Advertising morality: maintaining moral worth in a stigmatized profession

Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands.     

Les transferts de fonds et leur effet sur les indicateurs du marché du travail: illustration par le cas mexicain

L'effet des envois de fonds sur les indicateurs du marché du travail est abondamment traité dans la littérature, à partir de microdonnées en général. Les macrodonnées, plus rarement utilisées, posent un problème d'endogénéité lié aux corrélations possibles de la variable relative aux transferts. Dans cette analyse, fondée sur des données de panel relatives au Mexique, les auteurs cherchent à contourner le problème en utilisant un estimateur GMM en système. Ils montrent que les envois de fonds élèvent les taux d'activité tout en réduisant le nombre des heures travaillées, la fréquence de l'emploi «critique» (c'est‐à‐dire de mauvaise qualité) et la durée des épisodes de chômage.     

Growing Pains: The Transformative Journey from a Nascent to a Formal Not-For-Profit Venture

This article examines how a social venture transitions from nascent to formal status and argues that the transformation of the organization set in motion by establishing formal boundaries is a deeply profound one. Drawing from the nonprofit and social entrepreneurship literature on what prompts and energizes individuals to initiate new not-for-profit ventures, and linking it to a notion of revolutionary crisis as organizations emerge and develop, we seek to illuminate and explore the tension, and its consequences, between nonprofit entrepreneurs and the organization they create as the new venture transitions from nascent to formal. We do this by presenting the results from an in-depth case study examining the gestation and boundary-forming phases of Robert’s Place Cooperative, a plucky start-up cooperative in a midsize Midwestern city.     

Leader-member exchange as a linking pin in the idiosyncratic deals - Performance relationship in workgroups

In the current investigation, idiosyncratic deals (i-deals; individualized work arrangements) are modeled as differentiated resources that shape leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships in workgroups. We integrate literature on leader-member exchange (LMX) with research on i-deals to argue that employee evaluations of i-deals received from the grantor –typically the leader- enhance employee perceptions of LMX, which in turn become instrumental in generating positive performance outcomes. Furthermore, because workgroup characteristics have potential implications on the relationship between a deal grantor and the deal recipient, drawing upon social identity theory of leadership, we reason that the i-deals-LMX relationship is affected by the overall value congruence among the group members. Cross-level moderated mediation analyses on multi source data obtained from 289 employees nested in 60 workgroups showed that the mediational role of LMX in the i-deals to performance outcomes relationship was weaker in high value congruence groups.     

The matching extension problem in general graphs is co-NP-complete

A simple connected graph G with 2n vertices is said to be k-extendable for an integer k with \(0<k<n\) if G contains a perfect matching and every matching of cardinality k in G is a subset of some perfect matching. Lakhal and Litzler (Inf Process Lett 65(1):11–16, 1998) discovered a polynomial algorithm that decides whether a bipartite graph is k-extendable. For general graphs, however, it has been an open problem whether there exists a polynomial algorithm. The new result presented in this paper is that the extendability problem is co-NP-complete.     

The Informal Sector: A Review and Agenda for Management Research

Despite its connotations of non‐compliance, illegality, social exploitation and marginality, the informal sector is a substantial contributor to economic life in developing countries and, increasingly, in more technologically advanced activities. Its prevalence in developed economies has also become more widely recognized. In light of its significance, this paper reviews research on the informal sector from a management and organization scholarship perspective, rather than from an entrepreneurship view, as has been the focus until now. It sets out the atypical management practices that are inherent in the sector, explores the under‐researched relationship between formal and informal firms, and highlights definitional, conceptual and other limitations in extant research. As a step in resolving these issues, the authors present a conceptual model of formality and informality in a three‐dimensional framework that highlights an organizational infrastructure dimension, a view of firms operating along a continuum, and a multi‐level analytical context. Building on this, the authors detail opportunities for enhanced appreciation of in situ management and organizational practices in the informal sector and outline tools for pursuing a management and organization scholarship agenda. Overall, the authors argue that management scholarship has great potential to improve understanding of the informal sector, and that the informal sector provides opportunities to advance management theory, research and practice.     

京津冀节能减排政策措施的差异与协同研究

在对京津冀1981年以来节能减排政策措施进行量化处理的基础上,建立针对节能减排政策措施有效性的计量模型,分析了京津冀节能减排政策措施的演变状况,并探究京津冀节能减排政策措施对其节能减排效果影响的差异性.研究结果表明:京津冀节能减排政策颁布经历了早期各年份相对零散、缺乏连续性到新世纪以来政策颁布数量显著增多、政策总体力度逐渐增大的过程,但三地政策总效力的增加主要是由于节能减排政策颁布数量增多引起的;京津冀三地在政策的制定过程中更多的是趋于实现短期目标,政策整体缺乏系统性和权威性;人事措施、行政措施、引导措施、财税措施、金融措施等不同节能减排政策措施对京津冀节能和减排的有效性具有明显的差异;三地对不同政策措施的使用方式、使用程度方面存在明显的差异,这对京津冀协同推进节能减排的治理工作提出挑战.论文还从京津冀完善单一节能减排政策措施的使用、加强市场手段的应用及京津冀区域协同治理等方面提出了相应政策建议.     

基于违约鉴别能力组合赋权的小企业信用评级——基于小型工业企业样本数据的实证分析

信用评级是衡量债务违约的可能性,因此评级体系要有违约风险识别能力,能够将违约客户和非违约客户显著地区分开.通过逼近理想点的思路,构建多目标规划模型求解最优的组合权重,并对中国某区域性商业银行1 814笔小型工业企业贷款进行实证分析.本文的创新与特色一是以非违约企业的数据到正理想点的距离代数和最小为第一个目标函数,以违约企业的数据到负理想点的距离代数和最小为第二个目标函数,构建多目标非线性规划模型进行组合赋权,在满足了“非违约企业的评价得分越高、违约企业的评价得分越低”要求的目标下得到最优的组合赋权的权重系数,使赋权结果保证了评级模型能够将违约企业与非违约企业最大地区分开.改变了现有研究的组合赋权脱离评价目的的弊端,改变了现有研究中违约与非违约企业的评价得分存在大量重叠、对两类企业的区分能力低的弊端.二是通过检验“违约企业的信用得分是否显著小于非违约企业的信用得分”的J-T非参数检验,验证信用评价模型的合理性.改变现有研究忽略对信用评价模型的合理性进行验证的弊端.三是经过实证,发现本研究建立的组合赋权模型的违约鉴别能力(Z=5.546)要高于现有研究的两种常用组合赋权模型、即基于方差最大的组合赋权(Z=4.298)和基于偏差最小的组合赋权(Z=5.182)     

基于平均电价的在线电动汽车充电排程定价机制

考虑在一个区域内单个充电站为多辆电动汽车(充电顾客)提供充电服务的排程与定价问题.充电顾客的排程(排序)有三种可选择的机制,即从高到低将待充电顾客按下列准则进行排序:1)顾客充电的总报价;2)顾客充电的单位报价;3)顾客在当前时间点之前已充电量的价值.基于上述充电排程机制,提出了一种基于顾客已充电量的平均电价且不依赖未来充电需求的定价机制,证明了所提出的排程定价机制具有个体理性和激励兼容特性.与已有的按顾客获得的最后一单位待充电价格进行定价的方法相比,研究发现:在第1)或第2)种排程机制下,所提出的定价机制顾客充电最终支付价格的期望相同,但方差减小;在第3)种排程机制下,所提出的定价机制顾客最终支付价格的期望和方差均减小.算例结果展示了所提出定价机制在减小充电顾客最终支付价格不确定性方面的作用与效果.     

基于变系数分位点回归的金砖四国金融稳定分析

金融不稳定性累积到一定程度就会引发金融危机,而新兴市场作为世界经济发展的重要增长点,同时也是金融危机爆发的重灾区.因此,新兴市场金融稳定性的研究至关重要.本文基于新兴市场代表国家——金砖四国(中国,俄罗斯,印度,巴西)的主要综合股指对金融稳定性进行了实证研究.与传统金融稳定性的研究方法不同,本文考虑系统性冲击在正常和极端市场下对不同国家金融市场的影响.首先应用分位数回归模型对金砖四国的金融稳定性进行检验,进而基于变系数分位数模型研究系统性冲击对金融市场稳定性的影响随时间变化的趋势,对金融稳定性进行了时变分析.实证结果表明,金砖四国都具有某种程度的金融不稳定性,近期中国和巴西在5%分位点处的金融不稳定性受系统性冲击的影响相对于印度和俄罗斯更加剧烈.