Urbanizing Refuge: Interrogating Spaces of Displacement

Refugee spaces are emerging as quintessential geographies of the modern, yet their intimate and everyday spatialities remain under‐explored. Rendered largely through geopolitical discourses, they are seen as biopolitical spaces where the sovereign can reduce the subject to bare life. In conceptualizing refugee spaces some scholars have argued that, although many camps grow and develop over time, they evolve their own unique form of urbanism that is still un‐urban. This article challenges this idea of the camp as space of pure biopolitics and explores the politics of space in the refugee camp using urban debates. Using case studies from the Middle East and South Asia, it looks at how the refugee spaces developed and became informalized, and how people recovered their agency through ‘producing spaces’ both physically and politically. In doing so, it draws connections between refugee camps and other spaces of urban marginality, and suggests that refugee spaces can be seen as important sites for articulating new politics.     

Transforming Transformers into Militainment: Interrogating the DoD‐Hollywood Complex

This article examines how the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Hollywood collaborated to manufacture the blockbuster films Transformers (T) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (TRF) to sell in global markets and to sell a positive image of DoD personnel, policy, technology, and practice to the world. T and TRF are global militainment films made by the “DoD‐Hollywood complex” to make money in markets and put the U.S. military before the world in a positive light. To show how, the article's first section defines the “DoD‐Hollywood complex,” presents a brief 20^th‐century history of its formation, and describes the current DoD institutions, policies, and practices that fuse DoD publicity agencies to Hollywood filmmakers. The second section highlights how DoD assisted T and TRF's production and contemplates why Hollywood solicited DoD support. The third section shows how T and TRF put DoD in a positive light. The conclusion addresses some of the consequences of T and TRF with regard to democratic theory. By showing T and TRF to be global militainment commodities, this article interrogates the nexus of “reel” and “real” U.S. military power and sheds light on how DoD interacts with Hollywood studios to influence how it gets screened by entertainment media and seen by global spectators.     

Ignorant Theory and Knowledgeable Workers: Interrogating the Connections between Knowledge,Skills and Services

This article builds on recent critiques of the knowledge economy to argue that key growth areas in future employment will be in low level service jobs rather than knowledge work as currently understood. The article discusses the knowledge, skills and competencies involved in interactive service work. It suggests that knowledge which is contextual, social or tacit has been taken to be of lesser value in relation to competitive advantage. It highlights the contrast, therefore, between the growth in interactive service work and the focus of the knowledge management literature on a small sub‐set of total employment. Two case‐studies of interactive service work, one drawn from a range of service sectors and the other from a call‐centre setting, provide empirical material which highlights the skills required by em‐ployers in this area. Technical skills were seen as less important than aesthetic and social skills. These cases highlight the management of social skills and competencies as critical to interactive service work. Workers need to develop an understanding of themselves that allows them to consciously use their emotions and corporeality to influence the quality of the service. This leads to the conclusion that the interactive service sector should not be conflated with knowledge work. Rather, it is more important to focus on the broader need for knowledgeability in work, and so broaden understanding of labour in the contemporary workplace.     

Assessing skills and autonomy: the job holder versus the line manager

Managers and their employees may have different perceptions of the skills used in jobs. We carried out a survey aimed at explaining such differences, in respect of verbal, physical, problem‐solving and planning skills, the qualifications required to get the job and indicators of workplace autonomy. First, for most skills there is a reasonably good match between the perceptions of the line manager and those of the employee. But in the case of the contested skills associated with autonomy there is little agreement. Secondly, for most skills there is a small ‘perceptions bias’, in the sense that employees rate required skills at a higher level than their line managers. Thirdly, consistent with the hypothesis that skills are socially constructed, when the manager is male and the worker female there is a tendency for the boss to underestimate and/or the worker to overestimate their skill level by comparison with other gender combinations.     

Pay level satisfaction and employee outcomes: the moderating effect of autonomy and support climates

The present study examined autonomy climate (AC) and support climate (SC) as moderators of the relationship between pay level satisfaction (PLS) and employee outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction, affective commitment and intention to stay). Survey data were collected from 5801 Belgian employees, representing 148 units. The hypotheses derived from distributive justice theory and from research on the meaning of money received partial support. Multilevel analyses revealed that AC buffered the negative effects of low PLS on all three outcomes, and that SC exacerbated the negative effects of low PLS on intention to stay. Theoretical and practical implications of this differential moderating effect are discussed.     

Worker autonomy and performance: Evidence from a real-effort experiment

Worker flexibility in effort allocation is a crucial factor for productivity and optimal job design. This paper runs a real-effort experiment that manipulates both the degree and type of autonomy individuals have in scheduling their effort, and it examines the causal effects of these manipulations on final performance. The main findings come from comparing subjects with different levels of cognitive ability. Using individual data on scheduling decisions, I find significant baseline differences in performance and effort-allocation strategies between high- and low-cognitive ability subjects. Moreover, the experiment shows that high-ability individuals reach higher performance when they have full scheduling flexibility while limiting any task-ordering possibility increases the performance of low-ability individuals. Overall, this paper provides new and robust evidence on the importance of cognitive ability in explaining effort-allocation decisions, and it identifies job design interventions to increase the performance of high- and low-ability workers.     

Subsidiary initiatives and subsidiary autonomy: Evidence from New Zealand and Brazil

The paper uses evidence from a developed and a developing economy (New Zealand and Brazil) to study the consequence of multinational subsidiary initiative taking for subsidiary autonomy. Initiative taking and autonomy are known to increase the likelihood of a subsidiary continuing to grow and develop. Uncertainty remains as to whether subsidiaries acquire or lose autonomy as they engage in initiatives partly as the willingness to pursue initiatives can be viewed positively or negatively by the parent company. By using cross-country data and distinguishing three types of initiative according to the scope of their potential impact (internal, local and global) the study provides a basis for examining this topic that improves on evidence from a single country or single initiative study. Data from 200 multinational subsidiaries in New Zealand and 172 in Brazil are gathered for analysis. As well as examining the overall relationship between initiative taking and autonomy the study presents the first evidence on this topic for subsidiaries in New Zealand and Brazil. The overall conclusion is that subsidiary initiative taking is likely to increase subsidiary autonomy but the affect over autonomy is dependent upon the type of initiative that the subsidiary undertakes: subsidiary autonomy is more likely to increase as a result of a local market initiative than a global or internal market initiative.     

出版物物流中心的规划与建设

从1937年4月24日新华书店成立．到2006年．出版物分销企业在数量、范围、股权方面不再受到限制．新华书店已经走过了69个年头。在我国加入WTO的大背景下．面对出版物发行领域日益激烈的市场竞争．山东省新华书店认识到．只有积极应对．发挥自己的行业优势，形成核心竞争力．在供货商与客户之间搭建高效、优质服务的流通渠道，构建良好和谐的供应链关系，才能更好地生存和发展。     

In search of local autonomy: the politics of big cities in Russia's transition

Despite a series of local government reforms in the 1990s, Russia's localities still lack serious autonomy. Only big cities maintain hopes for the emergence of local autonomy and local democracy. City politics has produced multiple conflicts between regional and local authorities; however, regional‐local relations merely reflect fundamental center‐periphery controversies on a smaller territorial scale. While big cities and their metropolitan areas serve as centers of political, economic and social modernization, other regional areas are lost in the peripheries. During Russia's transition period, some large cities acquired more political and economic autonomy from regions than others did. This article concentrates on the crucial role of (1) political opportunities inherited from the late‐Soviet period; and (2) strategic choices of political actors in the post‐Soviet period. The constellation of initial conditions and outcomes of political conflicts have contributed greatly to the diversity of city politics and urban autonomy in Russia's cities. Finally, the article considers the possible impact of local autonomy in Russia's cities on national social, economic and political developments. Malgré la série de réformes des années 1990 sur les gouvernements locaux en Russie, les localités manquent toujours d'une véritable autonomie. Seules, les grandes villes espèrent encore l'avènement d'une autonomie et d'une démocratie locales. La politique urbaine a généré nombre de conflits entre autorités locales et régionales; ceux‐ci ne sont pourtant que le reflet de la polémique fondamentale entre centre et périphérie à une échelle territoriale réduite. Alors que les grandes villes et leur métropole concentrent modernisations sociales, économiques et politiques, le reste de la région se fond dans les périphéries. Pendant la Russie de transition, quelques grandes villes ont acquis davantage d'autonomie économique et politique que d'autres par rapport à leur région. L'article détaille le rôle crucial qu'ont joué, d'une part, les ouvertures politiques héritées de la fin du régime précédent et, d'autre part, les choix stratégiques des acteurs politiques de l'ère post‐soviétique. La pléiade de conditions initiales et de séquelles de conflits politiques a largement contribuéà diversifier les politiques urbaines et le degré d'autonomie des villes russes. Enfin, l'article aborde l'impact éventuel d'une autonomie locale des villes sur les évolutions sociales, économiques et politiques de la Russie.     

Cohesion Policy Funds and local government autonomy: Evidence from Italian municipalities

In this article we investigate the effect of the European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy funds dedicated to administrative capacity building on the local government autonomy for the Italian case focusing on municipalities taking part to the programming cycle 2007–13. From an empirical perspective, the causal impact is estimated using a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) design with continuous treatment combined with a Propensity Score Matching approach. We exploit a unique database developed by the open government initiative on cohesion policies in Italy (OpenCoesione), which collects detailed information at municipality level on financed EU projects. Our results show that the specific Cohesion Policy funds have a positive and significant effect on the local government autonomy measured in terms of taxation autonomy.     

现代消费者教育:构建企业竞争优势的新途径

随着国内竞争的国际化,技术转移和扩散的速度越来越快,企业可以在全球范围内进行采购和布点,传统的竞争优势逐渐成为市场可获得性资源,企业面临竞争优势弱化的危险,而现代消费者教育,却可以成为构建企业竞争优势的新途径。     

Caught in the web: the dual nature of networks and its consequences

Relations between a firm and organizations in its political and economic environment are increasingly seen as crucial for the successful functioning of that firm, both in the narrow economic sense, and at the broader level of reaching sustainability. However, attention seems to be focused on the positive qualities of such networks of organizations. In this paper it is argued that networks of organizations have a dual nature, and do not just provide possibilities for collective learning and problem solving. At the same time, such networks consist of dependency relations that provoke power strategies, which result in outcomes reflecting the distribution of power rather than leading to an optimal result. By means of a case study, this dual nature is explored. It is shown that the actors involved in the process of developing an alternative to the disposable milk carton in the Netherlands are embedded in dependency relations. Several of these actors attempt to create problem solving networks, and succeed. However, the already existing dependency relations between the actors involved influence the direction, outcome, and timing within these networks. Using criteria for network performance, this dual nature of networks is assessed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Rules of the game: constructing norms of influence,subordination and constraint in IT planning

This paper examines how norms develop and influence the planning of technological and organizational change. A case study highlights the influences of a broadly held management innovation as it is introduced into an existing organizational culture, demonstrating how norms play a role in attempts to introduce technical and management innovations. In the case, three sources of normative structuring—business process re-engineering, the consultant, and the target organization's business environment—converged to create new rules defining how to conceptualize the problem space, the appropriate ways to approach problems, who had actionable authority and how ideas were to be expressed. The emergent normative context trapped the group in a malfunctioning process and eliminated opportunities to question the process or to suggest alternative directions. This case highlights how analyzing normative systems holds promise to improve scholarly understanding of organizational technologies and to refine managerial tools for technological and organizational innovation.     

论构建社会主义和谐社会的意义

构建社会主义和谐社会的战略思想,具有非凡的理论意义和实践意义.构建社会主义和谐社会的战略思想,是党中央新一届领导集体的核心执政理念之一.构建和谐社会是社会主义社会的本质要求,是对我国社会主义现代化建设经验的新总结,是对中国特色社会主义事业发展规律的新认识,是对马克思主义执政理论的新贡献,是应对国内国际新挑战的迫切需要,是巩固党执政基础完成执政任务的必然要求,是实现全面建设小康社会的重要保证.     

Team ground rules: Their nature and functions

Teams are complex relational systems. Effective team functioning depends on members willingness to coordinate and work together. Ground rules play a fundamental but frequently ignored role in this process. We define ground rules as the mutual agreements informally established by members to regulate team functioning. These agreements may subsequently be rendered formal or explicit. The nature and functions of ground rules (including as social-normative tools for handling paradoxes) are discussed, as well as the forms/types they assume. Rules for setting ground rules, as well as the role team leaders may play in facilitating the emergence of effective ground rules are also considered.     

论构建社会主义和谐社会的意义

构建社会主义和谐社会的战略思想,具有非凡的理论意义和实践意义。构建社会主义和谐社会的战略思想,是党中央新一届领导集体的核心执政理念之一。构建和谐社会是社会主义社会的本质要求,是对我国社会主义现代化建设经验的新总结,是对中国特色社会主义事业发展规律的新认识,是对马克思主义执政理论的新贡献,是应对国内国际新挑战的迫切需要,是巩固党执政基础完成执政任务的必然要求,是实现全面建设小康社会的重要保证。