Using identity structure analysis (ISA) to investigate female entrepreneurship

The process of founding a business is for most people a period of transition entailing taking on a new role. Such a transition will often result in a change of values and beliefs. For some women, values ascribed to the entrepreneur will conflict with conventional feminine values. Previous researchers have classified women in accordance with their degree of attachment to entrepreneurial values and conventionally defined masculine-feminine values (Goffee and Scase 1985, Cromie and Hayes 1987), but to date there has been little attempt to examine the process of change in women's values and beliefs as a result of business start-up.

This paper reports on the first attempt to use Identity Structure Analysis (Weinreich 1980/1986/1988) to investigate entrepreneurship: in this case, specifically female entrepreneurship.     

Importing terrestrial biocapacity: The U.S. case and global implications

Human societies depend for their survival on goods and services provided by both local and global ecosystems. For most of history, people used mainly local resources. Increasingly, however, globalization and trade enable consuming populations everywhere to support themselves on the output of distant ecosystems. This is potentially problematic because of global change and because the spatial separation of material production (including resource exploitation) from consumption eliminates the direct negative feedback that normally occurs when people dependent on local ecosystems degrade those ecosystems. With spatial separation comes psychological separation. Modern consumers remain generally unconscious of their growing reliance on biophysical goods and services produced half a world away and see no connection between their consumer lifestyles and distant ecological consequences. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to raise a cautionary flag about unfettered trade and to show the value of accounting for trade-related physical flows and their impacts on natural capital in sustainability analyses. Using the United States as an example, we present an analytical method that can locate and measure the ecosystem area embodied in any population's imports of renewable resources. We quantify U.S. imports from specific countries around the world; we estimate the area of terrestrial ecosystems in those countries devoted to consumers in the U.S. and we highlight both increasing U.S. imports and their potential impact on extra-territorial ecosystems. This method creates indirect (conceptual) feedback between consumption and ecosystems integrity which we hope will partially replace the physical feedback neutralized by globalization. Such analyses can help generate public and decision makers’ awareness of both their dependence and their impacts on, distant natural capital stocks. This in turn should increase interest in establishing improved co-management regimes to maintain the stability and reliability of such now obligatory relationships.     

The State of Risk Assessment Practices in Information Security: An Exploratory Investigation

Risk in Information Systems Security can be defined as a function of a given threat source's exercising a particular vulnerability and the resulting impact of that adverse event on the organization. Risk management is the process of identifying and assessing risk and taking steps to reduce it to an acceptable level given the costs involved in doing so. The major activity within risk management is the risk assessment process. The objective of this research is to assess the current state of practice in conducting risk assessments for information security policy management. Results from an exploratory survey of U.S. headquartered firms indicate that increased frequency of conducting risk assessments, the use of quantitative measures of likelihood of loss, and more complete asset inventories correspond with higher levels of user satisfaction and perceived usefulness, although many companies choose not to engage in this level of practice or to only go part way. Additionally, respondents reported substantial difficulty in identifying threats and estimating loss, indicating that much can be done to improve the current state of practice.     

Armed conflict and birth weight: Evidence from the al-Aqsa Intifada

No previous study has estimated the effect of intrauterine exposure to armed conflict on pregnancy outcomes. Drawing on data from the 2004 Palestinian Demographic and Health Survey, which was conducted approximately 4 years after the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada, we find that an additional conflict-related fatality 9–6 months before birth is associated with a modest increase in the probability of having a child who weighed less than 2500 g. There is also evidence, albeit less consistent, of a positive relationship between fatalities in late pregnancy and low birth weight.     

Dividend Irrelevance and Accounting Models of Value

In accounting models of value, dividends typically appear to have a strong positive relationship with value despite theoretical reasons to expect dividend displacement. We show that this result is driven by the relationship between dividends and both core earnings and other information derived from the valuation error in the prior year. Where core earnings can be effectively modelled in a specification including other information, dividend displacement is no longer rejected. Under these circumstances dividends exhibit weak incremental predictive power for earnings and earnings expectations and hence have little impact on value. We show that valuation models are sensitive to model specification and should be used with caution when testing the value impact of firm characteristics or accounting numbers.     

One fits all in the EMU? One monetary policy for eleven countries

Euro-skeptics continue to argue that the discrepancies between national business cycles are too wide, and that a common European monetary policy cannot work in the long run. The laboriously accomplished monetary stability will therefore not be able to last, high rates of inflation and a “soft” euro will, in the long run, be the inevitable consequences. The empirical evidence given in the following article supports a different view: not only has there been a strong correlation of business cycles in Euroland over the past decade, but there are also a multitude of forces that are working towards further convergence.     

Teacher union responses to education reforms: job regulation and the enforced growth of informality

This article examines the school teacher union responses to education reforms. The removal of formal collective bargaining arrangements is strengthening the significance of the traditional union structures, and the responses reflect both the pressures of the reforms and the traditions of the three main unions