Agriculture–nutrition linkages with heterogeneous,unobserved returns and costs: Insights from Tajikistan

Agriculture–nutrition linkages (ANLs) have been increasingly investigated in the literature. However, nutritional returns and costs of household agricultural production practices (APPs) in semisubsistence settings are poorly understood. We fill these knowledge gaps using pooled cross-section data sets in Tajikistan, where semisubsistence farming and undernutrition coexist despite relatively good agricultural infrastructure and education systems. Agricultural diversification, yield enhancement, production expansion are positively associated with various nutritional outcomes, particularly in areas with poor food market access. Decomposition exercises suggest that nutritional returns and costs of these APPs vary across households, and the adoption of APPs is driven by the expected nutritional returns. In Tajikistan, improving nutrition through household ANLs requires growing the smallholder agricultural sector in multiple dimensions, including diversification, intensification, and expansion, while also understanding better the pathways of ANLs and addressing bottlenecks at appropriate stages of such pathways.     

Workforce diversity and firm performance: Relational coordination as a mediator and structural empowerment and multisource feedback as moderators

Workforce composition in organizations has become increasingly diverse. As an important step in determining how workforce diversity leads to firm performance, we proposed relational coordination as a mediator through which diversity in age and education indirectly affects firm performance. We also highlighted two human resource management practices (structural empowerment and multisource feedback) as critical contingencies that moderate the effects of workforce diversity on relational coordination and firm performance. We conducted hierarchical multiple regression on multisource data (including responses from senior directors, department directors, managers, and employees, as well as financial performance) from 189 Korean firms in the manufacturing sector, which yielded support for our hypotheses. These findings offer novel theoretical and practical insights into the effective management of workforce diversity.     

How do female directors improve board governance? A mechanism based on norm changes

Prior literature documents that corporate boards with female directors produce better governance outcomes than all-male boards. However, female directors constitute the minority on most boards, which precludes majority voting as the mechanism through which they change board decisions. We identify changing the norms of how the board works as this mechanism. Using the market for norms framework, we explain how female directors are effective even without possessing a board majority or other sources of symbolic power, such as hierarchical authority and social gravitas. Empirically, we show that independent female directors, compared to their male counterparts, are more effective at changing board norms (board processes) and improving governance (board outputs).     

Board diversity reforms: Do they matter for EU bank performance?

We examine the impact of governance reforms related to board diversity on the performance of European Union banks. Using a difference‐in‐difference approach, we document that reforms increase bank stock returns and their volatility within the first 3 years after their enactment. The type of reform matters, with quotas increasing return volatility. The effectiveness of reforms depends on a country's institutional environment. The impact of reforms on return volatility is found to be beneficial in countries more open to diversity, with common law system and with greater economic freedom. Finally, reforms play a bigger role in banks that have ex ante less heterogeneous boards.     

European firms’ corporate biodiversity disclosures and board gender diversity from 2002 to 2016

We examine how board gender diversity is associated with biodiversity disclosures of a firm, and whether the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the EU biodiversity strategy reinforce this relationship. Using institutional theory and resource dependency theory, our sample comprises 4013 firm-year observations from European corporations covering data from 2002 to 2016. We use panel regressions with country, time and industry dummy variables to analyse the disclosure of biodiversity initiatives (DBI) and logit regressions to explain biodiversity impact assessment (BIA). We find that board gender diversity is positively associated with the DBI and BIA of a firm, and that the GRI framework and the EU biodiversity strategy positively moderate this relationship. Moreover, the GRI framework and the EU strategic plan show positive relationship with the DBI, rather than BIA. Altogether, our evidence suggests that corporate boards with a higher proportion of female directors are more sensitive to the concerns of institutional pressures and respond to those concerns by increasing corporate biodiversity disclosures. Overall, we find that firms tend to comply with the GRI framework and the EU 2020 strategy by undertaking symbolic biodiversity disclosures, rather than providing a comprehensive disclosure of their impacts on biodiversity.     

A Challenge in Our Time: Issues of Race in Supply Chain Management

This editorial addresses one of the greatest challenges of our time—racial inequality. Logistics and supply chain management (SCM) factor prominently in people’s everyday experiences, as consumers of products and logistics services as well as through participation in logistics and supply chain workforces. These everyday experiences can be quite disparate depending on one’s race. As academics, we have a responsibility to peel back the layers of how these issues of race and diversity impact and interact with supply chain phenomena. This editorial is intended to bolster conversation around these issues. We identify compelling themes that merit consideration and, perhaps, deeper investigation, including race as an individual difference variable in our research, race in SCM talent and leadership, and race and racism in SCM execution. We also call for more research that addresses racial inclusion and equal access in other aspects of SCM in light of its far-reaching influence in the realms of business and society. The time has come to address these pervasive issues affecting organizations and individuals. We also introduce the articles appearing in the current issue of the journal.     

Partner‐diversity effects on alliance termination in the early stage of green alliance formation: Empirical evidence from carbon‐emission reduction projects in Latin America

Partner diversity is a key influencer in interorganizational alliances, and several empirical studies have shown that its outcomes are contingent on alliance‐specific factors. We extend this research as well as the growing literature on green alliances, in which partner diversity is uniquely high. Specifically, we examine partner‐diversity effects on alliance termination in the early stage of green alliance formation. We hypothesize that in this context, size disparity increases termination likelihood, whereas organizational variety and cultural separation have the opposite effect. To test our hypotheses, we use a sample of 366 alliance projects located in Latin America and submitted to the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism for evaluation, validation, and registration from 2004 to 2014. Our findings contribute to several research streams and provide practical guidance for successful formation of alliances focused on environmental protection.     

发射分集系统在空间相关莱斯快衰落信道下的性能

我国加入WTO以后,对于上海的发展是一个千栽难逢的机遇,同时也给上海的发展带来新的挑战。本文通过详实的资料分析了上海经济发展的现状和制约上海进一步发展的问题,并运用市场营销新理论,提出构建上海现代化大都市的营销战略。     

具有天线选择与中继选择的空间调制技术

针对空间调制（SM）技术存在的缺欠,提出了具有天线选择和中继选择的空间调制系统方案。首先在多输入多输出(MIMO)信道模型下,通过对发送端天线选择,将拥有最佳信道状态的天线选出进行SM,打破SM技术对发送端天线数的限制,并提升采用高阶调制的SM分集性能。然后进一步将此思想引入协作通信网络,结合传感器网络的分级观念,提出采用中继选择和空间调制的中继传输协议,并通过仿真观察系统分集性能的改善。仿真结果表明,上述中继传输协议不仅能提升系统性能,而且使系统配置更加灵活。     

基于CP分解的MIMO-OFDM系统接收信号盲检测

多输入多输出-正交频分复用（MIMO-OFDM）无线通信系统中接收信号从空间、时间、频率的维度形成多因素的阵列信号,传统的矢量或者矩阵代数的建模方法在处理多因素信号问题上显得不足,无法利用多因素间的关系,而张量分析在解决多维阵列信号处理的问题上具有优势。针对MIMO无线通信系统,结合OFDM技术,研究了张量信号的建模及分解方法,并充分利用张量信号的分解唯一性提高无线接收信号的检测能力。提出了基于CP（CANDECOMP/PARAFAC）张量分解方法对未知信道状态（CSI）的MIMO-OFDM系统进行接收端的张量信号建模和盲检测,并通过仿真分析验证了模型的可行性。仿真结果表明,在接收天线数目大于发送天线数目且各径信道独立情况下,基于CP分解的接收信号盲检测算法在误码率为10-4时,随着接收天线数目增加,信噪比可获得约5 dB的增益。