Where Grass Has No Roots: The Concept of ‘Shared Strategic Communication’ as an Answer to Unethical Astroturf Lobbying

As researchers pursue connections between strategic communication and management, they need to critique practices to develop norms that increase strategic communication’s long-term contribution to society. Norms of strategic communication are shaped by socially constructed standards of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and guide how strategic communication fosters organization-public relationships (OPR). Such norms are particularly important regarding deliberative strategic communication, which uses political CSR to guide corporations’ political role. Although principles of OPR and political CSR should foster more ethical strategic communication, some practices weaken such standards. To make that case, this article (1) reviews the historical foundations of deliberative discourse, (2) examines principles of OPR and political CSR, and (3) applies normative principles of deliberative discourse (4) to critique three cases of strategic political communication, known as astroturf lobbying, a deceptive lobbying practice that undermines and fakes grassroots movements. We conclude by integrating the findings into theory building that shifts CSR outcomes from advantaging individual organizations adding value to society. This theme uses ‘creating shared value’ to advocate shared strategic communication. This notion includes the normative claims of political CSR (open discourse, participation, transparency, accountability) to arrive at shared strategic communication that supports the ‘good’ organization and society simultaneously.     

A multi-country,multi-sector replication challenge to the validity of the cultural tightness-looseness measure

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - In this study, we assess the internal and external validity of Gelfand et al.’s (2011) recently developed measure of cultural tightness-looseness (CTL)....     

Investigation of causality based on complex use of statistical methods (case study of social research)

The article deals with the problem of revealing cause–effect relations in the social research by a complex of statistical methods. The ways for solving the problem for experimental and non-experimental data are regarded. In the research the role of the statistical methods in formation of causal relation hypotheses is revealed and the methods of hypotheses verification in conditions of experiment or upon latent structure modelling are discussed. The possibilities of the use of the factor analysis and the analysis of variance in revealing cause–effect relations are also considered. Special attention is paid to the interpretation of the analysis results depending on the character of the empirical data and the conditions they were obtained in. The approaches to causal relations revealing based on the development of the schemes of the complex analysis of the empirical data by the statistical methods aimed at investigation of the cause and effect relation in a long-term research are suggested. We take into account the hierarchical structure of the schemes reflecting the structure of the subject of cognition, the specificity of which requires the use of “rigid” and “flexible” models in combination. Its variant could be the method of structural equation modelling. The article gives an example of the research of causal relations in the assessment of the quality of education services in higher institution. Each stage of the assessment is provided with building of certain “rigid” or “flexible” mathematical models. Their combination allows using the obtained quality parameters as an instrument of regulation of interaction between education service providers and clients.     

On the choice of measures of reliability and validity in the content-analysis of texts

The paper discusses several reliability measures: Scott’s pi, Krippendorff’s alpha, free marginal adjustment (Bennett, Alpert and Goldstein’s \(S\) ), Cohen’s kappa, and Perreault and Leigh’s \(I\) and the assumptions on which they are based. It is suggested that correlation coefficients between, on one hand, the distribution of qualitative codes and, on the other hand, word co-occurrences and the distribution of the categories identified with the help of the dictionary based on substitution complement the other reliability measures. The paper shows that the choice of the reliability measure depends on the format of the text (stylistic versus rhetorical) and the type of reading (comprehension versus interpretation). Namely, Cohen’s kappa and Bennett, Alpert and Goldstein’s \(S\) emerge as reliability measures particularly suited for perspectival reading of rhetorical texts. Outcomes of the content analysis of 57 texts performed by four coders with the help of computer program QDA Miner inform the analysis.     

Sustainable development of global entrepreneurship: infrastructure and perspectives

Development of the modern global entrepreneurship is one of the most perspective and promising means of overcoming the consequences of the global economic crisis, as well as prevention of future crises of economic systems, as it ensures full level of optimization of production and distribution processes. The purpose of the article is to determine perspectives of sustainable development of the global entrepreneurship. For determining the level of sustainability of development of the modern global entrepreneurship, the authors use the methods of statistical analysis of time rows (method of horizontal and trend analysis). The authors perform a complex analysis of dynamics of development of global companies and performed evaluation of their sustainability. Also, the necessity for changing the model of managing the development of modern global entrepreneurship for increasing its sustainability is substantiated. As a result, it is concluded that modern global entrepreneurship is developing in the unstable way, and practical recommendations are offered for solving this problem. A perspective model of sustainable development of the modern global entrepreneurship is developed and presented. A certain limitation of the results of the performed research is the framework character of the offered recommendations.

     

Fixed effects instrumental variables estimation in correlated random coefficient panel data models

We provide a set of conditions sufficient for consistency of a general class of fixed effects instrumental variables (FE-IV) estimators in the context of a correlated random coefficient panel data model, where one ignores the presence of individual-specific slopes. We discuss cases where the assumptions are met and violated. Monte Carlo simulations verify that the FE-IV estimator of the population averaged effect performs notably better than other standard estimators, provided a full set of period dummies is included. We also propose a simple test of selection bias in unbalanced panels when we suspect the slopes may vary by individual.     

Corruption: Theory and evidence from the Russian Federation

In this paper, we provide theory and evidence on the problem of corruption in the Russian Federation. Our theoretical model indicates that in the presence of official corruption, the numbers of tax inspection (collection) employees could be inversely related to per capita tax collection. Our empirical analysis supports our theoretical model, shedding light on one of the most intractable problems in the Russian Federation.