A functioning executive: Chester Barnard and the modern manager

“Thus the endurance of organization depends upon the quality of leadership; and that quality derives from the breadth of the morality upon which it rests.” The Functions of the Executive.By Chester I. Barnard.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938.     

The crisis in Somalia: Tragedy in five acts

Somalia's catastrophic humanitarian crisis of 2007, in whichup to 300,000 Mogadishu residents were displaced in fightingpitting Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government (TFG)forces against a complex insurgency of clan and Islamist opposition,was the culmination of a series of political miscalculationsand misjudgements on the part of Somali and external actorssince 2004. They resulted in a cascading sequence of politicalcrises which plunged Somalia into increasingly intractable conflicts.This ‘tragedy in five acts’ includes the flawedcreation of the TFG in late 2004, which emerged as a narrowcoalition rather than a government of national unity; the failureof a promising civic movement in Mogadishu in summer of 2005to challenge the power base of warlords and Islamists in thecapital; the disastrous decision by the US government to encouragean alliance between its local counter-terrorism partners inMogadishu, producing a war which led to the victory of the Councilof Islamic Courts (CIC) in June 2006; the radicalization ofthe CIC over the course of 2006, which guaranteed a war withEthiopia; and the Ethiopian offensive against the CIC in late2006, leading to its occupation of the capital, a complex insurgencyagainst Ethiopian forces and armed violence which produced whatthe UN described as a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’.In virtually every instance, key actors took decisions thatproduced unintended outcomes which harmed rather than advancedtheir interests, and at a cost in human lives and destructionof property that continues to mount.     

基于二代测序平台的微单倍型位点的分型研究

目的 建立基于二代测序平台的微单倍型分型方案,调查其在中国南方汉族人群中的多态性,探讨其法医学应用价值.方法 以20个微单倍型位点为研究对象,利用多重PCR构建靶向扩增子文库,以二代测序为检测手段,采用生物信息学方法 构建个体微单倍型,最后进行多态性分析.结果 总体测序量为2.12G,覆盖所有片段,平均覆盖深度为335...     

Troubling Masculinities: Changing Patterns of Violent Masculinities in a Society Emerging from Political Conflict

Men's dominance of the political and military dimensions of the Northern Ireland conflict has meant that the story of the conflict has generally been a story about men. Ethno-nationalist antagonism reinforced men's roles as protectors and defenders of ethno-national groups and shaped violent expressions of masculinities. Due to the primacy of ethno-nationalist frameworks of analysis in research on the conflict, the relationships between gender and men's violence have been under-theorized. This article employs the framework of Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities to examine these relationships and also explores the changing patterns of men's violence in Northern Ireland.     

Welfare effects of forming a criminal organization

This paper develops a simple model to examine the economic consequences of two different criminal market structures in the private protection and extortion industry: (1) horizontal (decentralized) governance and market structure and (2) hierarchical (centralized) governance and market structure with a criminal organization. Forming a criminal organization produces positive or negative effects on its members and social efficiency. These results depend on the potential competitiveness among criminals and the ability of a criminal organization’s boss to target more valuable extortion victims.     

Voles don't take taxis

Johnson's paper advances understanding of sequences of burglaries committed by the same offender. Furthermore, it has heuristic value in suggesting new avenues for applicable research. Each of the current data shortcomings represents an opportunity for novel research approaches, and the optimum forager metaphor holds continuing appeal as an organizing principle helpful to operational policing.     

A Regulation of Bids for Dual Class Shares. Implication: Two Shares—One Price

This paper examines the consequences of a specific regulatory restriction on bids for dual class shares. Shares of different classes are often argued to have different prices because a premium will be paid to the superior voting shares in the case of a tender offer. This paper assumes a setup where regulations require that a tender offer pays the same relative premium to both classes of shares. In this setup, it is shown that both classes will sell at the same price as long as there is a strictly positive probability that either the current management is sufficiently strong or that a sufficiently strong rival will show up. Furthermore, under this weak condition the regulation is socially optimal in the sense that the management that provides the highest total firm value will be the management of the firm. Finally, the regulation is shown to favor (or protect) the holders of restricted voting shares and this is not necessarily at the expense of the holders of superior voting shares.The practical interest of this paper derives from the fact that some European countries have adopted different regulatory restrictions on bids for dual class shares. This has more or less occurred due to proposed EU Directives. The regulation examined in this paper applies to tender offers in Denmark. Empirical results on the voting premium in Denmark are shown to be consistent with the theoretical results in this paper.