Crafting social change: former global factory workers negotiating new identities in Sri Lanka’s villages

This article explores how former factory workers negotiate new identities in villages, as new brides, mothers and daughters-in-law, after 5–6 years of employment in an urban Free Trade Zone. I argue that their performances of self-discipline and disavowal of transgressive knowledges allow them to make use of the limited social, economic and political spaces available while gradually reshaping local understandings about the good daughter-in-law. Former workers’ strategic deployment of social conformity represents the foundation on which their entry into village social, economic, political spaces is based on. Although individual social conformity would conventionally be identified as everyday politics, I argue that former workers’ performance of self-discipline and social conformity is strategic and leads to changes in gender norms and village social hierarchies and thus represents a form of politics that is in between everyday and transformative politics – politics that creates conditions of possibility for social transformations.     

建立以本土企业为主体的协同创新机制研究

改革开放以来,我国经济发展取得了巨大成就,但也面临一些重大挑战,特别是本土企业加入、依赖跨国公司主导的产业链,在短期内得以迅速发展的同时,也导致本土产业链出现了断裂和碎片化的问题,这对本土企业的创新和发展是不利的。文章研究在我国建立以本土企业为主体的协同创新机制的基本规律和特点,为提高本土企业的创新能力提供借鉴。研究的主要发现是,这是一个复杂和曲折的过程,在这一过程的启动阶段和转折阶段,非经济因素或者至少是长期经济因素而不是短期经济因素具有独特的、非常重要的作用。     

论全球生产的网络化及其推动力量

在产业转移的浪潮中,世界经济局势发生了很大的变化。在经济全球化的过程中,市场经济规则在世界范围内被广泛接受。受惠于科技革命特别交通和信息技术的巨大进步,跨国公司得以在世界范围内寻找战略资源满足其趋利性动机,形成了全球生产网络。     

对外新闻编译中的叙事建构策略——以《环球时报》为例

对外新闻是我国对外宣传的重要渠道,其编译的成功与否直接影响我国国际形象,乃至国际话语权的确立。对外新闻是国家对外讲述中国故事,传播中国声音的行为,其编译本质上是新闻再叙事行为。通过尝试在对外新闻编译研究中引入叙事理论视角,以环球时报中英文网的新闻语料为例,从时空建构、选择性采用、标示性建构以及参与者重新定位等角度探讨对外新闻编译中叙事建构策略的具体运用,为提高我国对外新闻编译传播效果探索新的策略和路径。     

管理认知、资源编排与后发企业技术追赶

后发企业技术追赶研究逐渐深入到微观认知基础,但关于管理认知如何驱动技术追赶的机制尚未被充分揭示。通过纵向案例研究,揭示了后发企业高管认知与资源编排动态适配以实现技术追赶的过程。研究发现,在追赶阶段,高管分析型认知通过“纵向资源结构化、稳定性重组、联盟撬动”的资源编排方式进行基本技术积累;在转型阶段,高管创造型认知通过“横向资源结构化、丰富性重组、国际撬动”的资源编排方式获得了新兴技术能力;在超越追赶阶段,高管的悖论型认知通过“双向资源结构化、开拓性重组、平台撬动”的资源编排方式实现了行业技术领先。研究结论既从管理认知视角拓展了技术追赶理论,又为后发企业的追赶实践提供了管理启示。     

Global product development projects: measuring performance and monitoring the risks

Abstract

This article investigates the development and application of key performance indicators for global product development. Two in-depth, longitudinal case studies with multinational Danish manufacturing companies were conducted, and highlight how key performance indicators, typically used for collocated, cross-functional product development, do not provide the predictive insight required to avoid the additional risks encountered in the global product development environment. Grounded in the case study results and building on established methodologies in performance measurement literature, a framework was developed and validated in two additional Danish companies to support project managers to develop: preventive indicators, which support the avoidance of identified risks, and outcome indicators, which support the measurement towards the attainment of project objectives. The study is unique as it is one of the very few longitudinal studies of engineering design activities in a global context, providing the in-depth contextual understanding towards key risks and their influence on performance; an important step to support researchers and practitioners with the development of preventive measures.     

Service diversification and growth of professional service firms

This study investigates the impact of service diversification on the rate and mode of firm growth in professional service firms (PSFs). Drawing on the extant PSF literature, we identify differing views regarding the growth impact of service diversification. Specifically, some scholars suggest that the external client benefits associated with service diversification should allow PSFs to expand revenues at a rapid pace and pursue less merger and acquisition activity, whereas others imply that increased diversification can cause internal challenges with respect to learning costs, coordination and innovation that can limit the rate of revenue growth and encourage more mergers and acquisitions. We test these competing views using longitudinal data on 137 accounting firms and cross-sectional data on 125 law firms and find that service diversification is negatively associated with the rate of firm revenue growth and positively associated with the use of mergers and acquisitions.     

Culture and Crisis Communication: Nestle India's Maggi Noodles Case

Extant theoretical paradigms in the field of crisis communication are organization-centric and do not adequately recognize the role of culture. The purpose of this essay is to analyze a crisis faced by Nestle India using the framework of global public relations which defines culture broadly to include political, economic, media, societal, and activist cultures. Our analysis revealed that a multinational corporation with over a century of presence in the country struggled to align itself to the complexities of the cultures of the host country. In the case of Nestle India, whereas environmental variables such as political economy and Westernization of urban India boosted the growth of its instant noodles, the multinational also struggled to cope with the rise of media corporatization, activist pressure and the vagaries of regulatory enforcement not to speak of cultural nationalism. It is evident that Nestlé's crisis response was governed more by its traditional corporate culture than by an ability to keep pace with the changing demands of its environment, leading to the amplification of an issue into a crisis. The study concludes that multinationals that ignore culture will be forced to pay a heavy price both in terms of reputation and the bottom line.     

NGOs, Global Governance and the UN: NGOs as “Guardians of the Reform of the International System”

The role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United Nations (UN), as well as in world politics in general, is increasingly gaining the attention of scholars of international law, political science and social anthropology. Using extensive earlier research on NGO-UN relations and on the concept of global governance, it is concluded that although NGOs are becoming increasingly influential actors on the international arena, several problems impede their influence from growing within the UN. Once the inefficiencies of NGOs participation in United Nations’ bodies and institutions have been described, we propose some modalities of reform of this Organization, with the purpose of improving the involvement of world civil society in UN decision-making processes, and increasing its democratic profile. Finally, the study suggests several areas that require future research and more in-depth study in order to make predictions about how NGO-UN relations will evolve in the coming decades.

FDI’s Impact on Transitional Countries, Serbia as a Rational Choice: The FIAT-ZASTAVA Case

The privatization process and foreign direct investments (FDI) are among the most important economic issues in transitional countries. FDI has enormous influence on transitional countries that need serious structural changes. In this paper we will study FIAT’s decision to invest in the Serbian automotive industry. We will try to rationalize FIAT’s decision because Serbian car manufacturer ZASTAVA was not the only alternative for FIAT to invest in the Balkans. In order to justify FIAT’s decision we will apply the Mullins model of horizontal and vertical FDI, examine the importance of the cooperating history between two car manufacturers and compare macroeconomic conditions and Global Competitiveness of Serbia and Romania, which was the main alternative for FIAT. Finally, we will also try to explain why FIAT decided to announce the investment at the end of political campaign in Serbia when pools gave anti-European parties higher chances for victory, instead of waiting to see the outcome of the elections.