From primacy to purpose commitment: How emerging profit-with-purpose corporations open new corporate governance avenues

This paper aims at contributing to corporate governance theory by developing a model of governance that takes into account a recent legal innovation: the introduction of purpose-driven legal business forms in the corporate law of several countries. Current debates in such theory oppose models that grant “primacy” (i.e., ultimate control rights) to different constituencies. The resulting uncertainty proves problematic in the face of new, urgent social and environmental stakes that are difficult to represent in traditional governance bodies. Newly adopted profit-with-purpose corporate forms' introduction of a “purpose” in corporate contracts renews these debates. We show that through the “purpose commitment” model it enables, the distribution of control rights in the governance system is decoupled from the objectives assigned to the corporation. This new approach renews the formal role of management, and corporations’ accountability to society. We explore the theoretical, practical, and political consequences of this new model.     

Creating a positive emotional culture: Effect of internal communication and impact on employee supportive behaviors

The study surveyed 506 employees in the United States to test the effect of internal communication (i.e., corporate-level symmetrical and leadership-level responsive communications) on fostering a positive emotional culture characterized by companionate love, joy, pride, and gratitude. In addition, we tested the interplay between corporate internal communication and a positive emotional culture and its influence on supportive employee behaviors, specifically, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and employee advocacy. Results indicated that symmetrical communication and responsive leadership communication cultivated a positive emotional culture in organizations. Such culture also fostered employee OCB and advocacy. Moreover, corporate symmetrical communication directly and positively influenced employee OCB. Finally, this study found that employee OCB positively affected employee advocacy. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings for public relations scholars and practitioners were discussed.     

Value drivers of social businesses: A business model perspective

Hybrid organizational forms that combine commercial and welfare institutional logics play an increasingly important role in addressing the grand societal challenges we face today. Building on the literatures on hybrid organizations and social business models, we explore the characteristics of social businesses from a business model perspective. This study seeks to better understand the particularities and value drivers of hybrid social purpose in contrast to purely commercial business models. We follow a grounded theory approach and our findings are based on interview data from 17 social business firms. Building on social businesses' identified particularities, we propose four value drivers of social business models: 1) responsible efficiency, 2) impact complementarities, 3) shared values, and 4) integration novelties. We link our findings to the literature, contributing new insights into social businesses models and implications for practitioners.     

High value manufacturing: Capability,appropriation, and governance

Manufacturing competitiveness is on many policy agendas, born out of a concern for firms in high-cost economies finding themselves outcompeted by low-cost rivals. Government policy makers and manufacturing firm strategists have put their faith in what we label as high value manufacturing (HVM). We see HVM as an incipient phenomenon currently in a situation of prescience, as something that is still “in-the-making,” with manufacturing firms trying to find ways to be able to step away from having to compete on price. This paper consults relevant strategy theories with the purpose to pinpoint the issues and problems that need to be accommodated for bringing HVM into being and for creating the effects that are anticipated. We found that HVM must be seen as a distributed activity, thus realizing complex functionality for a system-of-use, while being subjected to path constitution. For HVM to function, the firms involved need to find solutions to the capability problem, the appropriation problem, and the governance problem. We suggest that further research needs to involve itself in problem-solving activity to assist in bringing HVM about while simultaneously further developing strategy theory geared toward firms that are involved in a distributed activity like HVM.     

The future of PR is ‘fantastic’, ‘friendly’ and ‘funny’: Occupational stereotypes and symbolic capital in entry-level job advertisements

Over the past decade, there has been a move towards examining public relations as a socio-cultural practice, acknowledging practitioners as influential communicators who produce and symbolise cultural values through public relations messages. Ideally, a diverse group of professionals would aide in representing a diverse society, but to date, the profession remains female dominated. In this article, it is proposed that practitioners’ own discourse do not only establish what is most valued in the occupation and which habitus suits the practice best, but that the discourse also opens and closes occupational entry for new practitioners thereby contributing to a lack of diversity.This article presents the findings of an indicative thematic content analysis of one of the most common, yet under-research sites of discourse, namely entry-level job advertisements in New Zealand and Australia. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the analysis found that the advertisements placed little to no emphasis on the nature of the work, instead focusing on elements of ‘fit’ whereby new entrants were expected to be charismatic, friendly, and willing to work in an environment that is ‘fun’ and ‘flexible’. In doing so, public relations practitioners tacitly created invisible barriers, a self-limiting occupational culture and furthered existing stereotypes of the ‘perfect’ practitioner.     

Does state ownership really matter? The dynamic alignment of China's resource environment and firm internationalization strategies

Recent research suggests that unequal access to home country institutional resources affects firm internationalization strategies. We add to this debate, based on an analysis of state-owned (SOEs) and non-state-owned (NSOEs) Chinese mining firms, by developing a more dynamic and multi-layered understanding of this interplay. We find that home institutional support can be ownership-based or performance-based, whereby the former benefits SOEs and the latter favors high-performing NSOEs. Combined, these support structures serve as institutional control mechanisms in promoting competition, performance and loyalty to national policies. In addition, they establish a permanent link between firm- and home country-specific assets and incentivize firms to develop dynamic resource access capabilities at home and abroad. Our findings inform our understanding of the firms-institutions nexus and Chinese foreign direct investment dynamics, especially in industries of strategic importance to the state.     

Frequency domain bootstrap for ratio statistics under long-range dependence

A frequency domain bootstrap (FDB) is a common technique to apply Efron’s independent and identically distributed resampling technique (Efron, 1979) to periodogram ordinates – especially normalized periodogram ordinates – by using spectral density estimates. The FDB method is applicable to several classes of statistics, such as estimators of the normalized spectral mean, the autocorrelation (but not autocovariance), the normalized spectral density function, and Whittle parameters. While this FDB method has been extensively studied with respect to short-range dependent time processes, there is a dearth of research on its use with long-range dependent time processes. Therefore, we propose an FDB methodology for ratio statistics under long-range dependence, using semi- and nonparametric spectral density estimates as a normalizing factor. It is shown that the FDB approximation allows for valid distribution estimation for a broad class of stationary, long-range (or short-range) dependent linear processes, without any stringent assumptions on the distribution of the underlying process. The results of a large simulation study show that the FDB approximation using a semi- or nonparametric spectral density estimator is often robust for various values of a long-memory parameter reflecting magnitude of dependence. We apply the proposed procedure to two data examples.     

《内蒙古工业大学学报》(自然科学版)五年载文分析(1994～1998)

本文对《内蒙古工业大学学报》（自然科学版）１９９４～１９９８ 年五年载文情况进行了统计分析．其中包括收稿及刊用率,稿源,分类,内容,篇幅,出版时滞,作者情况以及各类基金论文发表情况等．将其统计结果与文献〔１〕进行了比较,结果表明刊用率,出版时滞和文章篇幅均较上一个五年有所下降．     

对改革当代中国学术期刊的思考

我国学术期刊存在的主要问题是审稿选文缺乏健全的制度保证;办刊主体的行政化：编排规范不当导致以人取文,也导致读者看人读文;因科研评价机制不科学所致的学术腐败使学术期刊深受污染;经费缺乏明确政策规定等。要改变这种状况,实现学术期刊宗旨,必须进行全方位的配套改革：（1）加强审稿选文的制度建设;（2）实行实职主编制,扩大主编与责编的自主权;（3）改革编排规范：增加编者按（重点论文导读）与作者自述的“课题价值”与“创新点”,取消“作者单位”与“作者简介”;（4）改革科研成果评价机制,加强学术腐败惩治力度;（5）创办多家学术批评专刊,改革学术期刊评价方式;（6）明确学术期刊性质和经费来源及额度,确保经费足额到位。     

Straight Eye for the Gay Guy: Composing Queerness

Drawing on the work of Didier Eribon and his theorization of the construction of gay male subjectivity, this article examines different “texts,” broadly defined, that grapple specifically with straight men attempting to represent male homosexuality: Norman Mailer's essay, “The Homosexual Villain”; the Bravo reality television series Boy Meets Boy, and Michael Griffith's short story, “Hooper Gets a Perm.” These texts represent attempts by straight authors to grapple with queer experience in ways that move the imagination of queers beyond simple stereotypes or uncritical explorations of the sexual “other.” In the process of examining these texts, the following questions are addressed: What happens when a straight man attempts to represent a gay man? Does he “get it right,” and is such a question even useful? More specifically, what is the value in having straights imagine queerness? Is such an imagining possible? Is such desirable? And, if so, what are the contours of such an imagining—as well as its possibilities and limitations, pedagogically, personally, and politically? Ultimately, I contend that the straight imagining of queerness offers rich potential for mutual understanding; furthermore, attempting to understand what goes into the making of those representations tells us much about how queerness circulates in our culture as a subject, a figure of discussion, contention, and representation.