Inside the Corporate Veil: The Character and Consequences of Executives’ Duties

This paper is based on a keynote address to the 2006 annual workshop of the Australian Corporate Law Teachers\u27 Association on The Pathology of Corporate Law. The paper\u27s thesis is that fuller understanding of many corporate malfunctions requires examination of organizational structures and patterns of interaction below the level of the board within a corporation\u27s hierarchy. The paper argues that there is merit to mandating duties of skill and care at the executive level, drawing on examples of executive conduct in recent corporate fiascos. The paper also explores the application of the business judgment rule to officers. As conventionally formulated, the rule\u27s prototypical subject appears to be a board of directors that, exercising original and undelegated power, makes discrete decisions about particular transactions or other matters. The paper questions the rule\u27s applicability to the work done by officers, many of whom may be appointed on the basis of a reasonable belief that they will diligently bring relevant skills to bear in an ordinarily careful manner

The Missing Books of Magic from Sandvik: In search for hidden books and secret knowledge

This article aims at defining a privately-owned manuscript from the end of the eighteenth century; a notebook of charms, recipes and ritual prescriptions, presumed to be connected with known manuscripts of magic, that were kept secret and hidden away. The study attempts to reconstruct the context of ‘The Sandvik Notebook’, in order to find out who penned it, when, and why. What kind of knowledge was sought: was it collected for antiquarian reasons, for esoteric interest, or for practical use – such as curing livestock and human beings? Was it copied from books or collected from peasant informants, and could it be related to the extant manuscripts ‘The Black Book’ and ‘The Red Book’, objects of the same line of enquiry? The three manuscripts are from Sandvik Manor, of the joint parish Burseryd-Sandvik, Sweden

The Role of Innovation Intermediaries in Innovation Systems

The paper investigates the role of innovation intermediaries in sector-specific regional innovation systems. Innovation is viewed as a non-linear, iterative process and open process involving multiple actors from different parts of the innovation system. The paper studies in particular innovation intermediaries that provide support to firms in the regional innovation system through the fulfillment of key innovation system functions. The implication of the fulfillment of innovation system functions by innovation intermediaries in the Scandinavian food sector context is examined through in-depth interviews and analysis of secondary documents. It concludes with a discussion on the potential of enabling innovation intermediaries to play a more strategic role in regional innovation system

The effect of temperature and water on secondary organic aerosol formation from ozonolysis of limonene, ?³-carene and ?-pinene

International audienceThe effect of reaction temperature and how water vapour influences the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in ozonolysis of limonene, ?3-carene and ?-pinene, both regarding number and mass of particles, has been investigated by using a laminar flow reactor G-FROST. Experiments with cyclohexane and 2-butanol (~3.5×1014 molecules cm?3) as OH scavengers were compared to experiments without any scavenger. The reactions were conducted in the temperature range between 298 and 243 K, and at relative humidities between <10 and 80%. Results showed that there is still a scavenger effect on number and mass concentrations at low temperatures between experiments with and without OH scavenger. This shows that the OH chemistry is influencing the SOA formation also at these temperatures. The overall temperature dependence on SOA formation is not as strong as expected from the partitioning theory. In some cases there is even a positive temperature dependence that must be related to changes in the chemical mechanism and/or reduced rates of secondary chemistry at low temperatures. The water effect at low temperature could be explained by physical uptake and cluster stabilisation. At higher temperatures, only a physical explanation is not sufficient and the observations are in line with water changing the chemical mechanism or reaction rates. The data presented adds to the understanding of SOA contribution to atmospheric aerosol composition, new particle formation and atmospheric degradation mechanisms

Körsång i Svenska kyrkan - en möjlig väg till religiös erfarenhet?

This study deals with the issue of how music can affect the religious experience of people who sing in choirs in the Church of Sweden. It is established that music plays a great importance in people’s every-day lives, and that it has various effects on us, for instance how it can soothe a person who is agitated or the way it can induce fright, compassion, anger or happiness. Music occupies a large space in our every-day lives, whether people are musically talented or not. Sometimes one is not even aware of it; it is simply present in the dentist’s waiting room, on the bus, in the store, and so on. The study has been conducted by means of two approaches. First through a quantitative questionnaire survey, the main purpose of which was to provide an overall view of the issue studied. Second, a number of qualitative interviews were conducted. These interviews limited themselves to the most relevant parts of the studied issue and therefore provided more details than the questionnaire survey. The results obtained through these studies have been compared to various theoretical views (presented in chapter 5), with the aim of either verifying or falsifying the study’s assumption that man can come closer to God through choir singing. Between the years 1990-1999, the total number of church visits (at service) in the Church of Sweden decreased by 7.7 %, while the attendance at musical services increased by 11.5 %. Thus, music is a very important part in the work of the Church of Sweden, and the singing in choirs has become somewhat of a people’s movement. This is the reason why the present study has been conducted; to investigate how choir singers are affected by their music. It is concluded that music can affect choir singers towards a religious experience, but also that there are many factors that contribute to such a change

"Fjärran nu invid". Mediala perspektiv på Lotta Lotass Fjärrskrift

Lotta Lotass Fjärrskrift is a work that makes use of three different media, a 50 meter long teleprinter strip and two filmed versions, distributed in cinemas and published on internet, which are portraying how the strip is made through a teleprinter. The purpose of this study is to investigate by the use of Lars Elleström’s theory of intermediality the different connections between the three different media versions of Fjärrskrift and how the work distance itself from the traditional book medium. Most prominently is, however, the question of what the medial implications do with the work, with the text, with the reading process and with literary public sphere. Fjärrskrift could be described as a work that puts a literary content within the media of a teleprinter, but it could also be described that it puts the teleprinter media within a literary context.The study proposes that Lotass uses media archaeological poetics, and that the mechanisms of the reading process are made visible by the defamiliarization of them. The three ways of distribution also produces an area of tension between the full accessibility of the internet version and the exclusivity of the teleprinter strip, which only exists in 100 copies

"Tillsammans med minnet av natten": En transtextuell studie av Tage Aurells "Sommarspel"

This study uses Gérard Genettes theories on transtextuality in an attempt to open up the meaning of Tage Aurell's (1895–1976) "Sommarspel" from the short story collection Nya berättelser (1949). The relations between the short story and earlier texts, such as the biblical myths about David and Goliath, and David and Batsheba; a poem by Dan Andersson; and an excerpt from the operetta Sköna Helena (La belle Hélène) by Offenbach, are analyzed. All of which point out the strong relationship between the text and the Swedish rural community of the early 1900s. A relationship which is so closely tied to Tage Aurell's authorship that it is crucial in order to understand the peculiar mix of countryside realism and experimental modernism which constitutes Aurell's short stories. The study also examines the relationship between "Sommarspel" and other genres (lyric and drama). An examination which concludes in introducing the term hyper-architextuality