Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine how much value national governments worldwide place on political, economic, scientific, artistic, religious, legal, sportive, health-related, educational and mass media-related issues. This knowledge is critical as governments and policies are typically expected to be congruent with the importance these issues have for society.

Drawing on theories of polyphonic and multifunctional organization, the authors recoded and analyzed a US Central Intelligence Agency directory to test the cabinet portfolio of a total of 201 national governments for significant biases to the above issues.

The results suggest that governments worldwide massively over-allocate their attention to economic issues.

The authors conclude that this strong pro-economic governance-bias likely translates into dysfunctional governance and development at both the national and supra-national level.

This paper aims to contribute to the sociological literature on moral communication and disciplinary apparatuses in a functionally differentiated society. It combines Luhmannian and Foucauldian theories to further the understanding of social system complexity.

The paper draws on the work of Niklas Luhmann, Michel Foucault and others to explore resonance capability, disciplinary apparatuses and the complexity–sustainability trade-off. The argument is illustrated with a discussion of the late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century anti-child labor movement.

The paper argues that organizations are better equipped than function systems to draw moral distinctions. Given the amorality of the function systems and the increasing secularization of modern society, a great deal of moral communication now occurs in non-religious organizations. These social systems increase their complexity in response to new problems, but the increased system complexity may become unsustainable.

The paper contributes to the growing sociological literature that compares and sometimes attempts to synthesize the theories of Luhmann and Foucault. It also contributes to the literature on organizational theory.

The paper brings together the work of Luhmann, Foucault, Valentinov and others to advance the understanding of organizations and moral communication in a functionally differentiated society. It uses Google Books Ngrams, among other resources, to support the argument.

This paper aims to elucidate the systemic processes underlying the enhanced information-control measures taken by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. The tightening of state information control has stimulated increasingly sophisticated methods of disseminating information on the part of professional and citizen journalists. Drawing on social systems theory as articulated by Niklas Luhmann and others, the authors frame the CCP’s enhanced information-control efforts as a response to the increasing systemic complexity of Chinese journalism, which is part of a self-reproducing, self-regulating (autopoietic) global journalism system. The authors use both subtle and overt protests over Chinese censorship as evidence for the journalism system’s increasing complexity and autonomy. The authors observe that levels of complexity ratchet up as the CCP and Chinese journalism counter each other’s moves. Finally, the authors suggest that the increasing complexity of the CCP’s information-control apparatus may be unsustainable.

The authors ground their argument in Luhmannian social systems theory.

The CCP's effort to control journalism leads to increased internal complexity in the form of huge bureaucracies that themselves must be overseen in an almost endless proliferation of surveillance.

This paper contributes to theoretical work in post-humanism.

To the authors’ knowledge, no studies have examined the tension between CCP censors and Chinese journalism from a Luhmannian systems theory perspective.

The main focus of this paper is upon the use of computers and other elements of Information Technology (IT) in the daily practice of social work, specifically in relation to the impact which it has upon the service user and the social workers and upon the outcome of service delivery. But it is also necessary to stray into other territories; notably management uses of computing in social work agencies, and to the more abstract area of the relationship between service‐users, social work and society.

By deconstructing centres and peripheries in Australian history curricula, the purpose of this paper is to establish in what ways these documents blended local, state‐specific concepts of major civilisations with trans‐local, and even global cultural assumptions about centre and periphery in world history.

The paper identifies a specific idea of centres in the 2009 Shape of the Australian Curriculum published by the National Curriculum Board. It demanded that “[s]tudents should have an appreciation of the major civilisations of Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Australia”. The idea of five groups of “major civilisations” is used to frame an analysis of history curricula from Western Australia and New South Wales. Syllabi from these States are used as examples because they demonstrate oppositional positions, geographically and in their approach to history teaching. Only senior secondary syllabi exhibit a continuous development of the subject history in most Australian states and territories. Hence, the paper deconstructs history syllabi for Years 11 and 12 and discusses in what ways a discourse between centre and periphery can be identified.

The author proposes a concept of a global centre in history curricula, which is found in multifaceted expressions at the peripheries.

Fully acknowledging that syllabi emerge from a web of local influences, which include state‐specific social, political, economic, and administrative factors, the paper adds a global perspective to the understanding of Australian history curricula which draws on the idea of cultural power.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

In an effort to systematically ensure that nursing students have the information literacy skills they need to succeed as healthcare professionals, instruction librarians and faculty members at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, are collaborating in designing a tiered approach to building student research skills, year by year. A series of information literacy competencies for the nursing field was agreed upon, and required courses throughout the undergraduate and graduate programs were targeted as appropriate points for instruction in these competencies. A description of the faculty‐librarian collaborative process which integrated this instruction into Nursing 605 is described, along with information about the Web‐based introductory graduate course.

As CD‐ROM becomes more and more a standard reference and technical support tool in all types of libraries, the annual review of this technology published in Computers in Libraries magazine increases in size and scope. This year, author Susan L. Adkins has prepared this exceptionally useful bibliography which she has cross‐referenced with a subject index.

This chapter integrates two separate branches of the law and economics literature to demonstrate the two-sided risk of market exclusion by a vertically integrated firm (VIF) with upstream and downstream market power. The ratio of downstream (retail) to upstream (wholesale) price-cost margins is key. A margin ratio that is “too low” can result in a vertical price squeeze, whereas one that is “too high” can create incentives for the VIF to engage in non-price discrimination or sabotage. A price squeeze occurs when a rival is inefficiently foreclosed because the upstream (input) price is too high relative to the downstream (output) price. Sabotage arises when the VIF raises its rivals' costs which, in turn, raises their prices and diverts demand from the rivals to the VIF. Displacement ratios delineate the range of safe harbor margin ratios within which neither form of market exclusion arises. The admissible range of these margin ratios is decreasing in the degree of product substitutability and reduces to a single ratio in the limit as the competing products approach perfect substitutes. The policy challenge is to apply these pricing constraints judiciously to prevent market exclusion in accordance with a consumer-welfare standard, while recognizing the risk that these protections can be appropriated and used strategically in the errant pursuit of a competitor-welfare standard. These issues may take on greater prominence in light of the recent release of the DOJ/FTC draft vertical merger guidelines.

The research aims to test whether the ability to measure marketing performance affects the actual performance of firms, in the context of the European high‐tech sector. It also aims to test whether performance‐reporting frequency and size of marketing budget mediate the relationship between measurement ability and performance.

Survey responses collected from 157 marketers were supplemented with firm performance data.

Results show that marketing performance measurement ability positively impacts firm performance and that reporting frequency mediates this relationship.

More attention should be given to the activities that are measured rather than the metrics in use – which receive much attention in the literature. Current interest in marketing dashboards may be overstated.

Enhanced ability to account for marketing leads not only to improved firm performance, but also to greater regard for marketing at the senior management level.

This is the first study to demonstrate a link between marketing performance measurement ability or frequency and firm performance in the European market. It also provides an insight into the chain of effects linking marketing performance measurement ability to firm performance.