A genre analysis of English language research grant proposal abstracts in Chile

The writing of English-language research genres represent a challenging task for non-native-speaker researchers. Grant proposals, in particular, are a high-stakes genre that will greatly influence a researcher’s career development opportunities; however, novice researchers are faced with an urgent lack of publicly available exemplars or teaching materials for this genre. The present study attempts to address this issue by means of Swalesian genre analysis. First, a move system analysis is applied to a corpus of 40 abstracts of successful grant proposals from a variety of disciplines. Based on the results of this initial analysis, a modified move framework for grant proposal abstracts is formulated. Finally, interviews are conducted with specialist informants from four disciplines. The results show that the proposed framework is clear and functional to the discussion of rhetorical choices in grant proposal abstracts for the present Chilean context

The Impact of Dynamic Two-Sided Platform Pricing on Fairness Perception in the Sharing Economy

From an economic perspective, dynamic pricing seems to be the profit maximizing pricing strategy for consumer-to-consumer (C2C) sharing platforms because it allows balancing supply and demand over time. Based on distributive justice and equity theory we investigate how two characteristics of dynamic pricing, namely -˜fee changes over time’ and -˜fee differences across consumer groups’, influence fairness perception and intention to share of consumers. Using a laboratory experiment, we find that fee differences between lenders and borrowers is the dominant source of negative fairness perception, which in turn results in a lower intention to share, especially for the consumer group that is charged with a higher fee. Consequently, C2C sharing platforms have to be aware of this negative effect from fairness perception when they implement a dynamic two-sided platform pricing strategy to maximize profits

The impact of industry-wide and target market environmental hostility on entrepreneurial leadership in mergers and acquisitions

Based on survey data from 115 acquisitions completed between 2008 and 2011 by European acquirers from German-speaking countries, we find evidence that entrepreneurial leadership is a strong predictor of exploration and a weaker but significant driver of exploitation outcomes following M&A. Industry-wide environmental hostility negatively impacts the influence of entrepreneurial leadership on exploitation. Target market environmental hostility negatively impacts the influence of entrepreneurial leadership on exploration. Thus, while entrepreneurial leadership is a key success factor of M&A performance by increasing both, post-merger exploration and exploitation, acquirers need to take environmental conditions at the industry and market level into account

The effect of the Madden-Julian Oscillation on station rainfall and river level in the Fly River system, Papua New Guinea

The Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) is the dominant mode of intraseasonal variability in tropical rainfall on the large scale, but its signal is often obscured in individual station data, where effects are most directly felt at the local level. The Fly River system, Papua New Guinea, is one of the wettest regions on Earth and is at the heart of the MJO envelope. A 16 year time series of daily precipitation at 15 stations along the river system exhibits strong MJO modulation in rainfall. At each station, the difference in rainfall rate between active and suppressed MJO conditions is typically 40% of the station mean. The spread of rainfall between individual MJO events was small enough such that the rainfall distributions between wet and dry phases of the MJO were clearly separated at the catchment level. This implies that successful prediction of the large-scale MJO envelope will have a practical use for forecasting local rainfall. In the steep topography of the New Guinea Highlands, the mean and MJO signal in station precipitation is twice that in the satellite Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 3B42HQ product, emphasizing the need for ground-truthing satellite-based precipitation measurements. A clear MJO signal is also present in the river level, which peaks simultaneously with MJO precipitation input in its upper reaches but lags the precipitation by approximately 18 days on the flood plains

Perspiration and inspiration:Grit and innovativeness as antecedents of entrepreneurial success

Venture success has been related to numerous characteristics of entrepreneurs including their enduring personality traits. Separately, recent scholarship has elucidated trait “Grit” comprising two dimensions, “Consistency of Interests” (or “Passion”) and “Perseverance of Effort”, and validated Grit as a predictor of success in areas such as education, military training, and income. We report a study with a sample of Austrian entrepreneurs relating Grit as well as firm-level Innovativeness to entrepreneurial success. We show that both Grit and Innovativeness predict success; Grit affects success directly and in effects that are mediated by Innovativeness