Industry-specificities and size of corporations: determinants of ownership structures

This paper analyses ownership concentration in six European countries and empirically studies the rent-seeking theory. This theory states that ownership concentration not only depends on the level of investor protection but also on company-specific and industry-specific parameters. This study analyses the sector-specific ownership patterns of listed corporations. The results only partially confirm the influence of industry-specific characteristics. Different industries are characterized by different shareholder concentration patterns. Hence, and in light of the rent-seeking theory, it is plausible that company's specific characteristics, like the identity of the largest shareholder, the risk of the firm, etc. influence rent-seeking behavior.     

Strategic organizational drivers of corporate environmental responsibility in the Caribbean hotel industry

This study identifies strategic organizational drivers of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) in the Caribbean hotel sector. Hotels face institutional pressures that question their environmental legitimacy, competitive pressures that force market re-positioning decisions and constraints/advantages based on their resources and capabilities for managing CER. Empirical evidence collected here suggests that CER improves when hotels declare environmental policies; target eco-conscious tourists; are foreign owned; affiliated to MNCs; and experience healthy financial performance. The latter three factors also enable the implementation of environmental policies thereby strengthening CER. They play no such role in how market re-positioning strategies impact CER. Neither did strategic targeting of luxury tourists affect CER. These findings are useful to policy makers in tourism-dependent economies where CER is intrinsically tied to sustainable development and the tourism product is so dependent on the quality of the natural environment in which it is immersed.     

Slovakia

European Journal of Political Research -     

Contextualising ICT benefits in an educational environment: the case of the DOC-WILS initiative

Abstract

The programme of the DoC-WILs is an initiative of the Department of Communication in collaboration with Telkom, established through the Human Resources Fund to enable human resources development at historically disadvantaged learning institutions. The Telecommunications, 1996 (Act 103 of 1996) establishes a Human Resources Fund to promote the provision of adequately skilled human resources at all levels of the telecommunications sector in numbers sufficient for the telecommunications needs of the country. The Department of Communication Web Internet Laboratories (DoC-WILs) emphasise skills development through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in areas such as network management, creating Websites, use of e-mail and the World Wide Web, multimedia applications and Intranet development. It is, however, not known under what contextual circumstances this kind of ICT-usage will lead to interactive learning benefits and how the DoC-WILs should go about achieving them. This article therefore attempts to shed some light on the conditions under which ICT usage could impact on educational outcomes desired by the DoC-WILs and on how these DoC-WILs could best go about taking appropriate actions to improve the possibility of achieving desired interactive learning benefits. It is argued that the ability of the DoC-WILs to achieve desired benefits successfully is crucially dependent on contextual conditions, policies or processes that apply to the DoC-WILs or their users. This is in line with the social shaping of technology approach that local circumstances surrounding the deployment of ICTs in different sectors of society are more important in shaping the consequence of ICTs than technological variables.     

Occupation-specific mode of self injury within the scope of a fictitious assault]

In typical cases self-inflicted injuries in fictitious offences show a characteristic pattern of findings with multiple, uniform, and mostly superficial skin lesions. If the actors possess special experiences, knowledge or instruments--particularly in the field of medicine--the injuries inflicted by themselves may have an appearance whose autoaggressive origin is less obvious. The case of a 43-year-old nurse is reported who was admitted for surgical treatment with two cuts in the abdomen extending into the subcutis; she pretended to have been attacked by 2 masked men who stabbed her for xenophobic motives. In reality she had inflicted the cuts upon herself after applying a local anaesthetic. The necessary equipment (Scandicain, disposable syringes, stitch cutter) was taken from her place of work. Self-inflicted injuries specific to medical professions, as well as fictitious offences with atypical cut- and stab-wounds and the insinuated motives of the alleged offenders are discussed.     

Is Economic Growth Increasing Disparities? A Multidimensional Analysis of Poverty in the Lao PDR between 2003 and 2013

The Asian story of miraculous growth and poverty reduction has reinforced mainstream views of development that equate high and sustained economic growth with progress in human wellbeing. But understanding development only in terms of economic growth is not sufficient. This paper offers a different perspective on possible effects of Laos’s transition from a subsistence-oriented economy to a market-oriented economy. We used a multidimensional poverty approach with panel data for the years between 2003 and 2013. Findings suggest that benefits were not equally distributed: 50 per cent of people moved in and out of poverty, and the other half was either non-poor (37%) or always poor (13%).     

A new approach to measuring time-lags in technology licensing: study of U.S. academic research institutions

This paper contributes to measurement of licensing performance of U.S. research institutions by suggesting an approach for identifying time-lags in the licensing process. Licensing is a multi-state process starting with a disclosure, and resulting in intermediate outcomes such as patents, licensing agreements, and licensing income. The time duration among these variables is critical in understanding which investment is responsible for which outcome. This study develops a statistic procedure estimating time-lag coefficients among licensing variables using an unstructured regression model (OLS). The procedure is applied to 46 U.S. academic research institutions using the licensing survey data from 1991 to 2007 by Association of University Technology Manager. The results present individual time-lag relationships between each pair of licensing variables.