The Metaphorization of Practical Action and Everyday Life Experience in the Words, Emblems, and Coverbal Gestures of Spoken Language

This paper focuses on the impact of practical action and experience on all aspects of oral language, segmental and suprasegmental, verbal and visual (i.e. gestural). It is based on observations of emblems and coverbal gestures in synergy with the words of spoken language over a number of years annotating and studying visual and verboacoustic manifestations in videotaped oral interactions. Facial expressions, postures, gestures, and body movement in general visually manifest the close semiotic interweaving of movement, space, and words in human thought and consequently in human oral expression. The important part of this interweaving results from the metaphorization or analogical converging of two notions that share one or more features but otherwise belong to different categories. Thinking and speaking are experienced as just another form of activity such as the practical actions of walking, running, handling objects, only transposed into the virtual world of cognitive and linguistic reality. Thus, when speaking, we are handling concepts by using gestures and words as if they were the objects experienced in the outside material reality. The etymology of words expressing abstract ideas often hide the metaphorical source domain of a concrete phenomenon in our practical life. For example, not only is the Latin word comprehendere, equivalent in meaning to the English words catch, get, grasp, or comprehend; the French saisir or comprendre; and the Croatian shvatiti, but all of these words also share the same underlying metaphor: Understanding is catching. The coverbal metaphorical hand gesture of grasping an imaginary object seems to visually revitalize in the gesture space the metaphor, which had become ´dead´ in the linguistic system. The correspondences in the verbal and gestural structure of metaphorical mappings in a given language are possible because words and gestures are parts of a single framework. They developed out of practical action and everyday life experience and stay deeply embedded in it. This paper was presented at the 4th Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies: Gesture, Brain and Evolution, 25-30 July 2010, University of Viadrina, Frankfurt Oder, Germany

Follow-my-leader FDI and collusion

This paper presents a simple model to illustrate the following idea - domestic rivals may be motivated to setup foreign production in the same country because the replication of each other’s foreign direct investment (FDI) facilitates collusive behaviour in the market in which they compete. This implies positive interdependence between firms’ FDI decisions, i.e. foreign investment by one firm brings increased incentive for others to follow-suit. So, we highlight a mechanism that propagates FDI clusters - a flurry of investment from one country, or region, to another.

The Single Market and The Geographical Diversification of Leading Firms in the EU

Geographical diversification describes the degree to which a firm’s operations in a particular industry are dispersed across countries. This paper presents evidence on the geographical diversification within the EU of the 290-odd largest manufacturing firms in Europe. We also explore how geographical diversification changed with the introduction of the Single Market. We highlight differences between firms’ home and foreign operations and study the variation across sectors and across EU countries. Ireland, which began its rapid FDI-fuelled convergence on average EU living standards over our data period, emerges as a special case and receives particular attention.Single Market, Geographical Diversification, FDI, Multinational Corporations

Playing away to win at home

This paper presents a model of the interaction between two rival firms based in the same country. Each firm must decide how to serve a foreign market (export or foreign production) and how much to invest in a corporate-wide asset that reduces production costs and/or augments the willingness-to-pay for their product. In this scenario, the firms’ foreign direct investment decisions are interdependent. Furthermore, strategic motives for FDI relate not to a firm’s domestic, as well as foreign, market profits. One possibility is that a firm sets up overseas production even though its foreign market profits would be higher by exporting.Foreign direct investment; Multinational firm; R&D; Oligopoly

Race-to-the-Bottom or -Top at Home or Abroad: Health and Safety Standards and the Multinational Firm

We develop a model to illustrate potential complexities in the relationship between corporate geographical diversification and the health and safety (H&S) standards set in national jurisdictions. A firm, that initially has a plant in its home country, may choose to also have one or two foreign plants in order to improve its bargaining position versus local governments, and so ensure reduced H&S standards, i.e. a race-to-the-bottom. However, contrary to the main focus of the popular debate on this topic, we note the potential for the race-to-the-bottom tendency to be exerted on H&S standards in the multinational company’s home rather than host country, and also for an upward push on H&S to instead result.

The Stock Performance of America’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens

This study considers the stock performance of America’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens following the annual survey by Business Ethics. We examine both possible short-term announcement effects around the time of the survey’s publication, and whether longer-term returns are higher for firms that are listed as good citizens. We find some evidence of a positive market reaction to a firm’s presence in the Top 100 firms that are made public, and that holders of the stock of such firms earn small abnormal returns during an announcement window. Over the year following the announcement, companies in the Top 100 yield negative abnormal returns of around 3%. However, such companies tend to be large and with stocks exhibiting a growth style, which existing studies suggest will tend to perform poorly. Once we allow for these firm characteristics, the poor performance of the highly rated firms declines. We also find companies that are newly listed as good citizens can provide considerable positive abnormal returns to investors, even after allowing for their market capitalisation, price-to-book ratios, and sectoral classification.Corporate citzenship, business ethics 100 best corporate citzens, corporate social responsibility, stock returns, trading rule performance

COMMUNICATION OF THE CROATIAN STATE ARCHIVES IN ZADAR WITH ITS USERS AND THE REVIEW OF THE INFORMATION NEEDS OF GENEALOGISTS

Genealogical researches associated with the Croatian archival institutions have not previously been systematically conducted neither at regional nor national level. However, more recent American researches conducted by interviewing genealogists talk about a very important group of users seeking for information from archival material and records. Based on these researches we perceive the most common user obstacles and problems they are facing during the search. Based on the available documentation in Croatian State Archives in Zadar and through questionnaires, the author has obtained the feedback from its users and the information on genealogists' habits (within the population of students and professors of the Croatian city of Zadar, and, with the second questionnaire, within the other natural or legal persons who use records). On the basis of questionnaires and insight into quantitative information on users and material, and with complementary qualitative research approaches (interviews of the American researchers with genealogists), the author came across the deeper insight on customers of the Croatian State Archives in Zadar in general, and on genealogists, in particular. The author thereby raises some key aspects in determining the users' behaviour when searching for information. In fact, the research has established the identity of the users and resulted in findings on: the uses of archives and records, ways in which users make contact with the archives, the research purposes (of genealogists in particular), the sources of reliance of genealogical users prior to visiting the archives and on the assessment which is determined by personal priority for genealogy research (1 for unimportant to 5 for extremely important). The results obtained may be considered by the archivists in Zadar, who might also intensify its own conduct of users’ research within its users and to connect the storage of information resources with the needs of the users

Corporate Reputation and Stock Returns; are good firm good for investors?

This paper employs a unique dataset from the UK based on ten years of surveys of company directors and analysts conducted for Management Today to examine the relationship between a firm’s reputation and the returns on its shares. We find that investors who purchase stocks with reputation scores that have risen significantly can make abnormal returns. Also, firms whose scores have fallen substantially still exhibit positive abnormal returns in both the short and long run when the market index is employed as a benchmark. However, when a more appropriate comparator is used, evidence of out-performance entirely disappearsManagement today, most admired firms, stock returns

Vizualna obilježja govorenoga jezika

Knjiga nastoji pružiti uvid u problematiku vizualnih obilježja govorenoga jezika s motrišta suvremene jezične znanosti. Njen cilj jest omogućiti upoznavanje s osnovnim pojmovima i terminima problematike razgovornih gesta te osvijetliti znanstveno zanimanje za vizualne pojave govorenoga jezika u interdisciplinarnome ozračju suvremenih lingvističkih istraživanja. Sadržaj knjige je usredotočen na vizualna obilježja govorenoga jezika, tako da se nastojalo razmotriti vizualna obilježja govorenoga jezika u odnosu na povezane aspekte iz problematike jezika i spoznaje te na taj način pridonijeti boljem razumijevanju i istraživanju uloge vizualnih obilježja u usmenoj jezičnoj djelatnosti