Who are ‘managing’ the lawyers in China? Control and commitment in an evolving institutional and cultural context and gendered implications

National legal systems are distinctive with strong institutional legacies and societal contexts. Research on the lawyers' work and their operating environment in China has been limited. This study fills part of this gap by investigating the nature of work and career prospect, with gendered implications, in six Chinese law firms. We argue that the lack of commitment to each other between the employer and the lawyers is a result of the governance structure, culture and business process of the law firms, societal norms, market pressure and the active involvement of other stakeholders. The political, economic, social and physical insecurity that engulfs lawyers' work environment undermines their ability to uphold justice for the weak, standards of the profession and ethical values of the society. The study has implications for western law firms operating in China as well as for Chinese law firms that intend to internationalize as part of an emerging trend of Chinese professional services firms. It also has broader implications for human resource management of professional services organizations in China.     

Bank risk proxies and the crisis of 2007/09: a comparison

The global financial crisis has again shown that it is important to understand the emergence and measurement of risks in the banking sector. However, there is no consensus in the literature which risk proxy works best at the level of the individual bank. A commonly used measure in applied work is the Z-score, which might suffer from calculation issues given poor data quality. Motivated by the variety of bank risk proxies, our analysis reveals that nonperforming assets are a well-suited complement to the Z-score in studies of bank risk.     

From Mad to Mindful: Corporate Control Through Corporate Spirituality

Abstract:

Capitalism has always and will always depend on a compliant workforce. Maintaining the delicate balance between a worker who is just “not-unhappy” enough or desperate enough to continue working while also cutting costs to the bone presents a continuous challenge for business interests. This pursuit to squeeze more productivity out of workers while also managing worker discontent in the cheapest way possible has spawned innovations in labor management which reflect the institutional milieu of the respective time. This research focuses on those labor management techniques particular to neoliberalism and the ways in which cultural movements and trends of the neoliberal period are mined and deployed as yet another useful resource in the disciplining of workers. Corporate mindfulness is the favorite labor management technique of the neoliberal period. The formalized packaging of corporate mindfulness began in the late 1970s but was built on a long tradition of attempts to hack the minds and mindsets of workers. Corporate mindfulness reinforces neoliberalism through the corporate individual, the transformation of the self of the corporate individual, and the creation of the corporation as a community and means of social connection for the corporate individual.     

INFRASTRUCTURE PROVISION,POLITICS AND RELIGION: INSIGHTS FROM TUNISIA'S NEW DEMOCRACY

This paper analyzes the relationship between access to infrastructure services and support for religious parties based on the evidence produced by a recent democratic experience in Tunisia in which a religious political party, Ennahdha, governed from 2011 to 2014. The experience points to a complex relationship. In the 2011 election, areas with higher access are associated with higher support for Ennahdha than areas with lower access. In the 2014 election, however, infrastructure access is positively correlated with support for the party in areas where access had improved but negatively correlated with support for the party in areas that already had high access. A possible pragmatic general implication is that, to be politically competitive, religious parties, cannot bet solely on their religious commitment to provide basic services, including infrastructure, to the poor. They need to recognize the multiplicity of voter's concerns and their evolving agenda.     

Measuring systemic risk with regime switching in tails

This paper motivates the importance of modeling nonlinearities in measuring systemic risk. I capitalize this motivation by generalizing the CoVaR approach proposed by Adrian and Brunnermeier (2016) to allow it switching between a high and a normal risk regime filtered from data.. Considering the U.S. large bank holding companies (BHCs), this paper shows that modeling regime changes in tails is capable of capturing both amplification and mean-reversion effects of an adverse shock to a bank's balance sheet on the banking system. Using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test statistics with and without bootstrapping, I perform the significance test to identify systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), and the stochastic dominance test to rank the identified SIFIs. The stochastic dominance test raises the concern that the CoVaR measure underestimates systemic risk contributions for SIFIs but overestimates for non-SIFIs. Finally, applying the BHCs' characteristics and housing market price to forecast the regime-switching systemic risk out-of-sample, I obtain from 4- and 8-quarter-ahead horizons a desirable countercyclical, forward-looking measure of systemic risk.     

荷兰食品产业与创新概述

从食品产业来讲,荷兰是一个强国,在全球享有很高声誉,而产学研协同创新是荷兰食品产业取得成功的关键。本文对荷兰食品产业及发展方向、主要食品研发机构和企业,以及食品谷等做了简要介绍,以加深对荷兰食品产业的了解,推动中荷在食品领域的合作。     

深化事业单位改革问题之我见——基于江苏省事业单位问卷调查的分析

在国有企业和政府管理体制改革已深入进行并取得积极进展的今天,进一步推进事业单位改革已经显得尤为迫切。以江苏省事业单位作为调查对象,全面了解江苏省事业单位改革的情况,在调查问卷数据分析的基础上,对当前体制改革中存在的问题做进一步分析,抓住改革难点,实施重点突破。     

Firm Investment decisions in the post‐conflict context

Economic and political transition can occur through peaceful or violent means. Violent transition disrupts the incentive for firms to make productive investments. This paper studies the determinants of profit reinvestment for firms in post‐conflict transition economies. Results indicate that while access to finance is an important determinant of reinvestment during transition, it is not as important in the post‐conflict context. However, property rights protections, in particular institutions of contract enforcement, are a more important determinant of profit reinvestment for firms operating in the post‐conflict environment than for firms in general. This indicates that obstacles to investment are context specific.     

深化高校考试改革培养创新人才

现行的考试制度不利于素质教育的实施，因此，应建立科学、规范的素质教育考试制度，改革传统的考试模式，加强考试的各环节管理，充分发挥考试在素质教育中的导向作用。     

浅谈中小金融机构与民营企业关系型融资

随着我国金融体制改革,中小金融机构蓬勃发展,其发展使得原来民营企业融资问题得到极大改善.对此我们分析得出:中小金融机构对民营企业融资存在着关系型融资的特征,并因此改善了民营企业融资环境,促进了民营经济发展.