Situating the wildlife spectacle: ecofeminism,representation, and polar bear tourism

This paper presents a critical investigation of power relations circulating in promotional materials associated with polar bear tourism in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. Drawing on precepts of ecofeminism, critical discourse analysis, and the content of cultural texts (websites, souvenirs) produced by tourism operators, businesses, and crown corporations, the study interprets how representations of polar bears re-inscribe regimes of truth that marginalize non-human animal others and are complicit with patriarchal ideologies. Focus in our analysis is placed first, on illustrating the portrayal of “performing spectacle bears” – a socially constructed subjectivity designed to serve the desires of wildlife tourism producers and consumers – and, second, on diagnosing the privileged discourses that work to maintain and normalize this construction, along with the interspecies dynamics they support. In effect, the paper sheds light on the complex and recurrent effects of anthropocentric and instrumentalist orientations in tourism, including their contingency upon masculine systems of value and rationality. The paper also points out the potential of ecofeminist ethics of care for enhancing interspecies relationships in sustainable tourism.     

Do investors actually value sustainability? New evidence from investor reactions to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI)

Research Summary: Research exploring investor reactions to sustainability has substantial empirical limitations, which we address with a large‐scale longitudinal financial event study of the first global sustainability index, DJSI World. We examine investor reactions to firms from 27 countries over 17 years that are added, deleted, or continue on the index. We find that once relevant controls and comparisons to observationally equivalent firms beyond the index are included, DJSI events have only limited significance and/or materiality. Nonetheless, investors' valuation of sustainability around the world has evolved over time, involving diminishing reactions to U.S. firms and increasing benefits, particularly of continuation on the index, over time. The study highlights the importance of careful analysis and longitudinal global samples in making inferences about the financial effects of social performance. Managerial Summary: The debate about how investors perceive corporate social responsibility (CSR) predates Milton Friedman's famous statement that the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits. Although extensive research has studied whether sustainability contributes to financial performance, we have yet to understand whether investors believe it pays off. This financial event study of reactions to the addition, continuation, and deletion from DJSI World, the first global sustainability index, shows that investors care little about DJSI announcements. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that global assessments of sustainability are converging and that investors may increasingly be valuing continuation on the DJSI, suggesting that firms may gain at least limited benefits from reliable sustainability activities.     

Mutation of HRM practices in Russia: an application of CRANET methodology

This article describes the challenges facing established practices and patterns of human resource management (HRM) during the economic recession. It is based on the results of the CRANET survey, administered in Russia in the third quarter of 2008, on the 2008 CRANET data available for Bulgaria and on survey of companies' executives, implemented in the first half of 2010. We found that Russian HRM practices that are based on low formalization of performance assessment, great versatility of payment arrangements, and high flexibility of working and contractual arrangements enabled companies to adapt to the recession conditions without massive layoffs.     

Do ethnicity and occupational status interact to influence anxiety? An investigation of anxiety among Hispanic emergency responders

Although anxiety is a universal emotion, some of the most severe job-related levels of anxiety are among emergency responder occupations, jeopardizing their well being and positive job performance. The literature suggests that certain ethnic groups report higher levels of anxiety than other ethnic groups. Using Lazarus and Folkman's transactional model of stress, this study examines whether ethnicity predicts differing anxiety levels across occupations. We sampled emergency and non-emergency responders in the state of Texas in the USA. The strongest positive relationship between occupational status and anxiety was observed for Hispanics compared with non-Hispanics. However, the findings reveal no significant effect between Hispanic ethnicity and anxiety. Our findings show that ethnicity may explain the differences in experienced anxiety across occupations. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

The challenge for women expatriates and spouses: some empirical evidence

This is an exploratory study examining issues associated with women expatriates and their spouses. Individuals representing three groups - organizations, women expatriates, male spouses - were interviewed to identify their experiences and concerns. The authors conclude that this issue will pose a dramatic challenge for international organizations in the coming decades, and that it is timely to investigate the issue in more depth.     

Innovation or imitation? The effect of spillovers and competitive pressure on firms’ R&D strategy choice

In this paper a firm’s R&D strategy is assumed to be endogenous and allowed to depend on both internal firm characteristics and external factors. Firms choose between two strategies, either they engage in R&D or abstain from own R&D and imitate the outcomes of innovators. This yields three types of equilibria, in which either all firms innovate, some firms innovate and others imitate, or no firm innovates. Firms’ equilibrium strategies crucially depend on external factors. We find that the efficiency of intellectual property rights protection positively affects firms’ incentives to engage in R&D, while excessive competitive pressure has a negative effect. In addition, smaller firms are found to be more likely to become imitators when the product is homogeneous and the level of spillovers is high. Regarding social welfare our results indicate that strengthening intellectual property protection can have an ambiguous effect. In markets characterized by a high rate of innovation a reduction of intellectual property rights protection can discourage innovative performance substantially. However, a reduction of patent protection can also increase social welfare because it may induce imitation. This indicates that policy issues such as the optimal length and breadth of patent protection cannot be resolved without taking into account specific market and firm characteristics.     

Volatility in the knowledge economy

Summary. We seek to explain the economic volatility of the last 6 years, in particular the rapid expansion and contraction of the knowledge sectors. Our hypothesis is that these sectors amplify the business cycle due to their increasing returns to scale, growing faster than others in an upswing and contracting faster in a downswing. To test this hypothesis we postulate a general equilibrium model with two sectors: one with increasing returns that are external to the firm and endogenously determined - the knowledge sector - and the other with constant returns to scale. We introduce a new measure of volatility of output, a real beta, and derive a resolving equation, from which we prove that the increasing return sectors exhibit more volatility then other sectors. We validate the main results on US macro economic data of real GDP by industry (2-3 digits SIC codes) of the 1977-2001 period, and provide policy conclusions.Received: 18 March 2002, Revised: 16 February 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D5, D58, E10, L50, L52, O38, O51.Correspondence to: Graciela Chichilnisky     

Shut the fridge door! HRM alignment,job redesign and energy performance

Anchored within the strategic HRM and alignment literature, and drawing on efficiency and legitimacy perspectives of organisational behaviour, we investigated a HRM intervention targeted at energy reduction goals in a large multinational retailer. The HRM intervention was focused on embedding the environmental and economic performance goals of the firm within the workplace through redesigning the job so that energy tasks were aligned with training and performance management systems, as well as organisational performance goals. Using a randomised control trial design, we tracked changes in energy behaviours and energy consumption in 769 retail stores (685 in the intervention condition, 84 in the control condition). The findings provide evidence that changing the alignment of HRM practices can influence both worker behaviour and organisational outcomes, including environmental outcomes. This work contributes to debates concerning the impact of HRM alignment on both the work and organisational performance context.     

Implications of the Russian Crisis

The financial crisis of August 1998 caused grave consequences for Russia. Although the mechanism of financial crises in emerging market economies has been thoroughly studied, the role of transition specificity is still underestimated. In the West, there is a widely accepted opinion that fiscal problems were the main driving force behind the crisis. The article contests this view and reveals a number of fundamental reasons that have brought a decade of market romanticism to a bitter end. In fact, the crisis disclosed serious misalignments in the strategy of reforms. Premature liberalisation and a far-fetched reliance on monetarist tools coupled with a lack of institutional, microeconomic and legal transformation hampered the development of market forces, provoked glaring macroeconomic discrepancies and, finally, led to a dramatic decline in production. Present Russian economic policy is aimed at reconciling market reforms with the Soviet economic heritage and the particular transition needs of the country.     

Flow Signals: Evidence from Patent and Alliance Portfolios in the US Biopharmaceutical Industry

Integrating signalling theory and the portfolio diversity literature, we theorize that diversity in a firm's patent and alliance portfolios sends contrasting flow signals impacting its market value in a nuanced way. Diversity in an alliance portfolio mediates the patent portfolio diversity – market value relationship by suppressing the negative effect of patent portfolio diversity creating an overall positive effect. We test our mediation model on a longitudinal set of 225 US biopharmaceutical firms that were awarded 17,078 patents and participated in 37,744 alliances between 1990 and 2006. Our theory and findings contribute three novel insights. First, we demonstrate the value of a temporal lens in explaining why diversity in a firm's patent and alliance portfolios send flow signals that establish expectations among market observers and have performance implications. Second, establishing that patent and alliance portfolio diversity are temporally sequenced provides compelling evidence for the value of studying multiple types of portfolios, their temporal relationships and effects on firm outcomes. Third, since diversity in a firm's portfolios can send contrasting flow signals conditioned on the cognitive demands and proximity involved in interpreting the signals, firms that do not maintain a ‘signalling fit’ with market observers increase the probability of unintentional negative signalling effects.