Institutional Change, Obsolescing Legitimacy, and Multinational Corporations: The Case of the Central American Banana Industry

This paper studies the practice of integration of influential host country actors to a multinational corporation as a strategy to decrease problems of legitimacy to the foreign firm before the host country's society. By developing the concept of obsolescing legitimacy, we argue that this strategy provides legitimacy to the foreign firm only in the absence of institutional changes in the host country. Once these changes take place, an alliance by the multinational to an elite or a political system no longer ruling the host country will become a liability and will generate problems of legitimacy for the multinational. We illustrate our argument with the case of the US multinational United Fruit Company in Central America.

Political Institutional Change, Obsolescing Legitimacy, and Multinational Corporations: The Case of the Central American Banana Industry

12 month Embargo (expires Dec 1st, 2013). This is the author final draft. The published version may be found here:http://doi.org/10.1007/s11575-012-0141-4This paper studies the practice of integration of influential host country actors to a multinational corporation as a strategy to decrease problems of legitimacy to the foreign firm before the host country’s society. By developing the concept of obsolescing legitimacy, we argue that this strategy provides legitimacy to the foreign firm only in the absence of institutional changes at the macro-political level in the host country. Once these changes take place, an alliance by the multinational to an elite or a political system no longer ruling the host country will become a liability and will generate problems of legitimacy for the multinational. We illustrate our argument with the case of the US multinational United Fruit Company in Central America

Effects of Climate Type and Temporal Variability in Meteorological Input Data in Modeling of Salt Transport in Unsaturated Soils

Oilfield produced brine is a major source of salt contamination in soil and groundwater. Salt transport in the upper soil layers is controlled by the atmospheric interactions via infiltration of meteoritic water. In lower layers, it is controlled by fluctuations in groundwater table, which are also linked to atmospheric interactions via groundwater recharge. Therefore, climate is an important factor in the movement of contaminants in the unsaturated zone. A one-dimensional variably saturated flow and transport model with soil atmospheric boundary condition was used to estimate the effect of climate type and soil texture on soil water and salt dynamics in variably saturated soils. Numerical simulations were run with Hydrus-1D, using daily and sub-daily climate. Simulations were run for nine-year climate datasets for ten different ecoclimatic locations in Alberta, Canada. Results show that flow and transport are function of climate type. Results also indicated that higher temporal resolutions of precipitation data resulted in higher net infiltration values. Higher net infiltration values resulted in faster solute displacement, especially, if the precipitation events were assumed to occur outside the evaporation hours. Minimal to no interaction was observed between groundwater table and atmosphere in coarse-grained soil material, especially in wetter climatic conditions. Keywords: Variably saturated soils, climate, soil-atmosphere boundary, water and salt dynamics, groundwater tabl

Caracterización y comercialización de la caña de azúcar para fruta (Saccharum oficinarum) en Temascaltepec, Estado de México

Se describe el proceso de comercialización de la caña de azúcar para fruta en la zona productora de influencia del municipio de Temascaltepec, Estado de México, así como definición de canales y márgenes de comercializión hacia la Ciudad de Méxic