The Gender Recognition Act: Past, Present and Future

This article shall focus on the landmark 2004 Gender Recognition Act and associated legal cases. It will explore the legal rulings that lead to the Act being passed, the content of the Act and the impact this had on the transgender community in the UK, including subsequent legal issues.&nbsp

Extending the managerial power theory of executive pay: A cross national test

Contextual factors are typically neglected in both theorizing and empirical tests on executive pay. The fast majority of empirical investigations use data from U.S. based firms. Theoretical implications are typically developed, understood and tested on the basis of the U.S. context. However, the U.S. case is not the world wide standard. Pay in other countries is on average considerably lower and have a different pay mix. The puzzle that from the typical use of agency theory can’t be explained is the variance of pay practices that exist not only within countries but also across countries. This paper extends scholars renewed attention to managerial power theory on executive pay. It sets out how and why institutional theory must be included in explanations of executive pay. On the basis of a sample of executive pay packages from 17 different countries we test the theoretical extensions. Results indicate that institutions interact with firm level determinants of executive pay. Explanations for executive pay should therefore account for the variance of pay practices within and across countries. Highlighting that the institutional embeddedness of pay practices play an important role in finding conclusive explanations of current pay practices.Executive compensation, corporate governance, managerial discretion, power, agency theory, institutional theory

Taming Trojan Horses: Identifying and Mitigating Corporate Social Responsibility Risks

Organizations are exposed to increasing pressures from their constituents to integrate corporate social responsibility (CSR) principles into their ongoing business practices. But accepting new and potentially open-ended commitments is not a harmless exercise, and companies may well expose themselves to serious risks when embracing such principles. To identify these risks, we conducted two naturalistic studies: one exploratory, the other corroborative. The results show that CSR adoption is associated with at least seven different business risks, ranging from failing strategy implementation to legitimacy destruction. To alleviate these risks, we discuss a set of managerial mitigation strategies that have the potential to realign companies’ CSR activities with their strategic objectives. Keywords corporate social responsibility - corporate social responsibility risks - managerial implications - mitigation strategies - strategy implementation - Trojan horses Pursey Heugens is an Associate Professor of Organization Theory in the Department of Business-Society Management at RSM Erasmus University. He received his PhD from the same school. His research interests span positive and normative theories of organizaton, including bureaucracy theory, neo-institutional theory, contractualist business ethics, and virtue ethics. Nikolay Dentchev is an independent research fellow at Ghent University, Belgium, and a project coordinator at the corporate venturing department of Fortis Group (Fortis Venturing). He holds a Ph.D. in business economics from Ghent University. His current research is related to entrepreneurship, instrumental stakeholder theory, and management challenges of corporate social responsibility

Polynomial SUSY in Quantum Mechanics and Second Derivative Darboux Transformation

We give the classification of second-order polynomial SUSY Quantum Mechanics in one and two dimensions. The particular attention is paid to the irreducible supercharges which cannot be built by repetition of ordinary Darboux transformations. In two dimensions it is found that the binomial superalgebra leads to the dynamic symmetry generated by a central charge operator.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, preprint SPbU-IP-94-0

Unfit to Learn? How Long View Organizations Adapt to Environmental Jolts

Long view organizations have a technical core combining high levels of Woodwardian (1958) technological complexity and Thompsonian (1967) technological intensity. This significantly diminishes their capacity for operational flexibility and strategic adaptation. Little is known about how such organizations manage to learn from rare events. We shed light on this issue by reporting a thirteen-year longitudinal study of a major oil company, tracing its experiences with a socio-political crisis from original preparations to learnings that did not fully materialize until years after the event. We use three alternate templates to interpret the organization’s struggle to maintain its technical core under conditions of fierce contestation by changing constituent groups and dwindling public support: (1) a stakeholder template mapping shifts in the salience of constituent groups that punctuate long-standing negotiated equilibria; (2) a legitimacy template showing migration towards new forms of legitimacy while old forms crumble; and (3) a capability template highlighting how pre-existing stocks of capabilities hinder learning before being supplanted by new ones. These templates are tied together in a set of integrative propositions stating how long view organizations learn from rare events

Much Ado About Nothing: A conceptual critique of CSR

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a nominal term clearly resonates with scholars and practitioners alike. As a scientific concept, however, it has often been criticized for its lack of definitional precision and poor measurement. In this paper we review and assess intensional and extensional definitions of the concept, as they have figured in the prior CSR literature. But we also go beyond these traditional review exercises by assessing the role (if any) of the concept in positive theorizing. The upshot of this analysis is that since the CSR concept adds nothing of value to existing frameworks in the field of management and organization, such as the economizing and legitimizing perspectives, it is best to discard it altogether

Testing the Strength of the Iron Cage: A Meta-Analysis of Neo-Institutional Theory

In this study, we use meta-analytical techniques to quantitatively synthesize and evaluate the sizeable body of empirical work that has been conducted under the banner of neo-institutional theory. We find strong support for the influence of mimetic pressures on organizational isomorphism, but support for the predicted roles of normative and coercive factors is mixed. Similarly, we find that the strategic isomorphism, the homogenous application of corporate policies, tends to translate into symbolic but not substantive performance effects. In combination with additional moderator analyses, these findings suggest new directions for future research

Parameter Symmetry of the Interacting Boson Model

We discuss the symmetry of the parameter space of the interacting boson model (IBM). It is shown that for any set of the IBM Hamiltonian parameters (with the only exception of the U(5) dynamical symmetry limit) one can always find another set that generates the equivalent spectrum. We discuss the origin of the symmetry and its relevance for physical applications.Comment: Minor changes; Revtex, 14 pages with 1 figur

无可遁形: 跨国公司与负责任商业行为

This Perspective explores the implications for the home countries of large MNEs of the agreement reached by over 140 countries in 2021 to enact a corporate minimum tax of 15%. It argues that the corporate minimum tax complements the trend to reduce the negative impact of unfettered globalization on labor, and it protects the ability of home countries to finance a robust social safety net. Home countries should adopt the corporate minimum tax, and that includes the US, which last year failed to adapt its Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income approach to the corporate minimum tax