A Trickle‐Down Model Of Abusive Supervision

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91132/1/j.1744-6570.2012.01246.x.pd

Stakeholders’ responses to CSR tradeoffs:SWhen other-orientation and trust trump material self-interest

When investing in corporate social responsibility (CSR), managers may strive for a win-win scenario where all stakeholders end up better off, but they may not always be able to avoid trading off stakeholders’ interests. To provide guidance to managers who have to make tradeoffs, this study used a vignette-based experiment to explore stakeholders’ intention to associate with a firm (i.e., buy from or become an employee) that trades off CSR directed at the stakeholders’ own group (self-directed CSR) and CSR directed at another stakeholder group (other-directed CSR). Results show that stakeholders were not systematically more attracted to a firm that favors their own group over another stakeholder group. Specifically, stakeholders’ other-orientation moderated their reaction to tradeoffs: stakeholders higher on other-orientation were willing to forego some material benefits to associate with a firm that treated suppliers in developing countries significantly better than its competitors, whereas stakeholders lower on other-orientation were more attracted to a firm favoring their own stakeholder group. Other-orientation also moderated reactions to tradeoffs involving the environment, although high CSR directed at the environment did not compensate for low self-directed CSR even for stakeholders higher on other-orientation. Second, the vignette study showed that trust mediated the relationship between tradeoffs and stakeholders’ reactions. The study contributes first and foremost to the burgeoning literature on CSR tradeoffs and to the multimotive approach to CSR, which claims that other motives can drive stakeholders’ reactions to CSR in addition to self-interest. First, it provides further evidence that studying CSR tradeoffs is important to understand both (prospective) employees’ and customers’ reactions to CSR-related activities. Second, it identifies other-orientation as a motive-related individual difference that explains heterogeneity in stakeholders’ reactions to CSR. These findings suggest several avenues for future research for organizational psychologists interested in organizational justice. Third, it investigates trust as a mediating mechanism. Fourth, it reveals differences in stakeholders’ reactions depending on which other stakeholder group is involved in the tradeoff. For practice, the findings suggest that tradeoffs are important because they influence which stakeholders are attracted to the firm

Stakeholder Relationships and Social Welfare: A Behavioral Theory of Contributions to Joint Value Creation

Firms play a crucial role in furthering social welfare through their ability to foster stakeholders’ contributions to joint value creation, i.e., value creation that involves a public-good dilemma due to high task and outcome interdependence - leading to what economists have labeled the ‘team production problem’. We build on relational models theory to examine how individual stakeholders’ contributions to joint value creation are shaped by stakeholders’ mental representations of their relationships with the other participants in value creation, and how these mental representations are affected by the perceived behavior of the firm. Stakeholder theory typically contrasts a broadly-defined ‘relational’ approach to stakeholder management with a ‘transactional’ approach based on the price mechanism - and has argued that the former is more likely to contribute to social welfare than the latter. Our theory supports this prediction for joint value creation, but also implies that the dichotomy on which it is based is too coarse-grained: there are three distinct ways to trigger higher contributions to joint value creation than through a ‘transactional’ approach. Our theory also helps explain the tendency for firms and their stakeholders to converge on ‘transactional’ relationships, despite their relative inefficiency in the context of joint value creation

A broadband microstrip to waveguide transition for FR4 multilayer PCBs up to 50 GHz

A broadband microstrip-to-waveguide transition has been studied and tested for low-cost microwave circuits on FR4 multilayer boards having an internal thick metal plate (1). It is obtained, at first, milling a slot in a thick metal plate. Subsequently the PCB is built up, using standard PCB process, inserting the thick metal plate as the second layer. In this way the slot results filled with FR4 prepreg. A further simple milling process removes the lower layers up to the thick metal plate and creates a part of the waveguide transformer and an area for plate to metal housing connection. The transition integration in the multilayer is obtained just fixing the board on the metal housing which includes the rest of the transformer and the waveguide. Moreover, as the transition shows low sensitivity to manufacturing tolerances, the above process is characterised by high reliability and reproducibility

Thick metal plate insertion make FR4 multilayer board a simple carrier for RF power circuits

In order to reduce sizes and costs of microwave circuits and to simplify their integration together with IF, control and power supply networks, we tested (1) a simple solution that allows using FR4 boards also for microwave circuits. Since FR4 boards are necessarily present in every equipment for power supplies, control, digital and IF circuits, it becomes possible to reduce the number of boards or modules collecting all the networks (operating from DC to tenth of Gigahertz) on the same FR4 multilayer. The typical RF requirements of good thermal and electrical ground and the need of a carrier for “chip on board” monolithic assembly are all achieved through the insertion of a copper plate a few tenth of millimetre thick. This copper plate replaces the second metal layer of FR4 multilayer remaining within standard FR4 process; monolithics can be mounted on it just opening a window on the first layer

Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, and Political Opportunities:

 In the summer of 2020, while mired in the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States experienced an unprecedentedly massive wave of protests led by the Black Lives Matter movement. Given the novelty of this upswell and the lack of a clear precedent thereof, there does not yet exist much scholarly analysis into why and how this movement expanded as significantly as it did or what developmental routes it may take as in the future. My research seeks to remedy this gap by employing the political process theory of social movement activity to interpret how the COVID pandemic increased opportunities for insurgent activity, how Black Lives Matter was in a prime position to take advantage of those opportunities, and how the movement can and should approach its future development to retain the support and leverage it accumulated during the 2020 protests. Through informal qualitative analysis rooted in the political process model, I suggest that COVID led to greater public recognition of institutional maladies in the United States, which Black Lives Matter was able to channel toward protest activity thanks to the low-cost, high-reward membership system inherent in its non-hierarchical structure and tactful use of social media. I then briefly consider different developmental paths that Black Lives Matter may take and assert that carefully implemented attempts at formalization will allow the movement to retain its organizing potential regardless of any volatile external opportunities.</jats:p

Fascism on screen: Fascist Italy’s film diplomacy campaigns in the United States

In the ten years before the outbreak of World War Two interrupted United States-Italy diplomatic relations, the Italian Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini sought to influence Americans’ opinion of Fascism by distributing Italian films in America. However, these campaigns have never been considered in their totality in scholarship on Fascist propaganda. This project seeks to provide a more complete examination of the Fascist regime’s efforts to use film as a propaganda tool in America by reviewing the exhibition and circulation work of Italian diplomats, Italian American organizations operating on behalf of the regime, and commercial distributors who signed agreements with the regime in the 1930s and early 1940s. By examining past scholarship in Fascist cinema studies, intragovernmental communications on different film distribution initiatives, and deliberations between regime officials and their implementing partners in America, I conclude that despite the best efforts of many agents of the regime to offer a positive vision of Fascism and Fascist Italy to Italian and non-Italian Americans through the cinema, Fascist film diplomacy initiatives in America were consistently limited in their ineffectiveness thanks to inadequate organizational, administrative, and economic support from the Italian government