Transferring management practices to China: a Bourdieusian critique of ethnocentricity

This paper provides a critique of the emergent theories of human resource management in China with a view to generating new theoretical insights with particular reference to Pierre Bourdieu's social theory. It reassesses the relevance of the orthodox critique of ethnocentricity and the coherence of approaches embedded in Chinese culture. With reference to six case studies of the largest retail firms, we identify two key challenges: the reliance on headquarter human resource practices that reflect an ethnocentric ethos, i.e. country-of-origin bias, and the failure to empower local managers and the problems this creates for managers expected to implement ethnocentric practices. We examine how Bourdieu's social theory sheds light on the processes by which these firms realise their strategic objectives through the complicity of local managers whose scope for resistance is constrained by the use of normative control and in part through attractive remuneration and career prospects that generate Bourdieusian capital for these managers. We conclude with some suggestions for further research

Dark Viscous Fluid coupled with Dark Matter and future singularity

We study effects of viscous fluid coupled with dark matter in our universe. We consider bulk viscosity in the cosmic fluid and we suppose the existence of a coupling between fluid and dark matter, in order to reproduce a stable de Sitter universe protected against future-time singularities. More general inhomogeneous fluids are studied related to future singularities.Comment: 11 page

String Cosmology: A Review

We give an overview of the status of string cosmology. We explain the motivation for the subject, outline the main problems, and assess some of the proposed solutions. Our focus is on those aspects of cosmology that benefit from the structure of an ultraviolet-complete theory.Comment: 55 pages. v2: references adde

Viscous Fluids and Gauss-Bonnet Modified Gravity

We study effects of cosmic fluids on finite-time future singularities in modified $f(R,G)$-gravity, where $R$ and $G$ are the Ricci scalar and the Gauss-Bonnet invariant, respectively. We consider the fluid equation of state in the general form, $\omega=\omega(\rho)$, and we suppose the existence of a bulk viscosity. We investigate quintessence region ($\omega>-1$) and phantom region ($\omega<-1$) and the possibility to change or avoid the singularities in $f(R,G)$-gravity. Finally, we study the inclusion of quantum effects in large curvatures regime.Comment: 14 page

Interacting New Agegraphic Dark Energy in a Cyclic Universe

The main goal of this work is investigation of NADE in the cyclic universe scenario. Since, cyclic universe is explained by a phantom phase ($\omega<-1$), it is shown when there is no interaction between matter and dark energy, ADE and NADE do not produce a phantom phase, then can not describe cyclic universe. Therefore, we study interacting models of ADE and NADE in the modified Friedmann equation. We find out that, in the high energy regime, which it is a necessary part of cyclic universe evolution, only NADE can describe this phantom phase era for cyclic universe. Considering deceleration parameter tells us that the universe has a deceleration phase after an acceleration phase, and NADE is able to produce a cyclic universe. Also it is found valuable to study generalized second law of thermodynamics. Since the loop quantum correction is taken account in high energy regime, it may not be suitable to use standard treatment of thermodynamics, so we turn our attention to the result of \citep{29}, which the authors have studied thermodynamics in loop quantum gravity, and we show that which condition can satisfy generalized second law of thermodynamics.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

A Planck-scale axion and SU(2) Yang-Mills dynamics: Present acceleration and the fate of the photon

From the time of CMB decoupling onwards we investigate cosmological evolution subject to a strongly interacting SU(2) gauge theory of Yang-Mills scale $\Lambda\sim 10^{-4}$ eV (masquerading as the $U(1)_{Y}$ factor of the SM at present). The viability of this postulate is discussed in view of cosmological and (astro)particle physics bounds. The gauge theory is coupled to a spatially homogeneous and ultra-light (Planck-scale) axion field. As first pointed out by Frieman et al., such an axion is a viable candidate for quintessence, i.e. dynamical dark energy, being associated with today's cosmological acceleration. A prediction of an upper limit $\Delta t_{m_\gamma=0}$ for the duration of the epoch stretching from the present to the point where the photon starts to be Meissner massive is obtained: $\Delta t_{m_\gamma=0}\sim 2.2$ billion years.Comment: v3: consequences of an error in evolution equation for coupling rectified, only a minimal change in physics results, two refs. adde

The unification of inflation and late-time acceleration in the frame of kk-essence

By using the formulation of the reconstruction, we explicitly construct models of $k$-essence, which unify the inflation in the early universe and the late accelerating expansion of the present universe by a single scalar field. Due to the higher derivative terms, the solution describing the unification can be stable in the space of solutions, which makes the restriction for the initial condition relaxed. The higher derivative terms also eliminate tachyon. Therefore we can construct a model describing the time development, which cannot be realized by a usual inflaton or quintessence models of the canonical scalar field due to the instability or the existence of tachyon. We also propose a mechanism of the reheating by the quantum effects coming from the variation of the energy density of the scalar field.Comment: LaTeX, 13 pages, 10 figure

Forecasting Cosmic Doomsday from CMB/LSS Cross-Correlations

A broad class of dark energy models, which have been proposed in attempts at solving the cosmological constant problems, predict a late time variation of the equation of state with redshift. The variation occurs as a scalar field picks up speed on its way to negative values of the potential. The negative potential energy eventually turns the expansion into contraction and the local universe undergoes a big crunch. In this paper we show that cross-correlations of the CMB anisotropy and matter distribution, in combination with other cosmological data, can be used to forecast the imminence of such cosmic doomsday.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figure

Bianchi type II models in the presence of perfect fluid and anisotropic dark energy

Spatially homogeneous but totally anisotropic and non-flat Bianchi type II cosmological model has been studied in general relativity in the presence of two minimally interacting fluids; a perfect fluid as the matter fluid and a hypothetical anisotropic fluid as the dark energy fluid. The Einstein's field equations have been solved by applying two kinematical ans\"{a}tze: we have assumed the variation law for the mean Hubble parameter that yields a constant value of deceleration parameter, and one of the components of the shear tensor has been considered proportional to the mean Hubble parameter. We have particularly dwelled on the accelerating models with non-divergent expansion anisotropy as the Universe evolves. Yielding anisotropic pressure, the fluid we consider in the context of dark energy, can produce results that can be produced in the presence of isotropic fluid in accordance with the \Lambda CDM cosmology. However, the derived model gives additional opportunities by being able to allow kinematics that cannot be produced in the presence of fluids that yield only isotropic pressure. We have obtained well behaving cases where the anisotropy of the expansion and the anisotropy of the fluid converge to finite values (include zero) in the late Universe. We have also showed that although the metric we consider is totally anisotropic, the anisotropy of the dark energy is constrained to be axially symmetric, as long as the overall energy momentum tensor possesses zero shear stress.Comment: 15 pages; 5 figures; matches the version published in The European Physical Journal Plu

Interacting Ricci Dark Energy with Logarithmic Correction

Motivated by the holographic principle, it has been suggested that the dark energy density may be inversely proportional to the area $A$ of the event horizon of the universe. However, such a model would have a causality problem. In this work, we consider the entropy-corrected version of the holographic dark energy model in the non-flat FRW universe and we propose to replace the future event horizon area with the inverse of the Ricci scalar curvature. We obtain the equation of state (EoS) parameter $\omega_{\Lambda}$, the deceleration parameter $q$ and $\Omega_D'$ in the presence of interaction between Dark Energy (DE) and Dark Matter (DM). Moreover, we reconstruct the potential and the dynamics of the tachyon, K-essence, dilaton and quintessence scalar field models according to the evolutionary behavior of the interacting entropy-corrected holographic dark energy model.Comment: 24 pages, accepted for publication in 'Astrophysics and Space Science, DOI:10.1007/s10509-012-1031-8