The English East India Company and the Modern Corporation: Legacies, Lessons, and Limitations

The English East India Company was first chartered in 1600, endured until the late nineteenth century, and, in a clever act of corporate resurrection, has even recently returned as a global, upmarket retail outlet selling fine foods and commemorative coins. It has also endured in the popular imagination and culture, churning out heroes and villains alike in film, television, and video games. The script writer for a forthcoming BBC miniseries, in which the East India Company stars as the prime antagonist, even noted recently that the Company was like “the CIA, the NSA, and the biggest, baddest multinational corporation on earth” wrapped into one corporation. All of this attention of late to one of the largest and most enduring corporations of its time, which managed a commercial and political system separated by half a world at upwards of a year and half’s distance, is perhaps unsurprising given the great legal, political, and economic conundrums surrounding the modern multinational corporation, from questions about global management to controversial issues such as tax inversions, monopoly, state-owned corporations, as well as the corporate person’s rights to free speech, religion, and so on. However, from outlandish film productions to the most sober of scholarship, the connections between the Company’s past and our present seem to have become all things to all people, stretched almost to the point of breaking. Though it would be impossible to be exhaustive, this Article nonetheless seeks to outline the various ways in which the East India Company’s legacy has been drawn upon in a range of fields, but especially legal and business scholarship, for a wide range of purposes. In so doing, it proposes that the sheer diversity of uses to which the Company’s history has been put, as well as the lack of any agreement about the meaning and nature of such comparisons, might suggest that the lessons the East India Company can offer to the financial, commercial, and organizational history of the modern corporation, while inherently interesting and heuristically instructive, must necessarily be limited, cautionary, and entertained at one’s own risk

The English East India Company and the Modern Corporation: Legacies, Lessons, and Limitations

The English East India Company was first chartered in 1600, endured until the late nineteenth century, and, in a clever act of corporate resurrection, has even recently returned as a global, upmarket retail outlet selling fine foods and commemorative coins. It has also endured in the popular imagination and culture, churning out heroes and villains alike in film, television, and video games. The script writer for a forthcoming BBC miniseries, in which the East India Company stars as the prime antagonist, even noted recently that the Company was like “the CIA, the NSA, and the biggest, baddest multinational corporation on earth” wrapped into one corporation. All of this attention of late to one of the largest and most enduring corporations of its time, which managed a commercial and political system separated by half a world at upwards of a year and half’s distance, is perhaps unsurprising given the great legal, political, and economic conundrums surrounding the modern multinational corporation, from questions about global management to controversial issues such as tax inversions, monopoly, state-owned corporations, as well as the corporate person’s rights to free speech, religion, and so on. However, from outlandish film productions to the most sober of scholarship, the connections between the Company’s past and our present seem to have become all things to all people, stretched almost to the point of breaking. Though it would be impossible to be exhaustive, this Article nonetheless seeks to outline the various ways in which the East India Company’s legacy has been drawn upon in a range of fields, but especially legal and business scholarship, for a wide range of purposes. In so doing, it proposes that the sheer diversity of uses to which the Company’s history has been put, as well as the lack of any agreement about the meaning and nature of such comparisons, might suggest that the lessons the East India Company can offer to the financial, commercial, and organizational history of the modern corporation, while inherently interesting and heuristically instructive, must necessarily be limited, cautionary, and entertained at one’s own risk

[Editorial] Marketing as an integrator in integrated care

Purpose: Integrated care requires solutions that cannot be delivered without addressing the underlying multidisciplinary problems. Yet with a few notable exceptions, there is a lack of coordination between disciplines, to effectively integrate knowledge. The main aim of this special section is to provide a platform that explicitly coordinates and curates multidisciplinary research aimed at providing a shared understanding and knowledge base that directly addresses the fragmentation in this field, with an explicit focus on the role of Marketing as a key but often neglected partner. We identify four big challenges (Self, Society, Micro Systems and Macro Systems) to which Marketing can contribute, illustrating these potential contributions through the articles and accompanying practitioner commentaries of this special section. Methodology: Ferguson demonstrates how reflexive introspection can be used, beyond its therapeutic benefits, to bring a deeper understanding of the meaning of illness and treatments from a patient’s perspective. Orazi and Newton establish experimentally the positive impact of collaborative sources on health messaging receptivity. Taiminen, Saramieni and Parkinson survey physicians to evaluate acceptance of/barriers to incorporating digital self-services into overall care delivery. Cruz, Snuggs and Tsarenko utilise interviews to understand the patient’s negotiation of the service labyrinth and fragmentation. Findings: We demonstrate the scope and flexibility of marketing theories and methods and how these can be applied to the four main challenges of integrated care: Self; Society; Micro Systems; Macro Systems. Research Implications: We identify directions for future research as a means of stimulating fruitful multidisciplinary partnerships in the four key challenge areas. It is only by collaborating across disciplines that we can really develop and provide insights that inform policy, practitioners, society and consumers on how to future-proof our care services. Originality/Value: In addition to publishing new research, this special section directly encourages multidisciplinary collaboration between marketing, as a neglected partner, and health/social care disciplines by showcasing the theories and methods that can be used to address our identified four key challenges to integrated care. In a novel approach, practitioner commentaries evaluate the value of each study, placing them in the wider integrated care context and hence pointing out further directions for development

Solar and Stellar Activity: Diagnostics and Indices

We summarize the fifty-year concerted effort to place the "activity" of the Sun in the context of the stars. As a working definition of solar activity in the context of stars, we adopt those globally-observable variations on time scales below thermal time scales, of ~ 100,000 yr for the convection zone. So defined, activity is dominated by magnetic-field evolution, including the 22-year Hale cycle, the typical time it takes for the quasi-periodic reversal in which the global magnetic-field takes place. This is accompanied by sunspot variations with 11 year periods, known since the time of Schwabe, as well as faster variations due to rotation of active regions and flaring. "Diagnostics and indices" are terms given to the indirect signatures of varying magnetic- fields, including the photometric (broad-band) variations associated with the sunspot cycle, and variations of the accompanying heated plasma in higher layers of stellar atmospheres seen at special optical wavelengths, and UV and X-ray wavelengths. Our attention is also focussed on the theme of the Symposium by examining evidence for deep and extended minima of stars, and placing the 70-year long solar Maunder Minimum into a stellar context.Comment: Invited keynote paper for IAU Symposium No 286, 2012. Comparative Magnetic Minima: Characterizing quiet times in the Sun and star

A high-tech, low-cost, Internet of Things surfboard fin for coastal citizen science, outreach, and education

Coastal populations and hazards are escalating simultaneously, leading to an increased importance of coastal ocean observations. Many well-established observational techniques are expensive, require complex technical training, and offer little to no public engagement. Smartfin, an oceanographic sensor–equipped surfboard fin and citizen science program, was designed to alleviate these issues. Smartfins are typically used by surfers and paddlers in surf zone and nearshore regions where they can help fill gaps between other observational assets. Smartfin user groups can provide data-rich time-series in confined regions. Smartfin comprises temperature, motion, and wet/dry sensing, GPS location, and cellular data transmission capabilities for the near-real-time monitoring of coastal physics and environmental parameters. Smartfin\u27s temperature sensor has an accuracy of 0.05 °C relative to a calibrated Sea-Bird temperature sensor. Data products for quantifying ocean physics from the motion sensor and additional sensors for water quality monitoring are in development. Over 300 Smartfins have been distributed around the world and have been in use for up to five years. The technology has been proven to be a useful scientific research tool in the coastal ocean—especially for observing spatiotemporal variability, validating remotely sensed data, and characterizing surface water depth profiles when combined with other tools—and the project has yielded promising results in terms of formal and informal education and community engagement in coastal health issues with broad international reach. In this article, we describe the technology, the citizen science project design, and the results in terms of natural and social science analyses. We also discuss progress toward our outreach, education, and scientific goals

Counting Yang-Mills Dyons with Index Theorems

We count the supersymmetric bound states of many distinct BPS monopoles in N=4 Yang-Mills theories and in pure N=2 Yang-Mills theories. The novelty here is that we work in generic Coulombic vacua where more than one adjoint Higgs fields are turned on. The number of purely magnetic bound states is again found to be consistent with the electromagnetic duality of the N=4 SU(n) theory, as expected. We also count dyons of generic electric charges, which correspond to 1/4 BPS dyons in N=4 theories and 1/2 BPS dyons in N=2 theories. Surprisingly, the degeneracy of dyons is typically much larger than would be accounted for by a single supermultiplet of appropriate angular momentum, implying many supermutiplets of the same charge and the same mass.Comment: 34 pages, 1 figure, LaTe

A panchromatic study of BLAST counterparts: total star-formation rate, morphology, AGN fraction and stellar mass

We carry out a multi-wavelength study of individual galaxies detected by the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) and identified at other wavelengths, using data spanning the radio to the ultraviolet (UV). We develop a Monte Carlo method to account for flux boosting, source blending, and correlations among bands, which we use to derive deboosted far-infrared (FIR) luminosities for our sample. We estimate total star-formation rates for BLAST counterparts with z < 0.9 by combining their FIR and UV luminosities. Star formation is heavily obscured at L_FIR > 10^11 L_sun, z > 0.5, but the contribution from unobscured starlight cannot be neglected at L_FIR < 10^11 L_sun, z < 0.25. We assess that about 20% of the galaxies in our sample show indication of a type-1 active galactic nucleus (AGN), but their submillimeter emission is mainly due to star formation in the host galaxy. We compute stellar masses for a subset of 92 BLAST counterparts; these are relatively massive objects, with a median mass of ~10^11 M_sun, which seem to link the 24um and SCUBA populations, in terms of both stellar mass and star-formation activity. The bulk of the BLAST counterparts at z<1 appear to be run-of-the-mill star-forming galaxies, typically spiral in shape, with intermediate stellar masses and practically constant specific star-formation rates. On the other hand, the high-z tail of the BLAST counterparts significantly overlaps with the SCUBA population, in terms of both star-formation rates and stellar masses, with observed trends of specific star-formation rate that support strong evolution and downsizing.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 44 pages, 11 figures. The SED template for the derivation of L_FIR has changed (added new figure) and the discussion on the stellar masses has been improved. The complete set of full-color postage-stamps can be found at http://blastexperiment.info/results_images/moncelsi

Pressure balance in the multiphase ISM of cosmologically simulated disc galaxies

Pressure balance plays a central role in models of the interstellar medium (ISM), but whether and how pressure balance is realized in a realistic multiphase ISM is not yet well understood. We address this question by using a set of FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-mass disc galaxies, in which a multiphase ISM is self-consistently shaped by gravity, cooling, and stellar feedback. We analyse how gravity determines the vertical pressure profile as well as how the total ISM pressure is partitioned between different phases and components (thermal, dispersion/turbulence, and bulk flows). We show that, on average and consistent with previous more idealized simulations, the total ISM pressure balances the weight of the overlying gas. Deviations from vertical pressure balance increase with increasing galactocentric radius and with decreasing averaging scale. The different phases are in rough total pressure equilibrium with one another, but with large deviations from thermal pressure equilibrium owing to kinetic support in the cold and warm phases, which dominate the total pressure near the mid-plane. Bulk flows (e.g. inflows and fountains) are important at a few disc scale heights, while thermal pressure from hot gas dominates at larger heights. Overall, the total mid-plane pressure is well-predicted by the weight of the disc gas and we show that it also scales linearly with the star formation rate surface density (ΣSFR). These results support the notion that the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation arises because ΣSFR and the gas surface density (Σg) are connected via the ISM mid-plane pressure