner nationalism, in which he focused on non‐rational forces. In the contested terrain of debates on Afrikaner nationalism Van Wyk Louw emphasised the need for the intellectual to ground his interventions in the tradition of European political thought, which demanded a respect for justice and an attempt at reconciling nationalism with liberalism. The article finally comments on the relevance of Van Wyk Louw’s contribution to current debates on public intellectual life in South Africa.     

The relation between monotonicity and strategy-proofness

The Muller–Satterthwaite Theorem (J Econ Theory 14:412–418, 1977) establishes the equivalence between Maskin monotonicity and strategy-proofness, two cornerstone conditions for the decentralization of social choice rules. We consider a general model that covers public goods economies as in Muller–Satterthwaite (J Econ Theory 14:412–418, 1977) as well as private goods economies. For private goods economies, we use a weaker condition than Maskin monotonicity that we call unilateral monotonicity. We introduce two easy-to-check preference domain conditions which separately guarantee that (i) unilateral/Maskin monotonicity implies strategy-proofness (Theorem 1) and (ii) strategy-proofness implies unilateral/Maskin monotonicity (Theorem 2). We introduce and discuss various classical single-peaked preference domains and show which of the domain conditions they satisfy (see Propositions 1 and 2 and an overview in Table 1). As a by-product of our analysis, we obtain some extensions of the Muller–Satterthwaite Theorem as summarized in Theorem 3. We also discuss some new “Muller–Satterthwaite preference domains” (e.g., Proposition 3).     

Development of the Geographical Proportional-to-size Street-Intercept Sampling (GPSIS) method for recruiting urban nightlife-goers in an entire city

Abstract

We developed the Geographical Proportional-to-size Street-Intercept Sampling (GPSIS) method in order to obtain a sample of nightlife-goers which accounted for the diversity of spaces, patrons and locations within two Swiss cities. Popular nightlife zones were identified and quantified using social media data and local experts’ knowledge. Young people were recruited in the streets on Friday and Saturday nights on three consecutive weekends using the ‘fixed-line method, pro-rated for the zone’s estimated popularity. Of the 3092 young adults approached, 896 agreed to pre-register. The importance of recruitment in multiple zones and over multiple weekend-days was evidenced by significant variations in participant demographics and registration rates between recruitment zones, times and weather conditions. To conclude, by combining a geographical approach with in situ recruitment, GPSIS has considerable potential as a tool for recruiting samples that represent the diversity of the nightlife population and spaces.     

Reversible jump, birth-and-death and more general continuous time Markov chain Monte Carlo samplers

Summary. Reversible jump methods are the most commonly used Markov chain Monte Carlo tool for exploring variable dimension statistical models. Recently, however, an alternative approach based on birth-and-death processes has been proposed by Stephens for mixtures of distributions. We show that the birth-and-death setting can be generalized to include other types of continuous time jumps like split-and-combine moves in the spirit of Richardson and Green. We illustrate these extensions both for mixtures of distributions and for hidden Markov models. We demonstrate the strong similarity of reversible jump and continuous time methodologies by showing that, on appropriate rescaling of time, the reversible jump chain converges to a limiting continuous time birth-and-death process. A numerical comparison in the setting of mixtures of distributions highlights this similarity.