Between a rock and a hard place: corporate elites in the context of religion and secularism in Turkey

Drawing on discourse analyses of 36 in-depth interviews with elite business people from Turkey, the study identifies the networking patterns of new and established business elites in the context of economic liberalization and socioreligious transformation of the country. Through a comparative analysis of the so-called secular and religious elite networks, we demonstrate the role of institutional actors such as the government, and identity networks, based on religion and place of birth in shaping the form and content of social networks among business elites in Turkey. In order to achieve this, we operationalize Bourdieu's notion of theory of practice and Granovetter's theory of social networks, illustrating the utility of combining these approaches in explicating the form and content of social networks in their situated contexts, in which power and divergent interests are negotiated.Galatasaray University Research Fund [grant number 12.102.005]

A modified fluorescent sensor for reporting glucose concentration in the airway lumen.

We have modified the periplasmic Escherichia coli glucose/galactose binding protein (GBP) and labelled with environmentally sensitive fluorophores to further explore its potential as a sensor for the evaluation of glucose concentration in airway surface liquid (ASL). We identified E149C/A213R GBP labelled with N,N'-Dimethyl-N-(iodoacetyl)-N'-(7-nitrobenz-2-oxa-1,3-diazol-4-yl)ethylenediamine (IANBD, emission wavelength maximum 536nm) with a Kd for D-glucose of 1.02mM and a fluorescence dynamic range of 5.8. This sensor was specific for D-glucose and exhibited fluorescence stability in experiments for several hours. The use of E149C/A213R GBP-IANBD in the ASL of airway cells grown at air-liquid-interface (ALI) detected an increase in glucose concentration 10 minutes after raising basolateral glucose from 5 to 15mM. This sensor also reported a greater change in ASL glucose concentration in response to increased basolateral glucose in H441 airway cells compared to human bronchial epithelial cells (HBEC) and there was less variability with HBEC data than that of H441 indicating that HBEC more effectively regulate glucose movement into the ASL. The sensor detected glucose in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALf) from diabetic db/db mice but not normoglycaemic wildtype mice, indicating limited sensitivity of the sensor at glucose concentrations <50μM. Using nasal inhalation of the sensor and spectral unmixing to generate images, E149C/A213R GBP-IANBD fluorescence was detected in luminal regions of cryosections of the murine distal lung that was greater in db/db than wildtype mice. In conclusion, this sensor provides a useful tool for further development to measure luminal glucose concentration in models of lung/airway to explore how this may change in disease

Entrepreneurial sons, patriarchy and the Colonels' experiment in Thessaly, rural Greece

Existing studies within the field of institutional entrepreneurship explore how entrepreneurs influence change in economic institutions. This paper turns the attention of scholarly inquiry on the antecedents of deinstitutionalization and more specifically, the influence of entrepreneurship in shaping social institutions such as patriarchy. The paper draws from the findings of ethnographic work in two Greek lowland village communities during the military Dictatorship (1967–1974). Paradoxically this era associated with the spread of mechanization, cheap credit, revaluation of labour and clear means-ends relations, signalled entrepreneurial sons’ individuated dissent and activism who were now able to question the Patriarch’s authority, recognize opportunities and act as unintentional agents of deinstitutionalization. A ‘different’ model of institutional change is presented here, where politics intersects with entrepreneurs, in changing social institutions. This model discusses the external drivers of institutional atrophy and how handling dissensus (and its varieties over historical time) is instrumental in enabling institutional entrepreneurship

Parental social class and school GCSE outcomes:Two decades of evidence from UK household panel surveys

This paper investigates social class inequalities in English school qualifications. The analytical focus is pupils’ outcomes in General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs). The original aspect of this paper is the operationalisation of data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), which facilitates analyses from 1991 to 2013. We observe a general trend of improved educational outcomes in more recent cohorts of school pupils, which is consistent with national results. The central empirical finding is that there is a persistent social class gradient. Pupils growing up in families in less advantaged social classes have less favourable school GCSE outcomes. This is especially concerning, because having fewer good GCSEs is likely to limit children’s participation in more advanced education and restrict their options in the labour market. Changes in the structure and content of GCSEs lead us to conjecture that sociological analyses of social class inequalities in school qualifications will continue to be important. We highlight the limitations of using administrative educational data, and we outline the data resources that would better facilitate the study of social class inequalities

Overcoming network overload and redundancy in inter-organizational networks:the roles of potential and latent ties

This paper builds on Granovetter's distinction between strong and weak ties [Granovetter, M. S. 1973. The strength of weak ties. Amer. J. Sociol. 78(6) 1360–1380] in order to respond to recent calls for a more dynamic and processual understanding of networks. The concepts of potential and latent tie are deductively identified, and their implications for understanding how and why networks emerge, evolve, and change are explored. A longitudinal empirical study conducted with companies operating in the European motorsport industry reveals that firms take strategic actions to search for potential ties and reactivate latent ties in order to solve problems of network redundancy and overload. Examples are given, and their characteristics are examined to provide theoretical elaboration of the relationship between the types of tie and network evolution. These conceptual and empirical insights move understanding of the managerial challenge of building effective networks beyond static structural contingency models of optimal network forms to highlight the processes and capabilities of dynamic relationship building and network development. In so doing, this paper highlights the interrelationship between search and redundancy and the scope for strategic action alongside path dependence and structural influences on network processes

Powers of Romance: The Liminal Challenges of Managing Organizational Intimacy

© The Author(s) 2014 Problematic organizational relationships have recently been at the core of highly visible media coverage. Most analyses of sexual relations in organizations have been, however, simplistic and unidimensional, and have placed insufficient systematic emphasis on the role of governmentality in the social construction of organizational romance. In this article, we proceed in two theoretical steps. First, we elaborate a typology of organizational romance that covers different manifestations of this nuanced process. We think of these as organizational strategies of governmentality. Second, we elaborate and identify liminal cases that fall into the interstices of the four predominant ways of managing sexual relationships in organizations. We think of these as vases of liquid love and life that evade the border controls of regulation by governmentality. Finally, we relate these issues to debates about the nature of the civilizational process and suggest hypotheses for future research

Mapping Philanthropic Foundations’ Characteristics: towards an international integrative framework of foundation types

As philanthropic foundations take on increasingly prominent sociopolitical roles, the need for stronger conceptualizations of foundations as an organizational form is articulated widely across academic, policy, and practice contexts. Building on institutional research’s tradition of categorizing, classifying and typologizing organizational forms, our article critically explores the different ways in which foundations have been cast and differentiated in international academic and practice literatures. Examining and integrating these, we propose an integrative framework of foundation types. Incorporating 13 categories—three contextual, five organizational, and five strategic ones—the framework allows for clarifying distinctions and identifying commonalities between different foundation forms, offering a basis for developing more reflective and differentiated research and practice knowledge