Search results
1 – 10 of over 7000Debarati Bhattacharya, Tai-Yu Chen and Wei-Hsien Li
This paper studies how a firm reacts to the threat from product market competition. Consistent with the strategic equilibrium model, we find that a firm increases…
Abstract
This paper studies how a firm reacts to the threat from product market competition. Consistent with the strategic equilibrium model, we find that a firm increases investment in response to external product market threats. Further, the paper analyzes whether product market threats lead to an improvement in investment efficiency. When faced with product market competition, we find that firms that are otherwise likely to underinvest (overinvest) increase (increase) their investment significantly (less than the firms that are likely to underinvest) in the next period. However, firms that are predisposed to overinvest do not make cuts in capital expenditure, which indicates that strategic investment is a critical countermeasure for addressing competitive threats for all firms, their inclination to make suboptimal investment decisions notwithstanding. Overall, the evidence supports the predatory risk of waiting as well as competition and investment efficiency hypotheses. Additional tests suggest that product market threat partially substitutes for other external monitoring mechanisms designed to manage agency problems.
Details
Keywords
Visual representations of teachers and teachers’ work over the past century and a half, in both professional literature and popular media, commonly construct teachers…
Abstract
Visual representations of teachers and teachers’ work over the past century and a half, in both professional literature and popular media, commonly construct teachers’ work as teacher‐centred, and built around specific technologies that privilege the teacher as the active, dominant and legitimate principal agent in the educational process. This article analyses a set of photographs that represent an ‘alternative’ educational approach to normalised mainstream schooling, to explore the ways such practices might enact pedagogy within different social relations. Butler’s discussions of performativity and Foucault’s concept of technologies of self, offer a theoretical framework for understanding the educative and political work such visual representations of teachers work might perform, in the construction of capacities to imagine what teachers’ work looks like, with implications for capacities to enact teaching. The photographs analysed present a pedagogy in which the teacher is less visibly central and less overtly directive in relation to children’s learning than in normalised pedagogy. Thus, in important respects, they offer material from which to construct a different vision of what teachers’ work looks like, and, consequently, to enact teachers’ work differently. In this article I explore a set of photographs of Montessori methods at Blackfriars School in Sydney in the early twentieth century. I do so in order to establish whether such photographs offer a representation of teaching that differs significantly from conventional ‘normalised’ understandings of teachers’ work. This in turn is intended to inform one part of a transformative agenda to address problematic aspects of contemporary schooling.
Details
Keywords
Alicia F. Noreiga and Casey Burkholder
In this comparative study, we explore the ways eight queer university students from Trinidad and Tobago and New Brunswick, Canada, use cellphilm production (cellphone …
Abstract
In this comparative study, we explore the ways eight queer university students from Trinidad and Tobago and New Brunswick, Canada, use cellphilm production (cellphone + film production + intention) to share their experiences, make calls for change, and forge solidarities across racial, cultural, and national contexts. Engaging in cellphilm production as a research method for social change, we ask: What are queer, trans, and non-binary students’ experiences in campus spaces? What are the commonalities and tensions that exist between their experiences? How might cellphilm production work to disrupt unsafe campus spaces and create transnational queer solidarities? Through cellphilm production, participants crafted narratives highlighting significant systemic barriers, and speaking back to micro and macro aggressions. Both participating groups expressed feelings of exclusion and institutional neglect and highlighted their university’s disregard toward accommodating physical spaces, such as washrooms, downplaying of verbal hostilities, and other microaggressions. Participants also noted that students were at the forefront of creating purposefully queer spaces. Our comparative study disrupts the erasure of the experiences of queer, trans, and non-binary university students in Trinidad and Tobago and New Brunswick and speaks back to hegemonic whiteness in the context of queer campus spaces in New Brunswick, Canada.
Details
Keywords
James A. Roffee and Andrea Waling
The purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of experiences of anti-social behaviour in LGBTIQ+ youth in university settings.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of experiences of anti-social behaviour in LGBTIQ+ youth in university settings.
Design/methodology/approach
The discussion reflects on qualitative interviews with LGBTIQ+ young people studying at university (n=16) exploring their experiences of anti-social behaviour including harassment, bullying and victimisation in tertiary settings.
Findings
The findings demonstrate that attention should be paid to the complex nature of anti-social behaviour. In particular, LGBTIQ+ youth documented experiences of microaggressions perpetrated by other members of the LGBTIQ+ community. Using the taxonomy of anti-social behaviour against LGBTIQ+ people developed by Nadal et al. (2010, 2011), the authors build on literature that understands microaggressions against LGBTIQ+ people as a result of heterosexism, to address previously unexplored microaggressions perpetrated by other LGBTIQ+ people.
Research limitations/implications
Future research could seek a larger sample of participants from a range of universities, as campus climate may influence the experiences and microaggressions perpetrated.
Practical implications
Individuals within the LGBTIQ+ community also perpetrate microaggressions against LGBTIQ+ people, including individuals with the same sexual orientation and gender identity as the victim. Those seeking to respond to microaggressions need to attune their attention to this source of anti-social behaviour.
Originality/value
Previous research has focused on microaggressions and hate crimes perpetrated by non-LGBTIQ+ individuals. This research indicates the existence of microaggressions perpetrated by LGBTIQ+ community members against other LGBTIQ+ persons. The theoretical taxonomy of sexual orientation and transgender microaggressions is expanded to address LGBTIQ+ perpetrated anti-social behaviour.
Details
Keywords
The following annotated bibliography of materials on orienting users to the library and on instructing them in the use of reference and other resources covers publications…
Abstract
The following annotated bibliography of materials on orienting users to the library and on instructing them in the use of reference and other resources covers publications from 1980. Several items from 1979 were included because information about them had not been available in time for the 1980 listing. Some entries were not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure a copy of the item.
Andrew J. Hobson, Linda J. Searby, Lorraine Harrison and Pam Firth
Jari Eloranta, Svetlozar Andreev and Pavel Osinsky
Did the expansion of democratic institutions play a role in determining central government spending behavior in the 19th and 20th centuries? The link between democracy and…
Abstract
Did the expansion of democratic institutions play a role in determining central government spending behavior in the 19th and 20th centuries? The link between democracy and increased central government spending is well established for the post-Second World War period, but has never been explored during the first “wave of democracy” and its subsequent reversal, that is 1870–1938. The main contribution of this paper is the compilation of a dataset covering 24 countries over this period to begin to address this question. Utilizing various descriptive techniques, including panel data regressions, we explore correlations between central government spending and the institutional characteristics of regimes. We find that the data are consistent with the hypothesis that democracies have a broader need for legitimization than autocracies as various measures of democracy are associated with higher central government spending. Our results indicate that the extension of franchise had a slight positive impact on central government spending levels, as did a few of the other democracy variables. We also find that early liberal democracies spent less and monarchies more than other regimes; debt increases spending; and participation in the Gold Standard reduced government spending substantially.
Details
Keywords
In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This…
Abstract
In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.
Details
Keywords
Business strategists can easily become slaves to their inbox or to the passing enthusiasm of the times, their supervisors or outside influencers, ranging from social…
Abstract
Purpose
Business strategists can easily become slaves to their inbox or to the passing enthusiasm of the times, their supervisors or outside influencers, ranging from social activists to securities analysts and investment bankers. This article seeks to put their work in historical context and to encourage them to engage in meta-cognition – a deep consideration of their role in helping to shape their business’s response to its current environment and challenges.
Design/methodology/approach
The article reviews the history of modern business strategy and divides it into three major phases, centered on the theories and practices of three strategists: Frederick Taylor, Peter Drucker and Michael Porter. The author suggests that each of these strategists was addressing the key business questions of their time and influenced the thinking of others who built on – and in many cases improved on – their theories and models. He suggests that a business strategist’s thinking should build on the work of those who came before in responding to contemporary questions of importance to their firm.
Findings
Business strategy is fundamentally an exercise in understanding and improving business performance and growth. It requires a depth of sophisticated thought that can be sharpened and focused through meta-cognition – thinking about thinking, i.e. a thoughtful consideration of what dominates our thinking and why.
Practical implications
This article invites practicing strategists to find their own place on that arc.
Originality/value
The article presents the history of business strategy as an arc of inquiry that has forward direction, moving inexorably outward, from time–motion studies on the shop floor, to the human beings who occupied it, and to the larger society in which they and the firm live. It invites practicing strategists to find their own place on that arc.
Details
Keywords
Sagarika Mishra and Mike T. Ewing
The purpose of this study to examine the effect of financial constraint on intangible investment because intangible investment provides an overall picture of marketing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study to examine the effect of financial constraint on intangible investment because intangible investment provides an overall picture of marketing investment and activity. Intangible investment also plays a significant role in facilitating future sales. Using a new measure of intangible investment (Peters and Taylor, 2017), the authors first establish that intangible investment is positively related with future sales. Then, using a new text-based measure of financial constraint, the authors show that financial constraint has a significant negative effect on future intangible investments after controlling for other factors. Intangible investment has three components. The first is R&D, the second is 30 per cent of selling and general administrative expense (SGA) and the third is other intangibles. The authors find that the negative and significant effect of financial constraint on 30 per cent SGA is stronger. This indicates that financially constrained firms reduce marketing related investments. The authors then considered firm size and found that smaller firms facing financial constraint continue to increase their intangible investments, whereas larger firms reduce their intangible investment. As a robustness test, the authors use advertising expenditure as a measure of promotion related investment and find that financial constraint has a negative effect on advertising spending. The authors then use two traditional measures of financial constraint in their analysis to compare with the new text-based measure.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use ordinary least squares with cluster robust standard error to conduct their empirical analysis.
Findings
First the authors establish that intangible investment positively affects future sales. Further the authors find that financial constraint negatively affects intangible investment. Moreover, financial constraint negatively affects the brand capital of intangible investment.
Research limitations/implications
The authors did not conduct any industry specific analysis to see how financial constraints affect intangible investment across different industries. Industry specific analysis is important because in some industries/sectors intangibles are clearly more important than in others, so this is an important avenue for future research. It will also be interesting to explore if and how financial constraint has a mediating effect on sales growth via intangible investment and different components of intangibles.
Practical implications
This study identifies another important factor that can negatively affect brand capital investment.
Originality/value
The authors have used a measure of financial constraint and text mined all the annual reports of US firms for the period of 1994-2016 to compute this measure.
Details