Spinouts from academic institutions: a literature review with suggestions for further research

This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of the phenomenon of spinouts from academic institutions. We systematically identified spinout papers in key management journals, categorised the literature and critically synthesised the findings. We present the findings of each literature stream in turn and also identify inconsistencies and directions for further research. We conclude that while the early literature has been mainly atheoretical and focused on describing the phenomenon, a core group of recent studies were theory-driven.

Does illegality breed violence? Drug trafficking and state-sponsored protection rackets

Illegality does not necessarily breed violence. The relationship between illicit markets and violence depends on institutions of protection. When state-sponsored protection rackets form, illicit markets can be peaceful. Conversely, the breakdown of state-sponsored protection rackets, which may result from well-meaning policy reforms intended to improve law enforcement, can lead to violence. The cases of drug trafficking in contemporary Mexico and Burma show how a focus on the emergence and breakdown of state-sponsored protection rackets helps explain variation in levels of violence both within and across illicit markets.

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Researching the use of force: the background to the international project

This article provides the background to an international project on use of force by the police that was carried out in seven countries. Force is often considered to be the defining characteristic of policing and much research has been conducted on the determinants, prevalence and control of the use of force, particularly in the United States. However, little work has looked at police officers’ own views on the use of force, in particular the way in which they justify it. Using a hypothetical encounter developed for this project, researchers in each country conducted focus groups with police officers in which they were encouraged to talk about the use of force. The results show interesting similarities and differences across countries and demonstrate the value of using this kind of research focus and methodology.

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Key actors in UN environmental governance: influence,reform and leadership

In the introductory article it was concluded that the effectiveness of the UN environmental institutions studied was quite low. Key actors, especially the US and the EU, play a considerable role in explaining the course of development in these institutions. However, this does not mean that these processes are mainly state-driven as a number of other factors matter. The potential for reform and increased effectiveness is limited as the main actors, the US the EU and G-77/China have very different interests and perceptions as to the future directions of these institutions.

Thinking Critically About Rural Gender Relations: Toward a Rural Masculinity Crisis/Male Peer Support Model of Separation/Divorce Sexual Assault

After decades of neglect, a growing number of scholars have turned their attention to issues of crime and criminal justice in the rural context. Despite this improvement, rural crime research is underdeveloped theoretically, and is little informed by critical criminological perspectives. In this article, we introduce the broad tenets of a multi-level theory that links social and economic change to the reinforcement of rural patriarchy and male peer support, and in turn, how they are linked to separation/divorce sexual assault. We begin by addressing a series of misconceptions about what is rural, rural homogeneity and commonly held presumptions about the relationship of rurality, collective efficacy (and related concepts) and crime. We conclude by recommending more focused research, both qualitative and quantitative, to uncover specific link between the rural transformation and violence against women. This paper was presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Los Angeles, California. Some of the research reported here was supported by National Institute of Justice Grant 2002-WG-BX-0004 and financial assistance provided by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of the Vice President for Research at Ohio University. Arguments and findings included in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the official position of the US Department of Justice or Ohio University. Please send all correspondence to Walter S. DeKeseredy, e-mail: walter.dekeseredy@uoit.ca. All of the names of the women who participated in DeKeseredy and colleagues’ rural Ohio study and who are quoted have been changed to maintain confidentiality.

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The effectiveness of UN environmental institutions

This is a study of the effectiveness of key UN institutions focussing on environment and sustainable development: the global conferences on development and the environment, the CSD and UNEP, primarily its co-ordinating functions. According to the indicators used to measure effectiveness here, it is concluded that the overall effectiveness of these institutions is quite low. This particularly applies to the CSD. UNEP has been quite effective in creating new institutions but has been less effective in co-ordinating them. As to the global conferences, their significance has been reduced over time.

Singing the same tune? International continuities and discontinuities in how police talk about using force

This article focuses on a research project conducted in six jurisdictions: England, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Venezuela, and Brazil. These societies are very different ethnically, socially, politically, economically, historically and have wildly different levels of crime. Their policing arrangements also differ significantly: how they are organised; how their officers are equipped and trained; what routine operating procedures they employ; whether they are armed; and much else besides. Most relevant for this research, they represent policing systems with wildly different levels of police shootings, Police in the two Latin American countries represented here have a justified reputation for the frequency with which they shoot people, whereas at the other extreme the police in England do not routinely carry firearms and rarely shoot anyone. To probe whether these differences are reflected in the way that officers talk about the use of force, police officers in these different jurisdictions were invited to discuss in focus groups a scenario in which police are thwarted in their attempt to arrest two youths (one of whom is a known local criminal) by the youths driving off with the police in pursuit, and concludes with the youths crashing their car and escaping in apparent possession of a gun, It might be expected that focus groups would prove starkly different, and indeed they were, but not in the way that might be expected. There was little difference in affirmation of normative and legal standards regarding the use of force. It was in how officers in different jurisdictions envisaged the circumstances in which the scenario took place that led Latin American officers to anticipate that they would shoot the suspects, whereas officers in the other jurisdictions had little expectation that they would open fire in the conditions as they imagined them to be.

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Methodological aspects of the Dutch National Threat Assessment

This paper discusses issues related to measuring organized crime as they have become manifest in the Dutch contribution to the EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA). It intends to convey to a wider academic community certain issues of definition, methodology and accountability, understanding the NTA process in terms of the communication of risks in a context of competitive defining institutions.

Treating Life Literally

This essay is a study of three texts written by the psychoanalyst Wulf Sachs. These texts hold an important lesson about the psychoanalytic turn in jurisprudence. Their attempt to extend psychoanalysis’s frontiers to fight the legalization of racism in pre-apartheid South Africa recoils upon itself, stripping self-evidence from the singular constellation of law, life, language, and sovereignty psychoanalysis derives from ancient and modern tragedy and formalizes into a discipline. Even as Sachs’s trilogy turns to psychoanalysis to critique the legalization of racism, it also points to the limits of psychoanalysis itself as a paradigm for the study of law.

Criminal victimization in contemporary China: a review of the evidence and challenges for future research

The rapid economic growth in China over recent decades has been accompanied by higher levels of crime, but there have been few studies of the Chinese experience of criminal victimization. A recent victimization survey of a representative sample of households in Tianjin represents a major effort to fill this gap in the literature. The present paper reviews the research based on the Tianjin survey along with other studies of crime and criminal victimization in China that have been published since 1990. We summarize the major findings, discuss the theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies that have been applied, identify the limitations of the research to date, and offer suggestions for future research.

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Designing the United Nations Environment Programme: a story of compromise and confrontation

The role of the United Nations in global environmental governance was determined in 1972 when a new international body for the global environment was created as a programme within the United Nations rather than as an autonomous specialized agency. A set of political dynamics between developed and developing countries led to the decisions on the functions, form, financing, and location of the new intergovernmental organization—the United Nations Environment Programme. This article traces the historical roots of these choices and exposes the motivations behind them.

The price of non-compliance with the Kyoto Protocol: The remarkable case of Norway

One of the ways to induce compliance is for an international enforcement mechanism to authorize the use of punitive consequences against a non-compliant country. However, such consequences should not cause significant damage to other (compliant) countries. The compliance mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol fails to meet this requirement. The Enforcement Branch of the Compliance Committee is instructed to impose punitive consequences on a non-compliant country that will have considerable adverse welfare effects for compliant countries as well. Using a numerical model, we show that in the case of Norway, the welfare effects can actually be worse if another country is punished than if Norway itself is punished.

The impact of the US legislation on company measures of control and prevention

The spectacular business scandals in recent years have led both the legislative and business companies to rethink and redesign their strategies. This article analyzes the worldwide impact of reforms in economic crime legislation emanating from the USA. Empirical data are reported showing that the US regulations are generating a spillover effect spreading beyond its sphere of operation. It is particularly notable that international stock-exchange-listed companies are orienting themselves increasingly toward the legal standards of the USA. Translated from the German by Jonathan Harrow, Bielefeld.

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The profitability life-cycle of direct investment: an international panel study

In this paper we test competing hypotheses about the shape of the time-profile of foreign direct investment profitability on a panel of countries. Using partial linearization method we derive the time-profile of the cumulative profitability for the stock of direct investment from aggregate macroeconomic data. By testing the non-linearity hypothesis of the cumulative profitability life-cycle of direct investment we find a cubic curve.

Hommage à Gérard Cornu

Sans résumé

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To Discipline and Publish: Scottsboro and Narratives of Delinquency

With the economics of racism of the 1930s and 1950s American South in mind, our essay explores the relationship between the act of writing and institutional penology. Taking an obscure, but visceral autobiographical account by Paterson and Conrad (Scottsboro Boy, Garden City Doubleday, 1950), we examine how discipline, punishment, and institutional identity emerge out of publishing, or, as Foucault put it, “the power of writing.” Narratives of delinquency born out of a racialized penal economy tend to resist attempts to tame the criminal, making institutional survival a productive discourse, and its articulation, a unique revolutionary act.

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Majority shareholder protection by variable qualified majority rules

In this paper, we analyze judicial review according to the German Stock Corporation Act (Aktiengesetz, §§ 243 et seqq.) and its blocking effect with the help of concepts of cooperative game theory. In particular, we suggest variable qualified majority rules as ingredients of arrangements which balance the interests of a majority shareholder and of the minority shareholders.

Anti-money laundering by international institutions: a preliminary assessment

This paper presents an evaluation of the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) program. It briefly discusses why this can be seen as the birth of a “regime for financial integrity”. We find that some areas of the AML/CFT framework are consistently weaker than others in the area of prevention measures. Specifically, we have two findings: the first, positive one, points to a substantial adequacy of the repressive measures; the second, negative one, points to a substantial failure of countries to adopt adequate preventive measures, and calls for renewed efforts to improve implementation of preventive measures across the board, with specific regard to the activity of financial sector regulatory and supervisory authorities. Also, Eurozone countries outperform all other groups in the sample. Finally, the limited availability of country information and the multiplicity of assessors and methodologies make it difficult to evaluate the performance of the program. Therefore, we suggest greater transparency and availability of detailed countries’ information, and follow up assessments of the weak areas of a country’s AML/CFT framework at higher frequency than the established 5 years.

A taxonomy of collaborative governance: a guide to understanding the diversity of international and domestic conservation accords

Partially in response to the increasing complexity of governance structures in the international environmental arena, international scholars have adopted a distinction between “Type 1” and “Type 2” international agreements. The former refer to agreements between governments, whereas the latter refer to agreements between governments and nonstate actors. While useful, this distinction offers only a partial taxonomy of the diversity of collaborative governance, and fails to incorporate “Type 3” dynamics among nonstate actors. As an initial attempt at sorting out the wide array of collaborative governance structures both domestically and across international borders, we propose a 3 × 3 matrix based on two typologies, one institutional (governmental, collaborative, nonstate), the other geopolitical (domestic, transborder, interstate/transnational). The result is a classification system of nine types of both domestic and international governance. In addition to identifying fundamental differences among the myriad forms of governance, the matrix reveals how the “softening of sovereignty” occurs in practice.

Measuring corporate environmental crime rates: progress and problems

The problem of corporate crime rates has been the subject of debate, speculation and operationalization for decades, largely stemming from the complexity of measuring this type of crime. Examining corporate environmental crime poses challenges and creates opportunities for advancing the discussion of corporate crime rates, but criminologists are less familiar with environmental data. In the current paper, we review the strengths and weaknesses of existing environmental data that can be used to construct the components of an environmental crime rate. We also present a corporate environmental crime rate derived from data on violations of the Clean Water Act and describe problems with using it in real world data. Implications for theory, practice and future research are discussed.

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