Search results

The purpose of this paper is to fill a research and literature gap by examining the nature and impact of hate crime victimisation on police officers, and their responses to it. The research explores victimisation due to the occupational stigma of policing and the personal characteristics and identities of individual officers.

The research design is qualitative, based on 20 in-depth interviews with police officers in one English police force. Thematic analysis was applied to the data.

All participants had experienced hate crime arising from their occupational or personal identities. Initially shocked, officers became desensitized and responded in different ways. These include tolerating and accepting hate crime but also challenging it through communication and the force of law.

This research is based on a small sample. It does not claim to be representative but it is exploratory, aiming to stimulate debate and further research on a contemporary policing issue.

If further research works were to confirm these findings, there are implications for police training, officer welfare and support, supervision and leadership.

The police occupy a problematic position within hate crime literature and UK legislation. This paper opens up debate on an under-researched area and presents the first published study of the hate crime experiences of police officers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse success at the corporate level for 72 Australian mergers between publicly listed firms during the period 1999‐2004, and to reassess evidence in earlier Australian studies that contrasts findings from other countries which report a decline in post‐merger operating performance.

A number of accounting operating performance measures for profitability, cash flow, efficiency, leverage and growth are used to proxy for the success of the merger, which is defined in terms of an improvement in each merged firm's industry‐adjusted operating performance between the pre and post‐merger period. Both non‐parametric and parametric comparisons of these measures are presented.

Some evidence that mergers improve the operating performance of the post‐merger firm is found. Industry adjusted profitability, cash flows, efficiency and leverage measures were higher in the post‐merger period.

The findings of this study are limited by the small sample size, the focus on listed firms, and the use of only operating financial measures of merger success. Future research could examine more mergers over a longer time period, use alternative methods of performance benchmarking, and use alternative measures of merger success, such as share price performance.

Australian mergers led to improved corporate performance during the period 1999‐2004. This result is consistent with findings in other countries but has not been found in prior Australian research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of mate crime and attempts to assess its practical as well as its theoretical implications.

It begins with an account of the short history of the concept and then positions mate crime within academic theorising around general hate crime and disability.

Particular reference is made to the significance of the issue of vulnerability and how its interpretation might affect understanding of this phenomenon.

This is followed by some observations on how agencies of social policy and the legislature are responding to the issue of mate crime.

Particular reference is paid to the impact of safeguarding adults procedures.

It concludes that, although “mates” can (and do) “hate”, further research is required on the subject in order to gain better knowledge of the issue from both a theoretical and a practice position.

In England and Wales, legislation pertaining to hate crime recognizes hostility based on racial identity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity. Discussions abound as to whether this legislation should also recognize hostility based on gender or misogyny. Taking a socio-legal analysis, the chapter examines hate crime, gender-based victimization and misogyny alongside the impact of victim identity construction, access to justice and the international nature of gendered harm. The chapter provides a comprehensive investigation of gender-based victimization in relation to targeted hostility to assess the potential for its inclusion in hate crime legislation in England and Wales.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate bidder and target returns in the time surrounding merger and acquisition (M&A) announcements.

The paper employs parametric and non‐parametric tests and regressions on holding period and abnormal returns to bidder and targets using indicators for equity and mixed financing, hostility, and Fama‐French SMB and HML factors.

The paper provides evidence that the cumulative average abnormal returns to shareholders of bidder companies in equity financed mergers following an M&A announcement are significantly negative.

The paper highlights the fiduciary duty of bidder company management and M&A advisory professionals to bidder company shareholders.

The paper updates the limited research on hostility and bidder returns in Australian M&A literature by re‐examining the share price performance over various windows and controlling for the Fama‐French factors.

This paper aims to discuss the sensible management of risk for disabled people, which can turn into disproportionate steps to attempt to completely eliminate risk, leading to diminished opportunities across life. Instincts to protect are heightened in the context of disabled people as potential victims of targeted violence and hostility. Individual‐, organisational‐ and systemic‐level responses can often be orientated towards protection and/or the minimisation of risk rather than towards providing access to justice and effective redress.

This paper draws on evidence generated through a literature review, interviews with disabled people and interviews with representatives from a number of key organisations.

For many disabled people, incidents can be persistent and ongoing. Common responses by disabled victims include avoidance and/or acceptance strategies. They are also advised by those around them and by agency staff they come in contact with to ignore perpetrators or to avoid putting themselves at risk. Criminal justice agencies may be more concerned about a victim's disability than about taking action to provide access to justice and effective redress. The protectionistic approach underpinning much of policy, legislation and guidance can be at odds with the positive promotion of disability equality.

The paper examines the need to move away from a protectionist paradigm to a rights‐based paradigm. It calls for a more inclusive approach where disabled people are involved meaningfully in the process of risk management and in other decisions around combating targeted violence and hostility against them.

This paper seeks to compare target shareholders' wealth gains in domestic and cross‐border acquisitions in India. Two existing schools of thought namely, the industrial organizational theory and bid‐specific factors theory have been compared to identify which of these two theories affect the target shareholders' announcement wealth gains in India.

Standard event study methodology has been applied to compute the announcement returns for domestic and cross‐border acquisitions. Cross‐border effect is calculated to compare the value creation in the two sets of acquisitions. Furthermore, cross‐sectional regression analysis is conducted to capture the impact of bid‐related features on target shareholder's value creation.

The results indicate that both domestic and cross‐border acquisitions have created value for the target company shareholders on the announcement. Nonetheless, the analysis of cross‐border effect as well as regression analysis makes it evident that value creation is higher for domestic acquisitions as compared to cross‐border acquisitions due to the influence of various bid‐specific factors. Thus, in India, bid‐related variables are the fundamental drivers of the target's announcement wealth gains irrespective of the nationality of the acquirer.

The paper extends the discussion on the target's wealth creation in domestic and cross‐border acquisitions by segregating the existing literature into two schools of thoughts namely, the industrial organizational school and bid‐specific factors school in an emerging economy like India. Moreover, various reasons specific to Indian mergers and acquisitions have been forwarded to explain the subdued market reaction to cross‐border acquisitions.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study of targets’ experiences of cyberbullying on online labour markets (OLMs). In addition to highlighting the link between targets’ coping and power and control, the paper compares conventional and digital workplaces.

The method of critical hermeneutic phenomenology is used in the inquiry, bringing political and applied dimensions into the study. Targets’ lived experiences, developed as case studies, were explored via conversational interviews. Thematic analysis was undertaken ideographically, followed by ideology-critique at a nomothetic level. Adopting the psychological/behavioural lens of coping theory, ideology-critique identified micro-level schemas and macro-level ideologies that perpetuate target disenfranchisement. Critical hermeneutic phenomenology illuminates the mutuality between individual and social processes, opening new doors to address power inequities through emancipation.

Hermeneutic phenomenology uncovered the core theme of “pursuing holistic and long-term well-being”, capturing targets’ attempts at working through their experiences of bullying without jeopardising their position on the OLM. Ideology-critique went beyond highlighting problem-focussed and emotion-focussed coping strategies that empowered targets to indicate how participants’ mindsets, anchored in ongoing circumstantial discourses and long-standing social cognitions, inhibited them from questioning the status quo and exploring alternative coping strategies like legislation and collectivisation, thereby curbing their agency. The findings were theorised in terms of power and control vis-à-vis the unique attributes of workplace cyberbullying, comparing and contrasting conventional and virtual workplaces.

The inquiry is limited to the Upwork platform. Including other OLMs will enhance theoretical generalisability.

The study feeds into praxis by alerting digital workers in general and targets in particular about their circumstances, setting the stage for mobilisation.

The study makes several pioneering contributions. First, it reports the first empirical inquiry examining bullying in digital workplaces, importantly, also extending knowledge on cyberbullying across conventional versus digital workplaces. Moreover, OLM research on abuse and harassment has not been undertaken so far. Second, methodologically, the inquiry illustrates the combination of hermeneutic phenomenology with ideology-critique, taking the rare steps of joining ontological perspectives conventionally viewed as divergent and of incorporating a largely neglected micro-level focus into ideology-critique. Third, it furthers theoretical insights into power and control in workplace bullying while drawing links with coping.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight a precise investigation of the relationship between information technology (IT) capability and organizational agility along with the moderating impact of environmental factors on this association.

Pre-tested structured questionnaires were administered during a matched-pair field survey to collect primary responses from 300 business and IT personnel working in various public and privately owned banking groups functioning in India. The structural equation modeling approach has been used for data analysis.

The two-folded research findings are first, IT capability enables organizational agility (studied as business process and market responsive agility), while IT capability has more effect on market responsive agility. Second, the environmental factors (studied as environmental diversity and hostility) possess a significant effect on the IT-agility relationship and, thereby, suggest that a more diverse and less hostile environment is required for the firms to build up superior IT capability for realizing enhanced agility.

The authors have studied IT capability as a first-order factor, organizational agility and environmental factors as second-order factors and by meticulously examining their critical dimensions this study greatly contributes to the existing IT-agility literature. The derived inferences provide various implications for the bank and IT managers to emphasize on superior IT capability for generating enhanced organizational agility.