Machiavelli at 550 — Reflections on his contribution to management, marketing, and public affairs

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Harris, P. (2019). Machiavelli at 550—Reflections on his contribution to management, marketing, and public affairs. Journal of Public Affairs, 19(4), e2056., which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pa.2056. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.With the U.K. Elections upon us and manoeuvring for the U.S. Presidential Elections in November 2020 already started, it is time to reflect on power. It is always good to call upon Machiavelli to help make sense of the issues and people in the political arena. It is 550 years since Niccolo Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469 of a very old Tuscan family. The young Machiavelli had a vigorous humanist education, was taught Latin by good teachers, and had access to the best of classical history and ideas. Little is known about the rest of his life until at the surprisingly young age of 29 in 1498, he was recognised by the Signory for his administrative talents and was elected to the responsible post of Chancellor of the Second Chancery. He is also given duties in the Council of the Ten of Liberty and Peace (formerly Ten of War), which dealt with Florentine foreign affairs

Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) Version 2.2 User Manual

The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) is a computer model that simulates many soil and vegetation processes. This document describes how to run version 2.2 of JULES. It primarily describes the format of the input and output files, and does not include detailed descriptions of the science and representation of the processes in the model. The first version of JULES was based on the Met Office Surface Exchange System (MOSES), the land surface model used in the Unified Model (UM) of the UK Met Office. After that initial split, the MOSES and JULES code bases evolved separately, but with JULES2.1 these differences were reconciled, so that all versions since v2.1 have had identical code in both the standalone version (as described here) and in the UM

Version 4 of the CRU TS monthly high-resolution gridded multivariate climate dataset

CRU TS (Climatic Research Unit gridded Time Series) is a widely used climate dataset on a 0.5 degrees latitude by 0.5 degrees longitude grid over all land domains of the world except Antarctica. It is derived by the interpolation of monthly climate anomalies from extensive networks of weather station observations. Here we describe the construction of a major new version, CRU TS v4. It is updated to span 1901-2018 by the inclusion of additional station observations, and it will be updated annually. The interpolation process has been changed to use angular-distance weighting (ADW), and the production of secondary variables has been revised to better suit this approach. This implementation of ADW provides improved traceability between each gridded value and the input observations, and allows more informative diagnostics that dataset users can utilise to assess how dataset quality might vary geographically

Primogeniture in Turkish Family Owned Businesses: An examination of daughter succession, the impact of national culture on gendered norms and leadership challenge.

Family owned and controlled businesses, which may be owned, controlled or operated by various family members, account for an enormous percentage of global employment, revenues and GDP. Although the majority of well-known companies are family owned, research indicates that unfortunately, only thirty percent of family businesses survive to the second generation. Therefore, successful transfer of the business to the next generation is an important issue for the family business literature. However, although succession is a vital issue for Family Owned Businesses (FOBs), the process is unfortunately very gender biased in most societies, with boys being generally favoured over girls so daughters are always excluded as candidates and other women are seldom considered as successors in family businesses. In many cases, especially in certain cultures, female members of the next generation are not even perceived as a viable option. Even in today’s rapidly changing business climate, primogeniture continues to dominate the value system of family businesses. Primogeniture is an accepted approach to family business succession planning; daughters are only considered for family business succession when all descendants are female or the daughter is the first born. This study aims to identify the reasons behind the primogeniture in Turkish FOBs. The objectives of the study were to examine the key factors identified by the incumbents related with the primogeniture. In this research study, an interpretive methodology was adopted to explore, interpret and to understand meanings of knowledge. For this research, qualitative data were gathered via in-depth open-ended interviews with 20 male FOB owners who have at least one daughter and 20 daughters working at their FOB with their fathers. The questions were designed to measure different facets of FOB demographics and culture to understand their effects on the selection process within Turkish FOBs and gender norms in the context of FOB norms, which influence both family members and the business it. This study investigated daughters’ succession in FOBs in Turkey, a developing country where women are less likely than men to engage in entrepreneurial activities and show that gendered norms are still considered when choosing the successor, in other word, primogeniture still dominates the family business succession process

The Evolution of Strategic Political Lobbying in the UK and the Psychological Network Underpinning Machiavellian Marketing

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. -Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Political marketing not only encompasses campaigning in the electoral and referenda processes but also is inevitably linked to political lobbying. Phil Harris is affiliated with th

Simulating cetacean responses to sonar exposure within a Bayesian hierarchical modelling framework : technical report

Funding: The research reported here was financially supported by the US Navy Living Marine Resources Programme (LMR) Contract No. N3943018C2080.In this report, we present a framework for simulating responses of cetaceans to various military sonar exposure contexts using Bayesian hierarchical modelling. This work was motivated by the need to assess the utility of different types of animal-attached biotelemetry tags in improving our understanding of dose–response relationships. Specifically, we used a Monte Carlo approach to conduct a sensitivity analysis of the effects of uncertainty in acoustic dose measurements (i.e. received sound levels) on the probability of behavioural response. Accompanying R code is available and fully described in a sister document.Publisher PD

Monkey business, Marco Polo, and managing global public affairs and trade

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Harris, P. (2016). Monkey business, Marco Polo, and managing global public affairs and trade. Journal of Public Affairs, 16(1), 3-6, which has been published in final form at doi: 10.1002/pa.1608. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Editorial We are now in the year of the Monkey, a year of excitement and innovation. Monkey years are often dramatic and see large-scale political change, and if you believe these things, it is predicted that we may see much political change and the forging of new alliances. Given the instability, we are seeing in the Middle East and large parts of Africa. Suspect that this is not a predication but a good probability. It is also over 700 years since Marco Polo started traveling eastwards and commented on Chinese and Indian civilizations and observed and recorded the vast amount of trade that was evident in Asia and moved along the Silk Road. He remarked that a stable system of government made this all work for the benefit of each society and that war invariably led to human suffering and mass migration and destruction. Little has changed except that the size of the Asian economies has become larger and the impact of war and conflict more psychologically impactful because of modern media, but the devastation on human life as tragic as ever. This is a general issue and reflects the vibrancy and range of material and research in the public affairs area. Researchers and practitioners represent the EU, Europe, North America, and Asia. We still have gaps in our knowledge geographically, particularly in understanding public affairs in China, India, Japan, and Korea; there has only been limited work on. The firs

Assessing the role of sampling uncertainty when predicting behavioral responses of tagged cetaceans exposed to naval sonar

Funding: This work was financially supported by the US Navy Living Marine Resources Program (LMR) Contract No. N3943018C2080. Support for the Atlantic BRS project was provided by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Atlantic under Contract No. N62470-15-D-8006, Task Order 18F4036, Issued to HDR, Inc.Concerns over cetacean mortality events coincident with maritime warfare exercises have motivated efforts to characterise the effects of anthropogenic noise on free-ranging whales and dolphins. By monitoring the movement, diving, and acoustic behaviours of individual whales before, during, and after sound exposure, behavioural response studies (BRSs) have supported significant progress in our understanding of the sensitivity of various cetacean species to high-powered naval sonar signals. However, differences in the designs and sampling capabilities of animal-borne tags typically used in BRS experiments prompt questions about the influence of data resolution in quantitative assessments of noise impacts. We conducted simulations to examine how uncertainty in the acoustic dose either measured on high-resolution multi-sensor biologging tags or modelled from position-transmitting satellite telemetry tags may affect predictions of behavioural responses in Cuvier’s beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris) exposed to low- and mid-frequency active sonar. We considered an array of scenarios representative of real-world BRSs and used posterior estimates of dose-response functions obtained under an established Bayesian hierarchical modelling framework to explore the consequences of different tag choices for management decision-making. Our results indicate that (1) the zone of impact from a sonar source is under-estimated in most test conditions, (2) substantial reductions in the uncertainty surrounding dose-response relationships are possible at higher sample sizes, and (3) this largely holds true irrespective of tag choice under the scenarios considered, unless positional fixes from satellite tags are consistently poor. Strategic monitoring approaches that combine both archival biologging and satellite biotelemetry are essential for characterising complex patterns of behavioural change in cetaceans exposed to increasing levels of acoustic disturbance. We suggest ways in which BRS protocols can be optimised to curtail the effects of uncertainty.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Exploring the possibilities for sustainable future growth in business and technology management, pp664-671.

A paper which examines the professionalisation of political campaigns in Southern Africa, using comparative methodology to examine the cases of Malawi and South Africa, selecting prominent political organisations in each