Value-adding and value-extracting entrepreneurship at the margins

Empirical data is reported from two case studies on the methods used to establish and grow the businesses of two entrepreneurs operating in very different environments: one legitimate, the other illegitimate. Both utilize strong social skills to legitimize their behaviours but neither can be considered as mainstream or conventional entrepreneurial actors. The findings suggest that, despite the very different outcomes associated with their actions, both entrepreneurs exhibit similar enterprising skills and managerial capabilities as found in entrepreneurs engaged in non-marginal activities

In search of Montsalvatch: making sense of interviewing farmers

This paper presents a personal account of how an individualized qualitative research process attempts to understand farmers. A story of how the author interacts with and interviews farmers in order to understand how they and the narrator constructs meaning about what it is to be a farmer and the ‘parallel world’ of the farmer. Explores some methodological issues and problems about framing farmers as entrepreneurs

Why the Voting Gap Matters

Over the last half-century, affluent Americans have turned out to vote at significantly higher rates than lower-income Americans

Do Corporations & Unions Face the Same Rules for Political Spending?

Corporations and unions face very different rules and requirements for their political spending. Labor unions must publicly disclose their political spending and, in some instances, face restrictions about seeking consent from their stakeholders before using political funds. Corporations do not face the same requirements. After Citizens United, there are many avenues through which corporations can spend money in politics without disclosing their financial support for particular candidates or causes. And corporations are not required to seek approval from their stakeholders -- in fact, shareholders don't even have the right under federal law to know if and how a company is spending money in politics.This paper highlights the differences and broad implications of rules governing political spending by corporations and unions. It recommends Congress adopt a comprehensive disclosure regime like the DISCLOSE Act and the SEC meet its responsibility to update disclosure laws for corporate political spending in the wake of Citizens United

What California Donors Want: In Their Own Voices

Based entirely on ideas, perspectives, and suggestions adapted from interviews with active and committed donors. Provides practical suggestions and considerations for tools, information, and guidance donors require as philanthropists

Statistical properties of inelastic Lorentz gas

The inelastic Lorentz gas in cooling states is studied. It is found that the inelastic Lorentz gas is localized and that the mean square displacement of the inelastic Lorentz gas obeys a power of a logarithmic function of time. It is also found that the scaled position distribution of the inelastic Lorentz gas has an exponential tail, while the distribution is close to the Gaussian near the peak. Using a random walk model, we derive an analytical expression of the mean square displacement as a function of time and the restitution coefficient, which well agrees with the data of our simulation. The exponential tail of the scaled position distribution function is also obtained by the method of steepest descent.Comment: 31pages,9figures, to appear Journal of Physical Society of Japan Vol.70 No.7 (2001

'I've got those empty diary blues': a wee case study of performance management in a Glasgow office

Friedrich Nietzsche's writings are currently threatened in that he is he treated only as a philosopher or a poet, and his relationship with twentieth century politics and latterly Management theory is largely ignored, excepting of course when he is held to be responsible for the growth in Fascism. In this paper an attempt will be made to show that Nietzsche should not simply be considered as the deracine par excellence with no interest with more general humanitarian concerns. This paper presents a background to Nietzsche and his relationship to Managerialism and then provides a story written in Glaswegian argot of the relationship between a recruit to a Law Enforcement Office in Glasgow, Scotland and his new Manager. An interesting tale about performance management, illustrates how the abuse of power hides personal and organizational dysfunctionality. Another key feature in the twist at the end of the tale is the manifestation of simulacra in performance measures relating to inspection tasks, where we see that 'work not done but recorded' becomes more important, more 'real' than 'work done but not recorded'. This is the excess of history. The story is written in the Glaswegian vernacular partly as homage to the renowned author James Kelman, but more significantly in an attempt take us closer to the lived experience of the actors - as opposed to the more usual sanitised accounts which abound in the management literature. The language is surprisingly 'industrial' in what is regarded as a 'professional' setting

Business support for farmers: an evaluation of the Farm Cornwall Project

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an account of a Farm Support Project in Cornwall which provides support, advice and an outreach facility for farmers in the Penwith district of Cornwall. It also discusses how effective such schemes are, particularly in an external environment which poses threats to the farm sector in the UK. Three kinds of questions about the nature of farming and the status of farmers are posed. The first set of questions includes polarisations about the hegemonic position of farmers. Second, macro-economic, and thus policy, questions concerning the economic “footprint” of the farmer and the farm's relationship with the economy are posed in Cornwall. The third set of questions concerns the economic role and entrepreneurial capability of the farmer in Cornwall. Design/methodology/approach – A desk study of the scheme's objectives, a literature review, and interviews with 27 stakeholders were reported on specifically the results of the interviews. Findings – The Penwith Scheme encompasses an integrated approach to providing business support to farmers including: sign-posting specialist advisers, the facilitation of training assistance with major grant applications, the development of “social capital” through to help in accessing sources of social support

Building a “community co-operative” at Hill Holt Wood

This article documents the business history of Hill Holt Wood (HHW), a community-run social enterprise based in rural Lincolnshire. It aims to shed light on the issues and obstacles associated with developing a rural enterprise into a ‘community co-operative’ (Somerville, 2007). To this end, face-to-face interviews were conducted with the venture’s founder over a period of approximately five years. It was found that the motivation and persistence of the founder, in addition to key support networks that can be drawn upon when required, were critical to the success of this community-controlled enterprise. The article concludes with a discussion of the future prospects for HHW and similar ‘community co-operatives’

Structure of the herpes-simplex virus portal-vertex

Herpesviruses include many important human pathogens such as herpes simplex virus, cytomegalovirus, varicella-zoster virus, and the oncogenic Epstein–Barr virus and Kaposi sarcoma–associated herpesvirus. Herpes virions contain a large icosahedral capsid that has a portal at a unique 5-fold vertex, similar to that seen in the tailed bacteriophages. The portal is a molecular motor through which the viral genome enters the capsid during virion morphogenesis. The genome also exits the capsid through the portal-vertex when it is injected through the nuclear pore into the nucleus of a new host cell to initiate infection. Structural investigations of the herpesvirus portal-vertex have proven challenging, owing to the small size of the tail-like portal-vertex–associated tegument (PVAT) and the presence of the tegument layer that lays between the nucleocapsid and the viral envelope, obscuring the view of the portal-vertex. Here, we show the structure of the herpes simplex virus portal-vertex at subnanometer resolution, solved by electron cryomicroscopy (cryoEM) and single-particle 3D reconstruction. This led to a number of new discoveries, including the presence of two previously unknown portal-associated structures that occupy the sites normally taken by the penton and the Ta triplex. Our data revealed that the PVAT is composed of 10 copies of the C-terminal domain of pUL25, which are uniquely arranged as two tiers of star-shaped density. Our 3D reconstruction of the portal-vertex also shows that one end of the viral genome extends outside the portal in the manner described for some bacteriophages but not previously seen in any eukaryote viruses. Finally, we show that the viral genome is consistently packed in a highly ordered left-handed spool to form concentric shells of DNA. Our data provide new insights into the structure of a molecular machine critical to the biology of an important class of human pathogens