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Social media platforms are increasingly receiving attention as legitimate locations for civil society discourse and social movement mobilization. Initial work by Lovejoy and Saxton suggests NGOs use digital platforms such as Twitter to engage their constituencies through information dissemination, community building, and mobilization to action. Here, we explore the applicability of Lovejoy and Saxton’s communicative functions framework to resistance movement behavior by exploring two examples of digital engagement in political conflict. Through content analysis of tweets using hashtag indicators #BDS and #ICC4Israel collected during the spring of 2015, we affirm Lovejoy and Saxton’s findings that information dissemination is the most prevalent communication function for grassroots and institutionally grounded movements. Further, we find that informational tweets in our sample often provide information about grievances, and therefore propose an expansion of the framework to accommodate tweets that may be more common in resistance movements than in NGO communication. In addition to general findings about the communicative functions framework, the content analysis yielded several findings specific to the resistance movements studied. Notably, we find that #BDS and #ICC4Israel tweets are overwhelmingly nonviolent, and that sentiment is generally favorable across both hashtags, with the exception of tweets focusing on academic boycott, which were more ambiguous.

The purpose of the paper is to assess the state of the business development services (BDS) market in Chengdu, with a view to identifying demand and/or supply side deficiencies, which public policy might help to address.

The data are drawn from two surveys undertaken in Chengdu between November 2005 and January 2006.

The research shows there are small firms that are active users of BDS, reflecting the emergence of non‐state owned enterprises in the city. The survey also shows evidence of unfulfilled latent demand, with a particular reference to sales and marketing advice and helping firms to access sources of finance. In addition, the survey of BDS providers shows that some are sensitive to the needs of small firms, although the latter are typically under‐represented in their client base.

The findings suggest that the BDS market in Chengdu is underdeveloped from a small business perspective, which can be illustrated by pointing to both demand‐ and supply‐side deficiencies. It can be argued that this is an important policy issue, if small enterprises are to fulfil their potential contribution to local economic development, particularly in relation to the development of non‐local sales.

This research adopts an “evidence‐based” approach to inform policy development.

The purpose of this paper is to define the contribution of intellectual capital (IC) of the board of directors (BDs) in generating IC of a company, to develop a definition of the IC of the BDs, as well as two of its major elements: human capital (knowledge, skills, and experience of board members, etc.), and social capital (relationships and networking opportunities of board members), and to clarify the relationship between these elements and financial performance indicators of companies based on a literature review on the topic.

A literature review and analysis was applied as this study’s research design.

The authors suggest that IC is generated not only by company staff, but also by governing bodies, particularly the BDs, whose members are not always under contract with the company in the traditional sense. Members of the board use their knowledge, experience, and networking opportunities to build IC for effective monitoring, advising, and providing the company with resources. In this sense, the BDs serves as a source of IC for a company, being the main internal corporate governance mechanism that leads to value creation in a company, taking into consideration the interests of all stakeholders.

The research indicates that the personal characteristics of board members may influence the performance of a company. Therefore, companies should be recommended to carefully select candidates for nomination to the board.

This study contributes to further development of the concept of IC of the BDs by bringing together the theory in the field and the empirical results of studies on the various elements of board capital in a company’s value creation.

With the objective of trying to understand and assess the status of delivering business development services (BDS) and identifying the constraints, the Ethiopian Development Research Institute conducted a survey of randomly selected 974 MSEs (551 micro and 423 small enterprise operators) in 2003.

Random, anonymous survey of MSE operators in BDS in Ethiopia.

The results of the survey indicated that there were very limited BDS providers in the sector, which delivered limited services to few MSE operators (very low outreach). MSE operators had very limited vocational and technical training (before starting business), received few short‐term training, extension and counselling, and marketing services. The most important constraints were mainly related to access to markets and finance. Networks or associations in the MSE sector were not used as useful instruments to promote joint marketing. The results of the survey reveal that there is not significant difference based on size (micro and small) and gender in accessing BDS in the MSE sector. Addressing the constraints of delivering BDS requires clarity regarding the roles of facilitator and providers and the use of subsidies during the transition phase. The interventions should focus on delivering BDS on sustainable basis by responding to the needs in the market and providing incentives to the BDS providers, particularly the private sector.

Very few systematic studies of this nature have been carried out in developing countries. The paper offers clear implications for policymakers involved in economic development and poverty reduction.

The study aimed to investigate how Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and others from around the world present their views on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). The quality of discourse was examined along with the implications of the rhetoric for social-justice and conflict resolution frameworks.

This qualitative study analyzed 257 texts (newspaper articles, opinion pieces, YouTube videos, emails. Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, campaigns and websites) for content and quality of discourse and for their implications for social-justice and conflict resolution work.

Most texts divided into those in favor of the boycott and those opposed. The content was also polarized − most pro-BDS texts saw Israel as a settler-colonial enterprise, and emphasized issues of social-justice, whereas opponents perceived Israel as a legitimate nation and were skeptical of the human rights angle. The main types of discourse discerned included: ethnocentric talk, attack and intellectual discussion, regardless of national/ethnic origin of the writer or stance toward the boycott.

Different types of texts were analyzed, which did not always fit easily into the discourse categories. Because this was the first study of its kind and looked at limited years, results should be approached with this in mind.

The rhetoric leaves little place for dialogue between those in favor and those opposed. Specific suggestions for combining social-justice work and conflict resolution work are offered.

BDS discourse in its present form hampers finding a solution to the conflict and abuse of Palestinian rights. A new approach is needed to try to resolve these issues.

Because there are few systematic studies on BDS, this article provides insight into how people discuss the strategy and how it connects to frameworks for resolving conflicts.

Global positioning system (GPS) kinematic positioning suffers from performance degradation in constrained environments such as urban canyons, which then restricts the application of high-precision vehicle positioning and navigation within the city. In December 2012, the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) regional service was announced, and the combined BDS/GPS kinematic positioning has been enabled in the Asia-Pacific area. Previous studies have mainly focused on the performance evaluations of combined BDS/GPS static positioning. Not much work has been performed for kinematic vehicle positioning under constrained observation conditions. This study aims to analyze the performance of BDS/GPS kinematic vehicle positioning in various conditions.

In this study, three vehicle experiments under three observation conditions, an open suburban area, a less dense non-central urban area and a dense central urban area, are investigated using both the code-based differential global navigation satellite system (DGNSS) and phase-based real-time kinematic (RTK) modes. The comparison between combined BDS/GPS and GPS-only vehicle positioning solutions is conducted in terms of positioning availability and positioning precision.

Numerical results show that the combined BDS/GPS system significantly outperforms the GPS-only system under poor observation conditions, whereas the improvement was less significant under good observation conditions.

Thus, this paper studies the performance of combined BDS/GPS kinematic relative positioning under various observation conditions.

In this paper chaos is viewed as an alternative approach to modeling complex and random appearing behavior. The spatial (static) characteristics of weekly returns and price levels for eleven International Indices are quantified. We find evidence that all countries exhibit similar static characteristics. Evidence presented supports the examination of price series instead of returns.

To highlight the insufficient guidance offered by a recent Securities and Exchange Commission settlement regarding a broker-dealer’s obligation to inquire into its customers’ sales of unregistered securities.

Discusses the traditional interpretation of Section 4(a)(4) of the Securities Act of 1933, which requires broker-dealers to conduct a reasonable inquiry into the basis for their customers’ proposed sales of unregistered securities. Then reviews a recent SEC settlement that appears to suggest the SEC believes there is a more stringent obligation on broker-dealers to inquire into their customers’ proposed sales of unregistered securities.

The SEC’s recent settlement states that various inquiries conducted by a broker-dealer into its customers’ claimed registration exemptions were insufficient to satisfy the broker-dealer’s obligation under Section 4(a)(4). However, the settlement does not address why these inquiries were insufficient or what inquiries, if any, would have satisfied the broker-dealer’s obligations under Section 4(a)(4).

This article analyses an SEC settlement that may, either intentionally or inadvertently, have used an enforcement action to attempt to heighten broker-dealers’ obligations under Section 4(a)(4).