Biodiversity conservation discourses. A case study on scientists and government authorities in Sierra de Huautla Biosphere Reserve,Mexico

Aiming to explore the relationship between natural protected areas operation and how conservation is logically described, this paper analyzes the discourses that government authorities and scientists developed on conservation and social participation in Sierra de Huautla Biosphere Reserve. Our results indicate that conservation is understood as the intent to keep nature with the lowest possible level of human interference, as its main strategies are: to eliminate inhabitant's unawareness about nature and to reinforce environmental legislation and inspection. Social participation was acknowledged as essential in reserve management, but local inhabitants, even when recognized as important actors, were excluded from the reserve co-administration scheme and mainly regarded as the beneficiaries of already designed projects. In order to achieve SHBR environmental and social goals, it is necessary to modify authorities’ comprehension of social participation toward a process that supports social change by empowering NPA inhabitants and transforming them into political actors.     

Association of financial or professional conflict of interest to research outcomes on health risks or nutritional assessment studies of genetically modified products

Since the first commercial cultivation of genetically modified crops in 1994, the rapidly expanding market of genetically modified seeds has given rise to a multibillion dollar industry. This fast growth, fueled by high expectations towards this new commercial technology and shareholder trust in the involved industry, has provided strong incentives for further research and development of new genetically modified plant varieties. Considering, however, the high financial stakes involved, concerns are raised over the influence that conflicts of interest may place upon articles published in peer-reviewed journals that report on health risks or nutritional value of genetically modified food products. In a study involving 94 articles selected through objective criteria, it was found that the existence of either financial or professional conflict of interest was associated to study outcomes that cast genetically modified products in a favorable light (p = 0.005). While financial conflict of interest alone did not correlate with research results (p = 0.631), a strong association was found between author affiliation to industry (professional conflict of interest) and study outcome (p < 0.001). We discuss these results by comparing them to similar studies on conflicts of interest in other areas, such as biomedical sciences, and hypothesize on dynamics that may help explain such connections.     

Corporate governance and family business performance

Family business continuity plans commonly establish a governance structure for the family and for the family business. The purpose of those structures is to improve strategy and control mechanisms of the family business and, to organize the communication and relationship between family owners and business executives. This research focuses on assessing the impact of those structures on family business performance. Specifically, the study assesses the impact a professional board of directors has on a company's performance. The research team selected a set of 22 family businesses. Some of these families have undergone a process of developing a family protocol over the last seven years. The authors captured the relevant information for this research by sending out a survey to each family member and to each non-family director or executive.     

Strategic management in Latin America: Issues and assessment

This paper summarizes the best papers of the Strategic Management in Latin America (SMLA) conference which took place in January 2009 in Sao Paulo. Within a context of economic crisis that started in 2008 the authors find that the matters of business strategy within Latin America, addressed in the paper of this special issue, are relevant today just as when the authors submitted their papers. The strategic choices made by individual firms independent of the ever changing economic climate in which they find themselves is the key to the firm. The papers in this special issue cover a variety of topics encompassed within the area of strategic management: competitiveness, strategy formulation and execution, functional business disciplines and institutional strength in Latin America.     

The stock market reaction to the 2005 split share structure reform in China

During 2005–2006, the Chinese government implemented the split share structure reform, aimed at eliminating non-tradable shares (NTS), i.e. the shares typically held by the State or by politically connected institutional investors that were issued at the early stage of financial market development. Our analysis, based on the time series of risk factors and on the cross-section of abnormal returns, confirms that the split share structure reform was particularly beneficial for small stocks, stocks characterized by historically poor returns, stocks issued by companies with low transparency and weak governance, and for less liquid stocks. Historically neglected stocks also witnessed an increase in the volume of trading and market prices. We conclude that the reform laid down the conditions for important future changes in ownership, liquidity and corporate governance in China.     

The Rise of Accelerated Seasoned Equity Underwritings

Seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) executed through accelerated underwritings have recently seen significant increases in global market share, and now account for a majority of the proceeds from both U.S. and European SEOs. Based on their study of over 30,000 global SEOs during the period 1991‐2004, the authors conclude that accelerated offerings occur more rapidly (as their name suggests), raise more capital, and require fewer underwriters than conventional fully marketed SEOs. Accelerated transactions also typically involve larger, better‐known companies that tend to be selling substantial amounts of secondary as well as primary secondary shares (whereas traditional SEOs consist almost entirely of primary shares). Besides speed of execution, the growing popularity of accelerated deals is also attributed to lower spreads, the reduced price risk for issuers resulting from the brief underwriting period, and “market‐impact” costs that are no larger than those that accompany traditional SEOs. Indeed, according to the authors' estimates, accelerated deals reduce the total issuance costs of U.S. issuers—in the form of lower spreads, market‐impact costs, and underpricing—by 250 basis points, on average, while the cost reduction for European sellers is said to be close to 400 basis points. The authors also present an analysis of SEO investment banking syndicates that illustrates that accelerated deals yield much smaller, more capital‐intensive, and presumably riskier underwriting syndicates that generate comparable revenues over much shorter transactions periods. In so doing, they enable larger, more reputable banks to “buy” market share and league table rankings. The authors' findings underscore three major trends that are shaping global investment banking. First, the fact that accelerated deals are marketed almost exclusively to institutional investors, and that these underwriting methods are gaining market share, suggests the declining importance of retail investors in equity markets everywhere. Second, the rise of accelerated deals both promotes and reflects increasing concentration in the investment banking industry, since only the largest banks have the capital base and risk tolerance required to buy large share blocks outright and assume all or most of the price risk of later resale. Finally, the increasing use of accelerated underwritings for SEOs provides another case of the “commoditization” of financial transactions characterized by relatively low asymmetric information. Since ATs can be employed for shares of only large and well‐known companies, these offerings are executed very quickly and cheaply—in much the same way plain vanilla corporate bonds are sold—and with minimal need for the placement and marketing services that investment banks use for IPOs and other non‐transparent security offerings.     

CORPORATE AND SOCIAL ACCOUNTING FOR PETROLEUM

Present national accounting conventions regarding the treatment of flows and stocks in the petroleum sector are considered to be unsatisfactory. But changes in reporting requirements for oil and gas producers open up possibilities for a more satisfactory treatment.
In this article some aspects of the newly adopted requirements are presented and the possible uses of the additional information available for improving social accounts are discussed.     

Strategy-proofness on restricted separable domains

We study a problem in which a group of voters must decide which candidates are elected from a set of alternatives. The voters’ preferences on the combinations of elected candidates are represented by linear orderings. We propose a family of restrictions of the domain of separable preferences. These subdomains are generated from a partition that identifies the friends, enemies and unbiased candidates for each voter. We characterize the family of social choice functions that satisfy strategy-proofness and tops-onlyness properties on each of the subdomains. We find that these domain restrictions are not accompanied by an increase in the family of social choice functions satisfying the two properties.     

ICT stochastic externalities,technology innovation and business services: is there an evidence of missed opportunity growth?

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we present an analysis of the production process for some OECD countries and consider the new technology of the ICT capital as driver of growth. In doing so, the production function approach adopted allows to disentangle the externalities not exploited. In line with the general-purpose technology theory, we attribute such externalities to the new technology ICT capital. Business services are a relevant vehicle to use better the innovative capital embedded in the production process. We develop and implement a methodology for the evaluation of the effect on growth related to the interaction between innovative capital and business services. The main conclusion of the paper is that the potentials of new technologies in use are almost completely exploited during the productive process. Then, even if a competitive solution is viable, there are small, though possible, margins to improve a sustainable European growth in the long run linked to externalities. We also point out some conclusions on the capital and labor shares showing that the latter is ‘too small’ both in the long and short run.     

What is the future of cancer care? A technology foresight assessment of experts’ expectations

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to generate qualified information on technologies that are expected to be relevant to cancer care over the next thirty years (2017–2037). Drawing on the concepts of technology foresight, a methodology was developed for future technology research. Future technologies were identified by consulting editorials of journals specializing in oncology. Nine technologies were selected with the potential to impact cancer care in the future. Additionally, a method was developed for consulting a large number of experts from articles indexed in Thomson Reuters Web of Science. In this survey, more than 83,000 cancer specialists were invited to answer a web survey in which they expressed their expectations about the future of cancer care. The questionnaire was answered by 2408 specialists, 56% of whom stated they were highly knowledgeable experts. Our results show that antibody-related therapies, molecular imaging, and tumor delivery systems are the technologies most likely to be used in cancer care in the next thirty years. The main reasons pointed out for the choice of these technologies were improvements in the prognosis of the disease and improved diagnostic reliability. Meanwhile, knowledge and scientific barriers were highlighted as the main obstacles to the development of the technologies deemed to have more limited chances of success.