Law,Property and Ambiguity: The Uses and Abuses of Legal Ambiguity in Remaking Istanbul's Informal Settlements

What is the role of legal ambiguity in the creation and institutionalization of private property regimes? In what ways does the (ab)use of legal ambiguities affect market‐making processes? I address these questions through a detailed analysis of two large‐scale urban renewal projects in Istanbul that impose a formal private property regime on informal settlements. My research reveals that without the strategic utilization of legal ambiguities and administrative arbitrariness by public and private actors, private property cannot be easily created and hence capitalist markets cannot function efficiently. My findings challenge the assumptions of several social science traditions such as neoclassical and neoinstitutionalist economics, as well as most works within the law and economics tradition regarding the relationship between law, property and economic development. These approaches to economic development are underpinned by the legal certainty that private property entails as the most important element for an efficient economic order. However, in their unconditional support for private ownership, they fail to realize the degree of legal ambiguity and administrative arbitrariness needed to create the private property regime in the first place. As such their arguments remain theoretically and empirically incomplete. A more complete analysis of the relationship between law and economic dynamics must focus on how private property is constructed, and the extent to which legal ambiguities and loopholes are utilized in this process.     

On Work and Authority: Issues in Job Enlargement, Job Enrichment, Worker Participation and Shared Authority

Abstract . Continued debate over the nature of work is adding to an existing vast literature in labor economics, business and personnel administration, industrial sociology and social psychology. Both theory and experience indicate that the authoritarian workplace results in social costs through reduced labor productivity and increased worker dissatisfaction. But progress toward shared authority and worker participation in the administration of the production process promises to be slow. Management generally preserves a legitimized authority, defending it with the misplaced rationale of elitism, i.e., the presumed functional superiority of managers. Unions will not press for shared authority, for to do so would undermine their basic and formal function of organizational restraint of managerial authority. Thus, while management and union logically protect their traditional roles, the worker and society are denied the potential benefits of basic changes in work and authority.     

Betwixt and Between: The Dilemma of Employee References

Concerns have arisen over employers' collection and sharing of information about employees, especially employment references. As a result of the dramatic growth in the number of lawsuits brought by employees, many employers have seriously curtailed the information they release concerning current and former employees. However, even the refusal to release information carries a legal risk. Employers who do not obtain information concerning applicants can be liable for negligent hiring, and those who knowingly withhold negative information regarding their former employees may be liable for negligent referral. This paper explores these expanding liabilities and suggests strategies to allow employers to manage the risk of communicating employee references.     

Post-acquisition Integration as Sensemaking: Glimpses of Ambiguity, Confusion, Hypocrisy, and Politicization

ABSTRACT   Though many studies have examined post-acquisition integration challenges, they have mainly focused on rationalistic explanations for the difficulties encountered in post-acquisition integration. There remains little knowledge of how the 'irrational' features of post-acquisition decision-making may impede organizational integration. This study attempts to bridge that gap by examining post-acquisition decision-making from a sensemaking perspective. The paper presents an in-depth analysis of a merger between a large Finnish furniture manufacturer and three smaller Swedish furniture companies. By focusing on the sensemaking processes surrounding integration issues, we uncover four interrelated tendencies that illuminate why the frequent problem of slow progress during post-acquisition integration occurs: inherent ambiguity concerning integration issues; cultural confusion in social interaction and communication; organizational hypocrisy in integration decision-making; and the politicization of integration issues.     

Adaptation,mitigation and risk: An analytic approach

The adaptation vs. mitigation dilemma is considered by analyzing a simple dynamic model of managing a polluting process subject to the risk of abrupt occurrences of harmful events. The occurrence hazard can be mitigated by reducing the polluting emissions, while the occurrence damage can be controlled via investments in adaptation activities. A full dynamic characterization of the optimal mitigation/adaptation processes is presented. The adaptation and mitigation policies interact strongly, and the evolution in time of each is affected by the option to implement the other. The conditions under which adaptation investments should begin promptly, take place after some delay or be avoided altogether are derived in terms of some key model parameters.     

The Authority Attainment of Women: Competitive Sector Effects

A bstract . Women receive better returns than men in authority in the competitive sector of the economy, all else being equal (including gender-type of occupation and firm size). This finding supports a hypothesis drawn from organizations theory and Becker (1971) (1957). In addition, this analysis shows that while differences in education and hours worked per week do help explain the gender difference in authority in the workplace , gender differences in domestic responsibilities have little direct effect on authority attainment.     

Power, Innovation and Problem-Solving: The Personnel Managers' Three Steps to Heaven?

ABSTRACT   Legge's seminal book on personnel managers ( Legge, 1978 ) identified ambiguities in their role, vicious circles that limited their power and possible strategies to improve their effectiveness. This paper explores how far the advent of human resource management has altered the circumstances in which they find themselves and how far it offers a new basis for power and influence. Analysis of interviews with 48 senior executives indicates that although there have been changes in features of the ambiguities and vicious circles, personnel managers have failed to overcome many of the problems identified by Legge 25 years earlier or to seize the opportunities outlined by Ulrich (1997 ) to become human resource champions.     

大学新生适应与人际信任和孤独感的相关研究

目的:研究人际信任与新生适应的关系以及孤独感与新生适应的关系。方法:采用人际信任、孤独感与新生适应的关系量表,随机抽取了350名大一新生进行调查。结果:①大学新生的孤独感在性别、城乡等方面无显著差异;女性大学生的人际信任得分高于男性大学生,且差异极其显著(p<0.01);来自城镇的大学生的适应总分高于来自农村的大学生的适应总分,且差异显著(p<0.05)。②大学生人际信任总分与新生适应总分呈显著正相关(r=0.392,p<0.01),大学生孤独感总分与新生适应总分呈显著负相关(r=-0.710,p<0.01),大学生人际信任总分与孤独感总分呈显著负相关(r=-0.446,p<0.01)。结论:人际信任程度越高,新生越容易适应大学生活;孤独感越低,新生越容易适应大学生活;孤独感对人际信任具有显著预测作用,可以解释人际信任总变异的19.7%。     

Authority and Commitment: Why Universities, Like Legislatures, Are Not Organized as Firms

This paper explores the functions and limitations of democratic governance by analyzing the allocation of decision-making authority in colleges and universities. Contrary to the conventional perception that large numbers and heterogeneity of voters and issues undermine the efficiency of democratic decision making, data on the allocation of authority for thirty-one decision areas in 826 US colleges and universities show democratic governance to be more prevalent in larger, "full-service" research universities than in smaller liberal arts colleges and special-curriculum institutions. State- and church-affiliated institutions, meanwhile, tend to be governed more like firms. The results overall are consistent with economic theories of political organization that view democratic governance primarily as a means of enhancing the credibility of commitments rather than as a method of aggregating preferences.

"Educational systems, like governments, apparently can never be rational,never a logical and economical means to a definite end.Rather must they be always makeshifts."

— J.P. Munroe (1899)     

The Dynamics of Self-Esteem and Physical Self: Between Preservation and Adaptation

The aim of this study was to model and characterize the psychologicalprocesses that underlie the dynamics of global self-esteem and physicalself over time. Twice a day for 228 consecutive days, seven participantscompleted a short inventory (PSI-6, Ninot et al., 2001) measuring sixsubjective dimensions: global self-esteem, physical self-worth, physicalcondition, sport competence, physical strength, and attractive body.Each series was modeled by means of ARIMA procedures. The resultsshowed that a simple moving average model provided a satisfactoryaccount for the dynamics of all series. This model suggests that acombination of two opposite processes underlies the dynamics ofself-concept: preservation, which tends to restore the previousvalue after a disturbance, and adaptation, which tends to inflectthe series in the direction of the perturbation.     

多元化用工一体管理

铁路施工企业在用工制度改革方面迈出了一大步,除了正式职工外,还有试用工、合同工和外地来京施工人员等.如何加强外地来京施工人员的管理,是我们多年来一直研究和探索的问题.在实践中,我们逐步摸索出路工(铁路正式职工)与外来工(外地来京施工人员)的管理模式,对加强新形势下的企业管理发挥了积极的作用.     

组织适应力与战略选择：企业成长的双重主题

市场环境和组织内部环境变化日益加快,企业的成长是否具有可持续性愈来愈成为战略管理的理论与实践所关注的内容。分析了战略选择与组织适应能力互补互动对企业的可持续成长的重要影响。