Divisional power, intra-firm bargaining and rent-seeking behavior in multidivisional corporations

Increasing divisional operational responsibilities and the dispersal of knowledge creating activities within the firm have loosened the traditional hierarchical structure of multi-divisional firms. In this paper we argue that a similar mixture of competition and cooperation that is found in inter-firm relationships now characterizes intra-firm relationships. Our model describes a situation in which divisional managers have their own objectives that may diverge from those of the firm as a whole.Thus, divisional managers are both profit-seekers in creating value that can be appropriated and rent-seekers in attempting to maximize their divisional share of the value d by the firm. The bargaining power of a division to maintain and increase its share of the profits generated by the operations of the firm as whole is crucially determined on its strategic independence.

SOUTH ASIAN AND (UNDOCUMENTED) LATINO/A IMMIGRANT BLOGGERS: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THEIR ENGAGEMENT WITH IMMIGRATION DISCOURSES

The overarching purpose of this project is to theorize how marginalized communities engage with dominant discourses and to locate possibilities for agency in contesting dominant representations of marginalized groups. I selected two discursive events as instances of a larger U.S. immigration discourse--the enactment of SB 1070 in Arizona and the publication of a column in TIME Magazine in which the author decries the influx of South Asians to his hometown of Edison, NJ. I then modified critical discourse analysis to examine weblog responses to these events by two diasporic communities interpellated by them--(undocumented) Latino/a immigrants and South Asian immigrants. Drawing upon a theory of constitutive rhetoric, I look at ways that members of these two groups are interpellated as subjects within their blogging communities. Moreover, I examine how the collective subject negotiates various identifications through a three-part diasporic identity framework consisting of structural, trans-spatial/historical, and intergroup representational positionings. I also consider the implications of the constitutive rhetoric for agency by interrogating how the blogs enable and constrain bloggers\u27 abilities to speak about the discursive events. In addition, I interrogate bloggers\u27 constructions of U.S. immigration discourse, identifying four ideological claims both (re)produced and challenged by the bloggers: triumphal multiculturalism; American Dream mythology; the entitlement to rights; and normative standards of acceptability. I also use a postcolonial approach to discursive engagement that considers the production of alternate subjectivities through destabilizing of the subject/object relationship. This project complicates our understanding of diasporic subjects as based on complex postcolonial subjectivities. This allows for an expanded notion of how collective subjects are constituted ontologically through the coming together of numerous points of identifications within a complex framework of diasporic identities. In addition, it links ontological status and epistemology by complicating the understanding of how and where subject positions arise, challenging assumptions of universal knowledge. Finally, it theorizes discursive engagement of members of marginalized diasporic groups by applying a dialectical perspective of agency and interpellated subjectivities and revealing how power operates through discourse to position subjects while identifying possible moments of agentic potential

A Reference Recursive Recipe for Tuning the Statistics of the Kalman Filter

The philosophy and the historical development of Kalman filter from ancient times to the present is followed by the connection between randomness, probability, statistics, random process, estimation theory, and the Kalman filter. A brief derivation of the filter is followed by its appreciation, aesthetics, beauty, truth, perspectives, competence, and variants. The menacing and notorious problem of specifying the filter initial state, measurement, and process noise covariances and the unknown parameters remains in the filter even after more than five decades of enormous applications in science and technology. Manual approaches are not general and the adaptive ones are difficult. The proposed reference recursive recipe (RRR) is simple and general. The initial state covariance is the probability matching prior between the Frequentist approach via optimization and the Bayesian filtering. The filter updates the above statistics after every pass through the data to reach statistical equilibrium within a few passes without any optimization. Further many proposed cost functions help to compare the present and earlier approaches. The efficacy of the present RRR is demonstrated by its application to a simulated spring, mass, and damper system and a real airplane flight data having a larger number of unknown parameters and statistics

Tuning of the Kalman Filter Using Constant Gains

For designing an optimal Kalman filter, it is necessary to specify the statistics, namely the initial state, its covariance and the process and measurement noise covariances. These can be chosen by minimising some suitable cost function J . This has been very difficult till recently when a near optimal Recurrence Reference Recipe (RRR) was proposed without any optimisation but only filtering. In many filter applications after the initial transients, the gain matrix K tends to a constant during the steady state, which points to design the filter based on constant gains alone. Such a constant gain Kalman filter (CGKF) can be designed by minimising any suitable cost function. Since there are no covariances in CGKF, only the state equations need to be propagated and updated at a measurement, thus enormously reducing the computational load. Though CGKF results may not be too close to those of RRR, they are acceptable. It accepts extremely simple models and the gains are robust in handling similar scenarios. In this chapter, we provide examples of applying the CGKF by ancient Indian astronomers, parameter estimation of spring, mass and damper system, airplane real flight test data, ballistic rocket, re-entry of space object and the evolution of space debris

Decolonization of Education: How Educators Can Aid Transcultural Acculturation to Advance Communities Committed to Social Justice

Cultures recreate themselves constantly, sometimes through natural transformations, sometimes through imposition. While colonialism was atrocious, partly because it transformed cultures by imposing disfigured identities and understandings (Fanon, 1963), we cannot reset cultures to how they were before conquest. That would require erasing languages now spoken for generations, dismantling religions and beliefs now practiced for hundreds of years, and purifying food habits now valued by the palettes of those formerly colonized. We can, however, work towards decolonizing our present- day society. Specifically, we can identify how colonialism continues to position some populations and their cultures as inferior (minoritized) and others as superior (majoritized; Vaccaro, 2021). We can also explore how colonized cultures adapted to colonialism, leading to the fusion or mestizaje of cultures that, in spite of colonial atrocities, led to new, intersectional identities that have now fallen prey to the same hegemonic perspectives of the past. And we can examine how natural mestizaje that occurs with immigration can be subject to contradictory pressures to assimilate to colonial ideals and to resist colonial influences. This paper proposes that Catholic schools are in a privileged position to contribute to decolonization by aiding students’ transcultural acculturation (Mudambi, 2021a; Mudambi, 2021b). Furthermore, this article offers specific actions in which Catholic schools can engage to mobilize education towards decolonization and, in doing so, foster a Christian culture of equity and justice, while serving as a model for other education systems

Prominence Reduction versus Banning: An Empirical Investigation of Content Moderation Strategies in Online Platforms

Online platforms have adopted various types of content moderation strategies to combat antisocial behaviors such as verbal aggression. This study focuses on two types of strategies: group prominence reduction and banning. This study aims to provide a holistic picture of all downstream effects of these strategies. Additionally, we assess the differential effects of content moderation on multihoming versus non-multihoming users. Preliminary findings indicate that prominence reduction strategies applied to a problematic group have the adverse effect of increasing verbal aggression in outside spaces. Banning strategies differentially impact multihoming versus non-multihoming users. These findings have important implications, as they show that group prominence reduction strategies produce negative spillover effects, and the behavior of multihoming users on multiple external platforms, and whether our results generalize across multiple contexts

What’s “Funny” about Technology Adoption? Humorous Appropriation of Online Review Platforms

The open nature of online review platforms allows for use of the technology in unexpected ways, attracting some visitors with an objective other than aiding other consumers’ purchase decision. These consumers are exhibiting a particular form of adoption called technology appropriation by writing humorous reviews that often make fun of the products or telling absurd stories. This study conceptualizes humorous appropriation of an online review platform through a content analysis of 33,987 reviews for 14 products on Amazon.com. We find reviews written for products where the review platform has been appropriated for humor differ from “regular” reviews across three dimensions: narrativity, emotionality, and impropriety. These humorous reviews tend to be more narrative, more negative, and contain more words about inappropriate or sensitive subjects. Our model of humorous appropriation extends the technology appropriation literature and has implications for how online retailers and sellers manage this emerging form of digital performance

Location, collocation and innovation by multinational enterprises: a research agenda

The distribution of creative economic activity over space has been viewed from three distinct perspectives. International business focuses on the multinational enterprise and the location of activities across national borders; economic geography studies the characteristics of the location site; and innovation scholars are mainly concerned with the technologies and knowledge that arises from the interaction of location and the creativity of actors. All these communities have drawn attention to collocation. However, the nexus of the three literatures is surprisingly thin, in particular with regard to the conditions under which collocation is an advantage or a disadvantage. In this paper, we take stock of the knowledge developed by the three communities and move the discussion further by qualifying a number of these conditions. Based on these considerations, we then propose a number of directions for future research