PHANTASMAGORIC LABOR: The new economics of self-presentation

We are entering an economy based not on information, but on image. The result is a phantasmagoric capitalism in which labor performers gain value on markets through their work of self-presentation. After tracing the evolution of labor performance through the romantic and modernist styles, this article contends that performers now intentionally compose their persona for the market, and do so through methods learned from the celebrity world. The language of iconography, the discipline that investigates the meanings of images, reveals the methods through which persona is composed, these being personification, attribute and allegory. By contrast to literature on the postmodern self, the article concludes that this phantasmagoric style of self-presentation does not entail a fracturing of self. Rather, aspirants to economic success must have a stronger and more determined sense of self than ever before, since they must strategically adapt persona to meet market demand.     

Sensitivity of executive pay to accounting performance measures in all-equity firms

We investigate the relation between chief executive officer compensation and accounting performance measures as a function of the firm's capital structure. We specifically analyse pay–performance relationships for all‐equity firms relative to high‐levered firms. We find a significant positive association between return on equity and the level of compensation for all‐equity firms. Consistent with optimal contracting theory, we cannot discern any such relationship for high‐levered firms. Because of agency costs of debt, managerial compensation in high‐levered firms plays the role of a precommitment mechanism in addition to its conventional role of aligning management incentives with shareholder interest.     

Computer-Assisted Negotiations of Water Resources Conflicts

This paper describes the algorithms within and results obtained using an interactive computer program developed to assist those involved in negotiating agreements among parties having conflicting objectives. This Interactive Computer-Assisted Negotiation Support system (ICANS) can be used during the negotiation process by opposing parties or by a professional mediator. On the basis of information provided to the program, in confidence, by each party, it can help all parties identify feasible alternatives, if any exist, that should be preferred to each party's proposal. If such alternatives do not exist, the program can help parties develop counter proposals. Through a series of iterations in which each party's input data, assumptions, and preferences may change, ICANS can aid each party in their search for a mutually acceptable and preferred agreement. This paper describes the algorithms used for analyzing preferences and for generating alternative feasible agreements. Also presented a re the results of some limited experiments involving water resource system development and use conflicts that illustrate the potential of programs such as ICANS.     

Cropping for plant-based agriculture

Concern is often expressed about systems of agriculture and questions are raised as to whether alternative systems might be an improvement. The Food Group of the Technology Policy Unit at the University of Aston, Birmingham, has been investigating the potential for a move to a vegetarian food production scheme for England and Wales.     

Effects of a merger on the human organization

With the formation of the new company, management is in an excellent position to define and build the kind of climate that will result in organizational excellence. And the creation of a climate for excellence may be the key to profits in the future.     

The iconography of the tourism experience

Guides to tourism planning typically lack a language for dealing with the destination's experiential content. This article argues that tourism planning has as its central challenge the design of effective touristic experiences, and can find conceptual sources for this task in iconography, the field that studies the meanings of images. In search of iconographie principles for tourism design, the article investigates Niagara Falls, still one of the foremost attractions in North America. At Niagara Falls, the article identifies two main compositional elements: staging, which situates a desirable motif (in this case a waterfall) in a stage setting; and thematizing, which links the motif to concepts (like terror or romance) that make it evocative.     

Job satisfaction and employee perception of the learning environment in the health care management industry

This study examines the relationship between job satisfaction and perception of the learning environment of administrative employees and differences in job satisfaction in terms of age, education, ethnicity, gender, location, marital status, position classification, and years of service. A total of 261 administrative employees of a national health care management organization participated in the survey. Major findings of this study revealed significant differences in some subcategories of job satisfaction and perceptions of learning environment in the respondents' ethnicity, age, and office location. Significant relationships were also found between job satisfaction, the perceived learning environment, and facets of the learning environment.     

The weight of the median voter ageing on public debt

This paper studies the relationship between an ageing society and voter preference for financing public expenditures with debt versus income taxation. We focus on advanced economies and OECD members where ageing is relatively severe, the political process is more democratic, and economic institutions are subject to electorate scrutiny. Since there are no international data sources available for the median voter age, one of the contributions of this paper is the construction of a median voter series for the countries included in the study. The sample period covers 30 years, from 1980 to 2010. The panel estimates confirm the Brennan hypothesis (Const Polit Econ 23(3):182–198, 2012). A 1-year ageing of the median voter increases the public debt to GDP ratio by on the order of 4.5 percentage points.