Boltzmann-Shannon Entropy: Generalization and Application

The paper deals with the generalization of both Boltzmann entropy and distribution in the light of most-probable interpretation of statistical equilibrium. The statistical analysis of the generalized entropy and distribution leads to some new interesting results of significant physical importance.Comment: 5 pages, Accepted in Mod.Phys.Lett.

Reproducing the City of London’s institutional landscape: the role of education and the learning of situated practices by early career elites

In this paper we argue that postgraduate education forms an important, but hitherto neglected, element in the distinctive institutional landscape of the City of London. In particular, and drawing on research into early-career financial and legal elites in the City, we show how postgraduate education tailored to the demands of employers within London plays an important role in indoctrinating early-career elites into situated, Cityspecific, working practices and, in so doing, helps to sustain the City’s cultures and norms of financial practice. Specifying the role of postgraduate education in reproducing these situated City practices is significant because, although geographical variegation in working practices between international financial centres has been widely reported, less attention has been paid to how such institutionally embedded differences are created and sustained. By identifying education as one mechanism of creation and sustenance, our analysis enhances understanding of how the institutional landscapes that underlie financial centres might be maintained or, when necessary, challenged; challenge being significant in relation to attempts to reform practices and cultures in international financial centres in the wake of the 2007–08 crisis

Understanding social exclusion in elite professional service firms: field level dynamics and the 'professional project

This article explores social exclusion in elite professional service firms (PSFs) through a qualitative study of six legal, accounting, investment banking and consulting firms. Employing a Bourdieusian perspective we find that all six firms privilege candidates with the same narrow forms of cultural capital, while acknowledging that this contradicts their professed commitment to social inclusion and recruiting the best ‘talent’. We find that this behaviour is enshrined within the habitus of elite firms. We argue that it represents an organizational strategy generated by a compulsion to achieve legitimacy in a specific field of London-based elite PSFs. We identify a ‘professional project’ of sorts, but argue that this can no longer be mapped on to the interests of a discrete occupational group. As such, we contribute to studies of elite reproduction and social stratification by focusing specifically on the role of elite professional organizations in the reproduction of inequality

Containing, embracing and hyper-activating Britishness: British-based foreign-owned firms

There are in the UK ownership forms different to the characteristics of Britishness – British-based foreign-owned firms where dominant owners may have differentiated control interests. These may contain, that is, override, national institutional characteristics embedded in a particular national capitalism. Accordingly, separating the agency of these firms from presumed business system structures may reveal how diverse patterns of firm ownership – those associated with British-based foreign-owned firms – can inform dynamic ownership developments in British capitalism which contain and hyper-activate Britishness. The article theorizes British-based foreign-owned firms and provides empirical detail on how ownership characteristics influence financial commitment and strategic control in 10 of these firms

“Financialized Capitalism: After the Crisis and Beyond Neoliberalism”

This paper serves as an introduction to a special issue which explores many new questions, intellectual and political, posed by the current global financial crisis. The aim is to get beyond the convention asking the well-rehearsed questions about what caused the crisis, or why the established theories could not predict it. For we can safely predict that many critical thinkers in political and cultural economy already know, or think they know, the answer to what caused the crisis. This is because they will construct the origins and causes of the within the problematic which they endorsed before the crisis began. Namely, that neoliberalism demarcates the period since 1970 as one of privatisation, liberalisation and support for free markets which essentially takes ideological propositions at their own word and, consequently, fail to distinguish between rhetoric and practice. This special issue explores some new ways of fundamentally reconsidering or challenging established ideas about neoliberalism and finance. For financialisation researchers, the intellectual struggle against organising concepts of neoliberalism and disembedded finance is unfinished business