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Empirical Focus (empirical + focus)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences57%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting28%

Selected Abstracts

THEORIZING GLOBAL BUSINESS SPACES

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2009
Andrew Jones
ABSTRACT. Over the last decade, geographers have paid a great deal of attention to transnational firms (TNCs) and global production networks (GPNs) in the global economy, to the emergence of a mobile transnational business class and also to the development of global or globalizing cities. All three literatures have made important contributions to understanding the spatiality of global economic activity, but each adopts a fairly discreet theoretical and empirical focus. This article aims to outline a number of theoretical dimensions for thinking about how these key strands to the globalization debate can be brought together through the concept of global business spaces. It will propose a framework for understanding the spatialities of global economic activity that seeks to capture the complex interaction of material, social, organizational and virtual spaces that form the context through which it is constituted. With reference to business travel as a key form of economic practice which plays a central role in (re)producing these spaces, it assesses how these emerging spaces of global economic activity present problems for the conceptual categories commonly used by both urban and economic geographers. In so doing, it proposes a series of ways in which a different research agenda can produce new insight into the complex forms of social practice at the centre of global economic activity. [source]

Legitimacy and the Privatization of Environmental Governance: How Non,State Market,Driven (NSMD) Governance Systems Gain Rule,Making Authority

GOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2002
Benjamin Cashore
In recent years, transnational and domestic nongovernmental organizations have created non,state market,driven (NSMD) governance systems whose purpose is to develop and implement environmentally and socially responsible management practices. Eschewing traditional state authority, these systems and their supporters have turned to the market's supply chain to create incentives and force companies to comply. This paper develops an analytical framework designed to understand better the emergence of NSMD governance systems and the conditions under which they may gain authority to create policy. Its theoretical roots draw on pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy granting distinctions made within organizational sociology, while its empirical focus is on the case of sustainable forestry certification, arguably the most advanced case of NSMD governance globally. The paper argues that such a framework is needed to assess whether these new private governance systems might ultimately challenge existing state,centered authority and public policy,making processes, and in so doing reshape power relations within domestic and global environmental governance. [source]

Studying talk and embodied practices: toward a psychology of materiality of ,race relations'

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2005
Kevin Durrheim
Abstract This article argues that an adequate social psychology of racism needs to take seriously people's lived experiences of ,race relations'. This involves an empirical focus on social life in ordinary contexts in which everyday practices are structured around ,race'. In particular, we argue that such a social psychology of racism needs to understand the articulation of two related domains of practices,embodied spatio-temporal practices and linguistic practices (talk),that together constitute the reality of ,race relations' in specific, concrete contexts. By discussing a case study of practices that constitute ,desegregation' on a post-apartheid beach, we show that this focus (1) allows a fuller appreciation of the nature and construction of ,race relations', (2) helps us to understand why ,race relations' are so resistant to change and (3) provides a historical and materialist account of the nature of ,race groups'. We argue that (what we term) the ,impoverished realism' of traditional attitude research and the ,selective anti-realism' of discursive social psychology both limit an appreciation of lived experience as a focus of study. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Semiosis, interaction and ethnicity in urban Java1

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 4 2009
Zane Goebel
This paper teases out the interdiscursive relations between local and perduring signs of personhood and their recontextualization in situated talk. In doing so, I aim to provide further evidence of the utility of incorporating ethnography, linguistic anthropological work on semiotics and work on face-to-face interaction. My empirical focus is on two consecutive men's meetings that occurred in an urban Indonesian milieu. In particular, I draw upon work on semiotic register formation and processes of social identification to flesh out how signs from different temporal-spatial scales figure in the social identification of a non-present neighbor as deviant and Chinese. By taking an interactional view I also attempt to fill a gap in the scholarship on such inter-ethnic relations in Indonesia, which has hitherto primarily been historical in nature. [source]

Distribution conventionality in the movie sector: an econometric analysis of cinema supply

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 8 2009
Alan Collins
This paper empirically analyzes the impact of several factors on a ,conventionality index (CI)' in the specific context of the cinema exhibition sector. To our knowledge, it is the first time that a standard CI has been constructed for this purpose. Econometric analysis of the determinants of variation in this index provides decision-makers with an empirical focus for analyzing distributional aspects of the movie exhibition market, with particular emphasis on product differentiation. Specifically, (i) do cinemas based in a city area have a different or ,specialized' focus in contrast to cinemas in small towns? or (ii) do multiplexes have a different or more specialized focus in comparison with cinemas? To this end, cross-sectional econometric models are estimated to help analyze these effects in three Italian regions for a sample of cinemas covering the 2006 season. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Core competencies and the prevention of adolescent substance use

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, Issue 122 2008
Tamara M. Haegerich
Adolescence is a developmental period during which youth are at increased risk for using substances. An empirical focus on core competencies illustrates that youth are less likely to use substances when they have a positive future orientation, a belief in the ability to resist substances, emotional and behavioral control, sound decision-making ability, a belief that substance use is wrong, and a strong bond to prosocial peers and family. Such etiological research is beginning to provide a strong foundation for successful competence-building prevention programs. Focusing on the developmental-ecological context of adolescent substance use will expedite advances in prevention. [source]

PERFORMING GOVERNANCE: A PARTNERSHIP BOARD DRAMATURGY

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 4 2007
TIM FREEMAN
This paper explores the governance of complex public sector partnerships through a detailed case study of a Joint Commissioning Partnership Board (JCPB) in the South East of England. It argues that a theoretical and empirical focus on the instrumental roles of boards has resulted in an under-appreciation of their symbolic purposes, especially in the context of the governance of inter-organizational relationships. The paper considers the performative dimension of partnership governance, highlighting the role of the symbolic in institutional enactment. Following a brief overview of governance in public sector partnerships, the case study site for the empirical research is introduced. The instrumental and symbolic roles of management boards are considered from a new institutionalist perspective and a dramaturgical analysis of institutional enactment undertaken to explore interplays of the symbolic and instrumental in strategy formation. Some implications for our understanding of the symbolic in partnership governance are discussed. [source]