Stolen Future, Broken Present

This book argues that climate change has a devastating effect on how we think about the future. Once several positive feedback loops in Earth’s dynamic systems, such as the melting of the Arctic icecap or the drying of the Amazon, cross the point of no return, the biosphere is likely to undergo severe and irreversible warming. Nearly everything we do is premised on the assumption that the world we know will endure into the future and provide a sustaining context for our activities. But today the future of a viable biosphere, and thus the purpose of our present activities, is put into question. A disappearing future leads to a broken present, a strange incoherence in the feel of everyday life. We thus face the unprecedented challenge of salvaging a basis for our lives today. That basis, this book argues, may be found in our capacity to assume an infinite responsibility for ecological disaster and, like the biblical Job, to respond with awe to the alien voice that speaks from the whirlwind. By owning disaster and accepting our small place within the inhuman forces of the biosphere, we may discover how to live with responsibility and serenity whatever may come

Management Research on Multinational Corporations: A Methodological Critique

In the context of burgeoning research on multinational corporations (MNCs), this paper addresses the issue of the representativeness of databases of MNCs in Ireland. It identifies some important deficiencies in existing databases much used by scholars in the field. Drawing on the international literature, it finds that this problem also characterises research on MNCs in many other countries. In the Irish context, we find that the extant empirical research has generally excluded two key categories of MNCs, namely, (a) foreign MNCs which are not grant-aided by the main industrial promotions agencies and (b) Irish-owned MNCs. The paper outlines our experience in identifying and addressing these deficiencies and describes the methods that might be employed in more precisely defining the MNC population in Ireland. More generally the paper reviews some of the issues and obstacles confronting scholars investigating the MNC sector in Ireland and abroad.

Discipline and punish? Strategy discourse, senior manager subjectivity and contradictory power effects

Responding to calls for a more localized and dispersed conceptualization of power in the study of strategy discourse and its power effects, this paper examines how such effects undermine and contradict each other in a mundane, routine interaction: a research interview between a corporate elite actor and one of the authors. Using a Foucauldian inspired discursive psychology approach to provide a critical analysis of brief stretches of talk in a research interview, we expose the inherent instability and contingency of strategy discourse as it is used to construct accounts of corporate success, failure and senior manager subjectivity. Our core contribution is to show that resistance to strategy discourse is discernible not only through how lower level or other actors contest or undermine this discourse, but also by observing the efforts of corporate elites to manage temporary breakdowns (Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2011) which disrupt the background consensus which ordinarily provides strategy discourse with its “taken-for-granted” quality. Resistance, we argue, is not only an intentional and oppositional practice but inheres within the fine grain of strategy discourse itself, manifested as a “hindrance and stumbling block” (Foucault, 1978) in the highly occasioned and local level of mundane interaction

Solar energy apparatus with apertured shield

A protective apertured shield for use about an inlet to a solar apparatus which includesd a cavity receiver for absorbing concentrated solar energy. A rigid support truss assembly is fixed to the periphery of the inlet and projects radially inwardly therefrom to define a generally central aperture area through which solar radiation can pass into the cavity receiver. A non-structural, laminated blanket is spread over the rigid support truss in such a manner as to define an outer surface area and an inner surface area diverging radially outwardly from the central aperture area toward the periphery of the inlet. The outer surface area faces away from the inlet and the inner surface area faces toward the cavity receiver. The laminated blanket includes at least one layer of material, such as ceramic fiber fabric, having high infra-red emittance and low solar absorption properties, and another layer, such as metallic foil, of low infra-red emittance properties

Warm Cores around Regions of Low-Mass Star Formation

Warm cores (or hot corinos) around low-mass protostellar objects show a rich chemistry with strong spatial variations. This chemistry is generally attributed to the sublimation of icy mantles on dust grains initiated by the warming effect of the stellar radiation. We have used a model of the chemistry in warm cores in which the sublimation process is based on extensive laboratory data; these data indicate that sublimation from mixed ices occurs in several well-defined temperature bands. We have determined the position of these bands for the slow warming by a solar-mass star. The resulting chemistry is dominated by the sublimation process and by subsequent gas-phase reactions; strong spatial and temporal variations in certain molecular species are found to occur, and our results are, in general, consistent with observational results for the well-studied source IRAS 16293-2422. The model used is similar to one that describes the chemistry of hot cores. We infer that the chemistry of both hot cores and warm cores may be described by the same model (suitably adjusted for different physical parameters).Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. Accepted by MNRA

Regional head quarter’s dual agency role: micro-political strategies of alignment and self interest

Increased research focus on the networked perspective of the MNE reflects a greater delegation of responsibility from corporate headquarters (CHQ) to subsidiary and intermediary units such as regional headquarters (RHQ). This shift has increased the intensity of political interactions between key actors within the MNE. Despite the recent rise in studies on the micro-political perspective of the MNE, to date little empirical work has explored this issue in the context of the CHQ-RHQ relationship. Drawing insights from agency theory and micro-politics, we focus on the context in which RHQs develop micro-political strategies in order to manage the flow and exchange of knowledge with CHQ. We show how RHQ may exhibit a ‘dual agency’ role when dealing with CHQ, in that it is characterised as a principal and agent, each requiring different micro-political knowledge strategies. As a principal, RHQ will develop micro-political knowledge strategies to increase alignment with CHQ. As an agent, RHQ develops micro-political knowledge strategies to pursue its own self-interests. Having identified different RHQ agency roles, we develop a conceptual model that outlines how alignment and self-interest seeking behaviours from RHQ manifest through different micro-political knowledge strategies in its agency relationship with CHQ