Espe Ngituka, Mary Hagan and Carl Greenwood
This article describes the highly innovative Art and Well‐being Project, which offers arts activities to asylum seekers and refugees in South Tyneside. This was the first outcome…
Abstract
This article describes the highly innovative Art and Well‐being Project, which offers arts activities to asylum seekers and refugees in South Tyneside. This was the first outcome of a continuing partnership between the NHS, the local English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) provision, and Tyne and Wear Museums (TWM).
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Timothy A. Kruse and Kazunori Suzuki
This paper seeks to analyse Steel Partners' investments and activism targeting United Industrial, Ronson, and BKF Capital to provide context for the debate surrounding shareholder…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to analyse Steel Partners' investments and activism targeting United Industrial, Ronson, and BKF Capital to provide context for the debate surrounding shareholder activism by hedge funds and how incumbent management should cope with it. Steel Partners is one of the busiest and most controversial activist investors in both the USA and Japan.
Design/methodology/approach
An in‐depth clinical analysis of Steel Partners activism at three targets is performed. Context is then provided with a broader study of 63 companies targeted by Steel Partners.
Findings
The paper reveals that Steel achieved remarkably different degrees of success with each target. This analysis suggests the use of longer post‐activism windows to examine performance, more nuanced definitions of successful activism, and the inclusion of officer and director ownership as a predictor of activist success and target performance.
Practical implications
Managers wishing to maintain their independence face a difficult balancing act. One option is simply to refuse to negotiate, preferably while maintaining a substantial ownership stake. However, the activist might launch a proxy fight or hostile bid, file a lawsuit, or even encourage a wolf‐pack type campaign. For activists, target selection, especially managerial ownership, and patience are important. Steel quickly achieved its goals at BKF and failed at Ronson despite maintaining its stake for more than 13 years. It suffered large losses in both cases.
Originality/value
This paper provides researchers and practitioners with additional insights into the debate concerning the value of hedge fund activism. It also suggests several new questions to researchers examining corporate governance and activism.
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This paper aims to explore the context and implications of the New Zealand Drug and Substance Drug Checking Acts 2020 and 2021.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the context and implications of the New Zealand Drug and Substance Drug Checking Acts 2020 and 2021.
Design/methodology/approach
This discussion provides a description of legislative changes about drug checking in the New Zealand context, alongside a critical analysis of the interlinked factors surrounding these important pieces of legislation.
Findings
The legalisation of drug checking is an important harm reduction development in the New Zealand context, although overregulation of licensing requirements should be avoided, as well as overly punitive responses to peer service providers who may have criminal convictions. The new regulations should also ensure that innovation around new technology or products tested is not stifled.
Originality/value
New Zealand is the only country to introduce permanent national legislation to legalise drug checking, and as such analysis of the legislation is of interest to the international community.
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This chapter examines jury nullification, through which American juries refuse to convict criminal defendants in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt to express disapproval…
Abstract
This chapter examines jury nullification, through which American juries refuse to convict criminal defendants in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt to express disapproval of specific criminal laws or of their application to particular defendants, through the political theory of Carl Schmitt. It distinguishes liberal components of American jurisprudence, especially the rule of law, from democratic sovereignty, and shows how the two are in deep tension with one another. In light of this tension it argues that jury nullification amounts to democratic sovereignty applied counter to the liberal state in a way that paradoxically upholds individual liberty.
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In his article on “What Is Still Wrong with Austrian economics?,” Peter Boettke considers matters of strategy for the Austrian school and stresses the importance of institutions…
Abstract
In his article on “What Is Still Wrong with Austrian economics?,” Peter Boettke considers matters of strategy for the Austrian school and stresses the importance of institutions and institutional analysis. This comment takes up both themes. Two possible strategies for institutional research are considered. Then the place and role of institutions in Austrian analysis are addressed. It is argued that Austrian thinking has been caught in a dilemma between making theory as general as possible, or of taking on board the historically specific character of key institutions in market economies. The different approaches of Ludwig Mises and Carl Menger to this quandary are compared, with attention to the central concepts of property and capital.
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Daniel A. Wren, Regina A. Greenwood, Julia Teahen and Arthur G. Bedeian
This paper aims to highlight myriad accomplishments of C. Bertrand Thompson, who is perhaps most well known as a scientific-management bibliographer and a Taylor disciple, in the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to highlight myriad accomplishments of C. Bertrand Thompson, who is perhaps most well known as a scientific-management bibliographer and a Taylor disciple, in the belief that his contributions as a pioneer management theorist and consultant in Europe deserve to be more widely known and more deeply appreciated.
Design/methodology/approach
Archival, primary and secondary sources were used in the research.
Findings
Thompson was among the first to bring management consulting to Europe. He understood the importance of adapting scientific-management principles to meet the diverse needs of each client for whom he consulted. Thompson’s strong belief and value system remained constant throughout his life.
Practical implications
Understanding the needs of customers or clients and adapting systems to meet those needs is essential in achieving success as a consultant.
Originality/value
By drawing on rarely accessed published and unpublished materials, this paper discusses Thompson’s many contributions to management thought and practice, most of which previously have not been highlighted in the referent literature.
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C J de Jong and Linda J Frederiksen
This study aims to map the current resource-sharing environment in Canada through the lens of its research libraries in general and the University of Alberta in particular. The…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to map the current resource-sharing environment in Canada through the lens of its research libraries in general and the University of Alberta in particular. The findings present an interesting view of changing resource sharing patterns and trends.
Design/methodology/approach
Interlibrary loan (ILL) transaction data were compiled from annual data reported to the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and a case study of the University of Alberta is presented.
Findings
The current trend shows declines in both borrowing and lending transactions.
Research limitations/implications
Validity of the CARL ILL transactional data is subject to consistency in institutional reporting and accuracy of the data. The trends portrayed in the data are deemed realistic of the Canadian experience.
Originality/value
This is an original study of CARL ILL transactional data, providing an aggregated view of 13 years of annual data, and an analysis of this data. It updates previous research and benchmarks current ILL patterns at CARL institutions.
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This paper aims to investigate the merit of Fred Taylor's claim that he did not conceive the notion of time study on his own. He insisted that he acquired it while a student at…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the merit of Fred Taylor's claim that he did not conceive the notion of time study on his own. He insisted that he acquired it while a student at Phillips Exeter Academy and identified the particular individual to whom, he claimed, he owed his earliest exposure to time study – George A. “Bull” Wentworth.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on archival material, including a recently discovered letter by Taylor, this paper substantiates Taylor's claims regarding his association with Wentworth. By corroborating existing and new evidence of the Wentworth‐Taylor link, it probes into the nature and the scope of the influence of the “Old Bull” of Exeter on the father of scientific management.
Findings
Taylor did not conceive of time study on his own but acquired it early in his life via traceable socialization influences, many of which came from Wentworth. Such influences were both substantive and lasting: the residue of Wentworth's methodology is distinct in Taylor's early and later time study work. Taken together, both internal and external consistency of the evidence has led me to assert that it is plausible that Wentworth had a traceable and lasting socialization impact on Frederick Taylor.
Originality/value
This paper is a rare inquiry into the part of Taylor's life history that precedes his pioneering of the industrial, managerial, and economic applications of time study. It grounds the matter of Taylor's conceiving the time study idea into the context of his early‐in‐life socialization – an important subject left largely unexplored by Taylor's biographers and the historians of the scientific management movement.