Headquarters Allocation of Resources to Innovation Transfer Projects within the Multinational Enterprise

This paper examines headquarters allocation of resources to specific innovation transfer projects within the multinational enterprise between sending and receiving subsidiaries, focusing on the role of the subsidiary hosting the transfer. Resource allocation is of key strategic importance for the organization given that resources are limited in the multinational enterprise and that headquarters is the principal actor in distributing resources internally between competing innovation transfer projects. Findings from a dataset of 169 innovation transfer projects reveal that headquarters tend to favor established lines of innovation at the subsidiary level, as opposed to overall subsidiary operational relatedness for additional corporate resources. It is found that headquarters also tend to allocate resources to acquired subsidiaries' transfer projects to a higher degree than to those of greenfield ones. A curvilinear effect is found for subsidiary bargaining power which is initially positive and subsequently negative. The results highlight that certain subsidiary and innovation traits are determinants of headquarters resource allocation.     

Organized Violence and Institutional Child Delivery: Micro-Level Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa, 1989–2014

The conditions under which a mother gives birth greatly affect the health risk of both the mother and the child. This article addresses how local exposure to organized violence affects whether women give birth in a health facility. We combine geocoded data on violent events from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program with georeferenced survey data on the use of maternal health care services from the Demographic and Health Surveys. Our sample covers 569,201 births by 390,574 mothers in 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We use a mother fixed-effects analysis to estimate the effect of recent organized violence events within a radius of 50 km of the home of each mother on the likelihood that her child is born in a health facility. The results indicate that geographical and temporal proximity to organized violence significantly reduces the likelihood of institutional births. Although the level of maternal health care overall is lower in rural areas, the negative effect of violence appears to be stronger in urban areas. The study further underscores the importance of household and individual resilience, indicating that the effect of organized violence on institutional child delivery is greater among poor and less-educated mothers.     

Subjective Economic Status in Adolescence: Determinants and Associations with Mental Health in the Norwegian Youth@Hordaland Study

We aimed to identify factors associated with perceived economic well-being (PEWB), and examine its association with symptoms of depression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. In the Norwegian youth@hordaland study, 9166 16–19-year-olds provided information on perceived economic well-being and relevant covariates. Information about families’ income-to-needs was obtained from tax return forms. Adolescents in households with a low income-to-needs ratio, with non-working parents, and in single-parent households were more likely to report poor PEWB. Adolescents with poor PEWB reported more symptoms of depression and ADHD, also after adjusting for covariates, including income-to-needs. There was a significant indirect effect of income-to-needs on mental health problems though PEWB. The current study demonstrates the role of PEWB as a contributor in the pathway from social inequalities to disparities in mental health.     

Fostering integrated research on organizational politics and conflict in teams: A cross-phenomenal review

Modern business decisions are naturally prone to political influence and have become increasingly complex. Firms attempt to address this complexity by using decision-making teams, which not only involve the use of politics but also show conflict among members. We know only little about politics in decision-making teams. Paradoxically, the team level is particularly eminent in the related conflict literature. Hence, we incorporate the team level by relating the individual-, dyadic-, team-, and organizational-level politics literature with the team conflict literature to foster exchange between conceptually related yet empirically distant streams of research and to initiate more intensive politics research at the team level. In a thematic analysis of 166 publications, we identify 11 themes that represent ongoing discussions, debates, and trends within and between research in politics and conflict. We map out how research on multilevel politics and team-level conflict can enhance their mutual understanding and strengthen the meaningful team perspective in politics research in the future. Our main theoretical implications are advice for future scholarly research on theory choice within and between these streams of research, on the challenges of researching organizational politics and conflict as multilevel phenomena, and on conceptual boundaries between the positive effects of politics and conflict.     

Populism versus neo-liberalism: is there a way forward?

ABSTRACT

Populism is a contested concept. In this conclusion we do not want to rehearse these contestations. Rather, we re-emphasize: the extent of the threat that populism poses for liberal democracy; the failure of most mainstream Economists and Political Science to understand the nature of the threat; and the putative ways of renewing democracy.     

Stratified Gaussian graphical models

Gaussian graphical models represent the backbone of the statistical toolbox for analyzing continuous multivariate systems. However, due to the intrinsic properties of the multivariate normal distribution, use of this model family may hide certain forms of context-specific independence that are natural to consider from an applied perspective. Such independencies have been earlier introduced to generalize discrete graphical models and Bayesian networks into more flexible model families. Here, we adapt the idea of context-specific independence to Gaussian graphical models by introducing a stratification of the Euclidean space such that a conditional independence may hold in certain segments but be absent elsewhere. It is shown that the stratified models define a curved exponential family, which retains considerable tractability for parameter estimation and model selection.     

Emphasizing the experiences of researchers after RCR instructions: Introduction to Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to highlight the experiences of individuals who participate in the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training program held at various universities in Malaysia. In response to a mailing request sent to 40 individuals who had undertaken a RCR training program, 15 participants agreed to be interviewed. The results of the study showed that the three main reasons for participating in the training were as follows: anticipation for knowledge gained; personal experience with research misconduct; and establishing a new network of researchers. In terms of the positive effects gained from undertaking the training, the participants highlighted an increased awareness of the issues and problems related to research misconduct; the need to promote integrity in research conduct; a change in the way they conduct their research; and a change in the way they confront and address misconduct. The findings of this study should be valuable for policy makers and those involved in the management of research programs and ethics, as it demonstrated the importance of RCR training in equipping researchers with the necessary knowledge to conduct research responsibly, and to avoid research misconduct.     

Malala and the politics of global iconicity

The article presents a case analysis of Malala Yousafzai's transformation into a global injustice icon after she was shot in 2012 by the Pakistani Taliban for advocating for girls’ right to education. The analysis focuses on the political aspects of this process and is divided into three parts. The first looks at factors that facilitated Malala's iconization as she was undergoing medical treatment and was unable to participate in her iconization. The second part starts when Malala enters the global public sphere and begins to actively contribute to the iconization process. The third part identifies de‐iconizing resistance to Malala from Pakistani actors who see her iconization as a symbolic colonization in which Malala has become a vehicle of the West. Theoretically, the article is located within cultural sociology, but expands it in a political and global direction.     

Imposing the Regular Ultra Passum law in DEA models

Recently there has been some discussion in the literature concerning the nature of scale properties in the Data Envelopment Model (DEA). It has been argued that DEA may not be able to provide reliable estimates of the optimal scale size. We argue in this paper that DEA is well suited to estimate optimal scale size, if DEA is augmented with two additional maintained hypotheses which imply that the DEA-frontier is consistent with smooth curves along rays in input and in output space that obey the Regular Ultra Passum (RUP) law, i.e. monotonically decreasing scale elasticities. A necessary condition for a smooth curve passing through all vertices to obey the RUP-law is presented. If this condition is satisfied then upper and lower bounds for the marginal product at each vertex are presented. It is shown that any set of feasible marginal products will correspond to a smooth curve passing through all points with a monotonic decreasing scale elasticity. The proof is constructive in the sense that an estimator of the curve is provided with the desired properties. A typical DEA based return to scale analysis simply reports whether or not a DMU is at the optimal scale based on point estimates of scale efficiency. A contribution of this paper is that we provide a method which allows us to determine in what interval optimal scale is located.     

“Right to the City” and the Structure of Civic Organizational Fields: Evidence from Cape Town

This article proposes a network analytic approach to the role of frames in shaping the structure of civic organizational fields. Adopting a perspective from the global South, it looks at the impact of the expression “Right to the city” (RTC) over alliance building among civil society actors, exploring patterns of collaborative ties among 129 civil society organizations active in Cape Town from 2012 to 2014. The article addresses two broad questions: What is the relation between RTC and other frames that are also frequently invoked to describe urban struggles and issues? Does the RTC frame affect the structure of urban civic organizational fields in significant ways? Data suggest that while RTC plays a significant role in local civil society, it is neither the only interpretative frame that Capetonian civic organizations draw upon to characterize their activity, nor the more salient. “Urban conservation,” especially tied to nature conservation and environmental issues, actually shapes the structure of local organizational fields in a sharper manner. This is, however, a potentially more divisive frame, rooted as it is in the apartheid legacy that still shapes urban dynamics in the city.