Why is group-based pay perceived as meaningful,meaningless or negative? Exploring the meanings of pay suggested by reflection theory

This study explored the propositions of the reflection theory of pay [Thierry (2001), Work Motivation in the Context of a Globalizing Economy, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 149–166]. The theory is grounded in theories of individual motivation. However, in a group-based pay context more socially oriented motivational factors may also play a role. In addition, the theory does not take into account that pay may have negative meanings. In this study, we have adopted a qualitative approach to improve the understanding of what meanings group-based pay may have. The research questions were the following: (1) why is group-based result-oriented pay perceived as meaningful, (2) why is group-based result-oriented pay perceived as meaningless and (3) why is group-based result-oriented pay perceived to have a negative meaning. To study the meanings attached to group-based pay, we conducted 29 focus group interviews (88 employees) in six municipal organizations in Finland. The results showed that the reasons for perceiving group-based pay as meaningful were related to the value of money, compensation for performance, the positive messages signalled by the pay and positive outcomes. On the other hand, when pay was perceived as meaningless, the arguments were related to the weak instrumentality of money, weak links between performance and pay, incompatibility and lack of knowledge. The negative meanings were related to negative message conveyed by the pay and its outcomes. When these results were compared with four meanings proposed by reflection theory, all four categories were found in the speech of the interviewees. In addition, two new categories were found and designated as ‘messages’ and ‘outcomes’. These new categories were theoretically linked to social identity theory.     

External Venturing and Discontinuous Strategic Renewal: An Options Perspective

This study examines the relationship between a firm's venturing activities and its undertaking of strategic renewal. The study was motivated by some important gaps in the corporate entrepreneurship literature on venturing and renewal. The extant literature has not focused on the different types and dimensions of firms' renewal activities. In particular, discontinuous renewal involving shifts in firms' core businesses is not well understood. Moreover, the conditions that drive firms to undertake strategic renewal have not been examined. For example, it is not known how venturing increases or reduces the benefits of undertaking renewal. This study focuses on a discontinuous form of renewal involving major changes in firms' core businesses and examines firms' external venturing activities that complement their internal development. We examine corporate venture capital (CVC) investments, which are direct minority equity investments made by established companies in privately held ventures. Discontinuous renewal is conceptualized as resulting from a set of related, and often sequential, managerial decisions. The first managerial decision is to initiate growth in a business that is relatively newer or smaller for the organization. The second decision is to move away, or even withdraw completely, from the current core business that enabled prior growth and prosperity for the firm and served as its primary revenue earner. Employing a real options perspective, we argue that CVC investments create growth options in new and existing businesses but do not result in firms' withdrawal from existing businesses. Therefore, we expect CVC activity to be negatively associated with the likelihood of a firm undertaking discontinuous renewal. We also propose that the benefits of withdrawing from existing businesses are even lower, and the costs even higher, for firms in dynamic industries and for firms that possess strong internal capabilities. The predictions of the study are tested using longitudinal data on 477 firms from the 1990 Fortune 500 list for the period 1990–2000. We find support for all our predicted hypotheses. These results help address important limitations in the corporate entrepreneurship literature. The study also contributes to the real options and organizational capabilities literatures.     

Information-based management mode based on value network analysis for livestock enterprises

ABSTRACT

With the development of computer and IT technologies, enterprise management has gradually become information-based management. Moreover, due to poor technical competence and non-uniform management, most breeding enterprises show a lack of organisation in data collection and management. In addition, low levels of efficiency result in increasing production costs. This paper adopts ‘struts2’ in order to construct an information-based management system for standardised and normalised management within the process of production in beef cattle breeding enterprises. We present a radio-frequency identification system by studying multiple-tag anti-collision via a dynamic grouping ALOHA algorithm. This algorithm is based on the existing ALOHA algorithm and uses an improved packet dynamic of this algorithm, which is characterised by a high-throughput rate. This new algorithm can reach a throughput 42% higher than that of the general ALOHA algorithm. With a change in the number of tags, the system throughput is relatively stable.     

Determinants of Schooling in Egypt: The Role of Gender and Rural/Urban Residence

In this paper, we examine if there are gender differences in schooling attainment and the extent to which these differences are exacerbated for rural children in Egypt. Using a nationally representative cross-sectional survey, our estimation results find strong support for the hypothesis that being male and living in urban areas significantly improves child schooling. We show that relative to a female child who is “never enrolled” in school, a male child is over twice as likely to be currently attending school, and over two-and-a-half times more likely to have some schooling. These positive effects are particularly strong for rural male children. There are also regional variations, with a child (male or female) living in Upper Rural Egypt having a significantly lower likelihood of being currently enrolled. Finally, our estimation results point to large positive effects of father's education on the probability of current enrolment for all children. Mother's education, however, improves only the likelihood of current enrolment for female children, with no significant effect on male children.     

Social landscape: Ten years of planning ‘valuable landscapes’ in Estonia

This paper gives an overview of theme planning on designating valuable landscapes in Estonia (1999–2003) and traces its impacts through the decade up to the present. We claim that in addition to the mapped list of valuable landscapes and their attributes as we have described them, this planning exercise called forth changes in society as well as in landscapes and their appreciation. As the project applied participatory planning tools unprecedented in post-communist Estonia, the Estonian word for landscape (maastik) is now being used more in everyday language, according to the way its meaning altered in the process.     

Fashionably voluptuous: normative femininity and resistant performative tactics in fatshion blogs

Abstract

While research on consumer identity projects has begun to include marginalised consumers, we nevertheless lack insight of the ways in which socio-historical understandings of gendered identity are (re)constructed in the context of consumer resistance and in relation to the market. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, we draw on Butler's notion of performative identity formation and combine this with Bourdieu's notion of capital as identity resource, first to explore performative identity construction of fatshion bloggers embedded in the normative understandings of gendered identity, of adopting and negotiating the dominant cultural discourses of fashion, and second to consider the subversion of such discourses and resistant acts as these are enabled by normativity. We establish two performative identity tactics that highlight normativity as a resource for resistance.     

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The everyday intimacy of sleeping: an embodied analysis of intimate practices

Previous consumer research has generated rich knowledge about the dynamics of everyday intimacy. However, what is lacking is an understanding of the role the body plays in intimacy. To redress this gap, we set out to think of consumers’ intimate lives from an embodied perspective. To this aim, we take a practice lens to study the intimate practice of sleeping that offers, we argue, a fruitful context for highlighting the significance of bodily aspects. It also enables us to shed new light on the previously identified emotional, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions that structure and organize intimate practices. Our exploratory study employs a set of sleep-related cultural data to illustrate how consumption in sleeping practices is present in many previously unrecognized ways.     

Conflict as a Tool for Measuring Ethics at Workplace

The article concentrates on problems, which emerge in the ongoing process of transforming a socialistic society to a western welfare society. This process does not only include economic aspects, as it might seem from several articles and books written about the subject. Often these societies, having established a stable financial and legal systems face much harder problems related to the prevailing values. They are not struggling anymore because of bad loans or lack of investment but because of outdated values and inability to adapt themselves to a changing world. To understand these difficulties better, 2000 conflicts, occurred during last four years in local companies, have been investigated.Conflict as the research tool has been chosen because it is a very informative phenomenon for revealing an organisation's general status. It sheds light on different aspects of problems, which occur during rapid development. We could name several conflict reasons but generally all of them stem from three sources:(1)Popularity of the early-capitalistic values(2)Inability to organise information according to needs(3)Outdated valuesThe article gives an overview about the reasons of conflicts in Estonian companies and ethical problems, which occur when managers start to solve these conflicts with power.