Informal settlements’ needs and environmental conservation in Mexico City: An unsolved challenge for land-use policy

The aim of this article is to analyze the effectiveness of land-use policy in Mexico City in controlling the expansion of informal human settlements in peri-urban zones of high ecological value. It is argued that Mexico City's land-use policy has been reactive and internally inconsistent, failing to take informal settlements into account, has not offered the poor access to housing with adequate services and greater security in terms of land tenure, and lacks the necessary financial resources and institutional capabilities for providing solutions to these problems. Through a case study of informal settlement management policy in the Tlalpan Delegation,¹ applied in what has been termed SC or “Conservation Land,”² we conclude that local government exhibits an inability to confront the new challenge of urban sustainability, that it resorts to conventional solutions which give rise to contradictory situations where political decision-making prevails over ecological considerations, so land-use policy is permissive and does not halt informal urban expansion in areas of high environmental value.     

Proposal of a composite indicator of job quality based on a measure of weighted distances

Quality & Quantity - In this paper, we propose a formulation of a composite indicator (CI) computed for individuals and based on elementary indicators that are measured using quantitative,...     

The Power of Stakeholders' Voice: The Effects of Social Media Activism on Stock Markets

Building on social movement theory, this study assesses the influence of social media activism on the stock market performance of targeted firms. We focus on information published on Twitter by two critical stakeholders: consumer associations and trade unions. To the extent that social media represent a valid medium to mobilize stakeholders' activism, protests on Twitter may damage firm reputation, leading to capital market reactions. Using a corpus of over 1.5 million tweets referring to Spanish listed banks, we study the impact of activism by looking at targeted firms' abnormal variations in price and trading volume. Our findings suggest that the Twitter activism of key stakeholders has a significant impact on investors' decisions. Further, our empirical analyses indicate that the mechanisms affecting investors' behavior differ depending on the characteristics of the stakeholder group. Hence, this study contributes to understanding how social movements influence corporate behavior via social media. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Healthy and tasty school snacks: suggestions from Brazilian children consumers

Children do not choose what to eat based on health issues alone, and the high availability of non‐nutritious food in the environment can be a barrier to the consumption of healthy foods. Brazilian children are consuming processed, savoury, rich in fat, sodium and refined carbohydrates rather than more nutrient‐dense foods. Foods offered in public school meals and those sold in private school canteens in Brazil are subject to regulation, but not the snacks brought from home. This study identified the suggestions of public and private school students about the characteristics that a snack should present in order to be considered both healthy and palatable. A qualitative exploratory study using focus groups was conducted with 128 primary school students aged 7–10 years old. Interviews were transcribed and content analysis was conducted, generating three categories: (1) foods actually consumed during snack breaks; (2) examples of foods considered healthy and/or tasty for consumption during snack breaks; and (3) desired characteristics of a healthy and tasty snack. Foods of high energy density and low nutritional value were mentioned as the most consumed snacks, usually brought from home or purchased within/near the schools. Consumption of meals offered by the National School Meal Program was reported by only one‐third of the public school students. Fruits, natural juices and vegetables were considered healthy foods; sweet‐tasting preparations containing fruits were considered tasty; while fruits and natural fruit juices were considered both healthy and tasty. Sweet‐tasting preparations containing fruits were mentioned as examples of snacks with the desired healthy/tasty characteristics. The disparity between what was actually consumed and what was reported as ideal leads us to question the availability in retail stores of healthy yet palatable foods that meet this population's desires.     

How risk influences the choice of governance mode in biopharmaceutical inter-firm relationships

This paper proposes a new theoretical framework for assessing the influence of risk in shaping the governance form in biopharmaceutical inter-firm relationships. In particular, we propose a multidimensional operationalization of relational and performance risk and, by following Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and Real Options (RO) theory constructs, we hypothesize a relation between the aforementioned risk components and the choice of governance form. Specifically, following TCE reasoning, we hypothesize that a high level of relational risk leads towards more hierarchical governance forms, while, following RO theory, we hypothesize that a high level of performance risk leads toward market-oriented governance forms; finally, we hypothesize a moderating effect of each risk component on the other. We empirically test our framework through the analysis of 353 inter-firm relationships signed worldwide between pharmaceutical and biotech companies from 2007 to 2010. The results show substantive support for our theoretical framework. Furthermore, we find a significant moderating effect of the performance risk on the TCE relation between relational risk and governance forms.     

Technological similarity in national styles of innovation in a historical perspective

The paper examines some issues related to different styles of innovation in some advenced countries. The statistical work carried out is an attempt to answer the questerion: to what extent do countries' styles of innovation differ and how often do similarities arise? The issue of similarity/dissimilarity of countries' styles of innovation is investigated in the last 100 years for a group of selected countries. The evidence provided is based on a US patent database held at the University of Reading and countries' styles of innovation are measured with the use of the RTA index in four historical periods. The conclusions of the paper are consistent with the theory of national systems of innovation. Countries show very different styles of innovation and, what is more important, this difference is stable over time. However, a selected combination of similar countries occurs in every period, thus underlining the existence of regional groups. These regional groups are the only pairs of countries showing technological similarity historically.     

Subcultural influences on family decisionmaking

This investigation assessed Mexican-American and Anglo wives' perceptions of family decisionmaking roles for the purchase of eight different goods and services. This comparison was used to explore the impact ethnic subculture plays in consumer behavior. The findings indicate that ethnicity significantly affects wives' perceptions of family decisionmaking roles for expensive items, and that this is not just due to common associations with other variables. This is an under researched area in which cross-national differences and basic socioeconomic disparities are often inaccurately attributed to culture.     

Influence Allocation Methods in Group Decision Support Systems

Influence allocation processes are voting and opinion aggregating methods that allow members to distribute some or all of their decision making influence to others in the group in order to exploit not only the group's knowledge of the alternatives, but its knowledge of itself. Only with the common use of group decision support systems (GDSS) has their use become practical. In this paper we reconsider SPAN, an influence allocation process introduced by MacKinnon (1966a). Experimental comparison shows SPAN to be significantly better at selecting a correct option from a set of options than two common voting methods. An alternative influence allocation process that we call RCON (Rational Consensus), is based on a weighting method proposed by DeGroot (1974) and has been explicated as a normative standard for combining opinion by Lehrer and Wagner (1981). The judgmental inputs to SPAN would appear to be logically related to those for RCON. Submitting the SPAN inputs from the experiment, transformed in this logical way, to the RCON process results in somewhat better performance than with SPAN. However, evidence indicated that the two methods are conceptually and psychologically sufficiently different that an experimental comparison is needed between them.