Social network and family business: Uncovering hybrid family firms

What does it mean for a private enterprise in China to be embedded in a family? Our purpose here is twofold: (1) use social network analysis to describe what it means for a firm to be embedded in a family, (2) reveal from the application a new kind of firm, not family, yet akin to family. Armed with data on a large probability sample of private enterprises — a third of which meet ownership and employment criteria of being family businesses — we uncover a category of “hybrid family firms” that look modern in the style of firms that exclude family, but operate socially in ways similar to family firms. Our conclusion from summary statistics on the sample is that there are no differences in average performance level or network advantage for the three categories of businesses: family firms, hybrid family firms, and family-excluded firms. The fact that CEOs of family firms and hybrid family firms more often turn to family as key business contacts is a fact about network composition that raises no question about network mechanisms. Whether the CEO turns to more or fewer family contacts, government help is more likely with stronger political connections, and business success and survival are more likely with a large, open network. That said, the look-modern, act-traditional hybrid family firms stand alone in prospering with a CEO embedded in a closed business network. Recognition of hybrid family firms adds to the literature’s illustrations of social network analysis used to distinguish types of businesses and business people, and extends the population of organizations within which governance and strategy are likely to be better understood when viewed through a family logic.     

Business reform outcomes: Why so different?

Post-crisis policy making increasingly focuses on doing business reforms. We argue that the effects of those reforms will be different across countries. To understand the reasons for the reform outcome divergence, we advance a novel firm-size distribution (FSDs) argument. At the center of the argument is the fact that FSDs are different across countries and stable over time. Then, if a given doing business reform induces firms of different size to grow differently, this will produce a variety of reform outcomes across countries. To advance the argument, we set up a tractable general equilibrium (GE) model and study how firms of different size grow after a doing business reform. The model predicts that larger firms will grow faster than smaller firms after the reform. The model predictions are tested on the Enterprise Surveys (ES) data, merged with the Doing Business indicators. We confirm that firms of different size grow differently after a Doing Business reform. Thus, based on the notable differences of firm size distributions across countries, identical reforms to start, operate and close a business will produce a variety of reform outcomes across countries.     

黄国雄教授商品流通理论研究回顾

黄国雄教授是中国现代商品流通理论的奠基人.文章通过文献梳理和实际观察,对黄国雄教授的商品流通理论研究进行了回顾.黄国雄教授的商品流通理论主要包括三个方面:在内容方面,聚焦于商品流通理论的研究;在方法方面,多使用经验主义范式;在主要贡献方面,奠定了现代商学理论的根基,具体包括提出了“商业创造价值论”“流通产业基础论”和“商道即人道论”等三大理论,以及建立了现代商学的学科体系.     

外语课堂教学多模态语料库MCCT的创建

教育信息化2.0时代，利用多模态语料库语言学方法，通过语料库建设及其数据挖掘进行教学音视频流反思，已成为课堂教学和教师发展研究的重要手段。在遵循语料库建设基本原则基础上，聚焦“教师自身发展”专门用途外语课堂教学多模态语料库MCCT的创建，强调建库目的。与此同时，介绍建库过程，概述文字转写、语料切分与标注等具体做法，总结深加工后MCCT特点及其应用开发。目的是为高校教师利用多模态语料库方法进行教学、科研和自身发展提供理念思路、技术参考和典型样例。     

Deterred by debt? Young people,schools and the escalating cost of UK higher education

Popular commentaries lament that reforms to the financing of Higher Education (HE) in the UK will operate as a significant deterrent to HE participation amongst students from less advantaged backgrounds. This view of debt as a deterrent is powerful and exists not only at a societal level, but also, as we show, is present in schools. Our data reveal, however, that these ‘debt commentaries’ play out very differently across schools according to the nature of their catchment and the sorts of views staff hold about pupils in relation to their fear of debt. Furthermore, students’ views on debt largely contradict these popular ‘debt-as-deterrent’ narratives and instead are often characterised by acceptance, ambivalence and at times positive orientations towards the prospect of debt. These findings vividly illuminate both the regional and institutional specificity of staff and student decision making in relation to ‘debt’, hence they have substantial implications for HE funding policy specifically and debates about widening participation in HE more generally, where ensuring greater equity in the scope of choices young people have when it comes to choosing a university is a pressing concern.     

In the flesh: a poetic inquiry into how fat female employees manage weight-related stigma

ABSTRACT

This paper engages with the question of how fat female employees manage weight-related stigma at work. We use poetic inquiry to show the reader how it feels for our participants to be stigmatized based on their size. We interviewed 22 women who self-identify as full-figured, fat, overweight, or obese. The results consist of six poems, five of which were written by us, the researchers. These ‘tri-voiced poems’ (Leavy 2010b) illustrate the spectrum of affective responses and stigma management strategies that our participants talked about, ranging from feeling anxious, super-smart, impeccable, and funny to rebellious and confident. The sixth poem was written by one of our participants and voices her first-person experiences and perspective. Our aim is to do justice in our writing to the emotions that circulated in the interviews and to make a political statement with regards to the stigmatizing practices in organizations related to size and health.     

名物化及其在药品广告语篇中的意识形态意义

阐述名物化的意义体现的基础,分析药品广告语篇中名物化的使用情况,旨在揭示药品广告语篇如何通过名物化实现某种隐含的态度。分析表明,名物化通过隐含药到病除的观念、彰显药品广告的医疗科学权威性以及预设操纵性信息等方式,巧妙地传达着广告主的意识形态意义。