Evidence of bias in NCAA tournament selection and seeding

We investigate bias in the selection and seeding decisions of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee. Using data on 910 teams associated with the ten tournaments from 1999 to 2008, we test for bias toward teams from seven ‘major’ conferences and six ‘mid‐major’ conferences, as well as for bias toward teams represented on the Committee. We find substantial support for the hypothesis of bias in favor of virtually all major and mid‐major conferences in selection and/or seeding, as well as evidence of bias toward majors over mid‐majors. We also find substantial evidence of bias toward teams with some type of Committee representation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Configuring the Field of Play: How Hosting the Olympic Games Impacts Civic Community

abstract    I theorize and empirically illustrate how the mega-event of the Olympic Games configures relational and symbolic systems within the host city. I focus on a field at the level of the local geographic community and explore how city character and traditions enable both persistence and change in institutional elements even when potentially disruptive events occur. I present two exploratory studies. The first shows how the event of the Olympics is rooted in the local field of the host city but varies by communities; the second explores the dynamics of configuring the field of one Olympic city: Atlanta, host of the 1996 Olympic Games.     

Tournament Rituals, Category Dynamics, and Field Configuration: The Case of the Booker Prize

abstract    In this article we theorize the ways in which tournament rituals, in the form of prominent industry award ceremonies, configure organizational fields. We review field theory to distil four criteria to which field-configuring mechanisms should conform. We undertake an archival study of the Booker Prize for Fiction to explore how this tournament ritual has configured the field of contemporary English-language literature by championing the distinctive category of post-colonial fiction.     

Metonymy in Language about Organizations: A Corpus-Based Study of Company Names

abstract    In this paper, I examine the use of metonymies in people's talk about organizations. Drawing upon a corpus of natural talk extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) I identify recurring categories of metonymies that appear to be a central part of people's talk about organizations. These categories of metonymies involve substitutions where an organization stands in for its members, its products, its facilities, its stock or shares or a company-related event. I also found that metonymies in each of these categories are used as basic metonymic expressions that are only partially connected to metaphorical expressions and interpretations of organizations. Where those connections exist, the use of metonymies follows a metaphor-from-metonymy linguistic pattern (where a metaphorical meaning arises from the use of a metonymy) rather than a metonymy-within-metaphor pattern (where a metonymy is part of a metaphorical expression). I elaborate on the implications of these findings for our understanding of how organizations are discursively constructed and understood through metonymic language.     

Offshoring: Value Creation through Economic Change

abstract    In this essay, I analyse the economic and managerial dimensions of offshoring, drawing from recent research by the McKinsey Global Institute. I argue that offshoring, like other forms of trade, creates enormous value for both companies and the economy as a whole. However, in the case of countries with less flexible labour markets such as Germany, findings are more nuanced. While the potential cost savings for companies from offshoring appear impressive, our research suggests that companies are leaving billions of dollars behind when they offshore. We propose several ways companies could make capital-labour trade-offs to create new markets and services. By maximizing gains from offshoring, companies can both cut costs and generate revenue. Given the benefits offshoring, the challenge is how to make the transition to a global economy less painful for workers and increase the participation in the wealth creation. Hence, I also identify options to help policymakers and companies manage the changes offshoring requires.     

Guest Editors' Introduction

abstract    In this introductory article to the Special Issue we make a case for the study of 'field-configuring events' (FCEs). We begin with a discussion of the nature and character of FCEs. We next situate the study of FCEs in the context of ongoing research addressing the growth and evolution of institutional, organizational, and professional fields. We follow this with an overview of the relationship between FCEs and the evolution of fields, paying particular attention to how FCEs link field evolution at the macro level with individual action at the micro level. We then examine the unique methodological advantages that the study of FCEs offers to researchers who are interested in studying dynamic field processes. We conclude with a summary of the five papers that make up this Special Issue.     

The Moral Economy of Parallel Currencies

A bstract .   This article offers a monetary analysis of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) and examines both their moral and economic significance as well as the way in which these two aspects may conflict. After considering LETS' principles and history, I review three monetary theories in order to ascertain how one might best explore these phenomena. By drawing on the "Chartalist" tradition in monetary theory, I show (1) how strongly oriented LETS are to the formal market economy, from which, it is held, they detach themselves, and (2) that they do not effect a return to barter or an abolition of money, as is sometimes claimed. Both points become clear when one pays due attention to the primary function of money as money-of-account. In the final section, I consider LETS empirically and compare their structural potentials with their concrete form. LETS' members are motivated less by pecuniary gain than by the desire to build community and realize certain values. Participants have little motivation to expand LETS, which are therefore destined to remain small and ineffectual in offering an alternative to the unemployed and less well-off. Indeed, were LETS to grow in size, the moral commitment required of members would come into conflict with the growing financial interests at stake.     

9 Persons: Natural,Functional, or Ethical Kind?

A bstract .   In this paper, I examine alternative views of personhood and how they affect our understanding of life and death. Building on David Wiggins's insight that our concept of person tries to hold in a single focus our nature as a biological being, a subject of consciousness, and a locus of moral values, I argue against views that try to reduce persons to one of these aspects at the expense of the others. Thought experiments that have been prominent in the literature on personal identity are criticized on grounds that they sunder persons from the moral and cultural context in which they appear and ignore an essential relational aspect of persons. I argue for a substantive view of persons that understands persons as "constituted by" but not identical to human organisms, and that treats persons as having essential relational properties. Persons are thus beings whose nature is not determined entirely by their biology or psychology but is, in part, a matter of individual, moral, and cultural construction. I argue that such a view provides the best theoretical grounding to answer the more practical, bioethical questions concerning the beginning and end of life.     

OPEN KNOWLEDGE DISCLOSURE: AN OVERVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE AND ECONOMIC MOTIVATIONS

Abstract.  This paper reviews current literature on open knowledge disclosure strategies used by firms. It is usually acknowledged that for an innovative firm that does not benefit from a natural protection (such as lead time advance) the best strategy is to keep an innovation secret as long as possible or to protect it through an exclusive patent. However, in apparent contrast to this traditional view, many studies suggest that firms often disclose important parts of their knowledge through scientific publications, conferences, the Internet, etc. This paper aims to provide an overview first of the evidence supporting the existence of open knowledge disclosure and second of the economic motivations that encourage rational, profit seeking firms to adopt these behaviours.     

GLOBALIZATION AND CORRUPTION CONTROL IN ASIAN COUNTRIES: The case for divergence

The globalization of corruption has given rise to the concern in many countries on how to combat corruption and many international conferences on this topic. However, in spite of the sharing of ‘best practices’ in fighting corruption at these conferences, there is still a great deal of divergence in combating corruption in Asian countries because of the different contextual constraints and the effectiveness of their governments' anti-corruption strategies. This article describes and evaluates the three patterns of corruption control in six Asian countries and concludes that the third pattern of anti-corruption laws with an independent anti-corruption agency adopted by Singapore and Hong Kong is the most effective.     

Showdown at Kykuit: Field-Configuring Events as Loci for Conventionalizing Accounts

abstract    Despite the centrality of fields as a concept in organizational research, the processes by which fields form and change have not been studied in great depth. By situating action in time and space, field-configuring events (FCEs) offer valuable settings for researchers seeking insight into such processes. This paper develops a theory of accounts as a way to understand a mechanism by which institutional entrepreneurs seek to shape fields and influence the institutions that govern them. Actors produce and distribute justified accounts – narratives that describe the way work in the field ought to be done – and attempt to persuade powerful actors in the field to adopt them as conventions. FCEs can thus be understood as loci for conventionalizing accounts. The theory of accounts and field-level change is illustrated with a case study of a turning point FCE during which competing institutional entrepreneurs in the field of 'non-profit technology assistance providers' present alternative accounts. Successful institutional entrepreneurship comes from recognizing political opportunities to align one's account with the dominant orders of worth in the field, thereby convincing powerful actors to accept one's account as convention.     

Seven key elements of a successful implementation, and eight mistakes you will make anyway

I know your company is unique. No one else has to deal with the problems/products/processes/procedures/people that your have to deal with. I know that you have searched the literature and attended conferences hoping to find information relevant to your company. Well, this is your lucky day. This article has been designed specifically for the unique company.     

2 Discourse Ethics, Democracy, and International Law: Toward a Globalization of Practical Reason

A bstract .   This paper deals with the foundational "architectonics" (Kantian) at the ground of the internal relation between the three concepts raised in the title. First, I provide a short introduction into the ultimate foundation of practical philosophy by the transcendental-pragmatic conception of discourse ethics . Then, I discuss the foundational relation between discourse ethics , positive law , and democracy as a constitutional state of law . Finally, I explore the foundational relation between human rights as part of universal law, the democratic state of law, and international law or jus gentium . By taking issue with Kant, Habermas, and Rawls, I try to show that a rational foundation of ethics, as well as a rational approach to the traditional problems of international law, is only possible through a critical transformation of Kant's approach via a transcendental-pragmatic conception of discourse ethics.     

3 Rethinking Global Justice from the Perspective of All Living Nature and What Difference it Makes

A bstract .   I begin this chapter with an account of what is deserved in human ethics, an ethics that assumes without argument that only humans, or rational agents, count morally. I then take up the question of whether nonhuman living beings are also deserving, and I answer it in the affirmative. Having established that all individual living beings, as well as ecosystems, are deserving, I go on to establish what it is that they deserve and then compare the requirements of global justice when only humans are taken into account with the requirements of global justice when all living beings are taken into account. I argue that the more adequate global justice that takes into account all living beings imposes some additional obligations on us that are absent from a less defensible human-centered global justice, but not as many as one might initially think.     

Muddy Waters: The Political Construction of Deliberative River Basin Governance in Brazil

Over the last two decades, numerous international conferences and organizations have espoused managing water as an economic good, involving participatory forums in systems of decentralized management at the river‐basin level. In the 1990s, Brazil adopted such a model. More than a simple transfer of power from the national to the local level or from bureaucratic to deliberative decision‐making, however, this process requires multi‐directional power transfers among a variety of policy arenas and actors and among national, state, municipal and river‐basin institutions, as well as a complex — and ongoing — negotiation over the meanings of both water pricing and participation. Focusing on the politics of reform legislation in the state of São Paulo and nationally, the article examines how political‐institutional features of federalism and executive‐legislative relations constrained the passage of reform legislation, and how pro‐reform actors attempted to surmount such institutional limitations with networking strategies and by fostering incremental changes in practices on the ground.     

Hostile Territory: High-Tension Religion and the Jewish Peddler

A bstract .   Scholars have long explored the role that reputation plays in the facilitation of exchange. Some attention has also been paid to the way in which religions serve as a proxy for reputation or as a mechanism for enforcement of exchange agreements. These reputation and enforcement mechanisms enhance the ability of the members of certain religious groups to perform economic roles where such secular-based mechanisms fail or are absent. In this article, I explore the ways in which hostility toward members of high-tension religions makes them uniquely well suited to the economic role of middlemen. As illustration, I explore the particular case of the 19^th-century German Jewish peddler in the young United States.     

浅谈项目利润管理在销售与运作计划中的作用

目前,很多制造企业为了应对不确定的市场产品需求,加快供货速度、减少库存积压,纷纷采用S＆OP运作模式,以期达到供需平衡。如何在S＆OP运作的数据收集和评审、销售规划、供应规划、合作关系会议、高层会议等环节中预估成本、预估利润,使产品交付、销售利润最大化,是迫切需要关注和实施的问题。     

Reflecting on Reflexivity: Reflexive Textual Practices in Organization and Management Theory

abstract    This paper identifies four sets of textual practices that researchers in the field of organization and management theory (OMT) have used in their attempts to be reflexive. We characterize them as multi-perspective, multi-voicing, positioning and destabilizing. We show how each set of practices can help to produce reflexive research, but also how each embodies limitations and paradoxes. Finally, we consider the interplay among these sets of practices to develop ideas for new avenues for reflexive practice by OMT researchers.     

Industry Event Participation and Network Brokerage among Entrepreneurial Ventures

Despite the recognition that network brokerage is beneficial for entrepreneurial ventures, little is known about its antecedents. This study examines how participation in industry events (e.g. conferences) relates to entrepreneurs' brokerage positions in informal industry networks and how these positions, in turn, impact new venture performance. Using a unique dataset of 45 events and subsequent network relations among entrepreneurs from 90 firms in the open source software industry, results indicate that: (1) entrepreneurs who participated in heterogeneous events or who bridged between events with few common participants were more likely to be brokers; (2) the relationship between event bridging and brokerage was stronger for entrepreneurs with broader prior career experiences; and (3) network brokerage mediated the event participation–performance link. It appears that events may limit structural opportunities for brokerage and that individual differences matter for exploiting these opportunities. Overall, this study increases understanding of how and when particular networking behaviours are beneficial for entrepreneurs.