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Lewis Byrd, a partner in the private equity firm Opportunity Capital Partners, is managing a number of interconnected issues. First, in his role as investment professional responsible for the firm's investment in a doghouse manufacturing company called Dogloo, he has to manage a relationship with an entrepreneur who has behaved in a way that has made coinvestors nervous about his skills as a CEO. The CEO, Aurelio Barretto, is a Cuban immigrant who has established a close confiding relationship with Byrd, who is an African American. Barretto has increasingly relied on Byrd to run interference for him with investors, while also providing the strategic advice that typically supports an investor-entrepreneur relationship. Another issue is that there is a potentially costly lawsuit looming involving copyright infringement by a larger, well-funded competitor in the pet products market. Byrd has to manage potentially volatile relationships while determining what's best for his firm from an investment standpoint and how best to advise Barretto to proceed. The case provides insights into the challenges in private equity investing that occur after the striking of the financial deal. The case also provides information for students about the technical and legal structure of private equity financing.

Theory and exhortation about planning, research and evaluation (PRE) in PR still outweighs best practice. The tools exist to enable PRE to be used as a means of demonstrating PR effectiveness. Yet research continues to demonstrate that PR is either not validated or the methodologies used are considered suspect. Behind the lack of PRE usage are weaknesses in PR training and reluctance to do the obvious, such as tap into existing sources of research. While it is important to prove the effectiveness of PR through PRE, there is a bigger prize: to demonstrate the strategic role that PR can play in organisations and to raise the standing of PR. With growing recessionary pressure and the threat of competition from other service providers such as management consultants, the PR profession should seize on PRE as a means of putting PR on to a higher plane.

This paper aims to explore the evaluation theory in a field closely related to corporate communication and public relations (PR) as well as in other disciplines and argues that embracing the evaluation theory more broadly can break the “stasis” and “deadlock” identified in evaluation of corporate communication and PR. Specifically, this analysis seeks to show that a transdisciplinary approach can contribute to standards and demonstration of impact – two long-sought goals in evaluation of corporate communication and PR – as well as inform methodology.

Critical analysis is applied to review the evaluation theory in a number of fields, including international development, public administration, management and health communication, compared with major frameworks, models and methods used for evaluation of corporate communication and PR.

This analysis shows that the evaluation theory in other fields and related theory of change, program theory and program logic models can contribute to advancing evaluation of corporate communication and PR in three ways: identifying standards in terminology and approaches, shifting focus from activities and outputs to outcomes and impact and applying appropriate and rigorous methodology.

While this paper does not present new empirical data, it expands the theoretical perspectives, models and methods applied to the evaluation of corporate communication and PR and identifies new directions for research.

As well as expanding the evaluation theory and opening up new ground for research, this analysis identifies a need for structural change in the field of practice.

Is strategic decision making practiced by fast‐changing U.S. high‐technology corporations? If it is, what impact is it having on financial performance? These research‐intensive companies operate in turbulent environments characterized by rapid innovation among competing firms. Can it be proven that strategic decision making helps in their struggle for survival, and can it be measured by the bottom line?

Black death on a loop online through the click economy brings to bear the mimetic violence associated with Blackness. The idea of consuming Black death as a repeat event highlights the visceral economy of online consumption practices in which Black death is shared and passed on as viral content. The foreshadowing of the Black body and Black death is both banalized and commodified as content for instant gratification spread via algorithms, tagging, likes and newsfeeds. The distributive popular economy online and the offering of Black death through a click economy redrafts Blackness through its historic fungibility of slavery and White oppression, and equally ‘virtuality’ in which both its hyper-visibility and invisibility assemble it through new modalities of violence whilst invoking new spaces to commune, grieve and experience collective grief for these demised bodies. Blackness is made perceptible through its liminality and denial of its corporeality such that both social death and mortal death are ascribed to it. This chapter agitates against the futility of Black death by its quest to read Black humanism online as a moment of empowerment and emancipation to reclaim Blackness and to defy its formlessness in the digital economy as the new graveyard of its spiritual resurrection.

The glitter of techtransfer agreements often tends to be a camouflage and the number of trainees is no substitute for genuine techtransfer: the self‐sustained duplication of foreign technology. We study techtransfer in Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore to develop the ethos of successful IT techtransfer. (1) Taiwan: In 1976 a US technology company, RCA, transferred CMOS technology which is foundational to semiconductors, not to a private company in Taiwan, but a public government agency. RCA could not trust Taiwan to honor Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) because of its piracy image. At home, RCA was accustomed to America's respect of its public institutions to do the honorable thing. So, RCA opted for a private‐to‐public techtransfer. Even after 16 years, another private company would not trust Taiwan private sector; General Physics of Columbia, Maryland, would transfer nuclear reactor simulation technology not to a private company, but to a government support organization, Institute for Information Industry. (2) South Korea: In the mid‐60s, US firms (Motorola, Signetics, Fairchild) began to assemble chips, followed by Japanese firms and 27 Japanese‐Korean Joint ventures (Samsung‐Sanyo; Crown Radio; Toshiba and Goldstar‐Alps Electronics). In 1975, Samsung acquired the only locally‐owned chip company (Korea Semiconductor) which manu‐factured CMOS chips for watches. (We recall that Taiwan imported CMOS technology from RCA in 1976). During 1983–84 Samsung ac‐quired DRAM technology and the ethnic Korean and Chinese employees succeeded in producing 64 and 256 k‐bit chips. CEO Lee took significant risks, time and again, to let Samsung join the race to design and manufacture successive generations of semiconductor technology. Much of the cumulative US$800 million investment in semiconductors was recouped in 1987 with the market upturn, and higher prices for 256 k‐bit chips. From 1989 onwards, Samsung pushed ahead to achieve design leadership by aggressively involving engineers in all phases of technology transfer and application, as well as by forging new joint ventures with foreign industry leaders which gave Samsung a more dominant role. 3. Singapore: Contrary to the leapfrogging advanced in the litera‐ture since 1982, suggesting that NICs leap over technology generations, Singapore electronics industry supports a model of incremental learning under which TNCs [Trans‐National Corporations] transferred technology gradually. Much of the advance was in pre‐electronic activities such as mechanical, electro‐mechanical and precision engineering, rather than in software or R&D, as would be expected under leapfrogging. As the subsidiaries advanced technologically, they formed forward links with customers, and backward links with local suppliers of capital goods. The government built up the appropriate infrastructure. We develop three Desiderata (desired conditions) for techtransfer: (1) A Pre‐determined Sequence of Technology by Type and Level, (2) A Pre‐determined Sequence of Intellectual Property Rights Protection, and (3) A Pre‐determined Sequence of Upgrading of Transferee's Technical Skills. Why should the transferor engage in any techtransfer? Because leading US corporations use only about 5 percent of their process inventions (Rank 100, 99,…,96) to improve/invent products. To protect the market of these five products, process inventions with Ranks 95, 94,…, 1 have to be denied to competition; they have to be literally locked up. If any NIC is at technology level say, 15, techtransfer of technology level 45 would instantaneously increase the transferee's technology level by (45–15÷15 =) 200% with no risks of R&D, no investment in facilities, no investment in personnel. That transfer would not threaten the transferor's latest products embodying Ranks 100, 99,…, 96. However, it would threaten the transferor's products embodying Rank 45. New technology leadtime is 6–18 months. If the transferee stays out of the main markets of the transferor (e.g. USA, Europe) for that leadtime, the transferee can sell in say, Asia and the Middle East, Africa and Australia. The transferee could offer the transferor two types of revenue: (1) licensing fee which is usually about 1–3% of gross revenue generated from products which could not have been produced without the transferred technology; and (2) 1% of revenue from new markets created by the technology. If the transferee observes the letter and the spirit of techtransfer for six months, a higher level technology, say level 60 could be transferred, instantly raising the transferee's technology level by (60–15÷15 =) 300%. This pre‐determined sequence of techtransfer is a win‐win situation. The transferor receives revenue from what is currently frozen assets; the transferee systematically raises its level of technology by 200%, 300%, etc. without having to risk a single dollar on uncertain R&D.

De territorialization - a concept of territory where social, economic, and political space are not necessarily geographical has developed from the radical alterations brought about by rapid globalization. For the first time in history, cultural spaces are developing that have no tangible connection to geographical places. Conventional learning structures, teaching methods, and course content make it difficult for these educational institutions to operate effectively in this climate. To prosper, they must make decisions expeditiously and the development of new programs must take place quickly, seamlessly, and continuously.

More importantly, with the changes demanded by these processes, the classroom must truly become a global entity. In this paper, an argument is proposed that though the forces of globalization have radically changed our conception and use of space, its material manifestation is as important now more then ever to those training to be architects and designers. However, the old lecture hall and studio configuration must make way for a new type of reflexive space that allows disciplinary boundaries to become blurred and more flexible.

If this occurs, universities might again become bastions of critical thought illustrating possible types of alternative spaces and temporalities within our personal and communal lives. By cultivating spaces built on the imperatives of diversity and simultaneity, the monistic onslaught of the global network culture could be translated into a multitude of spaces and temporalities that add richness to the necessary social, political, and cultural aspects of our lives. Within architectural discourse, this call is doubly important because this type of individual will most affect the virtual/material interfaces that are become increasingly common as the effects of economic and technological transformations are felt on a global scale.

Studies show that discourses are important in legitimating emerging fields. However, we still lack understanding of how potential participants’ interpretations of discourses shape their involvement in emerging fields – particularly when the field’s definition is ambiguous. Drawing on an in-depth study of the emerging nanotechnology field we show that individuals’ affective responses to discourses play an important role in their decisions to participate. We find that discourse, expectations, affective responses, and participation in emerging fields are mutually constituted, and develop a model that shows these interconnections. Theoretically, our study expands understandings of discourse and field emergence by incorporating affect.