bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Multinational Companies and the Future of Collective Bargaining: A Review of the Research Issues
Authors: Marginson Paul , Sisson Keith
Published: March 2007

Growing European economic integration has encouraged restructuring within multinational companies (MNCs), involving the development of organization-based employment systems, changing forms of management control and a shift in bargaining power. These developments are promoting the decentralization of collective bargaining and challenging established structures of multi-employer bargaining. How far MNCs withdraw from multi-employer bargaining will however be shaped by the different national industrial relations systems. Future research should examine the involvement of MNCs in national systems of multi-employer bargaining and the organizational, procedural and substantive aspects of their industrial relations activities at European level. Such a programme of cross-national research raises important issues of funding and collaborative organization.
Industrial Relations and Protection of the Environment: Research Findings from a New Policy Field
Authors: Gregory Denis , Hildebrandt Eckart , Le Blansch Kees , Lorentzen Børge
Published: March 2007

Since 1991 a research group has investigated the relationship between environmental policies and the industrial relations systems in 10 European countries. It might be expected that the growing importance of the environment as a policy issue would prompt an enlargement of the traditional agenda of industrial relations systems, leading to stronger inclusion of the social partners in environmental action; but in the main, evidence of such enlargement has been sparse. The Netherlands, where works councils legislation has been used to extend collective rights for greater environmental involvement, stood out as the exception. Elsewhere, initiatives have been mostly confined to company-level voluntary agreements, with certain sectors playing a prominent role. Very few attempts have been made to develop the environmental role of industrial relations actors through legislation. A number of explanations for this relatively slow progress are explored, as are the prospects for developments in the future.
Beat the Clock
Authors: Neustadter Roger
Published: March 2007

The essay examines the works of a number of mid-20th-century authors who challenge the domination of clocks in industrial society. This challenge to standard notions of temporality constitutes a significant disjuncture not only from conventional perceptions of time, but from earlier literary perceptions of time in western culture. The examination uses the concept of reification to describe and analyze their rejection of the temporal regularity of clocks.
Time, Leisure and Social Identity
Authors: Urry John
Published: March 2007

This article is concerned with exploring some of the connections between time and leisure, arguing in particular that leisure patterns are especially significant for changing notions of time. It is further argued that the once hegemonic clock-time is being supplanted in `disorganized capitalism' by a mix of instantaneous and glacial times. A variety of empirical indices of these are developed. It is then shown that contemporary leisure patterns are transformed through processes of de-traditionalization and increased reflexivity, processes that presuppose these newer forms of time. In conclusion, some implications for place are briefly developed.
Baseball Time
Authors: Mount Nicholas J.
Published: March 2007

A glance at the subject index of Samuel L. Macey's (1991) recent Time: A Bibliographic Guide reveals not a single entry under the heading of either `baseball' or even `sport'. This is not, however, an omission but a symptom: with the possible exception of Allen Guttmann (1978) in From Ritual to Record, no sports historian or theorist has, to my knowledge, done more than note baseball's unique temporalities. `Baseball Time' attempts, then, to explore in brief such temporal aspects of the game (in literature and on the field) as its privileging of event time over clock time, its marked variations in tempo and its ability to all but escape temporality itself.
Constructing Time After Death
Authors: Boyd John N. , Zimbardo Philip G.
Published: March 2007

This article reports on an `extraordinary' time perspective, one that partitions the future into pre- and post-death time frames. Based on data from 1235 individuals, the `transcendental-future' extends from the point of imagined death of the physical body to infinity, yet may influence present behavior. Related to numerous psychological variables, the transcendental-future is a component of, but not synonymous with, many religious beliefs. From the perspective of the transcendental-future, behaviors often seen as irrational, such as suicide, extreme heroism, and excessive tithing, are transformed into rational behaviors expected to lead to fulfillment of transcendental-future goals.
Sicilian Time
Authors: Morello Gabriele
Published: March 2007

The aims of this research note are to identify the traditional values behind the notion of time in Sicily; to assess Sicilians' attitudes to the past, the present and the future; to record the pace of life of Sicilians and to compare it with that of other cultures. In order to achieve these goals, various research methods were used: analyses of proverbs, interviews, tests and observations. This paper presents the results obtained from the study.
Between Security and Liberalization: Decoding Turkey's Struggle with the PKK
Authors: AYDINLI ERSEL
Published: March 2007

This article identifies the dynamics of the national security syndrome and the pendulum swing between security and liberalization that are embedded in the Turkish political system. It then explores how these are reflected in the problematic and conflictual processes of Turkish policy formulation with regard to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the post-violence era. The article presents evidence of a new impasse surrounding Turkey's southeast/Kurdish question. While Turkey is having difficulties in designing post-terror policies, the PKK appears unprepared to fully disarm and give up. The only route remaining seems to be one of political struggle. After identifying Turkey's structural limits to addressing the issue, the article discusses the implications of these on the future of the conflict, on Turkey's foreign relations with the West, and on the increasingly torn domestic political situation.
Beyond Profit-Motivated Exchange
Authors: Williams Colin C. , Windebank Jan
Published: March 2007

The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically whether under a market system, monetary exchange is always and everywhere based on profit-seeking behaviour. To do this, the paper examines paid informal work, a form of work conventionally conceptualized as low-paid employment heavily imbued with profit motivations on the part of both the consumer and supplier. Using structured interviews with 400 households in UK lower-income urban neighbourhoods, however, this paper shows that most paid informal exchange is seldom undertaken by either purchasers or suppliers to achieve maximum money gains. Instead, it is mostly conducted for and by close social relations for reasons associated with redistribution and sociality. In line with recent developments in economic geography associated with the ‘cultural turn/s’, therefore, this paper points not only to the social-embeddedness of paid informal exchange but also to how, at least in these UK lower-income neighbourhoods, the increasing penetration of monetary exchange has not marched hand-in-hand with market relations. In this extensive and growing sphere of monetary exchange, the profit motive is largely absent. Consequently, rather than construing paid informal work as the ultimate manifestation of unbridled profit-motivated capitalism, this paper instead shows such work to be a large alternative economic space within contemporary capitalism where monetary exchange is embedded in alternative social relations, motivations and pricing mechanisms.
r•cade - The Resource Centre for Access to Data on Europe. Creating a Resource on Europe for UK Academic Researchers
Authors: Cuthbertson Mike , Hudson Ray , McKeever Lucy
Published: March 2007

Comparative research on urban and regional issues in Europe has often been hampered by problems of accessing comparable cross-national data. The Resource Centre for Access to Data on Europe (r•cade) was established at the University of Durham in 1995 to seek to address this problem. This paper describes the original aims of the Centre and the ways in which these have been altered as it has subsequently evolved. It summarizes r•cade’s achievements in providing European data for the academic research community, in particular via its unique collaborative alliance with Eurostat and the UK Office of National Statistics, and discusses remaining difficulties and future threats and opportunities in a volatile political and technological environment.
Tying the Firm to the Region or Tying the Region to the Firm?
Authors: Phelps Nicholas A. , Lovering John , Morgan Kevin
Published: March 2007

In 1996 the Korean conglomerate LG announced plans to create up to 6100 jobs at a new greenfield electronics manufacturing operation in Newport, South Wales. The investment would have been unthinkable without the unique institutional capacity involved with inward investment attraction and development which exists in Wales. However, the scale of the LG investment has placed enormous demands on this institutional capacity and raises questions regarding the way in which major investments effectively capture the strategic orientation and resources of local institutions and serviceproviding organizations. In this article we explore some of the main dimensions of such institutional capture as revealed by an initial examination of the LG case.
Localization and the Use of Information Sources
Authors: Fuellhart Kurt
Published: March 2007

Business scholars have long emphasized the need for a continuous flow of strategic, tactical and operational information in order for decision makers to make informed organizational choices. However, much of the practical and theoretical work on ‘organizational learning’ and ‘environmental scanning’ has been aspatial and focused on the large corporation. Researchers of small business dynamics and entrepreneurship have measured firms’ use of information sources, but this work also remains largely aspatial. Geographers have only begun to scratch the surface of the relationships between forms of industrial spatial organization and the use of specific information sources at a firm level.

Coupling these various perspectives, I investigate the use and qualitative assessment of information sources by establishments in a highly localized industry (carpets in northern Georgia) and make some comparisons with several other industries in other regions (plastics and textile producers). Analysis is based upon responses to a mail survey soliciting information from (mainly small) firms regarding their use of 15 common sources of market and technical information.

I contextualize the use of information sources in the carpet industry by reviewing important industry trends and circumstances as well as the industry’s spatial organization. The results indicate that firms in the carpet industry, perhaps the most agglomerated industry in the United States, report relatively low overall use and availability of common sources of information compared with firms in other industries and regions. Organizational attributes, such as size and affiliation, may have stronger relationships to the sources of information that firms typically use than local context.
Chronic Illness, Symptoms and Efficacy in Children as Related to Some Psychological Characteristics of Mothers
Authors: Tripathi Ira , Agarwal A.
Published: March 2007

This paper examines the relationship between attitude towards health and neuroti cism and reporting of physical and psychological systems in mothers of chroni cally ill and healthy children. The relationship between reporting of symptoms by mothers, and complaints reported by the two groups of chronically ill and healthy children was also studied. Further, influence of the illness, and physical and psy chological complaints on academic and social behaviour, and efficacy of children were investigated. A total of 100 mothers and children were included in the study. Of these, 25 were chronically ill children and their mothers, and 25 were healthy children and their mothers. Results reveal that health attitudes and physical as well as psychological symptoms reported by mothers of chronically ill children were negatively and significantly correlated. In the case of chronically ill children, mothers'symptom reporting waspositively correlated with mothers' neuroticism, on the one hand, and the number of physical and psychological complaints on the other hand. Furthermore, the main effects of symptoms reported were found to be of significance for academic behaviours and efficacy of children. Results have been interpreted in terms of the relationship between the psychological dis position of mothers and their relationship with coping with disease by children.
Toward a Cultural Social Psychology
Authors: Pepitone Albert
Published: March 2007

The paper examines how the natural science perspective of social psychology expressed in the preference for intraindividual theories and models has systematically led the field away from a consideration of the specifically cultural sources of social behaviour. To demonstrate the role of cultural determinants in social behaviour, for example, the topic of moral behaviour has been discussed citing some experimental findings with implications for the development of a truely cultural social psychology of moral behaviour.
Testing for the Effects of Schooling on Memory in an Ecocultural Setting
Authors: Dash U.N. , Mishra H.C.
Published: March 2007

The present study examines the recall performance of school and non-school-going children in a natural setting using, as the task, a card game called 'call' quite popular in rural Orissa. Eighteen school and 18 non-school-going children of grade six from a rural area participated in this card game which allowed the experimenter to obtain estimates of immediate and delayed recall performance for each subject. There was practically no difference between the school and non-school-going children in respect of their overall memory competence including immediate and delayed recall. The findings suggest that when non-school children are provided with a task situation that spontaneously activates their memory potential, they perform as well as their school-going peers.
Literacy Training Policy and Practice in Tanzania: Some Elements of Reproduction and Resistance
Authors: Mlekwa Victor M.
Published: March 2007

Over the past two decades there has been an unprecedented effort in the world, parti cularly in the Third World, to combat illiteracy because it is considered an impediment to human progress. While many writers, politicians and educators do not claim an absolute and deterministic role for literacy in development, they argue that literacy is an essential component of both individual and societal development. Using Tanzania as an example, this paper argues that literacy training in most developing countries can be best analysed within the theoretical framework of reproduction and resistance. Literacy training policies and practices are analysed in different historical moments, focusing on the nature and character of the state, the state literacy training objectives, implementation and outcomes. Towards the end, the peasants' response to the state literacy training policies is briefly discussed leading to the conclusion that literacy training in Tanzania has enabled the peasants not only to read and write but also to reproduce themselves as peasants: small-holder growers of agricultural commodities for international capital.
Moral Development and its Relation to Perspective Taking Ability
Authors: Ittyerah Miriam , Mahindra Kanika
Published: March 2007

An attempt was made to study the relationships between moral development and perspective taking abilities of children at three age levels (i.e., 5-6 years, 8-9 years and 11-12 years). The results indicated that both moral reasoning and perspective taking improved with age. Gender differences were significant for only the cognitive perspec tive taking ability suggesting that girls possess more prosocial characteristics. Multiple correlations indicated that perspective taking abilities have a significant effect on moral reasoning for only the youngest age group. This suggests that perspective taking ability is a crucial mediator for moral development at the initial stages.

Hence, perspective taking once acquired increases only slightly to include the areas of perception or cognition, whereas moral reasoning is acquired through slow and successive comprehension of the various moral issues confronted in the course of development.
Life Experiences, Resistance and Feminist Consciousness
Authors: Kalpagam U.
Published: March 2007

This article traces the relationship between the organised women'.s movement and the numerous individual acts of resistance women perform in their everyday lives. Drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu's ideas about habitus and doxa to explain women's internalisation of patriarchy and subordinate status, as well as their ways of overcoming it, we explore why a majority of women do not identify themselves as feminist. How do they manage (or not) to bring the experience of their subordination from the field of doxa to the field of opinion—a precondition for 'feminist' politics? Feminism, for its part, must learn to theorise women's 'experiences' and to invoke the entire range of human relations that constitute such an experience. The argument is intention ally provocative in its critique of feminism as a way, further, of opening up fresh theoretical problems and resources for women's movements in India today.
Bearing Witness: Rape, Female Resistance, Male Authority and the Problems of Gender Representation in Popular Indian Cinema
Authors: Gupta-Cassale Nira
Published: March 2007

Indian cinema in its preoccupation with rape shows a parallel between feminist resistance and nationalist resistance. While Mirch Masala (1985), set in pre-Independence rural India, is able to draw upon a mythology of nationalist resistance, which also, at the same time, 'sanctions and mediates the potentially subversive politics of female resistance', later films like Zakhmi Aurat (1988) and Damini (1993) qualify women's autonomous resistance by including male partners to witness, support and legitimise their actions. We conclude that in popular cinema 'the more radical the gesture of resistance, the more conservative the resolution'. All the same, as fanta sised reactions to rape enacted by women, they engage the politics of female resistance in ways that are relevant to our feminist understanding.
Changing Livelihoods, Livestock and Local Knowledge Systems: Women Stake their Claim in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra
Authors: Ramdas Sagari R. , Yakshi  , Deepika Girijana
Published: March 2007

This paper discusses women's role, resource access control and decision-making power in the context of rapid changes in rural livelihoods, local knowledge systems and NRM. Participatory research was carried out in collaboration with NGOs and community-based organisations in six distinct agro-ecological regions of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, with a focus on eco nomically and socially marginalised communities. The research revealed that state policies have resulted in dramatic changes from food to commercial crops. This has threatened food and fodder security, the biodiversity of crops, natural flora, local livestock and poultry breeds, and led to unsustainable extraction of ground water and high levels of indebtedness. Women have borne the brunt. Women who formerly played key decision-making roles have been marginalised, their knowledge and expertise made valueless. Traditionally also women have been denied access to certain kinds of knowledge that constrain their livelihoods. Participatory research has empow ered women to take the lead in movements to challenge mainstream paradigms of sustainable development.
Women and Community Forests in Orissa: Rights and Management
Authors: Singh Neera M.
Published: March 2007

In Orissa a large number of villages have been protecting and managing state forests lands as a common resource through elaborate community arrangements. Rural communities involved in forest management have also been demanding secure rights over these forests. Vasundhara and Sanhati, an alliance of NGOs in Orissa, recently facilitated a broad-based consultation process with village people and NGOs on the issue of community rights over forests. This discussion brought forth the intricacies involved in operational details relating to community rights over forests, and how women's concerns and priorities tend to get marginalised in these debates. This paper tries to capture the discussion and debate on community rights over forests. It reflects on how women define their relationship with forests, how this is in contradiction with the 'rights regime' and the property-based view of forests from which it emanates, and how this could lead to conflicts over non-timber forest produce.
Ideologies of Gender on Television in India
Authors: Mcmillin Divya C.
Published: March 2007

Content analyses of Indian television programmes on the national network Doordarshan in the 1980s have shown that prime-time shows cast women as docile homemakers and as objects of male desire. This paper uses a critical postcolonial theoretical framework and narrative analysis method to detect ideologies of gender from programmes randomly selected from a month's menu of the transnational, national and regional television networks in the country. A broad conclusion is that Indian television in the late 1990s perpetuates, across channels, the 1980s' stereotypical images of women, images that have their roots in Vedic, colonial, and nationalist literature. The status quo is explained through a critical discussion of the framing of 'woman' in colonial and postcolonial nation-building efforts. The paper also points to the emerging genre of hybrid programming, where the greater incidence of female veejays and talk show hosts paves the way for the expression of female leadership and desire, and leads to more positive television portrayals of women in the 21st century.
Sources of Parental Values
Authors: Xiao Hong , Andes Nancy
Published: March 2007

This research examines the influence of social status, gender and family structure on parental values. Data are taken from the General Social Survey of six years in which parental value questions in standard form appeared. Logistic regression models are estimated for seven values representing three types of parental values: conformity, gender roles and self-direction. Results indicate that while social status has a positive effect on the preference of self-direction values and a negative effect on the valuation of conformity and traditional gender roles, gender and family structure are also consistently related to characteristics parents consider important for children. Compared to men, women are more likely to endorse self-direction and less likely to value conformity and traditional gender roles in children. Women in single-parent families are also more likely than women in two-parent families to value conformity and gender roles. Discussions of the findings and directions for future research are provided.
Integrating Local and Global Knowledge, Technology and Production Systems: Challenges for Technical Cooperation
Authors: Kuramoto Juana , Sagasti Francisco
Published: March 2007

Countries differ in their economic performance due to the way their respective science, technology and production systems interact. The creation, adoption and transmission of knowledge are at the core of each of these systems. In developing countries knowledge is not uniform, but combines indigenous skills and know-how with modern ones. Policies promoting the prevalence of modern over traditional knowledge have resulted in the dependence on imported knowledge and the incapacity to create an endogenous know ledge base. At the same time these policies have accelerated the loss of valuable indigen ous knowledge that would otherwise help improve the capacities and quality of life of vast sectors of the population. Technical cooperation can play a critical role in building an endogenous science and technology base as well as in promoting the integration of indigenous and modern knowledge, technology and production. Three sets of policies are required to fulfil that purpose: those related to the domestic integration ofknowledge, technology and production; those that establish links with the global knowledge, tech nology and production systems; and those that create a favourable policy environment for the other two.
The Iconography of Justice and Power in the Sculptures and Paintings of Town Halls in Medieval Germany1
Authors: Meier Ulrich
Published: March 2007

The present essay on 'Court-house iconography of the laterMiddleAges' pleads for a rather wide relation between text and image to provide a more differ entiated understanding of allegories like those of justice or of power. City-hall iconography should be interpreted without making extensive use of the para digm of republicanism. Medieval citizens were always proud to integrate heroes, saints, nobles, emperors and kings into their history and to turn them into citizens. City-hall iconography was not an expression of medieval re publicanism. Its motifs and programmes rather document the attempt to incorporate the city into medieval theology and into the theory of good rule.
Inside and Outside the Convent Walls: The Norm and Practice of Enclosure in the Reformed Nunneries of Late Medieval Germany
Authors: Uffmann Heike
Published: March 2007

Research on the enclosure of medieval nunneries has mainly analysed nor mative sources. The practice of enclosure, and nuns' perceptions of space and enclosure within the cloister remain neglected questions. This essay will compare the norms of enclosure of religious women during the late medieval period with chronicles written by nuns in reformed convents during the fifteenth century. Monastic reformers advocated that the sisters live together in poverty and chastity, renew the liturgy of the orders and, above all, abide by the regulations of enclosure. Historical chronicles and account books between 1480 and 1520 document the renovations of monastries in the wake of reform, and show how inextricably the reform of a female convent was tied to strict enclosure. The essay examines how the newly ordered space within the confines of the convents structured the nuns' perceptions, oriented their gaze and thereby acted upon their literary productions.
The Power of Imagination: The Christianitas and the Pagan North during Conversion to Christianity (800-1200)
Authors: Fraesdorff David
Published: March 2007

With the introduction of Christian conversions, non-Christian north ern and eastern Europe were conceived of as a unified North from the ninth century onwards, as aquilo. This notion of an alien North retained its hold over contemporary historiography, even after the completion of the missions in the twelfth century. The political, cultural, ethnic and linguistic otherness of the north-east continued to foster associations of the North as the kingdom of the devil, regardless of the fact that the regions beyond the Elbe had converted to Christianity. The so-called North in northern and eastern Europe thus provided an image of the alien for old Europe for more than a millennium.
Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Care and Support in Resource-constrained Settings
Authors: Habiyambere Vincent , Narain Jai P.
Published: March 2007

With the number of people infected with HIV rising globally, care and support for people with AIDS becomes increasingly important. More than 90 per cent of the new HIV infections occur in developing countries, which have limited resources for HIV/ AIDS treatment and care. This paper outlines strategies for provision and access to care in resource-constrained settings within and beyond the health sector. It argues that a comprehensive care and support package along the continuum should include voluntary and confidential counselling and testing, clinical management (including nursing care), psychological and social support. Proposed strategies include the linking of the health sector to community- and home-based care, the reorganisation of service delivery, the integration of prevention of care within national AIDS control programmes, the development of policy and legislation, and the empowerment and facilitation of community acrion.
Business and Newly Emerging Civil Society Actors: Between Conflict and New Forms of Social Dialogue
Authors: Mark-Ungericht Bernhard
Published: March 2007

Societal transformation processes are causing far-reaching changes in the relationship between businesses and society. The political, economic (information and communications), technological and cultural transfor mation processes lead to the evolution of new types of civil society actors. These necessarily increase the complexity of corporate environments and attempt directly or indirectly to influence their behaviour. Under these conditions, companies are increasingly forced to open up their own organizational boundaries to dia logue and, at the earliest possible stage, to include 'society' as a non-controllable variable. Along with an intensification of the direct relationships between companies and social action groups, a growing number of initiatives have recently evolved, which, often with the support of the state, attempt to create an institution alized dialogue between several companies, unions and non-government organizations (NGOs). The societal transformation processes that form the basis of these interactions as well as necessary and obstructive factors for the success of such multi-stakeholder dialogues will be analyzed in this article.
Perceived Role of Human Resource Management in Indian Organizations: An Empirical Study 1
Authors: Bhal Kanika T.
Published: March 2007

The role of HR professionals needs to undergo a radical shift with the changing Indian corporate scenario. A new set of roles where the focus shifts from doables to deliverables based on Ulrich (1997) has been con ceptualized and operationalized in this study. The first role of HR Professionals as a Strategy Integrator deals with aligning business and HR strategies of an organization. The second role focuses on being an Efficient Administrator, which would mean designing and developing efficient transaction mechanisms. The third role focuses on the HR Professionals acting as a Nurturant Patron to help employees accomplish their goals by providing them with resources and ensuring that employees are not overwhelmed by expectations. Finally, the fourth role of the HR Professional is that of a proactive Transition Facilitator to help organizations to anticipate change and deal with it.

To begin with, examples of these roles from Indian organizations are identified to explicate these roles. Further, a questionnaire survey of 103 respondents from 14 organizations (five from Consumer Durables and nine from IT) was conducted. The key results of the study indicated that HR is not perceived to play a differentiated role in Indian organizations. The survey also found an inherent bias in the perceptions of the HR professionals vis-à-vis the non-HR professionals (from other areas) regarding the role played by HR professionals in these organizations.

Results and their implications are discussed.
Consumer Satisfaction and Perceived Quality of Out-patient Health-care Services
Authors: Reddy Aileni Vidyadhar
Published: March 2007

Corporate hospitals are a new breed in health-care industry in India. They are attracting a number of patients because of their super specialities. There is keen competition for market share on all fronts among these hospitals. The key task is not only to provide specialized services more efficiently and effectively, but also to maintain the quality of overall services. As it is very difficult to evaluate the technical aspects of health-care, the non-technical aspects of health-care, such as waiting time, procedures, are taken into consideration for study. The service aspects are directly experienced and evaluation requires no technical expertise. This study made a humble attempt at evaluating consumer satisfaction in corporate hospitals. Survey method was adopted to collect information from respondents. Respondents were drawn from three corporate hospitals situated in Hyderabad. The primary analysis revealed that there are no significant differences among the hospitals. Further, the findings of the study revealed that all the stages—reception, examination, pathology, and x-ray/scanning process influence the overall satisfaction positively. But the stages like pathology and x-ray/scanning process significantly influence overall satisfaction. Finally, some directions for future research have been suggested.
Competitiveness of Indian Apparel Export Firms: An Analysis of Select Delhi-based Firms
Authors: Balaram Anuradha , Yadav Surendra S. , Baisya Rajat K.
Published: March 2007

Indian apparel exporting firms have proved their competitiveness in some market segments in recent years. Global trade in apparel is likely to change significantly due to major changes in the international business environment. The paper takes a view that Indian apparel export firms will have the opportunity to increase their global market share provided they take the necessary steps to make themselves competitive in a quota- free world after 31 December 2004. The analysis is based on a survey of leading Delhi-based apparel exporting firms. Since the Delhi region accounts for India's largest apparel export trade, these firms are among the top firms in the country in terms of apparel export sales turnover. The paper studies select structural and operational parameters of Delhi firms that could impact their performance in future and brings out critical issues that require immediate attention. The paper also offers suggestions on how the government can facilitate better management practices in apparel exporting firms so that they become globally competitive.
Energy Saving Initiatives in Lighting in India vis-à-vis the International Experience: A Focus on Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs)
Authors: Kumar Arun , Jain Sudhir K. , Bansal N.K.
Published: March 2007

In the background of the enormous potential for saving energy in the lighting sector in India, we present a synopsis of some relevant international experiences and underline the gaps in the current studies relating to CFL use or dissemination in India. The intention is to exhort scholars and lighting professionals to address these gaps, so that a practical and implementable framework is developed to accelerate the adoption of CFLs and other efficient lighting solutions in India.
Outward Looking Policies and Economic Development: A Case of Taiwan since 1952
Authors: Kulkarni Kishore G. , Sun Qixiang
Published: March 2007

In this paper, we analyze the transformation of Taiwan from an agriculture based natural-resource-abundant economy into a high-technology, advanced economy, with the help of comparative advantage in international trade theory, and the Heckscher-Ohlin model. Taiwan's trade policies shifted from import substitution and industrialization after World War II, to a labour-intensive export-led growth stage between 1965 and 1972, a secondary imports substitution stage between 1973 and 1980, and a technology and modernization stage since 1981. Our research shows that with a relative low endowment of natural resources, a small economy like Taiwan benefited greatly from international trade because it could acquire not only the capital goods and raw materials of industrialization but also the necessary output for its consumption. In this transition, government policies that restructured the economy were crucial for Taiwan to use its resource endowments to the greatest advantage.
`HARD' WOMEN AND `SOFT' WOMEN
Authors: Mennesson Christine
Published: March 2007

This article uses a combination of Bourdieu's concept of habitus theory and an interactionist perspective to examine women's participation in the traditionally `man's world' of boxing. The two major aims of the study were to identify how women entered and stayed involved in boxing and the types of identities that they forged in the process. The data were collected via participant-observation and in-depth interviews with a sample of women boxers and their coaches. It was found that the women's entry into and continued involvement in boxing depends on both disposition and situation. It was also concluded that women boxers occupied an ambivalent position: on the one hand, by definition, they challenged the existing gender order; on the other hand, they also reinforced the status quo by displaying traditional modes of femininity. This tension was related to the modalities of boxers' practice (`hard' or `soft') and their social histories. In short, the process of identity-formation among women boxers was inseparably social and sexual.
ATHLETIC CAREER
Authors: Pedersen Inge Kryger
Published: March 2007

Among the world champions in sport, several sportswomen have been able to combine a career in elite sport with motherhood, and a few have even supplemented this combination with further studies or employment. The attempt is made to render the phenomenon of elite sports mothers intelligible by offering some insights into the actual practice of the athletic career. An empirical study undertaken among individual sportswomen who combine their athletic careers with motherhood and education or work focused on the analytical question of how excellence within sports is produced. The pragmatic aspects of organizing and practising elite sport appear to question central concepts of career developed in the sociology of occupations. Instead, this article uses a concept of career elaborated within the tradition of symbolic interactionism to analyse how the individual athlete's practice encounters the structure of sport. The answer indicates whether `elite sports mothers' have achieved excellence against all odds.
COMPETING DISCOURSES
Authors: Pringle Richard
Published: March 2007

In this article I argue that sports of violence, such as rugby union, can provide a discursive space that allows for production and resistance to dominant discourses of manliness. I do so, in part, by presenting narratives of self to reveal how competing discourses surrounded my youth participation in rugby union in a manner that made it difficult to maintain a coherent sense of self. Through these narratives, I hope that readers can empathize with the tensions and contradictions I faced as a `rugby boy'. In addition, I draw on Foucaultian concepts to illustrate how the discourses that initially helped constitute my sense of self also provided a starting point for my eventual resistance against hypermasculine values. In this sense, I highlight how relationships between discourse, power and subjectivities are unstable.
The Patriot Game
Authors: Bradley Joseph M.
Published: March 2007

Whose Scotland? Who is Scottish? What is Scottish? What does Scottish mean in the sporting context? This article seeks to demonstrate that these contemporary questions among others, relating to Scotland and Scottish identity, can be explored through the medium of the most popular sport in Scotland. Further, in an environment where everyone `volunteers' their Scottishness, the perceived cause of the Scottish international team can be utilized to investigate some of the social, cultural and political complexities that lie underneath an image of oneness. This article concludes that, through the complexity of the Scottish national football side's supporters, we find that popular notions of Scotland can often be incomplete and consideration requires to be given to ethnic, religious and geographical factors in any sociological thesis relating to contemporary Scottish identity.
DEALING WITH DANGER
Authors: Albert Edward
Published: March 2007

This article addresses how physical risk and injury in recreational cycling can be understood as constitutive of the culture of sport. Using data from interviews with racing cyclists, accounts of cycling accidents posted on an Internet website, and items related to accidents and safety issues from cycling publications, the paper explores how the perception of risk and the occurrence of injury are constructed as everyday expected elements of the sport. Although the sport is objectively dangerous, cyclists construe risk as a salient feature of participation and routinely engage in conversational practices that normalize its occurrence, thus defusing it as a deterrent to continued participation. Cyclists were found to warrant risk as part of the terrain of riding, along with crashes, close calls, injuries and premonitions. These motifs constitute storied events, which often serve both to exhibit and to assert membership in the cycling subculture.
RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM UNDER CONDITIONS OF PARTNER SELECTION
Authors: de Vos Henk , Smaniotto Rita , Elsas Donald A.
Published: March 2007

This paper is a contribution to solving the problem of whether reciprocal altruism can emerge and maintain itself in a population of selfish individuals. We use an evolutionary game theoretic simulation model (the Social Evolution Model) to investigate the relative fitness of two versions of a reciprocal altruistic trait competing with a defecting trait. One main difference between the Social Evolution Model and most of the models that are known in this field is that partner selection is straightforwardly built into the strategies of the players. In most of the models in the literature, partner selection is not an option in the game. Because of this element of forced play, much attention is given to the ability of strategies to detect cheaters and to retaliate. We show that modeling partner selection points to disadvantages of a preoccupation with cheater-detection and to the importance of committing oneself to a partner.
PAYMENT, PROTECTION AND PUNISHMENT
Authors: Smith Alastair , Varese Federico
Published: March 2007

A game theoretic model is used to examine the dynamics governing repeated interaction between Mafiosi running extortion rackets and entrepreneurs operating fixed establishments. We characterize the conditions under which violence occurs. Entrepreneurs pay protection money to the Mafia because they fear the Mafia's ability to punish. However, the entrepreneurs' willingness to pay encourages opportunistic criminals (fakers) to use the Mafia's reputation and also demand money. We show that two phenomena drive the repeated interaction between criminals and entrepreneurs: reputation-building and readiness to use violence on the part of the Mafiosi, and attempts to filter out fakers on the part of entrepreneurs. These two phenomena lead to turbulence: as entrepreneurs filter out fakers by not paying some of the times, some real Mafiosi are not paid and punish non-payment to establish their reputation. As Mafia reputation is re-established, fakers have again an incentive to emerge, setting in motion a spiral of never-ending filtering and violence. We also show how external shocks to this relationship, such as changes in policing practices, succession disputes within the Mafia or inflation, often lead to violence until beliefs are re-established. We conclude that a world where mafias operate is inherently turbulent. This conclusion goes against the widespread perception that racketeers are able to perfectly enforce territorial monopolies.
A General Game-Theoretic Model of Preference Adaptations in Problematic Social Situations
Authors: RAUB WERNER
Published: March 2007

This article analyzes the active and intentional modification of preferences as a mechanism of cooperation in “problematic” social situations (i.e., situations where individually rational behavior generates outcomes that are suboptimal in the Pareto sense). It is shown that an intentional modification of preferences in such situations can result in a generalization of Sen's Assurance Game preferences. As a formal framework for the analysis, a noncooperative N-person preference adaptation game is used. In this game, actors are able to choose effective preference orderings of outcomes in an underlying problematic situation. Under rather general conditions, mutual choice of generalized Assurance Game preferences is an ε-equilibrium point (Radner) in a preference adaptation game.
The Theory of Binding Commitments Simplified and Extended, with Generalization to Interpersonal Allocation
Authors: SIMON JULIAN L.
Published: March 2007

Self-control theories of struggle among several coexisting “selves” have recently been offered to explain such behaviors as foregoing anesthesia, quitting smoking, and ordinary saving. Strotz formally modeled such situations without the concept of coexisting selves, however. This article (a) boils down the Strotz formalism to three simple present-value equations, (b) argues that the framework applies to many ordinary commercial transactions rather than only to exceptional personal decisions, (c) does not require the concept of simultaneous selves, (d) places the subject within conventional economics with the concept of externalities, and (e) suggests that intra-individual allocation is similar to allocation between the given individual and other individuals. The key assumption is that the discount between the individual's present “person” and the individual's future “persons” is great compared to discounts among the future persons. This assumption is central to the analysis of Strotz and to Ainslie's behavioral analysis of self-control mechanisms.
The Dynamics of Income Inequality in a Representative Democracy
Authors: van WIJCK PETER , ARTS WIL
Published: March 2007

This article investigates the causes of income inequality in a representative democracy. The starting point of the analysis is Lenski's orienting statement that these dynamics can be explained by referring to political behavior that first became possible as a consequence of the institutionalization of democratic ideology. Two competing explanations are considered. The first originates from Lenski's technological-evolutionary theory of human societies, while the second is based on Downs's economic theory of democracy. Using time-series data pertaining to the case of the Netherlands, predictions derived from these theories are empirically tested. The Downsian explanation appears to be theoretically as well as empirically preferable to the Lenskian one.
The Economics of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall
Authors: TIETZEL MANFRED , WEBER MARION
Published: March 2007

The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain are explained in the context of an exit-voice framework presuming rational actors. It is shown that the prohibition of exit by establishing what we call “political costs of individual mobility” was a conditio sine qua non for the effective suppression of internal political opposition in Eastern Europe, and in East Germany in particular. The analysis of the costs of emigration and of political protest as instruments of autocratic rule (mobility politics) leads to interesting and surprising implications as to the general stability of dictatorial regimes.
Individual Rights, Emergent Social States, and Behavioral Feasibility
Authors: BUCHANAN JAMES M.
Published: March 2007

Individuals retain control over at least some minimal dimensions of personal behavior. If this is acknowledged, social states are not, and cannot be, objects of choice. Social states emerge from the interdependent choices made by acting individuals and groups. Individuals may ordinally rank social states, but the objects for collective choice must be assignments of rights or rules. Failure to appreciate the distinction here leads to misguided efforts to attain positions that may be imagined but that are beyond the limits of behavioral feasibility.