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This chapter uncovers the destabilizing and transformative dimensions of a legal process commonly described as assimilation. Lawyers working on behalf of a marginalized group often argue that the group merits inclusion in dominant institutions, and they do so by casting the group as like the majority. Scholars have criticized claims of this kind for affirming the status quo and muting significant differences of the excluded group. Yet, this chapter shows how these claims may also disrupt the status quo, transform dominant institutions, and convert distinctive features of the excluded group into more widely shared legal norms. This dynamic is observed in the context of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, and specifically through attention to three phases of LGBT advocacy: (1) claims to parental recognition of unmarried same-sex parents, (2) claims to marriage, and (3) claims regarding the consequences of marriage for same-sex parents. The analysis shows how claims that appeared assimilationist – demanding inclusion in marriage and parenthood by arguing that same-sex couples are similarly situated to their different-sex counterparts – subtly challenged and reshaped legal norms governing parenthood, including marital parenthood. While this chapter focuses on LGBT claims, it uncovers a dynamic that may exist in other settings.

This chapter examines the relationship between constitutional guarantees of sex equality, understood as prohibiting unequal treatment between men and women, and the constitutional protections of maternity. Textual guarantees of sex equality are nearly universal in constitutions around the world, and many constitutions in Europe, Latin America, and Asia also include provisions guaranteeing mothers the special protection of the state. In the United States, by contrast, the special treatment of mothers has long been contested as a threat to gender equality, and the efforts to add a sex equality amendment to the U.S. constitution have failed over the past century because of conflicts about the status of motherhood. This study traces the origins and jurisprudential development of maternity clauses in European constitutions to shed light on the possibility of synthesizing maternity protection with a constitutional commitment to gender equality.

From 1953 to 1961, the South Korean economy grew slowly; the average per capita GNP growth was a mere percent, amounting to less than $100 in 1961. Few people, therefore, look for the sources of later dynamism in this period. As Kyung Cho Chung (1956:225) wrote in the mid‐1950s: “[South Korea] faces grave economic difficulties. The limitations imposed by the Japanese have been succeeded by the division of the country, the general destruction incurred by the Korean War, and the attendant dislocation of the population, which has further disorganized the economy” (see also McCune 1956:191–192). T.R. Fehrenbach (1963:37), in his widely read book on the Korean War, prognosticated: “By themselves, the two halves [of Korea] might possibly build a viable economy by the year 2000, certainly not sooner.”

The authors examine the factors that impact the growth of exchange traded funds (ETFs) from 1990 to 2020. The authors show the first-mover and winner-takes-all effects from top ETF issuers. Besides the longer history and larger asset under management (AUM), the ETFs being managed by top issuers have exhibited lower risks and higher trading volume. Delisted ETFs on the contrary has a shorter history, lower AUM, higher risks, and lower trading volume. For zombie ETFs, the authors find longer history, lower risks but lower AUM and trading volume, controlled for total expense ratio, return, volatility, Amihud (2002) illiquidity, bid-ask spread, turnover ratio, as well as year, issuer, asset class and region fixed effects. The authors further study the ETFs’ AUM and trading activities over the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and COVID-19 pandemic crisis, and find that the GFC has a significant negative impact while the COVID-19 has a positive impact on the ETFs’ popularity. The significant increase in AUM of ETF relative to common stocks during the COVID-19 is associated with retail investors’ holdings, as the authors document a significant reduction of institutional holdings at the aggregate level.

Discusses the 6th ITCRR, its breadth of textile and clothing research activity, plus the encouragement given to workers in this field and its related areas. States that, within the newer research areas under the microscope of the community involved, technical textiles focuses on new, ‘smart’ garments and the initiatives in this field in both the UK and the international community at large. Covers this subject at length.

Examines the tenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

There is limited research that indicates the relation between knowledge management practices (KMPs), organizational culture (OC) and operational efficiency performance (OE) by using Balanced scorecards (BSC) specifically in oil and gas sector. This relationship is not yet acknowledged through empirical tests. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by providing a better understanding of that relationship and its importance with regard to business outcomes.

In order to examine the relationship between OC and OE, this research takes a BSC perspective with the mediating impact of KMPs. Three hypotheses were developed using literature review and tested through the application of confirmatory factor analysis in structural equation modeling. Altogether, 568 valid responses were collected from one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the UAE.

All KMPs were found to have significant relationship with OE and OC. Also, KMPs mediate the relationship between OC and OE. In addition, the results show that the standardized coefficients of these paths and the loadings of the indicators on their factors are significant. Pearson’s correlations indicate strong evidences of the joint impact of OC and KM practices on OE, with a possible mediator impact of KM practices on OE.

One of research limitations is the type of organization. Future research may include other industries such as manufacturing and construction. Only the operational variable is evaluated and there is no consideration of other dimensions such as leadership type, organizational structure and technology.

This paper is the first in the UAE and the region to examine the relationship between OC and KMPs by considering OE from a BSC perspective with the mediating impact of KMPs.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of insider trading on analyst coverage and the properties of analyst earnings forecasts. Given the central role of analysts for information diffusion in stock markets, advancing understanding of the role insider trades may play in analyst coverage and forecasts, especially in the context of a changing legal environment (e.g. the implementation of Regulation Fair Disclosure [Reg FD]), should be a worthy goal.

To address the research questions, the authors run regressions in which the authors identify and control for as many possible determinants of analyst coverage and forecasts (e.g. firm size, information asymmetry and earnings performance) that are correlated with insider trades. To alleviate endogeneity concerns, the authors use three approaches. First, the authors extend the sample period to the post-Reg-FD period in which managers are not allowed to provide private information to financial analysts. Second, the authors measure analyst coverage in a window that is lagged by insider trades. Third, the authors employ firm-fixed-effects regressions in all the multivariate tests. Finally, following Larcker and Rusticus (2010), the authors conduct the impact threshold for a confounding variable test to assure that all regression analyses are indeed immune to the potential correlated-omitted-variable bias.

The authors find that the level of analyst coverage is positively related to the intensity of insider trades and that analyst coverage is more strongly associated with insider purchases than with insider sales. The authors also find that the positive association between analyst coverage and insider trades is less pronounced after the passage of Reg FD. Further investigations reveal that analysts revise their earnings forecasts upward following insider purchases, the informativeness of analyst forecast revisions significantly increases following insider purchases and optimistic bias in analyst forecast revisions is reduced as a result of insider purchases; the authors do not find similar evidence for insider sales.

A large body of insider trading literature (Johnson et al., 2009; Badertscher et al., 2011; Thevenot 2012; Skaife et al., 2013; Billings and Cedergren 2015; Dechow et al., 2016) provides evidence that insiders actively trade on their private information, such as their foreknowledge of price-relevant corporate events. This literature suggests that insider trades are potentially value-relevant and are informative about a firm’s future prospects. However, less research attention has been paid to investigating how insider trades might affect market participants’ (especially sophisticated participants’) behavior. This study contributes to understanding the role that insider trading may play in shaping analyst behavior.

Prior research (Frankel and Li, 2004; Lustgarten and Mande, 1995; Carpenter and Remmers, 2001; Seyhun, 1990) maintains that insider sales are less informative about a firm’s future prospects than are insider purchases because insider sales might take place for the liquidity and diversification purposes. By probing the stock price responses to insider selling activities, Lakonishok and Lee (2001), Jeng et al. (2003) and Fidrmuc et al. (2006) infer that insider selling is not informative about future firm performance. However, for such an inference, the authors cannot rule out the possibility that insider sales do convey value-relevant information, but the stock market does not react correctly to such trading information (Beneish and Vargus, 2002). Because the authors focus on examining analysts’ responses to insider sales, and analysts are supposed to be sophisticated in information processing, this study adds more compelling evidence for the notion that insider sales convey less information about a firm’s future prospects than do insider purchases.

There is an ongoing debate about the benefits and drawbacks of insider trading. Opponents of insider trading view insider trades as inequitable and immoral and assert that restricting insider trades curbs resource misallocation and benefits the whole society. Proponents contend that insider trading accelerates the price discovery process, increases market efficiency (Leland, 1992; Bernhardt et al., 1995; Choi et al., 2016) and may even play a role in rewarding and motivating executives (Roulstone, 2003; Denis and Xu, 2013). The authors add to this debate by documenting that insider trading increases the amount of information valuable to analyst research activities and helps enhance analyst services.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to offer firm-level evidence of a positive association between insider trades and analyst coverage. By accounting for the post-Reg-FD regime, this paper is also the first to provide evidence on how analysts, in the absence of access to management’s private information because of the regime change by Reg FD, react to insider trades.