‘The Captain of the Band is un Galant Uomo’: The Good Bandit from Boccaccio to Washington Irving

The article explores the figure of the “good bandit,” connecting representations of the historical personage Ghino di Tacco in late-medieval Italian literature with the bandits in Washington Irving’s travel tales. Ghino di Tacco was a notorious bandit, known for raiding pilgrims and travelers in thirteenth-century Tuscany. Nevertheless, according to literary sources such as Boccaccio's Decameron, the infamous raider left his victims unharmed and with the means necessary to complete their journeys. Sources also indicate that Ghino di Tacco became a bandit because of factional disputes and was eventually pardoned by Pope Boniface VIII for healing the Abbot of Cluny. Similarly, the fictional bandits in Irving’s Tales of a Traveller (1824) are revealed to be men of moral standing, forced into a violent life of banditry in response to the excesses of nineteenth-century Italy’s ruling classes. His tales redeem the figure of the bandit from crude one-dimensional treatments common in the works of English writers such as Ann Radcliffe. Pivoting from established proposals that have characterized bandits as either criminals or revolutionaries, this article argues that, for Boccaccio as with Irving, the figure of the good bandit functions as a symbol of reconciliation and social reintegration.     

SOCIAL INFLUENCE, SELF-REFERENT IDENTITY LABELS, AND BEHAVIOR

Self-referent identity labels are frequently argued to be a central component of the self and to be important in the planning of conduct. Despite the attractiveness of this argument, relatively little research has yet appeared that supports it, and studies of the etiology and effects of self-referent labels often fail to control for the confounding effects of preferences, norms. or other conceptions that are known to affect conduct. In this paper, propositions are argued concerning the causes and independent effects of self-referent labels. Some of these propositions are then tested in two studies, one concerned with alcohol use among adolescents in four Western countries, the other focused on alcohol and tobacco use among American high-school and undergraduate students. Both studies found strong ties between reports of peer modeling and respondents self-referent labels and that the latter had significant and independent effects on reported behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.     

The role of social networks for careers

The aim of this report is to elaborate on the centrality of social networks in the professional context (professional networks) of organizations. Professional networks are a career-relevant resource often called social capital. Social capital from professional networks entail relationships to colleagues or other departments, and can provide relevant and timely information or resources required for advancement on tasks and objectives. We will introduce different types of professional networks such as leadership networks, developmental networks or buy-in networks. Furthermore, the importance of professional networks for employees as well as employers will be explained. For employees, we will also provide information on the relevance of professional networks at different career stages.     

Verteilt und doch verbunden: Virtuelle TeamarbeitFar from Distant: Virtual Teamwork

This article provides an overview of the current research on the topic virtual teamwork. Despite all the advantages (cost savings, increased flexibility etc.), this form of cooperation is confronted with a number of challenges. Since it is accompanied by a more difficult exchange of information, it represents a source for conflicts and loss of trust. This can severely impair performance and satisfaction within the team. Aside from pointing out potential challenges of virtual teamwork, research-based recommendations on preventing and handling these problems are also demonstrated.     

Women,Legal Aid and Social Inclusion

This article examines access to legal aid for women in light of the Australian government's social inclusion agenda. It is notable that the government's image of social citizenship does not include the ability to invoke and enforce legal rights, and that discourses of social exclusion have paid relatively little attention to gendered patterns of exclusion. The article reports on a study of applications for and refusals of legal aid for family law, domestic violence and anti‐discrimination matters by socially excluded women in Queensland. It demonstrates the variety of ways in which Legal Aid Queensland's grants process operated to further exclude and marginalise these women. It argues that effective access to legal aid is an important element of social inclusion, but that this goal cannot be achieved by reliance on the tools of New Public Management.     

Wholly proprietary versus wholly open knowledge strategies: some empirical evidences from Italian biotech firms

This paper focuses on biotechnologies and biotech companies. Our aim is to develop a model for assessing the openness degree of knowledge governance strategies, applying it to the biotech firms. Biotech production is described as an emerging meta-industry in the global economy, fostering through new products, many socio-economic fields. Its main features are: a close relationship among knowledge, innovation and competitiveness; the need for collaborative research; the importance of small firms. Our paper begins with a brief characterization of the biotech meta-sector. We then review the literature regarding the advantages and disadvantages of ??wholly proprietary?? versus ??wholly open?? knowledge strategies. Next we propose a model and report the main results of its application to biotech companies in Italy. In conclusion, we evaluate the degree of openness of the company knowledge strategies based upon empirical evidence from our research in the field.     

Desire,death and wonder: Reading Simone de Beauvoir's narratives of travel

Abstract

This article draws upon the work of contemporary French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray in developing a post‐structuralist analysis of travel within the autobiographies of the second wave feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Travel and the experience of wonder at the otherness of the world figure as important self shaping experiences within the four volumes of Beauvoir's life narrative (1958, 1960, 1963, 1972). Travel has a metonymic relation to the passage of Beauvoir's life, in which the existential extremes of anguish and ecstasy are played out in a (feminine) quest for self knowledge. Through a close reading of Beauvoir's writing I analyse the different formations of desire that structure the experience of wonder in relation to the otherness of the world and death. I also draw upon debates within feminist philosophy about the nature of subjectivity and knowledge that were, in Beauvoir's time, ordered around an Hegelian opposition between immanence and transcendence. I take up Irigaray's notion of the sensible transcendental to explore another way of conceptualising the feminine subject's desire to know and value the world differently.     

PRICING AUSTRALIAN S&P200 OPTIONS: A BAYESIAN APPROACH BASED ON GENERALIZED DISTRIBUTIONAL FORMS

This paper develops a new class of option price models and applies it to options on the Australian S&P200 Index. The class of models generalizes the traditional Black‐Scholes framework by accommodating time‐varying conditional volatility, skewness and excess kurtosis in the underlying returns process. An important property of these more general pricing models is that the computational requirements are essentially the same as those associated with the Black‐Scholes model, with both methods being based on one‐dimensional integrals. Bayesian inferential methods are used to evaluate a range of models nested in the general framework, using observed market option prices. The evaluation is based on posterior parameter distributions, as well as posterior model probabilities. Various fit and predictive measures, plus implied volatility graphs, are also used to rank the alternative models. The empirical results provide evidence that time‐varying volatility, leptokurtosis and a small degree of negative skewness are priced in Australian stock market options.