Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Building theory from practice

The relationship between management research and practice is expanding in response to growing demand for research that is relevant to business and society, contributing in active and visible ways to the generation of wealth and competitiveness. Expectations of relevance come from many different sectors: universities, students, politicians, business leaders and funding agencies, to name a few. These trends signal a shift away from the prominence of science in social science, to a stronger emphasis on the social significance of social science to society. As management researchers, this appeal for social relevance poses challenges for the way we construct our theories and how we conceive their implications. In this essay we suggest one way to strengthen the relevance of management research. It entails shifting from a logic of building management practice from theory to one of building management theory from practice. Some management researchers are already hard at work redefining the social role of management theory. They converge on a definition of our role as providing practical relevance through theory for those who lead and work in organizations (Argyris, 2003; Tushman, 2003; Hoffman, 2004). In striving not just to balance rigor and relevance, but to maximize their benefits simultaneously, these researchers urge us to move once again into the domain of practical action, Lewin’s action research having provided the first such model (Lewin, 1946). Unfortunately, as Argyris (2003) and Hoffman (2004) point out, existing institutional systems and professional expectations often generate more restrictions than incentives to create such relevant or actionable knowledge. Our proposal for enhancing the relevance of management research suggests a different path: turning the relationship between research and practice upside down. Instead of defining ourselves as researchers who translate our theoretically derived knowledge into practical solutions (e.g. consulting tools, new management practices), we advocate seeing ourselves as tapping into practical knowledge in order to produce better theories. Drawing on Schutz’s (1980/1967) idea of the levels of knowledge, we take as our point of departure the first-order theorizing of practitioners. We use corporate branding as an example of a first-order construct from practice that contributes relevance to second-order constructs in STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION Vol 3(3): 337–348 DOI: 10.1177/1476127005055795 Copyright ©2005 Sage Publications (London,Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) http://soq.sagepub. com
IMPLICATIONS OF CLAIMANT-FAVORABLE APPROACHES USED IN DOSE AND PROBABILITY OF CAUSATION CALCULATIONS UNDER EEOICPA

There are many claimant-favorable factors inherent in both the reconstruction of radiation dose and the calculation of probability of causation under Part B of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. These factors result in an approximate 30% compensation rate for claims filed under EEOICPA, which is roughly an order of magnitude greater than the likely incidence of increased cancers as predicted by epidemiology studies and risk models. Additionally, there is essentially no chance that a claim that is denied compensation actually involves a radiation-induced cancer. The claimant-favorable nature of the Part B program is often misunderstood or ignored when the merits of the program are reported and debated. This paper provides details on how the technical aspects of the EEOICPA program that favor the claimants are being implemented.
TCR Bias and HLA Cross-Restriction Are Strategies of Human Brain-Infiltrating JC Virus-Specific CD4+ T Cells during Viral Infection

Virus-specific CD4+ T cells play a central role in control of viral pathogens including JC polyoma virus (JCV) infection. JCV is a ubiquitous small DNA virus that leads to persistent infection of humans with no clinical consequences. However, under circumstances of immunocompromise, it is able to cause an opportunistic and often fatal infection of the brain called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). PML has emerged as a serious adverse event in multiple sclerosis patients treated with the anti–VLA-4 mAb natalizumab, which selectively inhibits cell migration across the blood–brain barrier and the gut’s vascular endothelium thus compromising immune surveillance in the CNS and gut. In a multiple sclerosis patient who developed PML under natalizumab treatment and a vigorous immune response against JCV after Ab washout, we had the unique opportunity to characterize in detail JCV-specific CD4+ T cell clones from the infected tissue during acute viral infection. The in-depth analysis of 14 brain-infiltrating, JCV-specific CD4+ T cell clones demonstrated that these cells use an unexpectedly broad spectrum of different strategies to mount an efficient JCV-specific immune response including TCR bias, HLA cross-restriction that increases avidity and influences in vivo expansion, and a combination of Th1 and Th1-2 functional phenotypes. The level of combinatorial diversity in TCR– and HLA–peptide interactions used by brain-infiltrating, JCV-specific CD4+ T cells has not, to our knowledge, been reported before in humans for other viral infections and confirms the exceptional plasticity that characterizes virus-specific immune responses.
The Relevance of Kindling for Human Epilepsy

Summary: Kindling is one of the most widely used models of seizures and epilepsy, and it has been used in its more than three decade history to provide many key insights into seizures and epilepsy. It remains a mainstay of epilepsy related research, but the question remains how the results from kindling experiments further our understanding of the underlying neurobiology of human epilepsy. In this article we compare the basic features of kindling and human epilepsy, especially human limbic or temporal lobe epilepsy. In this review we focus on a limited number of topics that may show areas in which kindling has been often cited as a tool for better understanding of human epilepsy. These areas include the underlying circuits, the importance of seizure spontaneity, the associated neuropathology, the contribution of genetics, seizure susceptibility, and the underlying pathophysiology of epilepsy. In the course of this article we will show that there are many features that kindling can teach us by direct comparison or implication about human temporal epilepsy. We will also see that not all findings associated with kindling may be applicable to the human condition. Ultimately we wish to encourage critical thinking about kindling and the similarities that it shares and does not share with the human epilepsy so the results from studies using this model are applied rationally to further our insights the mechanisms of human epilepsy.
Divided Government European Style? Electoral and Mechanical Causes of European Parliament and Council Divisions

Voters who participate in elections to the European Parliament tend to use these elections to punish their domestic governing parties. Many students of the EU therefore claim that the party-political composition of the Parliament should systematically differ from that of the Council. This study, which compares empirically the party-political centers of gravity of these two central political actors, shows that opposed majorities between Council and Parliament may have other than simply electoral causes. The logic of domestic government formation works against the representation of politically more extreme parties, and hence against more EU-skeptic parties in the Council. At the same time, voters in EP elections vote more often for these more extreme and more EU-skeptic parties. The different locations of Council and Parliament in the pro-/contra-EU dimension may thus be caused by two – possibly interrelated – effects: a mechanical effect, due to the translation of votes into seats and then into 'office', and thus also into Council representation, and an electoral effect in elections to the European Parliament. The paper discusses the implications of this finding for our understanding of the political system of the EU and of its democratic legitimacy.
Adoption of selected improved cassava varieties among smallholder farmers in South-Eastern Nigeria

Cassava is a dominant component in crop mixtures in South-Eastern Nigeria. It is a preferred food security crop among smallholder farmers, because it can tolerate drought, low soil fertility and its production requires minimum external inputs. Various constraints have been shown to affect the widespread adoption of improved cassava varieties. This study examines various factors influencing the adoption of selected improved cassava varieties by smallholder farmers in Abia State, Nigeria, using the probit model. A multi-stage random sampling procedure was used to select 510 cassava farmers from 17 Local Government Areas of Abia State in 2007. Results of the study showed that 56.5% of the respondents were females. The majority (90.2%) consisted of those who were in their productive years. Most (78.8%) of the respondents were married, 83% attended formal schools; while75% had a household size of more than 5 persons. All the respondents were basically small-holder farmers; with 47% full time, 50% of the respondents had secured tenurial arrangements; 93% had more than 6 years of farming experience and 82.2% of them had adopted improved cassava varieties. Results indicated that 74% of 510 farmers who responded adopted improved cassava varieties, either solely or in combination with local varieties. The most popular varieties were NR-8082 (38.6% of total adopters), TME-419 (36.7%) and TMS-980505(12.9%). Marital status, household size, farm size, cassava maturity period and tenurial status were negatively and significantly related to adoption. Cassava yield and average income had a positive relationship with the adoption of the improved varieties. Implicit in these results is that policies should be aimed at introduction and prompt release of high yielding and early maturing cassava varieties, and converting tenurial arrangements of land to more secure forms.
Why Do Stock Prices Drop by Less Than the Amount of the Dividend? Evidence from a Unique Environment

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of a lack of an automated limit order adjustment mechanism on ex-dividend day stock price behavior in a unique environment in which there are no taxes on dividends and capital gains. It finds that the overnight drop in the ask price is smaller than the overnight drop in the bid price. In addition, the study finds that average price drops are smaller than the dividend amount for all dividend sizes. I also find no evidence of a sawtooth-shaped relationship between the dividend amount and the ex-day price drop. These results are generally consistent with the lack of an automated limit order adjustment mechanism.
Greenhouse Tests on Resistance Management of Bt Transgenic Plants Using Refuge Strategies

Abstract Experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of resistance management tactics is vital to help provide guidelines for the deployment of transgenic insecticidal crops. Transgenic broccoli expressing a Cry1Ac gene of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella (L.), were used in greenhouse tests to evaluate the influence of size and placement of nontransgenic refuge plants on changes in resistance allele frequency and pest population growth. In the first test with an initial Cry1Ac-resistance (R) allele frequency of 0.007, P. xylostella were introduced into cages with the following treatments: 0, 3.3, 10, 20, and 100% refuge plants. Results after four generations showed that resistance could be delayed by increasing the proportion of refuge plants in the cage. Population growth was also influenced by refuge size with the highest populations occurring in treatments that had either no refuge plants or all refuge plants. In the second test, we evaluated the effect of refuge placement by comparing 20% separate and 20% mixed refuges. P. xylostella with an initial frequency of resistant alleles at 0.0125 were introduced into cages and allowed to cycle; later generations were evaluated for resistance and population growth. Separating the refuge had a pronounced effect on delaying resistance and slowing establishment of resistant larvae on Bt plants. Combining information from both trials, we found a strong negative correlation between the number of larvae on Bt plants and the mortality of the population in leaf dip bioassays. Results from larval movement studies showed that separate refuges delayed resistance better than mixed refuges because they conserved relatively more susceptible alleles than R alleles and did not increase the effective dominance of resistance.
Cyclical unemployment: sectoral shifts or aggregate disturbances? A vector autoregression approach

Using a multivariate vector autoregression (VAR) model, this paper investigates if sectoral shifts, inflation uncertainty, or demand shocks are the primary cause of unemployment fluctuations in the postwar US economy. A sectoral shifts variable (cross-section volatility), an ARCH measure of inflation uncertainty, and three demand shocks variables (monetary base growth rate, interest rates and inflation rates) are incorporated in a VAR model. Our major findings are: cross-section volatility Granger causes unemployment; the sectoral shifts variable and inflation uncertainty explain a small amount, while demand shocks variables explain a substantial amount of the variation in unemployment.
Human Capital Development: Comparative Analysis of BRICs.

Purpose – The goal of this article is to conduct macro‐level analysis of human capital (HC) development strategies, pursued by four countries commonly referred to as BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Design/methodology/approach – This analysis is based on comparisons of macro indices of human capital and innovativeness of the economy and a review of related academic literature and government publications.Findings – The study results suggest that in terms of present human capital capacity Russia and Brazil are ahead of China and India. However, during the last decade the governments of the latter two countries have initiated impressive national programs of HC development, which include significant investment and targeted government regulation in such areas as primary and secondary education, vocational education and training, and higher education, especially in science and technology fields. Russia and Brazil have targeted programs in some of the above areas, but lack comprehensive long‐term strateg.
Sustainable Spending in a Lower-Return World

Investors—whether corporate pensions, public pensions, foundations, endowments, or individuals—need to focus on “sustainable spending,” which is key to effective strategic planning. To assess sustainable spending, planners must start with the three building blocks of return for most assets—income, growth, and revaluation (changes in the yield offered by that investment). Analysis based on these components of historical equity and bond returns shows that the long-term investor cannot expect to receive in the future the commonly assumed 8–9 percent returns. With stock yields below 2 percent and bond yields of 5 percent, even a 5 percent spending rate may not be sustainable without future contributions from the investor.
The ‘Divorce’ of ownership from control from 1900 onwards: Re-calibrating imagined global trends

In 1900 US business corporations were dominated by plutocratic family owners, while British and French quoted companies showed higher levels of divorce of shareholding owners from management controllers. Distinctive European ‘democratic’ corporate governance rules explain some of Europe's precocity and London's distinctive listing requirement of large ‘free floats’ was an important initial factor in manufacturing. Later in the twentieth century, the United States displaced France by further divorcing ownership from control. Business historians should direct their efforts to understanding why Britain was an early pioneer with persistent wide shareholding, why America took decades to catch up and why other countries did not build on their earlier lead (or even married ownership and control more closely). The pursuit of alternative (largely imagined) histories of national ownership differences could usefully be curtailed.
Estimates of the Underground Economy in Australia

In an age of tighter government regulation, many individuals and businesses are distorting our notion of the size of the Australian economy by actively participating in the underground economy. The consequences are clear: policy makers have imperfect knowledge on the state of economic affairs. Although there exists considerable international literature on the size of the underground economy, academics and public officials alike appear to have paid little attention to the extent of illicit economic behaviour in Australia. The aim of this paper is to provide the first known time-series estimate of the size of the Australian underground economy and to illustrate that its existence has implications for the nature of the business cycle in Australia. Copyright 1999 by The Economic Society of Australia.
The Determinants of Corporate Trade Credit Policies in a Bank-Dominated Financial Environment: The Case of Finnish Small Firms

This paper examines trade credit policies of small firms operating in a bank-dominated environment (Finland). We find that creditworthiness and access to capital markets are important determinants of trade credit extended by sellers. The level of purchases is positively correlated with the level of accounts payable. Larger and older firms and firms with strong internal financing are less likely to use trade credit, whereas firms with a high ratio of current assets to total assets, and firms subject to loan restructurings use it more. Negative loan decisions by financial intermediaries increase and a close bank-borrower relationship decreases the probability that a firm does not take advantage of trade credit discounts.
Empirical Implications of Alternative Models of Firm Dynamics

This paper considers two models for analyzing the dynamics of firm behavior that allow for heterogeneity among firms, idiosyncratic (or firm specific) sources of uncertainty, and discrete outcomes (exit and/or entry). Models with these characteristics are needed for the structural econometric analysis of several economic phenomena, including the behavior of capital markets when there are significant failure probabilities, and the analysis of productivity movements in industries with large amounts of entry and exit. In addition, these models provide a means of correcting for the self-section induced by liquidation decisions in empirical studies of firms responses to alternative policy and environmental changes. It is shown that the two models have different nonparametric implications - implications that depend only on basic behavioral assumptions and mild regularity conditions on the functional forms of interest (one distinction between them corresponds to the distinction between heterogeneity and an ergodic form of state-dependence; a form in which the effect of being in a state in a particular period erodes away as time from that period lapses). The nonparametric implications enable the construction of testing and selection correction procedures that are easy to implement (they do not require the computationally difficult, and functional-form specific, estimation algorithms that have been used to empirically analyze stochastic control models with discrete outcomes in the past). The paper concludes by checking for the implications of the two models on an eight-year panel of Wisconsin firms. We find one model to be consistent with the data for retail trade.
Comparison of alfetanil and ketamine in combination with propofol for patient‐controlled sedation during fiberoptic bronchoscopy

Background: During fiberoptic bronchoscopy, propofol, ketamine, benzodiazepines, and opiates are most commonly used, alone or in combination for sedation. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical efficacy of propofol/ketamine with propofol/alfentanil for patient‐controlled sedation (PCS) during fiberoptic bronchoscopy.
Corporate Diversification: What Gets Discounted?

Prior literature finds that diversified firms sell at a discount relative to the sum of the imputed values of their business segments. We explore this documented discount and argue that it stems from risk-reducing effects of corporate diversification. Consistent with this risk-reduction hypothesis, we find that (a) shareholder losses in diversification are a function of firm leverage, (b) all equity firms do not exhibit a diversification discount, and (c) using book values of debt to compute excess value creates a downward bias for diversified firms. Overall, the results indicate that diversification is insignificantly related to excess firm value. Copyright The American Finance Association 2002.
Farmers' satisfaction and intention to continue membership in agricultural marketing co-operatives: neoclassical versus transaction cost considerations

The survival of agricultural marketing co-operatives depends on their capability of satisfying and maintaining their base of farmer members. Hypotheses regarding these two success factors are developed in neoclassical economics and transaction cost economics. They are tested with a survey of 321 members of marketing co-operatives specialising in fresh fruits and vegetables. Our results show support for both perspectives. Price paid to farmers is important for their satisfaction with the co-operative. Farmers' perceptions of transaction costs are even more important. , Oxford University Press.
Sirolimus-eluting stents, bare metal stents or coronary artery bypass grafting for patients with multivessel disease including involvement of the proximal left anterior descending artery: analysis of the Arterial Revascularization Therapies study part 2 (ARTS-II)

Objective: The The Arterial Revascularization Therapies Study (ARTS)-II trial found no differences in survival or overall adverse events between sirolimus-eluting stents (SES) and the surgical arm of ARTS-I. Nevertheless, existing data suggest that patients with disease of the proximal left anterior descending artery (LAD) may derive particular benefit from coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). We therefore analysed the clinical outcome of patients in ARTS-I and ARTS-II with proximal LAD involvement. Design: Multicentre observational study. Setting: Forty-five European academic hospitals. Patients: Patients with multivessel coronary artery disease. Interventions: Patients in ARTS-II with proximal LAD disease treated with SES (289/607, 48%) were compared with 187/600 (31%) bare metal stent patients (ARTS-I BMS) and 206/605 (34%) surgical patients (ARTS-I CABG) with proximal LAD involvement from ARTS-I. Main outcome measures: Major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events after 3 years. Results: The Arterial Revascularization Therapies study part 2 (ARTS-II) subgroup had better survival than both ARTS-I groups (ARTS-II 98.6% vs ARTS-I BMS 95.7%, p = 0.05 and vs ARTS-I CABG 94.7%, p = 0.01) and lower rates of the hard clinical composite endpoint of death or non-fatal myocardial infarction (ARTS-II 3.1% vs ARTS-I BMS 9.6%, p = 0.002 and vs ARTS-I CABG 9.7%, p = 0.002). Although the ARTS-I CABG patients had a lower need for repeat revascularisation than ARTS-II (5.3% vs 13.1%, p = 0.002), the overall composite adverse event rates (death, myocardial infarction, stroke or any repeat revascularisation) were not significantly different between the ARTS-I CABG and ARTS-II patients (15.0% vs 18.0%, p = 0.4). Conclusions: SES are not inferior to CABG or bare metal stents for the treatment of patients with multivessel coronary disease including involvement of the proximal LAD.