The purpose of this paper is threefold; first, to show the role played by the United Nations (UN) in the fight against transnational organized crime; second, to analyze two…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is threefold; first, to show the role played by the United Nations (UN) in the fight against transnational organized crime; second, to analyze two subject areas, commercial sexual exploitation of children and mutilation of albinos, in which the Organization gives voice to the often voiceless victims; and third, to examine the role the UN may or should be called on to play in the postulated cooperation between high-level investigative means and personnel on the ground.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper relies on information generated by international organizations (Red Cross and UN) and media reports.
Findings
Although commercial sexual exploitation of children in many if not most advanced jurisdicitions is a crime with extraterritorial jurisdiction in the sense that perpetrator can be tried in, say, an advanced country for violations in a developing country, and considering that this crime has a strong international component, it has proved difficult to investigate. This is caused by the procedural difficulties in collecting proofs in one jurisdiction for use in another, transport of victims and witnesses, etc. Therefore, among many other measures, advanced countries should further tighten the investigation of so-called sex tourism clearly targeting children. Mutilation of persons with albinism is strongly linked to superstition and although often involving international trade, must be strongly countered by information. Again the UN plays and should play a leading role.
Research limitations/implications
Research in these and similar areas is quite obvious hindered by the so-called “dark number syndrome”, i.e. as the subject-matter is both illegal and the target of strong moral condemnation, it is difficult to get more than a small, hopefully representative, set of cases to examine.
Practical implications
Advanced countries must assist in limiting and hopefully stopping the overseas sex tourism involving underage individuals. Also, through the UN, the only moral arbiter we have, the international community should assist in informing and teaching, in particular, in the countries around the big lakes in Africa and in Malawi to bring to an end this kind of superstition. Likewise, the UN should act as a bridge, allowing sophisticated investigative means to link up with less sophisticated ones, in particular in the area of abuse of the environment (pachyderms in Africa and protected fisheries breeding grounds).
Social implications
From the previous paragraph, it is obvious, so it seems, that at least the commercial sexual exploitation of children and the mutilation of albinos can only be countered though a conscious effort at training aimed at the social layers – mostly in rural areas – where both superstition (albinos and brains of bald males) and the habitual view of children, in particular, but not only girls, as a source of income are prevalent.
Originality/value
The paper does not attempt to present original material. Rather it emphasizes the role of the UN in protecting the unprotected and promotes ideas with which to commence pushing back against the serious destruction of animals, including fishes.
Details
Keywords
Bonnie J. Tulloch, Michelle Kaczmarek, Saguna Shankar and Lisa P. Nathan
This project set out to explore information scholars’ perceptions of the influence of their keyword selections and the implications of their linguistic choices on possibilities…
Abstract
Purpose
This project set out to explore information scholars’ perceptions of the influence of their keyword selections and the implications of their linguistic choices on possibilities for and perceptions of the field of Information Science. We trialed a narrative methodological approach to investigate the multiple stories told with specific keywords, how they relate to larger discourses within the field and the impact they have on the lives of information researchers.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on Arthur Frank’s narrative analysis to consider keywords as stories, which shape one’s sense of professional identity and belonging. The analysis, which is informed by insights from multi-disciplinary scholars of keywords, employs data from a keywords-oriented workshop with Information School faculty and students, as well as an online questionnaire sent to heads of Information Schools.
Findings
We did not find a singular definitive story of information science scholars’ experiences with keywords. Rather we identify tensions surrounding common and contested understandings of discipline, canon and information, engaging the complexity of interdisciplinary, international, intellectual and moral claims of the field. This research offers insight into the experiential factors that shape scholars’ engagement with keywords and the tensions they can create.
Originality/value
A wealth of bibliometric analyses of keywords focuses on finding the “right” words to describe the scholarship you seek or the work you want others to discover. However, this study offers information researchers a novel approach, creating space to acknowledge the generative tensions of keywords, beyond the extractive logic of search and retrieval.
Details
Keywords
Vivianna Fang He and Gregor Krähenmann
The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities is not always successful. On the one hand, entrepreneurial failure offers an invaluable opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about…
Abstract
The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities is not always successful. On the one hand, entrepreneurial failure offers an invaluable opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about their ventures and themselves. On the other hand, entrepreneurial failure is associated with substantial financial, psychological, and social costs. When entrepreneurs fail to learn from failure, the potential value of this experience is not fully utilized and these costs will have been incurred in vain. In this chapter, the authors investigate how the stigma of failure exacerbates the various costs of failure, thereby making learning from failure much more difficult. The authors combine an analysis of interviews of 20 entrepreneurs (who had, at the time of interview, experienced failure) with an examination of archival data reflecting the legal and cultural environment around their ventures. The authors find that stigma worsens the entrepreneurs’ experience of failure, hinders their transformation of failure experience, and eventually prevents them from utilizing the lessons learnt from failure in their future entrepreneurial activities. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for the entrepreneurship research and economic policies.
Details
Keywords
Man Zhang and Patriya S. Tansuhaj
The increasing economic importance and the number of born global firms make it worthwhile to study what leads to their success in the international market. To better understand…
Abstract
The increasing economic importance and the number of born global firms make it worthwhile to study what leads to their success in the international market. To better understand this international business phenomenon, we conducted in‐depth interviews with managers, coupled with public database and Web site searches. Research propositions were developed based on an extensive qualitative method. The relationship between organizational culture, information technology capability, and performance is proposed in the context of born global firms, based on viewing the concept of IT capability from the resource‐based view. We further provide recommendations for managers, theoretical contributions and suggestions for future research.
Details
Keywords
Albertina Paula Monteiro, Ana Maria Soares and Orlando Lima Rua
This research draws upon the resource-based view and the dynamic capabilities view’s premise that a firm’s resources and capabilities determine competitive advantage…
Abstract
Purpose
This research draws upon the resource-based view and the dynamic capabilities view’s premise that a firm’s resources and capabilities determine competitive advantage. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model entailing simultaneously the impact of intangible resources; and dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation on export performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Therefore, the authors developed a study based on a survey of 265 Portuguese exporting companies. Data were submitted to a multivariate statistical analysis and a linear regression model was applied in order to predict the influence of the intangible resources on export performance. The structural equations model was used for this purpose.
Findings
The results show that export performance is directly impacted by dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation. However, intangible resources do not have a significant direct impact on entrepreneurial orientation; they do have an indirect effect through the mediation of dynamic capabilities. These findings highlight the catalyst role of dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation, leveraging the role of intangible resources as antecedents of export performance. These findings are valuable inputs for exporting managers and public entities.
Originality/value
While previous authors have attempted to analyse certain aspects of this process (linkage between intangible resources and export performance), this research developed a framework that combines these ones with entrepreneurial orientation and dynamic capabilities.
Details
Keywords
Joshua L. Kenna and Dennis Mathew Stevenson
Geography is an exciting discipline involving the interrogation of place, space, and mobility. Film is too powerful and assessable tool that engages audiences. Therefore, this…
Abstract
Purpose
Geography is an exciting discipline involving the interrogation of place, space, and mobility. Film is too powerful and assessable tool that engages audiences. Therefore, this article builds a rationale for utilizing film in the teaching of geography. Particularly geographic mobility, which is the study of spatial patterns of movement and viewing them with positive or negative social meaning and as embedded within structures of power.
Design/methodology/approach
This is not a research paper so there is no methodology to detail.
Findings
This is not a research paper so there are no findings to detail.
Originality/value
The article introduces three films (Selma, Hidden Figures, and The Green Book) and describes how they can be used to enrich the teaching of geographic mobility.
Details
Keywords
Chengwei Liu and Chia-Jung Tsay
Chance models – mechanisms that explain empirical regularities through unsystematic variance – have a long tradition in the sciences but have been historically marginalized in…
Abstract
Chance models – mechanisms that explain empirical regularities through unsystematic variance – have a long tradition in the sciences but have been historically marginalized in management scholarship, relative to an agentic worldview about the role of managers and organizations. An exception is the work of James G. March and his coauthors, who proposed a variety of chance models that explain important management phenomena, including the careers of top executives, managerial risk taking, and organizational anarchy, learning, and adaptation. This paper serves as a tribute to the beauty of these “little ideas” and demonstrates how they can be recombined to generate novel implications. In particular, we focus on the example of an inverted V-shaped performance association centering around the year when executives were featured in a prominent listing, Barron’s annual list of Top 30 chief executive officers. Our recombination of several chance models developed by March and his coauthors provides a novel explanation for why many of the executives’ exceptional performances did not persist. In contrast to the common accounts of complacency, hubris, and statistical regression, the results show that declines from high performance may result from the way luck interacts with these executives’ slow adaptation, incompetence, and self-reinforced risk taking. We conclude by elaborating on the normative implications of chance models, which address many current management and societal challenges. We further encourage the continued development of chance models to help explain performance differences, shifting from accounts that favor heroic stories of corporate leaders toward accounts that favor their changing fortunes.
Details
Keywords
What makes employees feel well within an organization? The aim of the present chapter is to start from a paradigm that emphasizes human relationality, affectivity, and…
Abstract
What makes employees feel well within an organization? The aim of the present chapter is to start from a paradigm that emphasizes human relationality, affectivity, and intersubjective systems, and accordingly focuses on how well-being is emerging from contextual interrelations between employees. Applying this perspective to a qualitative study of nurses in a nursing home, I came to see the work community as a well-being-generating system in which the well-being of individual members is constructed together as an ongoing social accomplishment. In addition, I identified four systemic processes within the work community that greatly influence the well-being-generating capacity of the system.