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1 – 7 of 7Stephen Ackroyd and Jonathan Murphy
The paper's aim is to consider the effects of recurrent economic crisis on the management and organisational structures of transnational companies based in the UK by considering…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper's aim is to consider the effects of recurrent economic crisis on the management and organisational structures of transnational companies based in the UK by considering contemporary evidence and scholarly views of the processes involved, and especially to consider the contributions of the papers that follow in this special issue of the journal.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides a summary overview of some of the key evidence and arguments concerning the origin of recent continuing crises in Western capitalism. The paper places in context and assesses the contribution of five papers especially selected by the editors to be included in this special issue which bear on different aspects.
Findings
The paper suggests several key processes are at work in contemporary capitalism, which can be summed up as increasing financialisation. This is the process by which businesses are increasingly orientated to the extraction of value, and success is primarily assessed in terms of the rate of return to capital employed. In their different ways the papers in the special issue illustrate aspects of the process of financialisation, including: the operation of a new set of financial institutions including private equity and hedge funds, and the effects of these on the various policies and priorities of the executive leaders of large businesses in such areas as human resource management and the adoption of new organisational forms. The discussion extends to the consideration of the effects of change on international finance and argues for the origins of changes in changed class relations.
Research limitations/implications
The implications of this work are that the character and reach of current economic change are further illuminated – including especially the underlying causes of the present economic crisis.
Social implications
Financialisation represents both a reorganisation of the processes of capitalist production and a class strategy of international elites to entrench their advantages in the new conditions of international political economy opened through the intellectual and policy triumph of neoliberal thinking.
Originality/value
The work brings together scattered insights and viewpoints and builds them into a coherent synthesis. It thus moves beyond limited conceptions and insights.
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Keywords
– The purpose of this paper is to examine in which ways hedge funds contribute to financialization.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine in which ways hedge funds contribute to financialization.
Design/methodology/approach
Two already identified conduits through which financialization operates are applied to hedge funds.
Findings
The paper finds that hedge funds drive the phenomenon of financialization in two major ways, i.e. the financialization of corporations, and the financialization of markets. Hence, hedge funds can be conceived as agents of change for financialization.
Research limitations/implications
There are indications that hedge funds possess disciplinary power. Future research should address this pivotal point, even though such power will be difficult to prove empirically.
Social implications
Hedge funds have been found to potentially increase market volatility. In times of crisis, stricter regulation of these investors that take excessive risks seems prudent.
Originality/value
Through linking “hedge funds” with “financialization” this paper closes a research gap. In addition, the so far rather structural debate about financialization benefits from the actor-centered approach of this paper.
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The media, private citizens and other stakeholders regularly appraise political negotiations, but the character of these negotiations and the reasons for outcomes are little…
Abstract
Purpose
The media, private citizens and other stakeholders regularly appraise political negotiations, but the character of these negotiations and the reasons for outcomes are little understood. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to discuss this character and explore its implications.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper. The author carried out a literature review and used his experiences in supervising political negotiation simulations.
Findings
The author argues that political negotiations have several specific characteristics that distinguish them from other kinds of negotiations. Political negotiations, for instance, tend to address often rather fuzzy public interests, involve value conflicts or are simultaneously performed “on stage” and “behind the scenes.” These characteristics may matter, as they can provide structural disincentives to negotiators, who might be tempted to focus on selling outcomes rather than on improving them (“saleability-oriented negotiating”). Hence, the author argues that political negotiators and their stakeholders face the challenge that political contexts may foster weak negotiation performances.
Practical implications
The author proposes an approach to political negotiations’ training that takes the findings of this paper into consideration.
Originality/value
This paper is the first, to the best of the author’s knowledge, to provide a detailed characterization of political negotiations and to discuss related implications.
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Romana Ratkiewicz, Wojciech Konior and Jan Kotlarz
The purpose of the paper is to give a brief description of the new topic introduced for the first time at the EASN Conferences.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to give a brief description of the new topic introduced for the first time at the EASN Conferences.
Design/methodology/approach
The topic concerns the heliosphere, the nearest surrounding of the Sun and thus the nearest vicinity of the Earth. The heliosphere is created due to the interaction between the solar wind and the local interstellar medium.
Findings
This paper does not include any new information about the heliosphere and only introduces a new topic to this journal. It is briefly shown how heliospheric structures are formed, what factors affect a shape of the heliosphere, what measurements are made by Ulysses, Voyager and IBEX space missions (important for the heliosphere modeling) and how obtained data are used to validate theoretical results.
Practical implications
To categorize the paper under one of these classifications, research paper, viewpoint, technical paper, conceptual paper, case study, literature review or general review, the authors chose a paper type, general review, as the closest category to this paper. However, it is not a purpose of this paper to provide an extensive review of the community efforts to investigate the physical processes in the vicinity of the heliosphere interface. This is mostly a status report.
Originality/value
As the new topic in this journal, the article introduces in detail only a small number of aspects connected with heliosphere models. Interplanetary and interstellar magnetic field structures are primarily described. Other factors are only mentioned.
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Wojciech Konior, Romana Ratkiewicz and Jan Kotlarz
This paper aims to review the current knowledge about the neutral component of the local interstellar medium (LISM), which due to the resonant charge exchange, photoionization and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to review the current knowledge about the neutral component of the local interstellar medium (LISM), which due to the resonant charge exchange, photoionization and electron impact ionization processes has a profound impact on the heliosphere structure.
Design/methodology/approach
This work is based on the heliospheric literature review.
Findings
The summary of four major effects of neutral hydrogen atoms penetrating solar wind (SW), i.e. the disappearance of the complicated flow structure; the emergence of “hydrogen wall” in front of the heliopause (HP); decreasing distance of termination shock (TS), HP and bow shock (BS) layer from the Sun; and recently discovered by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer mission, a region of enhanced energetic neutral atom (ENA) emission seen in all sky maps as a ribbon.
Practical implications
In the context of constantly developing space technologies in aerospace engineering and prospective deep space missions, there is a need of general reviews about the interstellar space surroundings of the Sun and gathering the knowledge to help in theoretical, numerical and experimental investigations such as the optimization of the scientific equipment and spacecraft structure to work in specific conditions.
Originality/value
The survey encapsulate basic and relevant processes playing an important role in the physics of the nearest surroundings of the Sun and the latest results of numerical and experimental investigations focused on the neutral LISM component and its influence on the heliosphere, which is strongly desired in future works. Until now, not many of such reviews have been done.
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Fraz Inam, Aneeq Inam, Muhammad Abbas Mian, Adnan Ahmed Sheikh and Hayat Muhammad Awan
Considering the economic dimension of sustainability, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the risk of bankruptcy in the Pakistani firms of the non-financial sector from years…
Abstract
Purpose
Considering the economic dimension of sustainability, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the risk of bankruptcy in the Pakistani firms of the non-financial sector from years 1995 to 2017.
Design/methodology/approach
Three techniques were used which include multivariate discriminant analysis (MDA), logit regression and multilayer perceptron artificial neural networks. The accounting data of firms were selected one year before the bankruptcy.
Findings
Findings were obtained by comparing and analyzing the methods which show that neural networks model outperforms in the prediction of bankruptcy. They further conclude that profitability and leverage indicators have the power of discrimination in bankruptcy prediction and the best variables to predict financial distress are also found and indicated.
Practical implications
Practically, this study may help the firms to better anticipate the risks of getting bankrupt by choosing the right method and to make effective decision making for organizational sustainability.
Originality/value
Three different techniques were used in this research to predict the bankruptcy of non-financial sector in Pakistan to make an effective prediction.
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Francisco Elânio Bezerra, Flavio Grassi, Cleber Gustavo Dias and Fabio Henrique Pereira
This paper aims to propose an approach based upon the principal component analysis (PCA) to define a contribution rate for each variable and then select the main variables as…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose an approach based upon the principal component analysis (PCA) to define a contribution rate for each variable and then select the main variables as inputs to a neural network for energy load forecasting in the region southeastern Brazil.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed approach defines a contribution rate of each variable as a weighted sum of the inner product between the variable and each principal component. So, the contribution rate is used for selecting the most important features of 27 variables and 6,815 electricity data for a multilayer perceptron network backpropagation prediction model. Several tests, starting from the most significant variable as input, and adding the next most significant variable and so on, are accomplished to predict energy load (GWh). The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin and Bartlett sphericity tests were used to verify the overall consistency of the data for factor analysis.
Findings
Although energy load forecasting is an area for which databases with tens or hundreds of variables are available, the approach could select only six variables that contribute more than 85% for the model. While the contribution rates of the variables of the plants, plus energy exchange added, have only 14.14% of contribution, the variable the stored energy has a contribution rate of 26.31% being fundamental for the prediction accuracy.
Originality/value
Besides improving the forecasting accuracy and providing a faster predictor, the proposed PCA-based approach for calculating the contribution rate of input variables providing a better understanding of the underlying process that generated the data, which is fundamental to the Brazilian reality due to the accentuated climatic and economic variations.
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