Does Corporate Culture Matter for Firm Policies?

Economic theories suggest that a firm's corporate culture matters for its policy choices. We construct a parent-spinoff firm panel dataset that allows us to identify culture effects in firm policies from behavior that is inherited by a spinoff firm from its parent after the firms split up. We find positive and significant relations between spinoff firms' and their parents' choices of investment, financial, and operational policies. Consistent with predictions from economic theories of corporate culture, we find that the culture effects are long-term and stronger for internally grown business units and older firms. Our evidence also suggests that firms preserve their cultures by selecting managers who fit into their cultures. Finally, we find a strong relation between spinoff firms' and their parents' profitability, suggesting that corporate culture ultimately also affects economic performance. These results are robust to a series of robustness checks, and cannot be explained by alternatives such as governance or product market links. The contribution of this paper is to introduce the notion of corporate culture in a formal empirical analysis of firm policies and performance.Economics of corporate culture; firm policies; firm performance

Supporting Parenting

Governments are showing more and more interest in providing services to parents to help them fulfil their parenting roles. But what does "good" parenting mean? How can policies to support parents best be adapted to local culture? What is the most appropriate way to critically evaluate these policies? This edition of Early Childhood in Focus addresses these questions by looking at examples of parenting support programmes from the UK, USA, Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia, and identifies practical questions for policy makers, advocates and practitioners to consider

The Political Economy of Pre-industrial Trade in Northeast Asia

This paper examines why the countries of Northeast Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) in the early nineteenth century traded much less (as measured by the proportion of trade to GDP) than most countries in other parts of the world. It is argued that the most important reason for this are government policies that suppressed private trade. It is shown that these restrictive trade policies were designed to maximize the total net benefit from trade, covering not only economic net benefits but also non-economic benefits in the fields of diplomacy, defense, culture, and internal politics.trade policy, Northeast Asia, tribute system, private trade, maritime ban, geography, culture

[Review of] Gill Bottomley and Marie de Lepervanche, eds. Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Australia

North American social scientists can benefit from comparing immigration in their own countries to immigration in Australia, another former English colony bordering on the Pacific Ocean. Bottomley and de Lepervanche have assembled a very useful set of theoretical discussions and data-based studies which provide a starting point for such comparisons. The collection focuses on the relationship of immigrants to the institutions and ideologies of the dominant culture in Australia. The underlying perspective is Marxist, although this is not made explicit by every contributor. In addition to a historical review of immigration policies, the authors present critiques of policies and the social science theories that go with them, as well as descriptive and analytical accounts of immigrants in particular institutional contexts such as labor, law and education

Violent, Political, and Administrative Repression of the Chinese Minority in Indonesia, 1945-1998

Since Indonesian independence, its Chinese minority has been a victim of violent outbreaks, but also of restrictive policies arising from politics and administrative measures. From about 1957, with the closure of Chinese-language schools and subsequent regulations about expression of Chinese culture, many speak of the “erasure” of that culture through such restrictions. Violent anti-Chinese outbreaks have proceeded from the Indonesian Revolution and the presidency of Soekarno (especially the so-called “PP-10” measures against Chinese rural traders) to the era of Suharto, which began with the 1965-1967 anti-Communist massacres and their effects on ehtnic Chinese and came to an end with the provocation of violence against ethnic Chinese in major Indonesian cities. This paper also discusses the reactions to these waves of anti-Chinese measures: rejection, flight, but also countermeasures in the form of political activity. In the years since Reformasi, as attacks on them have subsided, many Chinese Indonesians have chosen to emphasize their participation in Indonesian history and their positive contributions to Indonesian culture

Malay and Islam-Centric national narratives: modern art in Malaysia during the 1980s

THE 1971 NATIONAL CULTURE CONGRESS could be seen as the first official attempt to shape arts and culture in Malaysia. Inspired by increasingly pro-Malay government policies, Malay intellectuals convened at the University of Malaya in August that year to formulate the country’s policy on national culture. Three principles were established, namely, ‘Malaysian National Culture must be based on the indigenous culture of the people from the region’; ‘Elements from other cultures that are deemed proper and appropriate can be integrated as parts of the National Culture’; and ‘Islam as an important element in forming the national culture’. Perhaps more influential than the National Culture Congress in arts and culture was a rise in Islamic consciousness and policies from the mid-1970s onwards in Malaysia

Deepwater Drilling: Law, Policy, and Economics of Firm Organization and Safety

Although the causes of the Deepwater Horizon spill are not yet conclusively identified, significant attention has focused on the safety-related policies and practices—often referred to as the safety culture—of BP and other firms involved in drilling the well. This paper defines and characterizes the economic and policy forces that affect safety culture and identifies reasons why those forces may or may not be adequate or effective from the public’s perspective. Two potential justifications for policy intervention are that: a) not all of the social costs of a spill may be internalized by a firm; and b) there may be principal-agency problems within the firm, which could be reduced by external monitoring. The paper discusses five policies that could increase safety culture and monitoring: liability, financial responsibility (a requirement that a firm’s assets exceed a threshold), government oversight, mandatory private insurance, and risk-based drilling fees. We find that although each policy has a positive effect on safety culture, there are important differences and interactions that must be considered. In particular, the latter three provide external monitoring. Furthermore, raising liability caps without mandating insurance or raising financial responsibility requirements could have a small effect on the safety culture of small firms that would declare bankruptcy in the event of a large spill. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for promoting stronger safety culture in offshore drilling; our preferred approach would be to set a liability cap for each well equal to the worst-case social costs of a spill, and to require insurance up to the cap.Deepwater Horizon, BP oil spill, safety culture, government policy, liability caps, financial responsibility, insurance

Different routes, common directions? Activation policies for young people in Denmark and the UK

This article analyses and compares the development of activation policies for young people in Denmark and the UK from the mid-1990s. Despite their diverse welfare traditions and important differences in the organisation and delivery of benefits and services for the unemployed, both countries have recently introduced large-scale compulsory activation programmes for young people. These programmes share a number of common features, especially a combination of strong compulsion and an apparently contradictory emphasis on client-centred training and support for participants. The suggested transition from the ‘Keynesian welfare state’ to the ‘Schumpeterian workfare regime’ is used as a framework to discuss the two countries’ recent moves towards activation. It is argued that while this framework is useful in explaining the general shift towards active labour-market policies in Europe, it alone cannot account for the particular convergence of the Danish and British policies in the specific area of youth activation. Rather, a number of specific political factors explaining the development of policies in the mid-1990s are suggested. The article concludes that concerns about mass youth unemployment, the influence of the ‘dependency culture’ debate in various forms, cross-national policy diffusion and, crucially, the progressive re-engineering of compulsory activation by strong centre-left governments have all contributed to the emergence of policies that mix compulsion and a commitment to the centrality of work with a ‘client-centred approach’ that seeks to balance more effective job seeking with human resource development. However, attempts to combine the apparently contradictory concepts of ‘client-centredness’ and compulsion are likely to prove politically fragile, and both countries risk lurching towards an increasingly workfarist approach

OUR IDENTIFICATION THROUGH COMMON CULTURE AS SINGLE LANGUAGE UNIFIES US

Common culture represents a sign in human relationship, this in society help to interacbetween each other. This interaction helped by a common language which used day to dayespecially in conversation and in communication between people with same culture or noand with same language or not. Community and or society has the encouragements to learn their own and or both others culture and language; this be a potential capacities in tradingin education etc. For a society with a very large majority of individuals from one culture, individuals fromminority groups can be assimilated more quickly, this facilitate by a using commonlanguage and tend to make people reassemble the same. For Rwandans using Kinyarwanda as common mother tongue as national language of Rwanda this simplify in interaction forday to day activities and make people to understand easily each other. Particularly ourancestor used language in “Amahamba, Ibyivugo, Imivugo, Ibisingizo, imiganin’imigenurano, urwenya, ibisakuzo, insigamigani, amateka y’u Rwanda, amazina y’inka, imihango n’imigenzo nyarwanda, ikinyarwanda, uturingushyo, amazina y’ikinyarwandainshoberamahanga, indirimbo nyarwanda, umuryango nyarwanda etc…” for enhancing aquick communication and quick understanding of Rwandese Culture. This make impossibility of separating language and culture while the Rwandans actogether during these ceremonies rituals and everyone has to question and transmitting thevalidity and implications act which demonstrate this inseparability of both language and Culture. Today our culture has to face many diversity of foreigner’s languages and local languagewhile the citizens try to mix these languages with culture in order to preserve and/or sustaintraditional culture of Rwandans. Since policies that subsidize assimilation and theacquisition of many language skills to be socially beneficial, Rwandan government allowuse of French, English, and Swahili as the official languages of Rwanda and Rwandan SignLanguage to be used by the educated deaf population; for Rwandans to be ablecommunicate and interact easily with the world