Choice under restrictions

Nearly every decision a person makes is restricted in some way. While we are painfully aware of some of these restrictions, others go largely undetected. This paper presents a conceptual framework for understanding how restrictions interact with situational and individual characteristics, as well as goals to influence behavior. Implications for overlooked research opportunities in choice modeling are presented and discussed.     

Satire and Geopolitics: Vulgarity,Ambiguity and the Body Grotesque in South Park

Humour and laughter have become the subject of recent geopolitical scrutiny. Scholars have explored the affirmative and liberatory possibilities of humour, and the affective bodily dimensions of laughter as tools for transformative action in critical geopolitics. Humour that is vulgar and politically ambiguous is yet to be explored as a potent geopolitical avenue of enquiry. Studies of satire have suggested that rather than contesting entrenched geopolitical beliefs, satirical shows can serve to further divide audiences both amenable and antagonistic to the satire in question. I argue that this should not involve a wholesale rejection of satirical shows, as humour that uses irony, subversion, and other discursive techniques is just one way satirical media becomes an effective commentator on political issues. I examine the show South Park and argue its satire combines bodily and scatological humour with more traditional satirical techniques to produce a comedy that ridicules contemporary issues by reducing complex politics to the most basic and crass condition possible. This is defined in a Bakhtinian sense of the body grotesque, a social inversion through reference to the common bodily functions of all human beings.     

‘Generation Rent’ and The Fallacy of Choice

The now widely used term ‘Generation Rent’ reflects the growing phenomenon in the UK of young people living in the private rental sector for longer periods of their lives. Given the importance of leaving home in youth transitions to adulthood, this is a significant change. It is further critical given the rapid expansion of the private rented sector in the UK over recent decades and the more limited rights that private tenants have. This article draws on qualitative evidence to highlight the impact this has on young people's lives, and broader patterns of social‐spatial inequality. Our research highlights that, whilst young people retain long‐term preferences for homeownership, they nonetheless deconstruct this normalized ideal as a ‘fallacy of choice', given its unachievability in reality. Influenced by the work of Foucault, Bourdieu and Bauman, we emphasize how these dominant norms of housing consumption are in tension with objective reality, since young people's ability to become ‘responsible homeowners' is tempered by their material resources and the local housing opportunities available to them. Nonetheless, this does not exempt them from the ‘moral distinctions' being made, wherein renting is problematized and constructed as ‘flawed consumption'. These conceptual arguments advance international scholarly debates about the governance of consumption, offering a novel theoretical lens through which to examine the difficulties facing ‘Generation Rent’.     

中国上市公司治理结构的实证研究

我国上市公司的市场价值与其治理结构有无联系?投资者愿为治理良好的公司付出多大的溢价?本文旨在对上述两大问题进行全面和系统的实证研究,揭示当前上市公司存在的治理弊病,为建立具有中国特色的公司治理体系提供依据。为此,我们充分考虑了公司治理的内外部机制,并结合中国的市场环境,归纳出一系列变量来描述公司治理在我国的具体实践。基于这个变量体系,我们运用主元因素分析法编制了一个可反映上市公司治理水平的综合指标——G指标。我们的实证研究发现:( 1 )治理水平高的企业其市场价值也高;( 2 )投资者愿为治理良好的公司付出相当可观的溢价。     

Risk Management: Its Adoption in Australian Public Universities within an Environment of Change Management – A Management Perspective

This study draws on the multi‐theoretical approach to governance and a qualitative methodology to examine the extent to which key players in Australian public universities have developed and implemented risk management within an environment of change management. The findings demonstrate that wider influences – largely the result of conflicting management cultures – have had differing impacts on the values of key players and the consequent adoption of the process. Key players’ values range from congruent with a corporate culture (at the strategic level) to incongruent with a corporate culture (at the operational level), and result in different outcomes. These different outcomes suggest that the adoption of risk management by Australian public universities under the influence of new public management is problematic. The study provides opportunities for further research to confirm these findings with a broader sample of actors and the adoption of other governance control processes.     

Exploring corporate citizenship and purchase intention: mediating effects of brand trust and corporate identification

Corporate citizenship represents various organizational activities and status related to the organization's societal and stakeholder obligations. This study develops five different dimensions of corporate citizenship and examines the relationship between the five dimensions and purchase intention by including two key mediators. In the proposed model of this study, purchase intention is indirectly affected by economic, legal, ethical, general philanthropic, and strategic philanthropic citizenship via the mediation of corporate identification and brand trust. Empirical testing using a survey of 353 consumers from various industries confirms most of our hypothesized effects. Last, managerial implications for corporate leaders and limitations of our findings are discussed in depth.     

美国人眼中的中国产品

美国标准咨询中心总裁 Mr.Joscph F.Ludford(约瑟夫 F·路德福特先生)在产品保证和系统工程领域有长达40年的技术和管理经验,曾于1998年及1999年两次来华作专题演讲,是我国政府认可的国际质量标准专家。他要揭开"中国产品如何被美国市场接受?"的谜底。