Infrastructures and Societal Change. A View from the Large Technical Systems Field

Infrastructural and societal changes intertwine in multiple ways. This makes the societal implications of infrastructural projects difficult to assess and anticipate. Yet in present day network societies this task is particularly urgent. This paper first identifies two positions that tend to monopolize and deadlock debates. Next it examines two decades of research in the Large Technical System (LTS) research field for alternative approaches to this issue, before finally suggesting distinguishing between the four increasingly indirect moments of (co-) construction of infrastructures and societies. These may be related causally, but also add their own moments of contingency, agency, and choice.     

Standardization Process of Systems Technologies: Creating a Balance between Competition and Cooperation

Many firms are experimenting with how to standardize new technologies. They may use proprietary technologies for their products and services, and let them compete in the market selection. Alternatively, they can cooperate to jointly set a standard and experiment with combinations of market process and cooperation. If firms let the market decide, they can compete with technologies and need not invest time and effort in hammering out a standard. If they do incur the costs of negotiated standardization, they may enable end users to realize the benefits of standards. A hybrid standardization process combines the advantages of both market selection and negotiated decision making. This paper presents a contingency framework to identify conditions that will affect the preferred standardization process for vendors who introduce new technologies. A major contingency that this paper points to is the systemic nature of technologies in information and communication technology industries. The more systemic the technology is (in a way to be clarified), the less likely that firms will establish a hybrid standardization process. One advantage of decomposing technology systems in smaller components (modules) is that this approach enables firms to combine market selection with negotiated selection of standards.     

China''''s Cooperative Exploration of Oil and Gas and Its Taxation System

China' s foreign-oriented oil taxation system has, from the beginning, been based upon the positive experiences of other oil-producing countries and has incorporated common international practices. The system has been perfected over decades. It of fers more incentives than other oil-producing countries in the following four aspects: (1) Income tax has a "wide tax base and low tax rate"; (2) VAT levies a low tax rate on ma-     

ESG Integration and the Investment Management Process: Fundamental Investing Reinvented

We investigate how conventional asset managers account for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in their investment process. We do so on the basis of an international survey among fund managers. We find that many conventional managers integrate responsible investing in their investment process. Furthermore, we find that ESG information in particular is being used for red flagging and to manage risk. We find that many conventional fund managers have already adopted features of responsible investing in the investment process. Furthermore, we argue and show that ESG investing is highly similar to fundamental investing. We also reveal that there is a substantial difference in the ways in which U.S. and European asset managers view ESG.     

Ownership and production efficiency: Evidence from Taiwanese banks

In the early 1990s, Taiwan began her deregulation trend in order to enhance competition and economic efficiency across all industries. We derive a theoretical framework to predict possible rankings in technical efficiencies of public, mixed, and private banks. A panel data set with 43 Taiwanese banks during 1997–1999 is used for empirical analysis. We then apply a translog distance function to estimate technical efficiencies. The relationship between technical efficiency and government shareholding is also examined. Empirical results show that a public bank in Taiwan can improve its technical efficiency by mixed ownership at a diminishing rate. Moreover, banks in Taiwan on average performed worse after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.