Becoming a Slum: From Municipal Colony to Illegal Settlement in Liberalization‐Era Mumbai

This article argues that the transformation of a Mumbai neighborhood from municipal housing colony into illegal slum has been facilitated by the politically mediated deterioration and criminalization of its water infrastructure in the context of liberalization‐era policy shifts. These policy shifts hinge upon a conceptual binary that posits the unplanned, illegal and informal ‘slum’ as the self‐evident conceptual counterpoint to a planned, formal, ‘world‐class’ city. The story of Shivajinagar‐Bainganwadi problematizes this assumption by evidencing the deeply political and highly unstable nature of this binary — and thus insists upon an account of the shifting political and economic stakes imbued in these categories. The case of Shivajinagar‐Bainganwadi reveals that the neighborhood's emergence as an illegal slum has been mediated by the liberalization‐era politics that have come to infuse the neighborhood's water pipes — dynamics that have produced the illegality/informality of the neighborhood as a discursive effect.     

上海创意文化产业带来的启示

1999年,设计师刘继东从北京到上海创业。由于负担不起过高的写字楼租金,曾留学美国的他了解国外艺术家从艺的环境,于是在当时无人问津的苏州河边上的四行仓库签了租借10年的合同,并用自己有限的资金略作改造,大量保留仓库的原生态。由于有特色,空间又大,他又分隔成小间再转租,吸引了不少文化艺术机构     

Added value: Marketing basics?

Added value is a concept which is commonly used in marketing teaching and practice, yet a student seeking clarification of the concept and term, cannot easily find it by looking it up in the index of marketing textbooks. Of 80 texts surveyed, only 5% defined the term. However 100% of the sample of texts, used the concept of added value.

Several issues emerged from the survey. First, there were variations in the use in marketing textbooks, of the term added value. Second, where the term was used, often it was not defined. Finally, textbooks used the underlying concept (for which there is also some variation) of added value without necessarily using the term.

This paper reviews the various approaches to the concept of added value, and draws together some key themes in the form of a working model. The model developed recognises the accounting origins of the concept of added value, but arguments are developed within a marketing framework.

A key principle of the model developed, is the quantifiable nature of added value. This is viewed as being important, though difficult, where a sales transaction has not taken place. From a marketing perspective, it is recognised that products which have yet to be sold, have potential added value which marketing activity can help to realize.     

Employee work values and organizational attachment in North Mexican maquiladoras

Maquiladoras in Northern Mexico are currently plagued by low organizational attachment among production workers. Workers often feel little psychological commitment to their maquiladora, and turnover rates in the plants average about 10 per cent per month. In this study we examine the role that work values play in maquiladora workers' attachment to their organizations. An analysis of data from 227 production workers in two maquiladoras reveals that the upward-striving value (a desire continually to seek a higher-level job) is positively associated with turnover intentions and negatively associated with organizational commitment, while the social-status-of-job value (the perception that a good job merits respect) is positively associated with organizational commitment. The findings offer guidance to managers and management scholars attempting to understand and combat the organizational attachment problem in Northern Mexico.     

Creating and Recreating Heritage in Singapore

The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which public planning and policy have created a 'national' identity for Singapore since its independence in 1965, the importance of heritage to contemporary Singapore, and how heritage is marketed to Singaporeans and visitors. Over the last 30 years Singapore has striven to create itself as one of the most modern and successful of the ASEAN nations, but this may have been at the cost of its indigenous cultures and authentic heritage. Many of the craft industries common in the late 1970s and 1980s have been lost, and while the Singapore Tourism Board promotes Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam as 'pockets of individuality' in Singapore's multicultural society, souvenirs currently on sale were made in China, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. By contrast, the enduring image of 'Singapore Girl' for Singapore Airlines led to an entire souvenir culture and a batik clad 'Singapore Girl' Barbie Doll.     

Pensions as a Form of Executive Compensation

This paper investigates the role of pensions as an element of total executive compensation, and the relationship between pensions and performance‐based compensation in executive pay. Using hand‐collected data on FTSE 100 CEOs and senior executives from 2004?2011, we document that pensions function as a substitute for performance‐based compensation (primarily bonuses) in both cross‐sectional and time‐series settings. We also examine the effect of corporate governance characteristics on executive pensions. We find that corporate governance characteristics associated with stronger board monitoring play a constraining role on the magnitude of pensions. Our evidence of substitution effects between pensions and performance‐based compensation is consistent with a managerial power view of executive compensation‐setting, and the use of pensions as a ‘stealth’ element of compensation. Our findings are robust to considering different types of pensions, product market competition, and cross‐listing. Sub‐period analysis shows that pensions decrease and substitution effects weaken following the 2008 financial crisis. Moreover, we find no evidence that the use of compensation consultants with potential conflicts of interest is associated with higher pensions. Overall, our study contributes to a greater understanding of the role of pensions in executive compensation, and shows the importance of including pensions in analysis of executive compensation.     

Organisational and professional commitment of early career accountants: do mentoring and organisational ethical climate matter?

This study assesses the effects of mentoring and organisational ethical climate (OEC) on the organisational and professional commitment (PC) of early career accountants (ECAs) (i.e. accounting graduate recruits with three or less years of working experience). The empirical data are based on a questionnaire survey from 86 ECAs in Australian public accounting firms, and hypothesis testing utilises partial least squares analysis. Our results indicate when a career development style of mentoring is adopted there is greater organisational as well as PC. By contrast, a social support mentoring style has no significant impact on organisational commitment (OC) and a negative effect on PC. Further, our data also reveal OEC to be positively associated with OC, and OC in turn having a positive impact on PC. The results imply that fostering a career‐focused mentoring environment and an OEC can increase an ECA's OC and PC. These results have various implications for human resource management at both the accounting firm and professional levels.     

An Interview with Barbara Bergmann: Leading feminist economist

Barbara Bergmann, Emerita Professor of Economics at both the American University and the University of Maryland, has been a leader in the development and establishment of feminist economics, in scholarly, policy and organizational capacities. Professor Bergmann is particularly known for her crowding model of discrimination. She is the author of an excellent, accessible undergraduate textbook, The Economic Emergence of Women (1986) . She has authored several policy-oriented books, including In Defense of Affirmative Action (1996a), Saving Our Children from Poverty: what the United States can learn from France (1996b) , and What Child Care System for America? (2000). Professor Bergmann is past president of the Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics, the Eastern Economic Association and the International Association for Feminist Economics. She received her PhD in economics from Harvard in 1959. This interview was conducted at the ASSA meetings in Chicago on 4 January 1998.     

An investigation of customer order flow in the foreign exchange market

This paper examines the effect that heterogeneous customer orders flows have on exchange rates by using a new, and the largest, proprietary dataset of weekly net order flow segmented by customer type across nine of the most liquid currency pairs. We make several contributions. Firstly, we investigate the extent to which customer order flow can help to explain exchange rate movements over and above the influence of macro-economic variables. Secondly, we address the issue of whether order flows contain (private) information which explain exchange rates changes. Thirdly, we look at the usefulness of order flow in forecasting exchange rate movements at longer horizons than those generally considered in the micro-structure literature. Finally we address the question of whether the out-of-sample exchange rate forecasts generated by order flows can be employed profitably in the foreign exchange markets.