When bubbles burst: Mimetic insights into minimising confidentiality breaches

This paper presents a theoretical model to help managers visualise and manage confidential situations more effectively. The model metaphorically likens a confidential setting to the properties of a soap bubble, e.g. elastic expansion or contraction, minimal surface area to contain a given volume, fragility, surface tension, pressure, stress, strain and the potential for bursting thereby releasing the contents to the external environment. We explore the conceptual developments in two phases. Firstly, looking at how a bubble and confidential scenario form and grow. Secondly, we consider how a bubble may burst and map these forces to ways in which confidentiality may be breached. Many attributes are mapped, the key ones being: the embedded value within the system, the criticality of maintaining confidentiality, increasing pressure, the corresponding stress/strain dynamics and the levels of trust between stakeholders. Key research propositions are derived from the model which aims to minimise the risk of a confidentiality breach.     

Globalization,greed, and exploitation. How to break the baleful path?

During the last decades, a globalized and free market economy has become the worldwide accepted paradigm for organizing economic affairs. Indeed many positive effects of globalization have materialized and improved the wellbeing of humans, particularly in the poorer parts of the world. However, there is a dark side to globalization—negative external effects, e.g. the exploitation and destruction of natural resources—that is causing growing discontent (e.g. Stiglitz, Globalization and its discontents. Penguin, London, 2002). Different initiatives have been taken in order to deal with the deficits of globalization but have not yet resulted in a resounding success. This paper deals with the downsides of globalization and is not telling a “success story”. For this reason, it is a scholarly article and an essay at the same time, dealing with its subject sometimes from a personal point of view. After presenting some examples for negative side effects of our current economic system, it is argued that capitalism is not only promoting growth through innovation, but that it follows a path of greed and exploitation. Building on path dependence theory, self-reinforcing mechanisms are identified that lead into a lock-in of the current path and make it hard to alter its course. Against this background, three suggestions to tackle the deficits of globalization are presented and critically discussed—the Principles for Responsible Education (PRME), the attempt to restrict globalization (e.g. Steingart), and the implementation of a global governance system (e.g. Homann). Finally, a careful conclusion is drawn: A sequenced approach of education, sanction, and institution building might be the best solution to fasten up the slow moving process of fixing the shortcomings of globalization. It has to be clearly understood that this is not a contribution aimed against globalization and global competition. However, the issues raised in this article urgently need to be addressed. It logically follows that further research is needed in time.     

Parents,Perceptions and Belonging: Exploring Flexible Working among UK Fathers and Mothers

This paper advances knowledge regarding how fathers and mothers perceive and experience flexible working opportunities. It does this through applying the theoretical concept ‘belonging’ to ‘Parsonian’ classifications of parenting and work. In so doing it makes transparent the misconceptions and inequities which exist among parents and their organizational environments. Focusing initially on a qualitative study of fathers’ experience of working flexibly, the paper shows how fathers felt marginalized from the possibilities of flexible work due to line managers’ assumptions that men belonged to an ‘instrumental’ economic provider group. The paper contributes a new angle to debate by articulating how fathers perceived employed mothers as belonging to an ‘expressive’ child‐oriented group, with privileged access to flexibility. However, drawing upon a study of maternity and flexible work we query fathers’ assumptions that flexibility was easily available to mothers, suggesting that fathers’ perceptions of maternal privilege were misconceived. While mothers were categorized as belonging within an ‘expressive’ group associated with childcare, they were nevertheless discouraged from accessing flexibility. Inequities between women and men (with regard to flexibility) thus appeared to be less significant than fathers supposed.     

The Business Model Paradox: A Systematic Review and Exploration of Antecedents

The business model has become a popular concept in business and management fields. Yet, it is suffering from a paradox between outstanding popularity and severe criticism, which appears to impede the positive development of the scholarly discourse on the business model concept. Against this background, the purpose of this study is to provide insight into the antecedents of this paradox and to understand their implications for the future development of the concept. The following contributions are made. First, the authors apply a narrative approach to recognizing and interpreting the paradox, and introduce the analysis of syntactics of scholarly discourse as a novel method of investigating management concepts. Second, as a result of elaborating on recurrent themes and tensions in scholarly discourse, the authors extend the literature on business models through theorizing on the core of the concept along the dimensions of classification, constitution and configuration. In particular, they identify the simultaneity of separation and attachment as the main antecedent of the business model paradox. Third, the authors offer implications for further advancing the development of this management concept, and highlight the need for spurring integrative research while at the same time maintaining a plurality of perspectives.     

On-line bin packing with restricted repacking

Semi-on-line algorithms for the bin-packing problem allow, in contrast to pure on-line algorithms, the use of certain types of additional operations for each step. Examples include repacking, reordering or lookahead before packing the items. Here we define and analyze a semi-on-line algorithm where for each step at most k items can be repacked, for some positive integer k. We prove that the upper bound for the asymptotic competitive ratio of the algorithm is a decreasing function of k, which tends to 3/2 as k goes to infinity. We also establish lower bounds for this ratio and show that the gap between upper and lower bounds is relatively small.     

Harassment at the Workplace: A Practical Review of the Laws in the United Kingdom and the United States of America

Harassment is a major deterrent for productivity, loyalty, and commitment to one’s job and organization. Unfortunately, many employees tend to experience various forms of harassment in the workplace. The focus in this article is to understand the extent to which the law protects a person from harassment, first based on the explication and application laws in the United Kingdom. The article then provides comparative discussion of laws and practices against workplace harassment in the United States. A major objective of this article is to help employers and managers become more expert in preventing and correcting harassment.     

Partially Flexible Operating Rooms for Elective and Emergency Surgeries

In hospitals, the management of operating rooms faces a trade‐off between the need to be responsive to emergency surgeries and to conduct scheduled elective surgeries efficiently. Operating rooms can be configured as flexible and handle both electives and emergencies, or as dedicated to focus on either electives or emergencies. With flexible rooms, the prioritization of emergencies over scheduled electives can lead to schedule disruptions. Focused rooms can lead to imbalances between capacity and surgery workload. Whereas hospital administrators typically handle this trade‐off by employing either flexible rooms (complete flexibility) or dedicated rooms (complete focus), we investigate whether a combination of flexible and dedicated rooms (partial flexibility) could be a preferable alternative. The ensuing question is what is the right combination of flexible and dedicated rooms? A versatile simulation model is developed to evaluate different resource allocation policies under various environmental parameters and performance metrics, including patient wait time, staff overtime, and operating room utilization. The main result is that partial flexibility configurations outperform both complete flexibility and complete focus policies by providing solutions with improved values of expected wait time for both emergency and elective patients.     

TRADE QUOTAS AND BUYER POWER,WITH AN APPLICATION TO THE E.U. NATURAL GAS MARKET

We consider a market in which domestic buyers negotiate contracts with foreign sellers, and explore how trade quotas can help to increase the buyers' countervailing power. We use the Shapley value to describe bargaining power and the distribution of the trade surplus in such a bilateral oligopoly. By exploiting strategic externalities among the buyers, bilateral trade quotas can improve the buyers' bargaining positions. In contrast, aggregate trade restrictions on all buyers' trade never improve buyer surplus. Minimum quotas on imports from fringe suppliers can benefit nonaffected buyers, as these enjoy positive externalities. We apply these insights to the E.U. market for natural gas and show that the effects of trade quotas on E.U. gas importers' power can be significant.