Different roles of nodes in networks

The 'complex network' has been studied in many disciplines. In this thesis, we use an economic network to study the heterogeneity of the networks. Networks of shareholders in Turkey and the Netherlands are constructed from raw data. The nodes are shareholders and an edge between shareholders exists if they have invested in the same company. The general analysis of network has shown that this type of network has characteristics similar to other types of real-world networks: power-law like degree distributions, small-world phenomenon and scaling of community size distributions. Furthermore, we introduce the 'type' of shareholders and analyse the different behaviour of shareholder types by comparing with a randomised null model. The results are that different types of shareholders are parts of different topological structures in the networks. Based on the economic behaviours, we propose a random walk model to mimic the different roles of shareholders in the networks. The model starts with a directed random graph of shareholders with assigned labels/types mimicing the raw data, and companies, showing which companies shareholders have invested in. A biased random walker model is introduced to model, on an abstract level, how shareholders' investments evolve. We then extract the associated shareholder network. This evolving model can qualitatively explain general characteristics and heterogeneity of the real-world shareholder networks: the scaling of community size distributions, percolation behaviour and the average shortest paths between different types. When we focus on the emergence of features from local interactions and higher-order interactions. We propose a new framework for this analysis. For a more general analysis, we design a simple transition matrix of temporal triplets. By comparing the transition matrix of higher-order interactions with the transition matrix of a pairwise interaction toy model, we can quantify the interactions of triplets. Moreover, we create an algorithm based on the transition matrix to make link predictions. We apply this framework to real-world networks and show that this new framework is successful in making predictions.Open Acces

The Nature of Corporate Governance: The Significance of National Cultural Identity

This book presents a thoughtful inquiry into the nature and rationale of corporate governance. The authors address fundamental questions including; What is the balance between ownership and control?; For whose interests should the company be run?; What is the institutional balance between shareholders, directors and other potential stakeholders, including the economy

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Representations of Iran in British Documentary, 1920s – 2006

The research examines the representations of Iran in British documentaries made between 1920s and 2006. It aims to: a)investigate in British documentary the represented position of Iran in the world and in comparison to Britain, as well as how the positioning has evolved along historical change inside Iran, in the outside world, and in Iran’s relation with the outside world and Britain; b) reveal how, as mediated text, documentary film acts as part of the broader representational regimes in a social context in which these positionings are produced through contemporary social and political discourses. The research looks for the underpinnings of the documentary representations of Iran in the master-narrative of ‘Modernity’ and its relevant sub-narratives (industrialisation, modernisation, and democracy), as well as the narratives of Modernity’s Other (Orientalism and Islamicfundamentalism). It is shown that the films made about Iran before the Iranian revolution of 1979 are marked by the themes of industrialization and modernization with a focus on the activities of the British oil industry in Iran and/or the efforts of the Pahlavi dynasty to modernize Iran. After the 1979 revolution however, the focus of films shifts from Iran’s socio-economic issues to its political ones. Iran and its relations with the outside world are seen increasingly through the prism of the discourses of democracy and Islamic-fundamentalism in the films of this ear. British media coverage of Iran provides a case study opportunity to examine the evolution over a relatively long period of time of continuous and changing coverage of one country by another. Through studies such as this thesis, focusing on the use of film as a tool in international sociopolitical representation, the transition from 20th to 21st Century becomes in itself an era for critical interpretation across the social sciences. Through situating the interrelation between the media and international power struggles in a historical perspective, this kind of research can therefore be a valuable source in investigating the power-related functions of the media itself

Risky expertise in Chinese financialisation : haigui returnee migrants in the Shanghai financial market

By investigating the subjectivities of Chinese student-returnees (haigui) from Australia who pursue careers in the Shanghai financial market, this thesis explores the tensions resulting from the Chinese state’s engagement in contemporary financial capitalism. The thesis approaches financial expertise as an empirical object of analysis to ask how subjectivity is produced within the process of Chinese financialisation and how this impacts upon the Chinese state in the current conjuncture of capitalism. In the wake of the global economic crisis, the financial expert has often been portrayed as the faceless figure of a technocracy whose growing power has undermined and partially eclipsed the legitimacy of democratic representation and the state sovereignity, as happened in Greece in summer 2015. Yet, globally circulating narratives lack an analytic lens that can look beyond a western-centric view of capitalism. In China, despite the severe financial crackdown—which also begun in the summer of 2015—the state still seems firmly in control. To investigate the distinctiveness of Chinese financialisation I adopt a genealogical method that traces the history of expertise—and the figure of the expert—since the first period of Chinese modernisation, in the mid-nineteenth century. I argue that the contemporary production of experts marks a discontinuity within Chinese modernity. While in the modern period experts trained abroad were always considered strategic for the state political project, now such figures (haigui), even if still fostered and encouraged to return to China by state policies of education and migration, are pushed aside and considered superfluous to this same project. The findings in this thesis are based on ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, which included qualitative, semi-structured interviews with haigui from Australia as well as participant observation in brokerage rooms (branches of securities companies). These empirical investigations show that these returned financial experts are frequently unable to step into their preferred roles as consultants and mediators. They find themselves faced with a state securitised environment that they cannot penetrate, and a Chinese ecology of financial expertise dominated by guanxi (connections of influence within the party-state, often disguised). A common means by which haigui cope with this professional impasse is to turn to autonomous, self-managed investment in the stock market, abandoning their claim on expert advisory roles. Such autonomous financial action is not a path they would have necessarily sought. Since its inception in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, I argue that the Chinese state has used the stock market as a means of securing social legitimation by providing a prearranged space where the disaggregated and vulnerable subjects left behind by the dismantlement of the collective work units of the Maoist period (danwei) can congregate. The two Chinese stock markets (Shanghai and Shenzhen) serve as devices from which some may derive a living or even wealth in the context of a dismantled welfare state. Once they enter the stock market arena, the haigui are assimilated into a pool of lowend, non-expert actors of Chinese mass financialisation, the so-called “scattered players” (sanhu) of the market. The investment strategies of haigui thus acquire the same characteristics of informal expertise and contingent practice associated with the sanhu. The thesis shows how the officially sponsored “Chinese dream” has taken the form of a “stock fever”—an irresistible tide which is sweeping these subjects towards a commitment to making money at all costs. Investing in the stock market gradually becomes, for the haigui as for the sanhu, a self-referential activity. The state gradually disappears from the horizon of their subjectivity, so that the stock game, the dream of enrichment, becomes absorbing and substitutes for other alternatives. As the language of money supplants and obliterates other loyalties among the haigui, the state risks losing its grasp on the subjectivity of these dethroned experts, who become first indifferent and alienated and then potential unruly subjects

Management Matters : Organizational Storytelling within the Anthroposophical Society in Sweden

The Anthroposophical Society, founded by the Austrian polymath Rudolf Steiner, came to Sweden in 1913, but for the generation of present-day Swedish Anthroposophists whose voices are heard in this study, the great flowering of the movement occurred in the second half of the twentieth century. The movement had by then expanded into a large milieu with many largely independent enterprises and institutions, from the formal organization itself, to various schools, farms, shops, medical facilities, etc., all based on interpretations of Steiner’s legacy. Since then, many members of the movement feel, there has been a decline. A movement of this size and complexity can be seen as a large organization with a corporate-like structure. Taking its point of departure in ideas from the vast field of organization studies, and specifically in the study of storytelling as part of the creation of a corporate culture where many voices and many perspectives co-exist, this study investigates how Anthroposophists in Sweden, both rank and-file members and some who served in leadership positions, tell the story of the putative Golden Age, decline, and projected future of Anthroposophy in Sweden. Twenty-eight interviews were collected, recurrent themes identified, and the plots of the various individual stories analyzed by means of a version of the actantial model developed by the semioticist Algirdas Greimas. The basic storyline, of which the interviewees’ individual stories constitute variations, is that the Golden Age, when charismatic leaders could draw crowds of enthusiastic young people and a vibrant Anthroposophical milieu was built up, came to an end with the demise of those leaders. The present, i.e., the time at which the interviews were conducted, is narratively framed as a period of sharp decline. The vistas for the future come across in most stories as quite bleak. An actantial analysis reveals that the past, an epoch that is on one hand held up as a shining example is on the other hand also described as a time characterized by innumerable problems and conflicts. Disagreement is rampant regarding the reasons for the current decline, and a vast number of problems are identified in the individual narratives. The future is for some interviewees impossible to speculate about, whereas others have specific suggestions for change. These suggestions, when held up against each other, show that there is no unified vision of what the necessary changes might be or who must bring them about. The interviewees agree that Anthroposophy plays a vital role as a spiritual path. When asked how they would describe Anthroposophy and what it more specifically can offer, answers diverge, but substantive descriptions of core concepts or practices are rarely alluded to. Rather, their explanations of what Anthroposophy is are in almost all cases metaphorical or negative, i.e., they represent Anthroposophy as elusive or undefinable. Interviewees can suggest that the lack of a clear Anthroposophical “brand” is a major reason for its current perceived crisis. An analysis of the ways in which Rudolf Steiner is portrayed in the interview material shows that there are a variety of descriptions of him rather than a unified representation of a charismatic leader that members can rally around. This, the study suggests, is because four different forms of charisma can be distinguished on theoretical grounds, and the particular form that permeates the narratives collected for this study does not readily support the dissemination of a centralized, dominant narrative.Antroposofiska Sällskapet, grundat av österrikaren Rudolf Steiner, kom till Sverige redan i 1913, men för den generation av nutida svenska antroposofer vars röster hörs i denna studie inträffade rörelsens stora blomstringstid först under nittonhundratalets andra hälft. Vid det laget hade rörelsen expanderat och blivit till en omfattande miljö med många stort sett oberoende institutioner och verksamheter, från själva det Antroposofiska Sällskapet i strikt mening till olika skolor, lantbruk, butiker, kliniker, osv., som alla byggde på tolkningar av arvet efter Steiner. Många medlemmar i rörelsen menar att det sedan dess har skett en nedgång. En rörelse med den storlek och komplexitet som det rör sig om i det aktuella fallet kan betraktas som en organisation med en företagsliknande struktur. Denna studie tar därför sin utgångspunkt i ett organisationsteoretiskt perspektiv, i synnerhet i den gren av organisationsteorin som studerar berättande som ett led i hur en organisationskultur med många samexisterande röster skapas. I det aktuella fallet handlar det om berättelser som antroposofer i Sverige, både vanliga medlemmar och personer i ledarställning, framför om den blomstringstid de menar rörelsen en gång hade, den nedgång de säger sig uppleva och den framtid de föreställer sig att antroposofin i Sverige kommer att möta. Tjugoåtta intervjuer genomfördes och de berättelser som förmedlas i dessa intervjuer analyserades med hjälp av en variant av den aktantmodell som utvecklats av semiotikern Algirdas Greimas. Den grundläggande handling man återfinner i intervjupersonernas olika berättelser är att blomstringstiden var en guldålder då karismatiska ledare kunde samla stora grupper av entusiastiska ungdomar och en levande antroposofisk miljö byggdes upp, men att denna guldålder upphörde när ledarna gick ur tiden. Nuet, alltså den tid då intervjuerna genomfördes, beskrivs i berättelserna som en tid av förfall. Framtidsutsikterna som målas upp i de flesta berättelser är dystra. Aktantanalysen visar att berättelserna om det förflutna både beskriver denna tid i mycket positiva termer och nämner otaliga problem och konflikter. Nuets påstådda förfall återkommer i de flesta berättelser, men åsikterna går vitt isär när det gäller vad nutidens problem är och vad som orsakat dem. Framtiden beskrivs av vissa intervjupersoner som omöjlig att spekulera närmare om, medan andra har specifika förslag till förändringar. Sammantaget visar analysen att det saknas en enhetlig föreställning om vad som behöver göras för att lösa rörelsens problem och vem som ska ta ansvar för dessa förändringar. Intervjupersonerna är eniga om att antroposofin spelar en viktig roll. Frågan hur de skulle beskriva antroposofin och vad den har att erbjuda besvaras på olika sätt, men sällan i termer av konkreta beskrivningar av för antroposofin centrala föreställningar eller praktiker. Tendensen är snarare att svara i metaforiska eller negativa termer, alltså genom att berätta att de menar att antroposofin inte går att definiera. Samtidigt kan intervjupersonerna förklara att bristen på en tydlig antroposofisk identitet är ett huvudskäl till vad de ser som rörelsens nuvarande kris. En analys av de sätt på vilka Rudolf Steiner beskrivs i intervjumaterialet visar att det också finns en rad divergerande uppfattningar av honom snarare än en sammanhållen beskrivning av en karismatisk ledare som medlemmarna kan samlas kring. Studien konkluderar att karisma på teoretiska grunder kan delas in i fyra olika typer, och att den specifika form av karisma som intervjuerna återspeglar inte harmonierar särskilt väl med spridandet av en centralt utformad dominerande berättelse

Construction of a purchase intention model based on utility theory: a study of foreign banks in Indonesia

The study develops a conceptual model of purchase intention for foreign banks operating within Indonesia based upon utility theory, to test the role and interplay of ethnocentrism, experience, animosity, country of origin, and trust upon purchase intentions. Findings demonstrate the conceptualized and modelled purchase intention for savings and credit card respectively, acknowledges utility theory; finds a new insight of experience; and, presents social class consciousness and self-consciousness contributions in the context of bank consumer choices

Reading the Market

Americans pay famously close attention to "the market," obsessively watching trends, patterns, and swings and looking for clues in every fluctuation. In Reading the Market, Peter Knight explores the Gilded Age origins and development of this peculiar interest. He tracks the historic shift in market operations from local to national while examining how present-day ideas about the nature of markets are tied to past genres of financial representation.Drawing on the late nineteenth-century explosion of art, literature, and media, which sought to dramatize the workings of the stock market for a wide audience, Knight shows how ordinary Americans became both emotionally and financially invested in the market. He analyzes popular investment manuals, brokers’ newsletters, newspaper columns, magazine articles, illustrations, and cartoons. He also introduces readers to fiction featuring financial tricksters, which was characterized by themes of personal trust and insider information. The book reveals how the popular culture of the period shaped the very idea of the market as a self-regulating mechanism by making the impersonal abstractions of high finance personal and concrete.From the rise of ticker-tape technology to the development of conspiracy theories, Reading the Market argues that commentary on the Stock Exchange between 1870 and 1915 changed how Americans understood finance—and explains what our pervasive interest in Wall Street says about us now

The wealth of the few: the role of material resource power in the institutional reproduction of the Ukrainian oligarchy through its extractive political and economic practices, 2014-17

The thesis examines the process of reproduction of the modern Ukrainian oligarchy, and its survival as an evolving political economy institution across the “critical juncture” of the Euromaidan revolt of 2013/14, by way of continuation of its “extractive” political and economic practices, focusing on the role played by material resource power (wealth). Covering political and economic capacities and practices central to the reproduction process, the empirical chapters describe, analyse and explain the dynamics of wealth of the Ukrainian super-rich in relation to Ukrainian society in 2006-17, and its political implications; the process of conversion of wealth into political influence through vote-buying in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament); and elite rent-extraction schemes in the Ukrainian gas sector before and after the Euromaidan revolution, which illustrate the means of conversion of political influence back into wealth. A key argument of the study is that continuity in informal political and economic practices between the Yanukovych and Poroshenko presidencies, and of the elite political-economic networks that conduct them, signals continuity in the dominant political economy regime across the two periods. The main economic effects of the continuation of the informal practices of the Ukrainian oligarchy since its inception in the 1990s have been to undermine state capacity and investment. Based on the empirical investigations, the thesis proposes a novel way of envisaging the interconnection between the capacities, practices and processes of the Ukrainian oligarchy at a more general level, represented as a “currency flow”, or circuit, of wealth and power. To the academic literature on the dynamics of informally dominated post-communist political and political economy regimes, the dissertation adds, therefore, a detailed, integrated, and internally comparative case study of Ukraine

Fordism, multinationals and SMEs in the periphery: the case of microstate Malta 1964-2004

This study focuses on the rise and fall of an SME support organisation in the context of dependent development characterised by a dual-economy: on the one hand, a dominant modern sector composed almost entirely of export-oriented subsidiaries of transnational groups and, on the other, a traditional sector, made up largely of microenterprises catering for the local market.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo