У статті оцінено результати функціонування підприємств металургії України на основі зіставлення рівнів конкурентоспроможності та інноваційної активності підприємств. Запропоновано матрицю визначення стадії життєвого циклу інтегрованих підприємств металургії залежно від рівнів конкурентоспроможності та інноваційної активності. Поєднання оцінки конкурентоспроможності металургійних підприємств з аналізом інноваційного потенціалу дозволило вдосконалити управління підприємствами галузі й покращити ефективність їх функціонування в сучасних ринкових умовах.

The necessity of developing number standards for the managers on the basis of the of management functions regulation for various levels of management is proved. The consistency and structure of management functions at the metallurgical enterprises are investigated. The correlation of general and specific functions for the further consideration in calculating the number standards for manager is defined. A scientific and methodical approach to dealing with the types of work by the possibility of labor input rationing during the (...) determination of the standards for the top management number. (shrink)

The article gives a definition of the technical and economic potential of the application of the deforming broaching process. Research of the consequences of introducing deforming broaching into technological processes at manufacturing enterprises is carried out on the basis of application of system resource and matrix approach. On the basis of the performed researches, a methodological basis for the economic evaluation of the results of applying deforming broaching on the pro-duction has been developed. The article has improved the well-known (...) scientific and methodological foundations for the determination of technical and economic results of the application of deforming broaching due to the complex identifica-tion of production-organizational decisions - in technical and forms of evaluation in economic spheres. The developed approach gives an opportunity to more accu-rately assess the economic effect of introducing deforming broaching on the min-ing, metallurgical and machine building industries. It can be used to assess the economic effect of introducing other process parts processing. (shrink)

Representative organizations of employers massively occur in Russian Empire in the post-reform period as a form of protection of the interests of industrialists and businessmen in terms of development of capitalist relations. One of the issues related to the common interests of entrepreneurs in the First World War were rail transportation. Transport problems during the war was most acute for business associations, and became for them some kind a test of the efficiency. Analysis of periodicals and record keeping documentation of (...) representative organizations, "Bulletin" departments of railways show in article representative organizations of employers understanding the causes of the crisis in the Donbass railway during the First World War and shows what is needed and the government measures to overcome the negative effects of transport system. The article shows problems of Donbass rail transport during war years: low capacity and carrying capacity of the network, its lack of branching, shortage of rolling stock, the inefficiency of freight traffic and as a consequence of the rapid deterioration of equipment downtime and freight. Solving these problems entrepreneurs have seen in the additional construction of railways and roads, increasing the capacity of transport engineering factories and repair shops, using captured locomotives and wagons, technical upgrading of the railway network and station management. The paper emphasizes that the inefficiency of transport created a vicious circle of problems in the region - untimely delivery of goods to industrial enterprises of Donbass, deprived railways revenues from transport and fuel, metallurgical and engineering products, without which the operation of highways could not be successful. The article concludes that the war uncovered the underlying socio-economic problems in the country only grew, conflicts between different groups of businessman became deeper, Donbass railway crisis has become one of the most destructive processes in whole economy. (shrink)

Many scholars of organizations see social enterprise as a promising approach to advancing social justice but neglect to scrutinize the normative foundations and limitations of this optimism. This article draws on Rawlsian political philosophy to investigate whether and how social enterprises can support social justice. We propose that this perspective assigns organizations a duty to foster institutional capacity, a concept we define and elaborate. We investigate how this duty might apply specifically to social enterprises, given their characteristic features. (...) We theorize six different mechanisms through which social enterprises might successfully discharge this duty. These results affirm the value of conversation between organizational studies and political philosophy and shed new light on debates regarding social enterprise, institutional theory, and several other topics. (shrink)

There is a lack of theoretical consensus on how multinational enterprises (MNEs) should implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) to build legitimacy, particularly those operating in the smaller Asian emerging market context, where current growth in the global economy is being felt more acutely than elsewhere. This paper argues for theoretical integration of business ethics (BE) and international business (IB) research to address this concern. Hence, we explore the management of CSR strategies by MNE subsidiaries with specific interest on their (...) proactive adoption of strategic CSR to obtain legitimacy in a foreign host country. Drawing on the recent CSR literature and related theories, including stakeholder theory and institutional theory, propositions and a conceptual framework are developed and presented. The framework integrates BE and IB concepts on the different dimensions of CSR and provides a theoretical derived explanation of the process for strategic adoption of global through to more local CSR strategies by MNE subsidiaries to build legitimacy in an emerging market context. In addition, the framework provides valuable insights into the adoption of different ethical approaches or CSR strategies based on the level of ethical pressure in a host country and the degree of CSR ingrainedness in the parent company. (shrink)

This paper examines the growing number of publications on multinational enterprise management of sustainability issues. Based on an integrative literature review and thematic analysis, the paper analyses and synthesises the current state of knowledge about main issues arising. Key issues identified include the following: choice of sustainability strategies; management of the views of headquarters towards sustainability; local cultural sustainability perspectives in developed and developing host countries; MNEs with home in developing/emerging countries; and resource availability for implementing sustainability initiatives. Findings indicate (...) that although the literature is tending towards growing acceptance about sustainability and its challenges most researchers have focused on corporate social responsibility and investigate their own niche problem, industry, and country, using their own chosen theory and do not consider the need for consolidation and integration of social, environmental and economic performance. Avenues for future research are identified which will provide a means for the ethical foundations of theory and practice to be improved. (shrink)

Building on the literature on hybrid organizations, this manuscript explores the relationship between the organizational activity of social enterprises backed by venture philanthropy investors and income inequality. Using Ashoka’s portfolio of Indian social enterprises as empirical context of Western venture philanthropy investing activity, our results suggest that Indian municipalities with social enterprises that have received venture philanthropy investments experience a decrease in income inequality level and when these social enterprises are dominated by a collectivistic organizational identity (...) orientation the effect is stronger. Our findings have implications for the research on hybrid organizations, financing of social entrepreneurship and grand ethical challenges. (shrink)

This major work challenges some widely held positions in epistemology - those of Peirce and Popper on the one hand and those of Quine and Kuhn on the other.

Launched in 1982, the so-calledBerliner Wissenschaftsladen e. V.(WILAB) belonged to the scattered West-German ventures in “counter-science”. This article situates the origins of the “Laden” (~ workshop)—an “alternative” spin-off of sorts, spawned from the Technical University of Berlin—in the context of contemporary advances in regional science policy. In this connection, the ailing, de-industrializing “island city” arguably even played a certain pioneering role: elements of its multipronged “innovation offensive”, which peaked in the early-to-mid 1980s, were visible beyond city limits, including the trade (...) showBIG TECHand, notably, theBerlin Center for Innovation and New Enterprises(BIG), the FRG’s first start-up “incubator”, which opened in 1983.In other words, politically-minded scientists in tendency now had to deal with conditions that were less and less conducive to dreams of a “socially engaged” and “non-alienated” (counter-)science. Indeed, while hardly opposed to the new gospel of innovation, it’s not surprising that ventures such as WILAB, committed as they were to the production of “socially useful” science, found themselves increasingly marginalized. It’s as such a marginal venture, my argument goes, that WILAB’s prima facie hopeless attempt to initiate a different, more “humane” information technology sheds an instructive light on the emergence of “entrepreneurial” science in the FRG during the 1970s and 1980s. (shrink)

This study focuses on the managerial issue of should social enterprises become more marketing oriented. It adapts the Kohli et al. MARKOR marketing orientation scale to measure the adoption of marketing by SEs. The items capture Vincentian-based values to leverage business in service to the poor as a measure of a Vincentian marketing orientation. A VMO is an organisational wide value-driven philosophy of management that focuses a SE on meeting its objectives by adopting a more marketing orientated approach to (...) serve the needy and poor in a just and sustainable manner. SEs that exhibit a VMO seek to understand and respond to both the needs of their beneficiaries and stakeholders. They are constantly generating, disseminating, and responding to environmental, beneficiary, and stakeholder information and develop their business propositions to more effectively and efficiently meet the needs of the poor, while guided by a philosophy of leveraging business for social good. This study of SEs in Australia found that a VMO is strongly and positively correlated with social, economic, and environmental performance. These findings suggest that SEs may benefit by leveraging marketing capabilities to better serve their beneficiaries and stakeholders. (shrink)

A shipping war has broken out between two friendly neighbouring countries: Estonia (a rather poor land; liberated of Soviet occupation in 1991), and Finland (a wealthy one; independent since 1918). Led by their trade union the Finnish dockers boycott Estonian ships demanding for Estonian sailors the salary in the same range as that is in wealthy West-European countries. Estonian Sailors'' Union finds that such a war is not for their better work-conditions but against their working possibilities: the cheap labour force (...) is the only possibility for a poor country to entice foreign investments in it.No matter how the shipping war will be solved – the problem will remain. This is the problem of two opposites – cheap labour force of poor countries and expensive one of wealthy countries –, and international enterprises standing between them. Could such an enterprise survive without using the cheap labour force? And if it could, how could the poor countries survive then? Could there be found a clear unambiguous ethical solution? What ought to be the role of trade unions in such international business conflicts? (shrink)

In this article we argue that the emergence of a new form of organization – community enterprise – provides an alternative mechanism for corporations to behave in socially responsible ways. Community enterprises are distinguished from other third sector organisations by their generation of income through trading, rather than philanthropy and/or government subsidy, to finance their social goals. They also include democratic governance structures which allow members of the community or constituency they serve to participate in the management of the (...) organisation. Partnerships between corporations and community enterprises therefore raise the possibility of corporations moving beyond philanthropic donations toward a more sustainable form of intervention involving long-term commitments to communities. At the same time they change substantively the nature of any collaboration by allowing relationships to proceed on the basis of mutual advantage, thereby broadening their appeal and scope. In doing so, partnerships build capacity and enfranchise communities in a way that avoids the paternalism that has traditionally characterised relationships between corporations and voluntary sector organisations. Power relations are transformed because partners are seen as sources of valuable assets, knowledge and expertise, rather than recipients of patronage or charity. (shrink)

In Australia young people have emerged as a popular target for social enterprises and enterprising activities (Barraket, Mason and Blain, 2016). The reasons for engaging young people in enterprise-based projects include claims that they help address young people's deficits in entrepreneurialism and risk-taking as well as prepare young people to thrive in risky futures characterised by uncertain labour markets and precarious work (Foundation for Young Australians, 2015, 2016a, 2017a). The risk category is also central to a good deal of (...) policy concerning young people and underpins many agendas and programmes that aim to govern what many people claim to be young people's 'natural' tendencies to experiment and take risks (Bessant, 2008). This article explores how differing and arbitrary accounts of the relationships between young people and risk help to justify enterprise-based initiatives into young lives that might not serve young people's best interests. (shrink)

We live in a 'bimoral' society, in which people govern their lives by two contrasting sets of principles. On the one hand there are the principles associated with traditional morality. Although these allow a modicum of self-interest, their emphasis is on our duties and obligations to others: to treat people honestly and with respect, to treat them fairly and without prejudice, to help and are for them when needed, and ultimately, to put their needs above their own. On the other (...) hand there are the principles associated with the entrepreneurial self-interest. These also impose obligations, but of a much more limited kind. Their emphasis is competitive rather than cooperative: to advance our own interests rather than to meet the needs of others. Both sets of principles have always been present in society but in recent years, traditional moral authorities have lost much of their force and the morality of self-interest has acquired a much greater social legitimacy, over a much wider field of behavior, than ever before. The result of this is that in many situations it is no longer at all apparent which set of principles should take precedence. In this book, John Hendry traces the cultural and historical origins of the 'bimoral' society have also led to new, more flexible forms of organizing, which have released people's entrepreneurial energies and significantly enhanced the creative capacities of business. Working within these organizations, however is fraught with moral tensions as obligations and self-interest conflict and managers are pulled in all sorts of different directions. Managing them successfully poses major new challenges of leadership, and 'moral' management, as the technical problem-solving that previously characterized managerial work is increasingly accomplished by technology and market mechanisms. The key role of management becomes the political and moral one of determining purposes and priorities, reconciling divergent interests, and nurturing trust in interpersonal relationships. Exploring these tensions and challenges, Hendry identifies new issues of contemporary management and puts recognized issues into context. He also explores the challenges posed for a post-traditional society as it seeks to regulate and govern an increasingly powerful and global business sector. (shrink)

Recent initiatives from the Employment Department in the UK have promoted ‘enterprise education’. This paper discusses the relationship of enterprise education to the more established notion of a liberal education. It is argued that enterprise education should be understood not as replacing the aspirations of a liberal education, but rather as supporting or extending them. It does this (i) by helping pupils to understand what is arguably a significant form of life; (ii) by developing understanding of the economic conditions of (...) our social functioning; and (iii) by developing personal qualities which equip us practically to pursue our chosen paths in a competitive and sometimes hostile world. (shrink)

Enterprise performance is a critical component of any organizational success that is directly affected by its employees and the culture prevailing in the organizations. In order to gain strategic advantage from the employee brand equity it is important that organizations make efforts in retaining such employees that benefit the organizations. Therefore, this research examines the impact of employee brand equity and knowledge sharing culture on the enterprise performance with the mediating role of innovative capabilities. A self-administered survey was conducted among (...) the 323 employees of information technology sector working in the software houses in China. Smart PLS has been used to analyze the data through partial least square structural equation modeling. Results of the study have demonstrated that knowledge sharing culture plays a significant role in the enterprise performance while employee brand equity could not find statistically significant impact on enterprise performance. In addition, the SEM analysis further showed that employee brand equity and knowledge sharing culture play a significant role in the innovative capabilities. Results also revealed that innovative capabilities mediate the effect of employee brand equity and knowledge sharing culture variables on the enterprise performance. This research enriches the literature by examining the role of knowledge sharing culture in enterprise performance and innovative capabilities. This research further offers certain implications for the human resource department in developing their human resources. This can be achieved by availing the maximum skills of the branded employees by creating learning opportunities for the other employees through training sessions where they help and share their experiences. (shrink)

Instead of the currently prevailing competitive model, a more collaborative strategy is needed to address the concerns related to the unsustainability of today’s business. This article aims to explore collaborative approaches where enterprises seek to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with all stakeholders and want to produce sustainable values for their whole business ecosystem. Cases here analyzed demonstrate that alternative ways of doing business are possible. These enterprises share more democratic ownership structures, more balanced and broader governance systems, (...) and a more comprehensive view of organizational goals and performance – which goes beyond the narrow concept of financial bottom line and into a stronger and systematic care of the needs and requirements of the different stakeholder groups. Thanks to this evidence and different theoretical and empirical contributions, we suggest that the strength and sustainability of enterprises come from their ability to fit into the environmental, social, and cultural context in which they operate. By creating values for all stakeholders, enterprises can involve them and gain deep support based on their commitment. This may lead to superior performance from a multiple-bottom-line perspective. (shrink)

We propose conscious awareness as a mechanism for creating “shared value”; a form of value that Porter describes as putting social and community needs before profit. We explore the mechanism empirically in an entrepreneurial context and find that spiritual practices increase conscious awareness which, in turn, shapes entrepreneurial intentions and venture characteristics focused on shared value.

Résumé: La technologie métallurgique de la Chine ancienne est connue pour son ancienneté et sa délicatesse, mais pendant longtemps, le peuple chinois a toujours été sensible aux idées philosophiques qu’elles contiennent et le manque de compréhension rationnelle et généralisation théorique. La technologie métallurgique est une technique typique de l’ancien artisanat chinois. Cet article présente une analyse détaillée des idées philosophiques contenues dans la technologie métallurgique, notamment la technologie de la fabrication du fer (sidérurgie) et la technologie de la fonte et (...) du moulage de bronze. Nous estimons que les principales caractéristiques de l’ancienne culture chinoise de la technologie métallurgique sont l’accent mis sur l’importance de la philosophie, l’accent mis sur “le temporel, les avantages géographiques, et l’harmonie humaine”, et l’accent mis sur la pensée philosophique sur l’“harmonie”. (shrink)

The current and prevailing paradigm of intensive agricultural production is a straightforward example of the mainstream way of doing business. Mainstream enterprises are based on a negativistic view of human nature that leads to counter-productive and unsustainable behaviours producing negative impact for society and the natural environment. If we want to change the course, then different players are needed, which can flourish thanks to their capacity to serve others and creating values for all the participants in the network in (...) which they are embedded. In the article, through the analysis of the Slow Food movement and the use of recent theoretical and empirical contributions in behavioural sciences and psychology, we support the collaborative enterprise model as an alternative to the still prevailing, mainstream business models. Evidence shows that caring and responsible efforts of economic agents are acknowledged and reciprocated even in highly competitive markets. (shrink)

The paper responds to Professor Bridges's paper:‘Enterprise and liberal education’, the thesis of which is taken to be that enterprise education is not only compatible with liberal education, but a necessary part of it. A number of reasons are urged against this claim. In particular, it is argued that being enterprising is neither necessarily generalizable nor always desirable; that enterprise education is inextricably, though ambiguously, related to ‘the enterprise society’, yet ignores the harmful aspects of such a society; and that (...) the claim that enterprise education is liberal because it uses progressive pedagogic methods, is unsustainable. (shrink)

In the context of the digital economy development, the priority component of the economic security of an enterprise is changing from material to digital, constituting an independent element of enterprise security. The relevance of the present research is driven by the need to solve the issue of modernizing the economic security of the enterprise taking into account the new risks and opportunities of digitalization. The purpose of the academic paper lies in identifying the features of preventing internal and external negative (...) influences (threats) in order to guarantee the effective and stable functioning and dynamic social development of the enterprise in the context of digitalization. The research methods are as follows: general scientific research methods, in particular, logical analysis, theoretical substantiation, methods of induction and deduction, formalization and generalization, statistical observation. Results. It has been proposed to introduce the concept of “digital security of the enterprise” for replacing the concept of “information component of economic security” in order to bring the terminology in line with new economic realities. The implementation of the “black box” model has made it possible to identify the latest risks and threats to the economic security of an enterprise within the conditions of the digitalization that differs from the existing ones. The assessment of enterprises’ digital security of the European Union member states has revealed that the digital security level does not depend on the size of the country, however, it is influenced by the institutional environment (in particular, digital development tools in the EU) and the size of enterprises. Also, within the research framework, an assessment of the digital security level of enterprises in the context of digitalization has been proposed. In order to characterize enterprises by the level of digital security, a calculation procedure using the coefficient method has been proposed. (shrink)

The effective functioning of a modern enterprise necessitates the awareness of the owners and managers of its strategic orientations, the state of the internal and external environment, its competitive advantages, entrepreneurial potential and development prospects. A well-built business model of the enterprise helps to face these urgent and permanent challenges. However, the formation of a real business model of the enterprise necessitates mastering of theoretical and methodological bases and implementation of long-term practical measures in the field of assessment, shaping, organization (...) and control. This study offers a comprehensive business model of the enterprise that systematically identifies key factors which influence business activity of the enterprise and provide value logic for doing business in the global economic environment. (shrink)

This paper examines the different mechanisms used by multinational corporations (MNCs) in Nigeria seeking to make long-term social investments by meeting the critical challenge of improving water provision. Community enterprise – an increasingly common form of social enterprise, which pursues charitable objectives through business activities – may be the most effective mechanism for building local capacity in a sustainable and accountable way. Traditionally, social investments by MNCs have involved either donations to a charity, which then assumes responsibility for delivering social (...) outcomes, or direct management of social investment in-house. These approaches have been criticized, however, for their limited contribution to local capacity building, their focus on short-term outcomes, and the restricted role that they afford to communities. Partnering with community enterprise, provided there is sufficient local capacity to support it, is the most effective mode of governance through which MNCs can manage social investments in developing countries. (shrink)

The best way to understand a demand for freedom is to consider what it is directed against. The free enterprise movement began in the 18th century as a protest against various restrictions on business enterprise imposed by governments and by corporations sanctioned by government. Corporations (guilds, colleges, companies, universities) had existed since Roman times, ostensibly to guarantee their member's good behaviour, and especially good service to the public. But they served their members' interests also at the expense of the public (...) by restricting competition. Non-members were excluded from the trade; to become a member one had to serve a long and low-paid apprenticeship to an established member, and to pay various sums of money (for entry fee, graduation fee, compulsory gifts and banquets, etc.). Government sanctioned these practices, and imposed restrictions of its own, ostensibly in the public interest, but also to raise revenue and to provide fees and bribes for officials: the guild had to pay for its monopoly. Viewed cynically, government was an ancient and successful branch of organised crime, a respectable protection racket. (shrink)

This article considers Foucault’s analysis of ordoliberal and neoliberal governmental reason and its reorganization of social relations around a notion of enterprise. I focus on the particular idea that the generalization of the enterprise form to social relations was conceptualized in such exhaustive terms that it encompassed subjectivity itself. Self as enterprise highlights, inter alia, dynamics of control in neoliberal regimes which operate through the organized proliferation of individual difference in an economized matrix. It also throws into question conceptions of (...) individual autonomy that underpin much political thought and upon which ideas about political resistance are based. Self as enterprise also problematizes the viability of Foucault’s later work on ethics of the self as a practice of resistance. I go on to argue that Foucault’s discussion of an unresolved clash in civil society between monarchical and governmental power, between law and norm, offers an elliptical but more promising account of opposition to normalizing bio-power. (shrink)

The figure of today’s threat is the suddenly irrupting, locally self-organizing, systemically self-amplifying threat of large-scale disruption. This form of threat, fed by instability and metastability, is not only indiscriminate, it is also indiscrimin able; it is indistinguishable from the general environment. The figure of the environment shifts: from the harmony of a natural balance to the normality of a generalized crisis environment so encompassing in its endemic threat-form as to connect, across the spectrum, the polar extremes of war and (...) the weather. Michel Foucault characterizes the dominant contemporary regime of power, coincident with the rise of neoliberalism, as ‘environmental’: a governmentality which will act on the environment and systematically modify its variables. Its actions, he emphasizes, are not standardizing since the shift in the figure of the environment has moved it out of reach of normalization. Given the indiscriminateness of the environment’s autonomous activity, environmentality must work through the ‘regulation of effects’ rather than of causes. It must remain operationally ‘open to unknowns’ and catch nonlinear, transversal phenomena before they amplify the stirrings to actual crisis proportions. What systematicity is this? And: does power’s becoming-environmental mean that, politically, we are dealing with natural subjects? Where Foucault’s question ends is where, today, we must begin, in light of how the recomposition of power whose dawning he glimpsed in 1979 has since played out. In the context of Foucault’s theories of power, the question amounts to asking: is this still ‘biopolitics’? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Utopian Enterprises: Growing Up with Star TrekMark Jendrysik (bio)It might be hard to imagine today, when new Star Trek entertainment product seems to be everywhere, that there was once a time when Star Trek meant the seventy-nine episodes of the original series and nothing else. And it might be hard to imagine a time when episodes of a television series had to be watched at one particular time, (...) with no guarantee those episodes would ever be seen again—before the VCR, before streaming, when you had to race home and not miss a moment of the program. When Star Trek came on at 4 p.m., I sat glued to the TV, hoping my mother wouldn’t call me to dinner until 5. You might also remember telling friends who missed the program about the plot and experiencing the Rashomon effect as debates raged about what happened or did not happen on the show the afternoon before.In this article, I try to reconstruct the experience of watching Star Trek (“the Original Series,” or TOS, not that we called it that) for the first time as a child in the mid-1970s. This will be a reconstruction in Margaret Atwood’s sense of the term. I cannot at this distance of time be certain that my recollections have not been modified with the knowledge of years, or by a desire to make the experience of Star Trek perhaps more central to my life than it [End Page 359] was at the time. I will also reflect on Star Trek as a utopian and anti-utopian artifact. I do this because it seems to me that the Original Series has become the object of various caricatures that don’t do justice to the complexity and ambiguity of the program.Sci-fi in a Simpler Time?I ask you, if you are old enough, to cast your mind back to a time when Star Trek was not a multiplatform cultural juggernaut. I was born in 1964 and, perhaps predictably, I was enthralled by the space program as a child. After all, I grew up in the waxing years of the space race, just after Alan Shepard made his orbit around Earth. I was five years old when Neil Armstrong made his famed walk on the moon. The moon landings and Skylab missions provided hours of respite for my mother, too, as I sat glued to the television listening to Walter Cronkite’s calm voice. I read issues of National Geographic about the space race until they fell apart. I read all the books in my school’s library about space. A picture book with an introduction by Werner Von Braun showing future space habitants seemed to present an obvious future path for humanity.1 My friends and I were firmly convinced that one day, and soon, we would go live and work in space!By the early 1970s I had become a big fan of science fiction. In that simpler time sci-fi meant my Uncle Tom’s collection of anthologies that he had left at my grandmother’s house. On many afternoons in her sunroom, I tried to work through stories that were more than a little above my reading level. Poul Anderson’s story “The Queen of Air and Darkness” (1971) made a particularly strong impression on me in its treatment of colonialism and resistance (not that I would have used those terms at the time). Isaac Asimov’s Y/A2 book series Lucky Starr: Space Ranger (1952–58) was another favorite. I was enthralled with the stories set on Mars, Venus, and across the solar system. When I met the author in 1974, he seemed embarrassed by my love of these fairly slight works that he had published under the pseudonym “Paul French.” When I asked him to sign one of my “Lucky Starr” books, he laughed and said something like “those were a long time ago.”Sci-fi also meant movies that showed up on our local independent television stations, often as part of programs with titles like “Sunday Adventure Theater.” My friends and I became quite the connoisseurs of various voyages to the... (shrink)

The installation error of metallurgical machinery parts is one of the common sources of errors in mechanical equipment. Because the installation error of different parts has different influences on different mechanical equipment, a simple linear formula cannot be used to identify the installation error. In the past, the manual recognition method and the touch recognition method lack of error information analysis, which leads to inaccurate recognition results. To improve the problem, an automatic recognition method based on the neural network (...) for metallurgical machinery parts installation error is proposed. According to the principle of automatic recognition of installation error based on the neural network, the nonlinear relation matrix between layers of the neural network is established. The operating state parameters of mechanical equipment are calculated, and the time series of the parameters are divided into several segments averagely. Based on the recognition algorithm, the inspection steps of depth, perpendicularity and center position of reserved hole, base board construction, short-circuit motor line and terminal installation, center mark board, and reference point installation are designed. The experimental results show that the recall rate of the proposed method is 97.66%, and the maximum absolute deviation is 0.09. The experimental data verify the feasibility of the proposed method. (shrink)

This study explores social enterprises’ strategies for addressing mission drift. Relying on an inductive comparative case study of two Italian social enterprises, we show how stakeholder engagement combined with social accounting can successfully support a social venture to re-balance its positioning between wealth generation and social value creation. Indeed, stakeholder engagement helps the internal actors of a social enterprise to rationalize and embody pro-social values previously abandoned, while social accounting reinforces this embodiment process by showing the reintroduced social (...) commitment of the social enterprise to external audiences. Conversely, strategies focused only on social accounting and without significant engagement of external stakeholders prove to be unsuccessful in counterbalancing mission drift because they fail to activate the necessary process of internal re-introduction and operationalization of pro-social values and objectives. (shrink)

"The enterprise initiative is probably the most significant political and cultural influence to have affected Western and Eastern Europe in the last decade. In this book, academics from a range of disciplines debate Mary Douglas's distinctive Grid Group cultural theory and examine how it allows us to analyse the complex relation between the culture of enterprise and its institutions. Mary Douglas, Britain's leading cultural anthropologist, contributes several chapters."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The emergence of the virtual network enterprise represents a dynamic response to the crisis of the vertical bureaucracy type of business organisation. However, its key performance criteria—interconnectedness and consistency—pose tremendous challenges as the completion of the distributed tasks of the network must be integrated across the barriers of missing face-to-face clues and cultural differences. The social integration of the virtual network involves the creation of identities of the participating nodes, the building of trust between them, and the sharing of tacit (...) and explicit knowledge among them. The conventional organisation already doing well in these areas seems to have an edge when going virtual. The paper argues that the whole question of management and control must be reconsidered due to the particular circumstances in the ‘Network Society’. The paper outlines a suggestion for an exploratory, socio-technical research approach combining the dimensions of context, subject and action with the twin objectives of contributing to the enhancement of collaborative capabilities in virtual teams as well as improving the insights into the nature of virtual work. (shrink)

The growing global prominence of Chinese state-owned enterprises brings new dimensions to our understanding of multi-national corporations and human rights issues. This article constructs a three-level framework that enables the mapping of transnational, national, and intra-organizational human rights pressures, and uses this framework to identify and analyze the human rights that Chinese SOEs report concern with. The analysis provided suggests that while China’s most global SOEs are subject to transnational pressures to respect all human rights, such pressures appear outweighed (...) by those encouraging them to concentrate on only some human rights within their national and intra-organizational environment. The article concludes by identifying a number of ways in which our conceptual framework and empirical findings can inform future research. (shrink)

Enterprise philanthropy is practiced in a very unique and rudimentary form in China. Based on a unique random survey data on 3837 Chinese private enterprises conducted in 31 provinces of China in 2006, I find the significant positive relationship between enterprise philanthropy donation and enterprise profitability, and the result supports the political and institutional power view of enterprise philanthropy in the latest development of China. Simply put, Chinese private enterprises carried out philanthropy activities to better protect property rights (...) and nurture political connections, which in turn, leads to better enterprise profitability. The␣result is even stronger in institutions weaker provinces. (shrink)

In Lister v Hesley Hall [2002] 1 AC 215 the House of Lords reformed the law on vicarious liability, in the context of a claim arising over the intentional infliction of harm, by introducing the ‘close connection’ test. The immediate catalyst was the desire to facilitate recovery of damages on the part of victims of child abuse. The precise form the revision assumed was derived from two Canadian Supreme Court cases: Bazley v Curry [1999] 174 DLR (4th) 45 and Jacobi (...) v Griffiths [1999] 174 DLR (4th) 7. The Canadian jurisprudence contains a detailed review of the policy factors underpinning the law of vicarious liability and expresses the view that the most significant of these is ‘enterprise liability’. This article attempts to establish whether enterprise liability holds the same significance in the UK. And, on the assumption that it does, the article goes on to consider any difficulties that may ensue and any further common law reforms that may result. In particular it considers whether the law on vicarious liability for independent contractors is likely to change. (shrink)