Women in the driving seat: Eastern European immigrant women's citizenship,participation and educational inclusion in Portugal

This paper is a case study of Eastern European immigrant women's social inclusion in Portugal through civic participation. An analysis of interviews conducted with women leaders and members of two ethnic associations provides a unique insight into their migrant pathways as highly educated women and the ways in which these women are constructing their citizenship in new contexts in Northern Portugal. These women's accounts of their immigrant experience embrace both the public realm, in using their own education and their children's as a means of integration but also spill over into ‘non-public’ familial relationships at home in contradictory ways. These include the sometimes traditional, gender-defined division of labour within the associations and at home and the new ways that they negotiate their relative autonomies to escape forms of violence and subordination that they face as women and immigrants.     

Management knowledge and the organization of team science in university research centers

Increasingly, principal investigators are tasked by funding agencies not only to expand knowledge in a particular field of inquiry, but also to manage and coordinate sets of diverse actors, including researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds and with different institutional affiliations. This paper addresses how principal investigators organize and manage sets of diverse researchers in university research centers. The premise of the paper is that centers possessing “management knowledge”—as embodied in principal investigators themselves and in colleagues and subordinates (e.g. past experiences in centers, industry, formal management training and professional experience)—will demonstrate different structural and managerial characteristics when compared to centers without management knowledge. Based on interviews and documents for a purposive sample of centers established by the US National Science Foundation, the study investigates the organization and management of centers as a function of the presence and type of management knowledge of the center directors across multiple cases. Implications for addressing common challenges to team science in university research centers and comparable arrangements are discussed.     

City/Courthouse Building: A Mirror Game. Examining Connections Between Courthouse Buildings and Location in the Urban Environment

Courthouses are one of the founding pillars of the modern rule of law, being a sovereign body. But courthouses are not just buildings where justice is applied, administered, and written. From Max Weber on, courts have been associated with the urban dimension and the place they occupy in the geography of the cities. As in a mirror game, both city and court building look at each other, both shape each other, they belong to one another. And yet, how often do we think of their intimate interactions? Having this in mind, and by examining a number of geographically disparate cases, I intend to discuss correlated variations of the mirror game between city and courthouse building, where variables such as ‘the proxemics of the courthouse’, the (dis)alignment amid centre and periphery, ‘the sense of loss’ and the significance of control/discipline will be central to comprehend the ‘court/city’ narratives involved. Such semiotic analysis aims to foster reflection on the socio-political weight the location of the court—the connections of the building (comprising its architecture) and the city—may express. I conclude by arguing that courthouse buildings must rediscover their place and legitimacy, not only in the community’s collective imagination, but also in the urban space, promoting a closer dialogue with the cities in which they operate, as essential axes of city life. Particularly at a time when the likely way forward suggests a digital trajectory, possibly without the need for buildings.

     

Searching for contracting patterns over time: Do prime contractor and subcontractor relations follow similar patterns for professional services provision?

This paper compares over a 12‐year period (1) patterns of contracting between a state transportation agency and its prime contractors providing engineering design services with (2) patterns between these prime contractors and their subcontractors. We find evidence of different contracting patterns at each level that emerge over time and coexist in the same contracting context. While patterns at the agency–prime level are characterized by repeated contracts, patterns at the prime–sub level indicate fewer repeats and more contractor turnover. Implications for outsourcing practice and theory are discussed. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Exploring Justitia Through Éowyn and Niobe: On Gender,Race and the Legal

The image of Lady Justice, a white woman, sometimes appearing with her eyes veiled and other times unveiled, at times bearing scales and/or a sword in her hands, still is a common and popular feature of legal culture in many parts of the world. This is an image of justice that is found everywhere, from courthouses to cartoons. However, one may ask: “Who is this woman?”; Is she really a worthy representative of justice?; Or even a commendable representative of women? Thus, in this article, it is proposed to question the image of Lady Justice and the interpretations that have been associated with it, as well as the standards of conduct required of, and imposed upon, women both inside and outside the legal profession. The article will consider a range of arguments related to such questions, particularly on the issues of gender and race, by using two female characters: Éowyn (from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings) and Niobe (from the Wachowskis’s The Matrix). The two characters are women who have some significance in both plots. Through them, I will establish some similarities and differences with Justitia, namely the need to be disguised as men or embrace male attitudes (a similar process concerning women in the legal profession, for example); the use of weapons (specifically, the sword, and, hence, the necessary analysis of women as law breakers, in contradiction to the image of Justitia); and finally some key issues relating to the representation of women of colour.     

Business,social responsibility,and corruption

This paper explores the role of corporate social responsibility and the reporting thereof in the fight against corruption. A special focus is laid on the international endeavors to improve transparency through reporting, and the paper elaborates extensively on the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. Voluntary initiatives, such as the UNGC, the OECD guidelines, and the GRI guidelines, are considered to play an important role in providing the trust‐based informal social norms, without which markets and societies cannot function. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of university characteristics on scientists’ interactions with the private sector: an exploratory assessment

This paper estimates the effect of select university characteristics on the propensity of individual scientists to interact with private sector companies. The academic prestige of an institution has a direct negative effect on scientists’ interactions with the private sector, while the level of industrial R&D expenditures has a direct positive effect on such interactions. Institutional characteristics also moderate the effect of some individual-level variables such as tenure status, grant activity, involvement with students and disciplinary effects.      

The effect of informal industry contacts on the time university scientists allocate to collaborative research with industry

We ask whether informal interactions between university and industry scientists result in collaborative research. Using data from a national survey of tenured and tenure-track scientists and engineers in U.S. research extensive universities, we demonstrate that university scientists’ informal interactions with private sector companies increase both the likelihood and intensity of collaborative research with industry.

Overcoming the Impact of Corruption through Diligence: The Experience of Russian Female Managers

This article proposes that managerial time spent dealing with regulations, in addition to being a reflection of regulatory burden, can also be partially accounted by managerial strategy and propensity to “play by the rules” rather than rely on informal corrupt means to solve business problems in Russia. Using top-manager gender as a proxy for such behaviors, the study finds that firms headed by female managers are more likely to devote more time to dealing with regulations, and to protect their interests in courts. Such firms are less likely to be in a situation where corrupt requests are made, and also minimize corruption impact such as relative size of payments, when actually exposed to corruption pressures. It appears that there are non-spurious gender effect persisting after controlling for multiple firm- and region- level variables. With regards to managerial time spent on dealing with regulations in particular, it appears that the gender effects are reflected in differential responses to corrupt pressures (e.g. spending more time dealing with regulations), but increase in time tax by itself does not appear to limit impact of corruption, except waiting times for operating license, which are shortened. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.